Animation with a moustache

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Animation with a moustache Blog

Ton Roosendaal, Blender philosophy 0

Animation / Education

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Ton Roosendaal, Blender philosophy

Being my professional workhose since 2007, I have been naturally promoting Autodesk Maya on this blog, with some occasional foreays into Blender when enraged at the price of Maya’s license/subscriptions, then back to Maya when Autodesk introduced the free “Maya and Autodesk softwares for Displaced professionals” back in 2012. to support professionals during challenging times.

That scheme gradually disappeared without much noise and recently Autodesk introduced various options on top of the classic educational subscriptions.

Currently, you can get Maya LT, a 300 dollars a year cut down version of Maya that unfortunately doesn’t allow you to run most of the free animation rigs available on the market so for animators who want to focus on character performance this is a no-go. Python is not available either when everybody in the industry uses Python and scripts like AnimBot or any Phython scripts won’t run on it. Rendering is not possible, dynamics are not available, referencing is missing….

Then in some selected countries, you might have access to Maya Indy which is the full feature Maya, for “artists earning under $100,000/year in revenue.” This would perfectly cover hobbyist living in those 5 countries if only there wasn’t a catch! So what is the catch? The catch is, that this scheme is only valid for … one year .. then your subscriptions automatically gets renewed at 250 a month 😉

With my inclination for education and support for struggling populations in the light of the murder of George Floyd, I just can’t continue predominantly posting articles related to Maya.

“Learning 3d at home is a way for modest populations and kids, to potentially gain access to employment and revenue streams”

Learning 3d at home is a way for modest populations and kids, to potentially gain access to employment and revenue streams, outside of expensive institutions and without incurring lifetime debts or adopting piracy habits.

Sorry, that’s a long winded introduction to finally explain that I will start covering Blender more and more on this blog 😉

This first Blender post is a two years old video but a major one as Blender founder Ton Roosendaal, will cover the history of Blender, its philosophy, and its challenges with some interesting comparison with Autodesk and Zbrush.

I never dug too deep into Blender in the past as the interface and the Right Mouse Button (RMB) slection really annoyed me. Unlike some other software creators (TV Paint, Zbrush…), they realised that they shouldn’t force users to their philosophy and accept that some user interaction have now become standard, the left mouse click (LMB) for selection for example.

There are plenty of interesting bits in that video and 1 hour into it, Ton reckons there are just below 20/35k paying Maya customers and less that 20 developers working on it. This could explain why we get so many half baked features every releases and makes me wonder how many companies might be using pirate copies.

If you are in a hurry, Andrew Price was nice enough to include timecodes in the video description.

Enjoy

Related posts:

http://www.olivier-ladeuix.com/blog/2010/01/28/tachaaan-short-film/
http://www.olivier-ladeuix.com/blog/2011/08/07/blender-sculpting-tool/
http://www.olivier-ladeuix.com/blog/2011/10/10/this-is-what-you-need-blocking/
http://www.olivier-ladeuix.com/blog/2011/08/06/blender-grease-pencil/
Patrick Osborn FX Guide interview 0

Animation / Education

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Patrick Osborn FX Guide interview

Being mostly interested in Animated Features and Animated TV series, I don’t visit FX Guide much but I just found a series of interesting interview I will be posting in the next few days.

Here is a very interesting one with Disney “Feast” director Patrick Osborne where he goes into a bit more details about the unique visuals of his short film.

Via : FX Guide

The humbling encounters 0

Animation / Education

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The humbling encounters

Nik Ranieri

Once in a while in your career or just even at the start of your studies you will meet some unique individuals that will feed your self-doubts.

Whilst studying at Animation Mentor back in 2006, I was marveling at the work of several students that eventually became CG animation superstars, then later during my animation career, I came across few profiles that could animate three times better and three times faster than I could, so I just kept at it, with the belief that it might take me longer, before eventually succeeding.

If it is not just procrastination stirring us away from our goals, some of us just need to work harder to succeed.

Do you think Nik Ranieri gave up animation when he first came across 21 years old James Baxter while working on Roger Rabbit?

Pretty close but Nik Ranieri kept pushing and like Baxter, he ended up also, writing his name on Disney’s history books!

James Baxter line tests

Listen to this fun Nik Ranieri’s recollection of that encounter in the third part of an other memorable Animation Podcast interview.

