Bee Flocking

This is a R n D i did recently for a project a bee flocking. This is done using maya particles with a turbulence and instanced animation on particles.



Please do write coments if any.......

Crack any objects

This tool in written in python, this tool was written to crack polygonal objects into custom shapes as per the user's need.

Usage: Select the object to be cracked first and then the object used to crack and run the command in your script editor.

from at_cracker import*
at_cracker()

This tool is tested and compiled on windows platform with maya 2008 .

Download

Click here to download the video presentation of the tool

Light Render

This is a tool written in python and very much inspired by the solo render tool of ILM. This tool renders only the effect of selected light if you have multiple lights in the scene.

Usage: Select a light and g to the python tab of the script editor and type in
from at_LightRender import*
at_LightRender()

This tool is tested and compiled on windows platform with maya 2008

Download

Dome Light Rig

Hi this is a tool i wrote in python to create different types of dome light rig. It would be nice to hear comments from more people regarding adding more feature and stability of the script.

This tool is tested and compiled on window platform with maya2008

Usage: copy the file into your scripts directory and type
from at_DomeLight import*
at_DomeLight()
in your script editor you will get a UI for the tool

Download

Animation Offseting Tool

I have written a new tool to offset animation of selected objects.

Download

Hi this is a samll tutorial for creating a flag using nCloth in maya

Interview With PIXAR TD Kim White

Check out this cool interview with the Technical Director of Pixar Animation Studios "Kim White".

http://www.swcp.com/animate/pdf/winter98.pdf

Tips for Lighting for a Chroma Shot

• Keep your character at least 6 feets away from the screen do that you can avoid the spills happening in the edges.
• Always try and use a kicker so that its easy to extract the character
• Make sure the bg is lit evenly, try and use a vetroscope so that you can make out what is the chroma and luma levels normal lightmeters won't give this values
• Don't use the sharpen mode which is available in most HD Cams it will compress the fottage and give bit mats in the edges

CHROMAKEYING

What is Chroma Keying ?
“Chroma” is the word used to describe color that a camera can record in technical terms. (As opposed to “Luma”, which is the word used to describe the light that a camera can record.) Keying is an old production term that refers to removing an object from a picture using a form of matte.
The processes of Chroma.
The principal subject is filmed or photographed against a background consisting of a single color or a relatively narrow range of colors, usually blue or green because these colors are considered to be the furthest away from skin tone. The portions of the video which match the preselected color are replaced by the alternate background video. This process is commonly known as "Keying", "keying out" or simply a "key".
In analog color TV, color is represented by the phase of the chroma subcarrier relative to a reference oscillator. Chroma key is achieved by comparing the phase of the video to the phase corresponding to the preselected color. In-phase portions of the video are replaced by the alternate background video.
In digital color TV, color is represented by a triple of numbers (red, green, blue). Chroma key is achieved by a simple numerical comparison between the video and the preselected color. If the color at a particular point on the screen matches (either exactly, or in a range), then the video at that point is replaced by the alternate background video

Animating an Eye Blink

1. An eye blink always sells the emotion.
2. An un-animated eye looks like dolls eyes.
3. Give time for the eye to follow the objects it means eye never moves same with object it always has a delay of some frames.
4. Never do a random eye blink.
5. It conveys the shift in thought so plan when to blink the eyes.

Flickering R & D

Hi recently i did a research on flickering while rendering here are some note that i made during the research.

SSS FLickering

• FG problem
  

• Not 100% sure, but I think it could have something to do with the resolution of the lightmap. Try upping that some (I recall reading or hearing that a low resolution will cause similiar problems. The recommended size was the width being the width of your render and the height being twice that of your render).

Painteffects Flicker

• convert it to poly

• This is most likely a anti-aliasing issue. There is no need to convert to polygons however as
  the maya software rendering options at the bottom in the Paint Effects rendering section there are 2 boxes, Oversample and Oversample Post Filter.

Oversample will improve the anti-aliasing of your paint effects, most likely removing flickering and rendering problems.

Oversample Post Filter will add a further smoothing effect to the paint effects in post.

Of course you take a rendering time increase but this is better than flickering!

More info is available in the mayahelp document section for paint effects rendering options.

Hope this has helped, it fixed my grass problems.

Software Render :

• Is it a nurbs surface? if so make sure you check on 'smooth edge' under Common Tesselation Options
  
  
• adjusting near and far clip planes. bring the 2 values as close together as possible. (high near and low far value
  
  
• depth map shadows, you can fix the problem by increasing the resolution of your dmap shadows.
  
  
• adjusting your filter size, and\or bias size
  
  
• To fix the problem of maya software dmap shadows going through walls at the edge I would make another plane inside the wall.

avoiding flikering without increasing fg rays

• try increasing fgrays density. btw, use the new multiframe fg mode if you're animating with mray3.5.
  
  
• using an AO pass, rather than FG ..then you contorl the blur in post
  
  
• increasing the FG filther value to 1 or 2.
  
  
• increasing point density (point density takes crazy amount of memory.)

Shave and haircut or FUR Flickering

• if You have polysmooth node in DAG chain, get rid of it.
  
  
• If u open ur UV editor window and change ur current frame u will notice ur UV's getting animated. It is b'cos of while smoothing the surface the smooth UV's option would have been on by default. Pls try switching them off and render. it worked for me it may well work for u too. (note- Check the image attached)
  
  
• Render the FUR in seperate pass

Render with GI and Final Gather

• Try using an ambient occlusion shader instead of final gather and then multiplying it over the blinn shader.
  
  
• reduce your contrast even further,0.03. Try Mitchell or gaussian filter. View radius in pixels. Jitter:On. Keep min radius to 1 max to 100 (experiment with this, you can go down to 1,20). Use around 500 rays. Hope that helps.