Jamie's Jewels

Another 3ds Max launch event in London

Afternoon All,

Following last night’s enjoyable 3ds Max 2013 event with long term 3ds Max users like Pixomondo, it gives me great pleasure to announce another. You can find full details below of what to expect. This time I will be joined by Taylor James. A group of talented 3ds Max artists based in East London.

Click Here to register for the event.

There are some very interesting new features to the latest 3ds Max Entertainment Creation Suite and bluegfx are delighted to offer you the opportunity to see these new features in action at their free Technology Day hosted on 19th April 2012 at the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden, London.

From 10:00am, I will be demonstrating the latest features as well as taking your questions on any workflow issues you may have. 

 

London Transport Museum
Covent Garden Piazza
WC2E7BB London
United Kingdom

Thursday, 19 April 2012 from 09:30 to 13:00 (GMT)

 

Agenda
09:30am - Welcome Coffee
10:00am - Presentation begins
12:00pm - Breakout / demo - opportunity to test drive technology
13:00pm – Finish

 

Guest Speakers – Taylor James

Taylor James will also be speaking at both presentations. The Creative Production Studio will be recounting their experiences of the whys and results of switching their storage over to a Hitachi Data Systems Solution.

Hands On

After the presentation there will be a number of the latest HP workstations set up in the breakout area for you to test drive with the latest software’s installed. bluegfx will on hand to answer any questions you may have.

The session will also be supported by bluegfx’s other partners including Wacom (giving you the chance to test drive their latest Intuos 5 offerings and their  24” Cintiq). Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) will be in attendance to answer any storage questions you have along with HP and AMD.

Keep your eyes peeled on twitter for any further announcements.

Click Here to register for the event.

Happy Max’ing

3ds Max and 3ds Max Design 2013 announced

I wanted to ensure you were aware that Ken has announced the latest 2013 versions of both 3ds Max and 3ds Max Design. You can read the full overview of what to expect by clicking here. 

This is a detailed blog post from Ken that highlights some critical information for all of you Max users, that I highly recommend you have a look at. It includes some important answers to questions your probably already asking yourself. Like “will my 2012 plugins work with 2013?” and “what did the Beta users like the most?”

For those of you in the UK, I will be going through some of the enhancements at Thursday’s upcoming event announced in my previous blog post, or found by clicking here.

 

 

Happy Max’ing

London 3ds Max Event Reminder: Thursday with CrystalCG, Christian Debney, and Pixomondo

On Thursday, March 29th, we are gathering for an exclusive event at the Barbican Centre, London. The focus for this event is to showcase the tools and techniques used in film and other media that could translate effectively into 3d visualisation.
This event is a great opportunity for anyone interested in learning more about the art of 3D visualisation. During this event we explore the achievements of professionals working in media and entertainment. Demonstrating their work as well as their tools of choice, our speakers aim to share how they create detailed, realistic results for a variety of project styles. I will also be presenting essential 3ds Max workflows as well as a technology preview. Register For This Event here, hosted by Escape Studios  Following the success of Hugo at this year’s Oscars, Escape are delighted to confirm Pixomondo as one of their special guests for this event. Their contribution to the VFX in this Oscar winning feature film means we are all in for a real treat. If you are in the business of 3d visualisation, come and be inspired by what professionals in media and entertainment are creating.     Event details: When: Thursday, 29th March, 2012 Time: 6:30pm Where: The Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS – Cinema 3 & Conservatory Terrace (4th Floor) Agenda 6:30pm - Registration 7:00pm – Presentations 9:00pm - Drinks reception 11:00pm - Closes Speakers: Me, Jamie Gwilliam (Autodesk) – 3ds Max Pixomondo – Post-production for feature films and their tools of choice Ximo Peris (Crystal CG) - London Olympics 2012 Promo Christian Debney - Pop promo’s
Map to the Barbican Virtual tour of the venue

Happy Max’ing

Sega Australia creates London Olympics with 3ds Max

Hi All

You may of guessed, by how quite my blog has been recently, that it’s been a bit busy in the land of Autodesk. The good news is that their is a great new video emerged from the Autodesk mothership that gives us a glimpse at how Sega Studios Australia used Autodesk tools, including, 3ds Max, Motion Builder and Gameware (Scaleform, Beast) on their latest title. This title focuses on the upcoming 2012 Olympics here in London. (Scheduled for release in June.)

If your not familiar with SEGA Studios Australia, they were formerly known as The Creative Assembly Australia, and founded in July 2002. The studio developed “interactive entertainment for almost 10 years and has released titles across a range of genres for PlayStation®3, Xbox 360®, PC and Nintendo DS.”

 

The 5 minute video highlights Mark Rowley’s considerations around the characters. Mark, who is the studios Technical Director (TD), discusses how they were able to create multiple variations in the characters using 3ds Max, in this very heavy character driven pipeline.

Vikram Shingrani, Lead Technical Artist, discusses some of the finer points, such as tension driven normal maps for muscle deformations, and motion capture, or MoCap as its more commonly known.