I am posting a direct link to the interview as the libsyn link in the interview page is now broken, the main page works though or click below.

Direct link to the podcast:
http://animationpodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/AP_2005_09_05.mp3

Related posts:

http://www.olivier-ladeuix.com/blog/2006/08/28/youtubecom-i-love-you/
http://www.olivier-ladeuix.com/blog/2008/03/04/james-baxter-animation-podcast-part-2/
http://www.olivier-ladeuix.com/blog/2007/05/19/the-future-or-animation-is-now/

Character turns made easy 0

Character design / Education / Portfolio

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Character turns made easy

As I was doing it for myself, I thought I could share how I go about turning my designs.

If you are having trouble making your designs “turn”, here is a simple trick that might help you. Click on the pictures to zoom in.

Step 01
Step 02
Step 03
Step 4a
Step 4b
Step 5a
Step 5b

And here is a more advanced character turnaround demo by the great guys at Bam Animation

Disney CG “Robin Hood” 0

Animation

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Disney CG “Robin Hood”

Disney just announced a Disney+ exclusive feature and I know exactly what I would like it to look like! 😉

Wouldn’t you want to see Zootopia’s Nick Wilde taking on the lead of the 1973’s “Robin Hood” remake? I do!

Fostering intellectual openness 0

Animation / Education

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Fostering intellectual openness

Ed Catmull 2008 Siggraph Keynote

Back in 2008, I was privileged to attend Ed Catmull’s keynote at Siggraph as a Microsoft/Rare representative.

During his talk, Ed Catmull looked back at the mistakes Pixar did in its early years and the secrecy surrounding their technologies was one of them.

Instead he explained, everyone would benefit if studios became more open about their projects and technologies.

Fast forward to 2020, Ed Catmull stayed true to his words and everyone is now fully acquainted with Disney’s Ptex and other Pixar’s USD but did you know that Blue Sky and Dreamworks have also embraced the idea of sharing their ideas?

Few days ago, I shared an old article from the Blue Sky’s tech blog on Linkedin and I was astonished by the success it received. In the space of few days, my post, received a little bit less than 3.5k views on a blog post I had assumed everyone had already read and no, the article became viral.

ChopRig system

Most animation related websites are too mainstream those days and not technology focused enough so it is easy to fall out of the loop. When using a 3d software, yes you can pretend you are working like a 2d animator but realistically, you are more like the pilot of a fighter plane and need to keep an eye on your memory use, processes and autosaves.

For anyone wanting to stay up to date for at least what the main Feature animation studios are doing, I would highly recommend to bookmark the following links and keep an eye on what is being discussed.

Blue Sky tech blog

The Blue Sky tech blog is a fairly new one and I read some really interesting articles there, one of them regarding the gamification of Quality Checks (Introducing achievements into QC).

Blue Sky technology

Disney papers and talks

This is the historical animated feature tech website that goes all the way back to 2009.

Last year’s “Optimizing rig manipulation with GPU and parallel evaluation” Siggraph paper doesn’t appear though. It will eventually I am sure so use the link just above to read an abstract and watch the accompanying video.

Dreamworks research and development:

This is the Dreamworks treasure cove. Loads of information about their proprietary software and other tech.

Pixar research

Where it all started!

I hope this is useful to you. Don’t hesitate to share.

Milt Kahl_Disney Family album 0

Animation / Education

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Milt Kahl_Disney Family album

March 1909 came to life my favorite Disney animator. It has been a really long time since I last spoke about Disney legend Milt Kahl on this blog and at a time of political correctness where people are afraid to ruffle feathers, I think it would be a good time to make March 2020, Milt Kahl’s appreciation month!

Milt Kahl was one of Disney’s Nine old men. A vocal animator, well known for his razor sharp comments and stunning performances on characters like Rescuers’ Medusa, Jungle Books’ Shere Khan, Merlin, Aristocat’s Edgar, or even Bambi and Alice.

Let’s start Milt Kahl’s appreciation month softly, with his Disney Family Album portrait and then we will quickly move to a series of interview with his sharp criticism on the industry … and on his colleagues, and to finish with the excellent CalArt tapes!

Related posts:

http://www.olivier-ladeuix.com/blog/2009/09/27/milt-kahl-the-animation-michelangelo/
http://www.olivier-ladeuix.com/blog/2016/10/20/milt-kahl-animation/