What an inspiration and vray for Maya.

I know its been a long time since I posted anything on my blog, but I lost my HDD in my iMac, and then I was pretty damn crippled for a looong time!

Lighting,

At work we have had a visit from former lighting TD at PIXAR, Jeremy Vickery (www.jermilex.com) who helped us understand color and light a lot better. It was really amazing to learn from one of the people with a huge experience from the top movies like Cars, Ratatouille and The Incredibles.

Jeremy was so kind to share his knowledge and that he was sitting right net to you while working was such a great help, just being able to ask "if I want to, then ... ??" and the answer was immediately answered.

During that week I really learned a lot of process, practical lighting and color theories - thanks a ton Jeremy! - looking forward to the next visit..

We were also trying out v-ray for Maya, and found that it produces some fantastic images with very little effort, but also that it still can be improved a lot!. Simple Maya things that you take for granted is missing, like the manipulator tool on lights and IPR is simply too badly implemented still.

Documentation is an area for improvement and also tutorial material that is targeted at Maya would be really nice. And why have a shader available that will crash Maya when you click it??

However it is the first version of v-ray for Maya and with that in mind, its a great renderer! The look of the result is fantastic.

Christmas,

yes, christmas is very close, and I wish you all a happy xmas and a happy new year.

Thoughts about the giant! (Autodesk and Maya 2010)

So Autodesk (AD) announced Maya 2010 at Siggraph 2009 and now many people are mad/angry at AD.

The thing is that AD has merged Maya Unlimited and Maya Complete into a single Maya called Maya 2010. This also means that the price for Maya now is upped by half the difference between Complete and Unlimited. But what do you get for the price ?

If you have a Maya on subscription the upgrade is free for you and you get:

Maya 2010 (including the features previously only available for Unlimited users)

Maya Composite (Former known as Toxik)

Maya Motiontracker (a video tracking system)

More MentalRay render nodes (I think it was 5)

Your subscription fee will remain the same if you have a Complete license and will be a bit cheaper if you have an Unlimited license.

So why be angry with Autodesk for doing that? They dont have a 3D product for the sub 2000 USD market anymore, which leave plenty of room to the market which Modo, Silo, Blender, C4D and LW etc. tries to fill and you get the upgrade for "free" if you are on subscription and even the subscription fee is either the same or cheaper for you.

Now in my case, I am very happy with that, since we are on subscription and mainly have Complete licenses, except a few Unlimited and we are also missing a nice compositing tool. For me it is value for the money - and definitely not a reason to be angry at AD for.

If you have a composite solution already, like a Nuke setup or what not, then you are not forced to use Toxik, but you still get an unlimited license and Motiontracker. As I see it, there is absolutely no reason at all to be mad at AD for in this regard.

A little disappointed though:

Giving Maya a new name indicates changes in Maya itself, but as far as my current research says that are no changes in Maya, so basicly its a Maya 2009 unlimited with a name change. One would have hoped for atleast a short list of bugfixes and new features, but it seems that there are no new features if you are used to Maya Unlimited.

Please note, any information about package content and prices are based on my own personal research and if you are buying you will have to check the price and package content for yourself.

Feel free to comment on this article, because I would really like to know why people are mad at AD.

Zbrush 3.2 - GoZ !!!

Recently Pixologic updated the mac version of Zbrush to v 3.2. that included a pre-release of GoZ, a link between Zbrush and your 3D application. This functionality will be available to both PX and Mac platforms with the release of ZBrush 4 around August.

GoZ with Modo works like a charm.. However it makes some object groups in Modo that I find annoying, but overall its brilliant. It is not a big deal, and its just to drag the objects out of the groups, but still a bit annoying. Its fast and very intuitive though and the displacement, texture and normal maps are transfered perfectly.

I miss some way to assign a save directory for the maps included (or maybe I just havn't found it yet), cause it will override any existing in the default GoZ path.

To me it seems like when using GoZ with Maya, that the shader for MentalRay has its displacement set a bit too strong though, but with modo it is pretty much spot on. The quality of the displacement seems a bit higher for Modo as well, but that may be the way that modo handles displacement vs Maya.

A little issue with GoZ and modo is that if you i.e. start making a zSphere model in ZB, then transfer it to Modo, it will be extremely small, probably something with difference in unit sizes.

Pixologic has added sphere that will load automatically when you start ZB 3.2 - Why?? GO AWAY!, if I wanted a sphere, I will make one - this has nothing to do with GoZ functionality though.. But my overall verdict of GoZ is that it should had been made years ago - how have we been able to work in any other way!!

Seriously cool images

The earth is magnificent, just take a look at these serriously cool images taken from the ISS, I promise you it will be a treat!

Images from the International Space Station click HERE

Zbrush and transpose

Today I decided to fool around with an older model I did in Zbrush. And I wanted to try the transpose features, so this horse started as a traditional symmetric model, and 5 mins later it was posed and the worst deformation anomalies was corrected.

