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Intro to Photo-real Rendering with 3DS Max and Mental Ray
After years of promising a Mental Ray tutorial I’m finally getting around to it! Ironically I am doing most of my work with Vray now, but Mental Ray is still a great engine! I think it’s important to learn to push the limits of the tools built into 3DS Max before jumping to 3rd party render engines and plug-ins. Also, though I call this an “Intro” this doesn’t mean this tutorial is specifically for beginners. It can be, but this info is equally…
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Writing for 3D Total’s book “3DS Max Projects”
Hi, Samuel Conlogue here! Our schedule has been pretty stacked lately, but when 3D Total asked if I’d like to contribute to their book “3DS Max Projects” I made some room on the schedule and got to writing. My work on the 5 “Introduction to Lighting” chapters I was responsible for was based off an original 3D Total Lighting tutorial written by Andrew Finch. Andrew was busy working on another book for 3D Total so I filled in to do…
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GRADING IN AFTER EFFECTS PART 2
This is part 2 of a 2 part series on grading and other post render processes we use at Infusion Studios. This tutorial is more advanced than Part 1 as I’ll be looking at a heavily graded animation using the native color correction tools in After Effects along with some other industry standard plug-ins like Optical Flares from VIDEOCOPILOT.NET, Real Smart Motion Blur from RE:Vision Effects and Frischluft’s Lens Care. Source files: I have made the EXR files for frame 319 available for download HERE. Enjoy!
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GRADING IN AFTER EFFECTS PART 1 (MAGIC BULLET LOOKS)
As part 1 of a 2 part series on grading and other post render processes we use at Infusion Studios this is a quick tutorial on grading in After Effects using Magic Bullet Looks, a plug-in developed by Red Giant Software. MBL is a powerful, responsive and fun way to enhance your post workflow. Part 2, which will follow shortly, is a bit more advanced looking at heavily grading and finishing an animation using the native color correction tools in After…
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Maxwell Render Walk-through: 3D Studio Max & After Effects Using Multilight
Hey! Here is a little workflow video I made for working with 3D Studio Max, Maxwell Render and After Effects as well as how to take advantage of the Multilight feature. I ramble throughout attempting to cover what I consider to be the fundamental ares of importance. The goal here was not to get too deep into any one feature but to just move on through a basic workflow importing mesh to creating the final composite in After Effects. Here…
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Estimating Render Times on the Farm
The other night, as I was submitting some shots to my Backburner queue, I realized that I have never formalized a method for estimating render times for jobs that are in progress on my farm. Backburner does give some job info such as average task time and an estimate for how much remaining time before the job finishes. That’s not quite enough info to give me confidence in when I can expect things to finish up and regarding the “Remaining…
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A Life Less Sedentary: CG Artist Health
I decided to write this blog post because honestly, I wish I had read one like it years ago. After 12 years of making my living as a 3D artist, I can tell you this is not a career path that inspires healthy living. The realities of any CG artist’s daily life can steer one into a cycle of unhealthy behavior which can be very difficult to fully recognize and break free from. Modern living is potentially sedentary enough without…
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First Look at Using Autodesk Photofly for Visual Effects
After having created a number of models with Photofly 2.0 I thought it appropriate to start looking at various real-world applications for Photofly. A few jump to mind like game asset creation, architectural visualization, historical preservation, forensics and so on. But I think the really fun one is Visual Effects so I thought I’d start there. Little variable focal depth demo using a depth matte created with Autodesk Photofly and 3D Studio Max In a traditional visual effects work-flow your…
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How To Create Your Own Screen Capture Video Tutorials with Free Opensource Software!
Screen capture is a bit off topic since it really has nothing to do with 3D visualization but I thought it might be of interest to any other 3D folks out there that want to start making their own video tutorials or whatever else to put up on YouTube or post on their blog. My goal here is to point you to all the tools you need and provide a basic tutorial on how to create your own quality screen…
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Taking Maxwell’s New Interactive Preview Render Engine "Fire" for a spin.
So, this past Monday Next Limit released Maxwell 2.5 which, just as every Maxwell user had hoped, included “Fire”. Fire is the new integrated interactive preview render engine fully capable of all the features within Maxwell which is built to conveniently run within your host 3D application via plug-ins or withing Maxwell Studio itself. Since the first sneak peek video of Fire showed up online just before SIGRAPH this year, all us Maxwell users have been itching to get our…
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