Simon Dew, Lead Environment Artist, then proceeds to explain the challenges of creating some very unique and recognisable environments, as well as the challenges with lighting interiors and exteriors.

Also, for those in the games industry already, might like to know they go onto briefly discuss how Scaleform helped with all the HUD elements.

 

 

Sega Studios mention how exceptionally proud they are of the game, and I am sure you will join me in congratulating them and saying how good it looks. This is a game they should certainly be proud of.

 

For more information about the game, including screen shots, please visit the following link: www.olympicvideogames.com/london2012

 

Happy Max’ing

A look at Nvidias Maximus with AECMagazine

Back in January AECMagazine’s Greg Corke penned a brief article that looks at the pros and cons of Nvidia’s Maximus technology with 3ds Max. In his article he discusses how Nvidia Maximus is ideally suited to rendering and simulation, where Nvidia’s Tesla card can use iRay for rendering, leaving the Nvidia Quadro graphics card free to work with the 3d scene, reducing bottlenecks. For many of you using render farms, the advantages may seem confusing, but as we know in the 3d world of rendering, things change fast, and prices drop. Who would of thought 3 years ago, that a machine with 16gb of RAM would be the ‘norm’?

 

 

I recommend taking the 5-10 minutes needed to explore this article and learn more about what Maximus offers, and why its important to our industry and any future direction it may travel down.

Click here to read the full article

You can also read more directly from nvidia using this link. Clearly, this second link is going to be slightly biased and marketing led, however it is still jam packed with useful information, highlighted by the below graph. This is extremely helpful if exploring new hardware configurations for upcoming projects.

 

 

I would also recommend looking at our friends, Delta Tracing projects, whose exceptional work with iray is enlightening if your still unconvinced of its proven production benefits.

You can read an external case study with Delta Tracing here.

 

Finally, as a reminder, you can subscribe directly to AECMagazine for free. If you live in the UK you can opt to receive a paper copy, for everyone else you can receive a lovely PDF version.Click here for subscription info. I have subscribed for 3+ years, and still find it useful and informative.

Happy Max’ing

3ds Max used for Microsoft Flight

You’ve probably seen a lot in the press and on the interweb recently around Microsoft’s free PC Flight Simulator. Unsurprisingly 3ds Max was used to create the content. But don't take my word for it, as below is a behind the scenes video, which shows it in action at Microsoft.

 

Microsoft say “The release of Flight represents the culmination of three years of hard work and experimentation as we worked to reimagine the 30-year-old Flight Simulator franchise, push forward the evolution of the PC flying experience, and bring the thrill and wonder of flight to whole new audiences.”

You can download the simulator for Free at www.microsoftflight.com

The below video shows 3ds Max being used by Microsoft studios for creating the aircraft. They also briefly discuss some of the other considerations, such as the 700-800 exterior reference images, and 400-500 interior images.

Thanks to Gareth Corbett, for highlighting this video.

Happy Max’ing

Autodesk 2012 Games Show Reel

Great News, The Autodesk 2012 Games Show Reel is now live.

What better way to finish your Friday than to sit back and enjoy 4.5 minutes of inspirational work. Featuring some of the best games material from around the world created by our customers. (I recommend watching in full screen mode….)

 

Also, don’t forget that we will be streaming everything live from our booth at GDC.You can stay informed with what’s happening via this link > AREA's GDC 2012 page . 

Happy Max’ing

Some 3ds Max Shortcuts on Twitter/Facebook

Morning All

Those that follow me on Twitter, may have noticed that I have recently started creating some special tweets/posts that highlight the “3ds Max shortcut of the day.” These are designed to cater for all user abilities, and hopefully make you even more productive. There’s a few in there that I am sure you will know, which is great news, as it shows your progressing along the path to become your studio's 3ds Max super hero. Hopefully there is also a few that you don’t. There was certainly some that I didn’t….

The good news is there already a few weeks worth of shortcut combinations stacked up, waiting to say Hi. (As well as some bonus-tips-of-the-day which will say hello on an ad-hoc basis.)

To stay up-to-date with these, you can follow me on Twitter or on Facebook,  by using the 'Like' button to the left of this blogpost. The Twitter posts will also automatically be fed into Facebook. Each one should arrive to you at 12 each work day. (GMT)

Happy Max’ing

As it is World Book Day…

As today is World Book day, I thought I would share a reminder of my reading list for 3ds Max related books. All of which I have come to personally rely on in my career.

Click Here for more information.

Also, don’t forget you can download a full-length and free copy of Autodesk’s book ‘Imagine, Design, Create’ using the below links.

   

“This book provides a wide-ranging look at how the creative process and the tools of design are dramatically changing - and where design is changing in the coming years. Bringing together stories of good design happening around the world, the book shows how people are using fresh design approaches and new capabilities to solve problems, create opportunities and improve the way we live and work.”

This book was first released in March, 2011.

 

Download PDF version

The book is available as a free download here on Autodesk.com

Download eBook version

An electronic version of the book is available for free on the App Store.

 

Happy Max’ing