All in all, transpose within zbrush is a killer feature that I really love.

Highres video

Modo 401

Finally, last night Modo 401 was released - a much anticipated update. The 2gb download was quickly received due to a fantastic community that keeps seeding the torrent.

Now, from what I have seen so far, it looks like a brilliant update - a must for any Modo user and it is evident that Modo is becoming a major player in the 3D market. Modo 401 focusses on animation and rigging capabilities, but also rendering has received major boost in form of an incredible replicator system with fur and all sorts of goodies. Also a speed increase in rendering is introduced.

The asset system looks promising, but with the risk of going to be a major flop, since its entirely user moderated. I hope that the community will take it seriously so that the assets will be amazing.

Now we are just waiting for Pixologic (as usual) to finish the GoZ plugins for Modo and Maya and we have a really powerful creation suite!

Zbrush or Mudbox?

I need to say, that I have been extremely disappointed with Pixologic and their customer relations, and especially the way they have been treating their Mac users.

Let me summarize this for you:

ZBrush 3.0 is announced, with a message saying that the PC version will be released first and the Mac version will follow shortly after the PC release. The Mac customers are free to use the PC version until the Mac version arrive.

I am so blinded by this statement that I instantly buy the software, for Mac, and wait in anticipation of a release for Mac within a reasonable amount of time. For me that is somewhere between 14 days and 2 months.

After much writing and barking from an angry Mac community and total silence from Pixologic on the ZbrushCentral forums, a Mac version is finally released 1.5 years after the PC version. 1.5 years is NOT a reasonable time if you ask me or the Mac community.

Now you would think that the Mac community is happy, since we got the product we bough - but no, the version 3.12 as they call it, is full of bugs and cannot even export a displacement map which is the main reason why we should use Zbrush in the first place!!!!

Autodesk releases Mudbox 2009 for Mac which is a stable application that gets the job done, albeit not as many features as Zbrush, but at least it is working and working very well.

To make a long story very short:

After a loooooong time with total silence from Pixologic a version 3.12B is released for Mac, and now the software is finally working as intended - or at least it is usable - the release seem to be forced by the strong Mudbox release.

Zbrush 3.12B is not bug-free but at least it works!

This is almost 2.5 years since I bought ZB3.0! - No wonder I am not happy about Pixologic!

Now Pixologic has started to get their minds right and has begun releasing some very cool plugins for both the PC platform and for the Mac which is making Zbrush a very powerful application.

These plugins are:

• GoZ (close intergration between Maya, Modo and Cinema4D and more to come)
• Decimation (Geometry optimization)
• 3D Print (export optimized geometry directly as STL and more, ready for 3D print)

So what to chose now, Zbrush or Mudbox?

- I say both, since Zbrush is so much more powerful than Mudbox regarding features and possibilities, but Mudbox has a more clutter free user interface, is very stable, has superior texture painting capabilities over Zbrush and is in general much easier to use.

What can Autodesk Mudbox do to kill Pixologic Zbrush?

With the upcoming plugins for Zbrush it looks like Mudbox is gonna have a hard time hanging on to the user base, unless Autodesk has some really unique Mudbox features up their sleeves with a release within a few months - so to be frank I doubt that autodesk can do that at all, but they can still do something to hang on to the user base they have established - and maybe grab a few more users.

• They really need to implement some kind of posing tool in Mudbox.
• A connection between other 3D apps would be very nice to have (Zbrush is getting this very soon with the GoZ plugin)
• Layer blending for the 3D Paint.
• Some kind of ZSphere like tool, for easy character/object creation so that you are not forced to use an external 3D application for geometry creation.
• 64bit versions of both PC and Mac versions. (Mac will be 64bit with Snow Leopard very soon)
• Look at the powerful plugins like decimation and 3D print for ZB!
• Upgrade policy to match Pixologic - (free)

What can Pixologic do to kill Autodesk Mudbox?

• Most important thing for Pixologic is to re-think the Zbrush UI - make it clean and simple and not something for an alien from outer space!.. Zbrush UI is intimidating and extremely hard to start using.
• Release updates and plugins for both Mac and PC at the same time. Users in the Mac community feel neglected when they see the "Coming soon" sign on the download page, and so will PC users when they see the same on the GoZ plugin soon. (GoZ will be the first Zbrush Plugin to be released for Mac before the PC version).
• Enable texture painting without having to subdivide your model to 20 million polygons - a.k.a. painting directly on texture files/bitmaps.
• Have Blending modes for their texture painting.
• Clean up the UI
• Clean up the UI.. oh I said that already.
• And for the love of God, start to communicate with your users! Check out the outstanding way that Luxology is communicating with the users regarding Modo! We all know Modo 401 is deleayed, but still happy - due to communication from Luxology.

I started this post by saying that I have been very disappointed by Pixologic, but they are starting to get their grip on me again. However it is not forgotten. As of now, I will never pre-order form Pixologic again!