Here’s the seventeenth step in my Top Down Animation, Work in Progress series. In this video I concentrate on just the right arm. But this time I go further than the last one and also include the fingers of this hand. I also add in a table move and rock in reaction to the hand pulling on it during the fall.
Step Seventeen – Right Arm:
Again, if you have any questions or thoughts, leave a comment or send me a Tweet (@escape_studios)
We’re pleased to announce that we’re running a ‘3D for Visual Effects’ classroom course, which runs for 12 weeks and includes hands-on practical training using the latest industry standard software and techniques.
With 70% of the course fee funded by Skillset, the Sector Skills Council for the UK creative media industries, the course is aimed at anyone in the film industry and will give sufficient training to become immediately employable in roles such as Junior 3D Artist or Camera Tracking professional.
The Skillset 3D for Visual Effects course will offer practical training in the integration of CG in to live action covering areas such as 3D creation, animation, camera tracking, advanced lighting and compositing. Studio training will be supported by interactive tutorials and additional e-learning materials to help students revisit topics where necessary.
The course starts on May 24th and runs for 12 weeks. Potential applicants need to be already working in the film industry in order to qualify. Details on how to apply can be found here.
I thought I’d give you all a sneak peek at what’s currently happening on our Animation course. The students have just completed a day of life drawing lessons to help with their understanding of composition, staging, silhouetting and several other traditional art skills vital for 3D animators.
Next week the guys will be partaking in a mime acting class to help them understand movement and character, so look out for more photos soon.
If you are interested in learning more about our Animation course, or would like to visit the studios on one of our Open Days, please feel free to drop me a line.
Friday 12 March 2010
This is hot off the press from Autodesk at the Games Developers Conference in San Fran… Rather than paraphrase their release, I thought you’d like to see it in its entirety. So here it is:
GAME DEVELOPER’S CONFERENCE,SAN FRANCISCO, March 11, 2010 – Autodesk, Inc. and Epic Games, Inc. have collaborated to provide greater connectivity between Autodesk’s art creation and animation tools and Epic’s Unreal Engine 3, using Autodesk FBX data interchange technology. Autodesk FBX 2011 offers a faster, more streamlined workflow for transferring content created in Autodesk Maya 2011 and Autodesk 3ds Max 2011 software into Unreal Engine 3 – helping boost production efficiency and preserve creative intent.
“The streamlined interchange of 3D assets between Autodesk art creation tools and Unreal Engine 3 is the result of a long-standing, productive relationship between Autodesk and Epic Games,” said Mark Rein, vice president, Epic Games. “The Autodesk FBX file format is a robust standard for rich 3D data exchange within the games community. With this streamlined workflow, FBX should be the first choice for developers using the powerful Unreal Engine 3 when it comes to transferring art from Autodesk software.”
New for Unreal Engine 3 licensees and Unreal Development Kit (UDK) users is an FBX importer that enables game developers to import FBX files created in Maya or 3ds Max directly into the Unreal Editor. The importer automatically breaks files down into assets in the Unreal Editor, such as level of detail (LOD) information, animations, character meshes, character rigs, and models. In addition, if a 3D model is updated in 3ds Max or Maya, a new FBX file can be imported into the Unreal Editor where the assets will be automatically refreshed.
“Working with Epic Games, we have taken the once labor-intensive task of importing 3D content into a game engine and turned it into a one-click workflow,” said Marc Stevens, Autodesk vice president, Games. “Autodesk software and middleware is designed to integrate into a wide range of games pipelines. We are working in cooperation with leading games companies like Epic to help improve the connectivity between our tools and their engines – making game authoring simpler and more efficient.”
We have some exciting news from Autodesk today. They have just unveiled the 2011 versions of its Digital Entertainment Creation software with the promise of increased production efficiency, especially in terms of interaction, workflow, interface design and interoperability. The release dates are yet to be announced, but from what we’ve seen the new versions promise great value and some avant-garde technology developed with the likes of Sony Pictures Imageworks.
These new products will all be available as part of the Autodesk Entertainment Creation Suites which will give artists a significant cost saving.
