[edit] I am finally back on my old number: 0788 6383 170

Few pics from Annecy. More coming soon.

Main theatre but not the most comfortable. The festival reminded me why I prefer to watch DVDs from the comfort of my home, luckily some of the screenings took place at the multiplex cinema which is equipped with Sofa sized seats.

Two AM students, two AM graduates and Doctor G. Julio Lorenzo, Gustavo Calle, Olivier Ladeuix and Richie Prado.

The canal that leads to the Annecy Lac

Main screen, behind us.

sorry for the lack of post but don’t worry, everything is fine. I am still in the writing process of my script and I have decided not to leak anything before I am happy about the story, and the animatic is well underway.

Maybe I am being paranoid but I wouldn’t want to see a similar short coming out few month before my graduation. I have huge plans for it so the only thing I am gonna say is that it is gonna be really cartoony and tell the misfortune of a funny looking vampire.

I might upload some concept art next week. Yes I am gonna model and rig my own character with the help of Alfonso.

In the meantime here are some great shorts whose directors I was lucky enough to meet at the Auch festival or in London/

Chahut by  Gilles Cuvelier click on “Voir le Film” then “Haut debit” to get the better quality stream.

Out from Supinfocom

I have few more things in my sleeve but I have to do some clay modelling tonight

sorry for the lack of posts lately but I had to come up with 5 stories for my short film and preparing my trip to the Auch Animation festival so was pretty busy. Don’t worry I will post some stuff very soon

I did travel a fair bit in the past and thought that it would be a cool idea to map all those places. The furthest I went was probably North America on holidays and the South West of Africa where I lived for 2 years.

I was talking to my friend Mental Ray beta tester Jamie Cardoso lately, and realised that he was rendering his visualisations in single passes.

People who are not involved in rendering might not see the point but you need to think that if it takes you 5 hours to do a render and you realise that the Global illumination is too strong or the colours are too bright then you will have to do few more 5 hours renders until you get it right.

Ok you can always render a small area of your visualisation but if it is not you but the client who is not happy about the render and he needs to see the 8 pictures you have been asked to do every time you submit stuff for approval, then you are in real trouble.

Max and Combustion offer a great way to work in passes but you need to learn combustion and that can be really daunting task. Combustion to me is a bit like the Zbrush of compositing. Great when you know it, horrible when you open it for the first time. Well that’s when you compare it to After Effect, Shake is just as confusing.

So what does this leaves you with? Cebas PSD Manager is only $172 and allows you to export your passes straight into Photoshop. Each pass goes into the correct transfer mode.

Unlike Combustion, working on videos would be a real pain. Now there is an other way and that one doesn’t requires any plugins. Mental Ray!

By default mental ray allows you to render passes but the problem is, how do you transfer them into photoshop? I didn’t actually read the mental ray manual since I am not too keen on that rendering engine so I looked for answers elsewhere and found them in the Max to Combustion workflow. Here is how you do it:

“The Background layer uses the Normal transfer mode

The Diffuse layer is directly above the Background layer, it is composited using the Normal transfer mode.

The Specular layer is composited using the Add transfer mode. The Self-Illumination, Refraction, and Reflection render element layers are also composited using the Add transfer mode.

The Shadow layer is composited above the Specular layer to dim color in the shadowed areas. By default, the Shadow layer uses Normal transfer mode because its alpha channel controls how much the black and white shadows dim the Specular and Diffuse layers beneath it in the stacking order.

For the composite to match the 3ds Max scene, the Shadow layer must be below the Reflection, Refraction, and Self-Illumination layers. Otherwise, these three layers would also be dimmed.

If the composite has an Atmosphere layer, the layer appears above the Self-Illumination layer. The Atmosphere layer must be composited over all the other layers that are turned on. The Atmosphere layer uses the Normal transfer mode.

By default, the Alpha layer is turned off because it is not required, but it is very useful for compositing additional layers. The Z Depth and Blend render elements are also not required for a composite, so the layers are turned off in the composite when these elements are rendered in 3ds Max.”

Autodesk owns the copyrights of the extract above, I hope they won’t give me any problem. Come on guys I am making your softwares more popular!

The entire content is in the Combustion manual, in the last chapter called:

Combustion and 3dsmax>using render elements>Transfer modes and stacking order.

I need to blog about this. I went to get a credit card at the Natwest Earl’s court branch for a friend of mine who lives abroad and was told to ask for a specific member of staff.

When I enquired about it at the Information Desk I got told that I would need a letter to pick up a credit card.

I explained the situation very carefully and clearly and the fact that I was told to speak with a very specific member of the staff but she said the same thing: “no letter, no card”.

I don’t really have time to hang around in Banks and before heading home asked her if she was sure about it to which she replied.

“Do you see my title here?” pointing at her name tag…. It reads V. F. Customer Service Officer.

I am not too sure what kind of customer service we are talking about here but certainly not the kind of customer service I will ever want to be treated with. A person with a condescending attitude to me has got nothing to do with customer service.

Natwest Earl’s court don’t expect me to recommend you to anyone.

Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather will be broadcasted the 17th and 18th of December on Skyone. You can read more on skyone’s website . Don’t forget to check the very cool videos and there ‘s even a “making of” video by the MPC people. Thanks Rich for the tip

Autodesk was holding the Max 9 and Maya 8 roadshow yesterday at Odeon Kensington. This brought back some fun memories.

After a quick lunch with my fellow AM students, I rushed to the event. The room was already full and since I couldn’t see my friend Jamie Cardoso, I decided to take seat D4 at the front of the room.

This was the best decision I made for quite a while. Few minutes later, the ATI guy who was making a presentation of the new ATI FireGL cards started the draw for a prize.

For whatever reason, my seat D4 got choosen and I won the ATI FireGLV7200. I didn’t fully understand what it meant until I checked the documentation and realised that this card is one of the ATI top of the range graphic card.

For the kind of stuff I do in 3d, I was never really bothered with graphic cards in the past but that one will fit perfectly in my new Core 2 Duo system and it has already replaced my crappy Radeon X600.

I had decided to do a bit more anatomical modeling this term and this is just the perfect timing. 41.6GB memory bandwidth per second for Zbrush can’t hurt, can it?