Been a while…

Sorry for the time I’ve not been posting.

Work has been quite a rollercoaster, the highs and lows of advertising taking its toll initially and now springing back to heights unseen for a while.

Anyway, I have put the 3DWorld tutorials for magazine 111 – 117 up on my website.  These are:

111 – How can I make an occlusion textureUV map in Maya?

112 – Is there a simple flocking procedure in Maya?

113 – How do I create is a material with the look of tarnished silver?

114 – Is there a way to stop Paint Effects flickering during camera moves?

115 – How do I create a tooth brushing action in Maya?

116 – How do I simulate a magnet, like balls rolling to a common point?

117 – How do I grow Maya’s Hair system?

I hope they are of some interest.  If there is anything that you would like to see on the website, or even have a question asked, please ask me.

Thanks for reading

A white out and black out

Okay, yup, snow, yadda yadda yadda.  It’s all over the UK.  First time in years, whatever.

It’s cool, in more ways that one, especially as it means I’m getting out of the office and taking any work I can home.  Rather be buried near Buxton than in the depths of Manchester

Also, hell’s teeth!  The bandwidth on http://www.garynoden.co.uk was been exceeded so I’m going to have to find a cheaper way of getting out the files.  I think. I’m going to have to keep the archives and just leave up the PDFs seeing as they don’t take up much room in comparison.  If you need the archives, I’ll sort out another way of getting them to people.  As soon as I can upload again, I’ll put this info on the website.

As for now if you try to go to my site, well, you can’t.  And I can’t afford over £150 a year for unlimited bandwidth right now.

My Maya Tutorials are back online

Hello there, long time no blog.

Well, I am delighted to let you know that the tutorial section of my website is back up and running.  About time too.  There are 33 tutorials covering a wide range of topics from modelling objects, through animation, dynamics, rendering and some compositing. 

I have some more up and coming – one in particular about nCloth which will go up in a couple of months that shows exactly how to make it… well, you’ll have to wait.   Wow, I’m such a tease.

Anyway go to http://www.garynoden.co.uk follow the link to tutorials and check them out.

New Website

Hi there.

Just a quick note to anybody who might be reading my blog, I have completely updated my main website.  The tutorials have gone offline for now, but everything else is pretty much there.  Learning Flash is becoming a positive new thing and I have begun dreaming in actionscript.  Only 2.0 though, 3.0 I will get to.

Anyway, please take a look and tell me what you think.  Bye.

Computer Arts

I have just completed a noob tutorial for Computer Arts Projects which will feature in Magazine 117 about how to do simple rigging and deformation animation in Maya.  It’s been some time since I did any rigging, and was a good exercise for me as well as being a good introduction for Designers on how Maya can be used in their output.

Also, check out the magazine anyway.  It’s amazingly great quality and gives a wonderful insight into how people are using print and design media in the modern day.

Check out the magazine now here and, if you can, when my tutorial goes to press in 2 month’s time.

Maya Tutorials updated.

Morning from wet and windy Manchester in the UK.

I managed to get some time together to put up two new tutorials on the website:

Q&A107 from 3DWorld – Is it possible to do Toon lines on Instances?

Q&A108 from 3DWorld – Is there a way to transfer a lattice between objects?

you can get them by this direct link to the tutorials page here.

You can also see my new reel here too.

If by any chance you want a question answering about Maya, please let me know and if it fits in with the magazine it might even make it into print as a full blown tutorial.

See you around.

Maya Tutorials

Just a quicky to remind folks that you can get any one of these tutorials from my website in the links panel at the right of this page.  Each one has a full archive and PDF for you to use in order to fathom what I thought I was up to.  The most recent ones will become available soon, and I will post them here with links as and when I can.

G

Titles so far are as follows:

How do I create a pin matrix effect in Maya?
Does anybody know how to model desert plants?
How do I get my camera mapping projection to line up with my geometry?
How do I create a realistic frosted glass shader?
How can I texture and render photo-realistic planets correctly?
How do I import a photoshop image as paths?
How can I reduce my multipass render layers?
How would I create light bouncing off of water?
How do I get a Maya Camera into After Effects?
How can I replace particles with some geometric objects?
How do I morph textures with my blendshapes?
How do I animate tying a knot in Maya?
How can I make Realflow render like water?
How do I create a searchlight that projects a logo into the sky like the bat sign out of Batman?
How do you animate displacement maps in Maya?
How do I create a long curving tube, which progressively appears in small segments?
How do I make a drill bit in Maya?
How do I create curves from the post infinity cycle?
How can I create a book similar to Shrek 2’s?

Thank you to a thank you

I received an email from a fella called Shawn Faherty the other day saying this:

Hey Gary,

Just wanted to say nice job on the tutorial in 3D World about the push pins.  I was really excited to read the pages but so very turned off by all the scripting it took.  I play around with Houdini and your example is something I’m working on right now and is so much more intuitive and straight forward building procedurally.  Does 422 every use Houdini?  Sadly, most studios don’t but I’m hoping that changes by the time I make a jump into a CG career.  Thanks for listening.

Shawn Faherty (Cambridge, MA)

Oddly enough, I can’t seen to get back to his return address, it not seeing to like being replied to, so if you are going to find this and read it, Shawn, I’ll put here what I sent out as my reply.

Hi there, Shawn, and thanks for liking the Q&A

Yup, Houdini is a far more organised system for completing something like the pin matrix, but I couldn’t find the button to build a box in Houdini, let alone set up what I did in Maya.  Scripting is the only way to do it without going into the API and wrtiing plug-ins and I can’t do that.  Give me time, and I’l get round to it, though.

We only use Maya here at 422 Manchester, coupled with afx and fusion for grading and compositing in our department.

But Houdini is used in more places than you think, especially in the US of A.  Rhytm and Hues are very big on it, as are The Orphanage and Asylum along with Sony Pictures too.  You could do very well if you keep at it.

Great to hear from you, and good luck for the future.

Well, I just thought I’d put that up, seeing as it is the only way I might get back in contact with him

You can find the Q&A of the pin matrix on my website now, if you’re interested.