Maya is now available for the Mac OS X 64-bit operating system, and has an improved user interface and character animation and has new 3D editorial features, as you can see in the video I have posted here. As for 3ds Max 2011, we are told that it will be easier and quicker to produce higher-quality images thanks to the introduction of new techniques for creating and texturing models and animating characters.
Finally, changes to Softimage mean that artists can now create more complex and higher-quality characters and effects much faster. For game developers, there will be new versions of Autodesk Kynapse and Autodesk HumanIK to get stuck into.
Sneak previews will be available online at Autodesk’s website in the community area of their virtual Autodesk GDC booth or by viewing the Autodesk® MasterClass online. Presentations and MasterClasses will be available for on-demand streaming after the event.
Check out the full set of features here: http://bit.ly/annw5o.
Here’s the sixteenth step in my Top Down Animation, Work in Progress series. In this video I once again choose to concintrate on just one small part of the animation. This time the left arm, elbow and wrist animating them through the end of the scene.
Step Sixteen – Left Arm:
Again, if you have any questions or thoughts, leave a comment or send me a Tweet (@escape_studios)
Here’s the fifteenth step in my Top Down Animation, Work in Progress series. In this video I go back down to the feet and animate them through to the end of the scene. I pay extra attention to make sure it looks like the feet are pushing off and driving the chair tipping and rocking.
Step Fifteen – Feet:
Again, if you have any questions or thoughts, leave a comment or send me a Tweet (@escape_studios)
On Wednesday we were at the Apollo cinema in Picadilly, for our CG Workflows event with Framestore, looking at some of the extremely difficult shots they were asked to tackle on Avatar.
As well as the guys from Framestore, we had presentations from Al Mooney of Adobe, Lawrence Windley and Deepraj Sandhar from Avid, The Foundry’s Simon Robinson, Stuart Pitcher of Fugitive, Gary Meyer at Iridas, and our very own Dan Young.
It was a fascinating session, scratching the surface on all things stereoscopic and how apps like NUKE are finding ways to address the issues faced. Many questions were fired out including the ‘big debate’ of shooting in parallel versus convergence.
The highlight for many, though, was Framestore’s case study of Avatar. Tim Keene, Executive Producer – VFX and Christian Kaestner, Compositioning Supervisor, took us through working both on and off-set on this century’s biggest film, breaking down key scenes and showing how many of the elements were put together. As you can see from the images of Christian below, there were some incredible shots.
From our feedback, it’s clear we need to dive in deeper into the whole stereoscopy debate as it’s obvious this is one piece of next gen tech that’s not going to go away in a hurry!
Many thanks to all our presenters, sponsors HP, and also to everyone who attended.
How many of you play social games? I knew it was popular but I caught some figures on CNN’s website last week that really brought it home just how big it’s become. The FarmVille Facebook game is apparently being played by a staggering 27 million social gamers ever day, adding up to more monthly active users than the population of France.
Zynga, the company behind the game, is just one of the developers changing the way people view gaming, as the social aspect becomes an even bigger part of the industry. What’s most exciting are the new opportunities social gaming presents for smaller or up-and-coming developers – although we might consider the games to be pretty basic, they can actually go a long way to allowing less experienced developers hone their technical and creative skills.
It also attracts a wider audience of gamers and makes gaming more accessible to a different demographic: surely a good thing. In fact, the average social gamer is supposedly a 43 year old female. Quite a different audience to the stereotype of gamers as young men and teenage boys as this Times article also shows.
It’s quite an extraordinary phenomenon. As Facebook and other social networks continue to grow in popularity this type of gaming is only going to continue expanding. Let us know if you’ve been hooked on any social games lately.
Here’s the fourteenth step in my Top Down Animation, Work in Progress series. This video has me animating the root, shoulders, and head through to end of the scene. Now that the chair animation is all pretty much done I can finish off the body animation through the tip up, balance, fall back and impact.
Step Fourteen – Body:
Again, if you have any questions or thoughts, leave a comment or send me a Tweet (@escape_studios)
Here’s Jeff’s previous step in case you missed it: http://www.escapestudios.com/blog/top-down-animation-work-in-progress-step-13/
