Maya Extension 1 + SP 5 now available

Looks like its mostly bug fixes... lots and lots of bug fixes

 check your subscription page under Product Enhancements


and it is a patch install, so just run it over your current version of Extension 1 

Maya 2015 Extension 1 is NOW AVAILABLE !!! .

Maya 2015 Extension 1 is NOW AVAILABLE !!!
get it while its hot.

http://area.autodesk.com/products/features/maya

Maya customers on Autodesk® Subscription have access to Extension 1 for Autodesk® Maya® 2015 software
This extension for Maya provides you with new tools and workflow enhancements, helping you get more done in less time. Some of the features you should be excited about include: an all-new Color Management system, new performance profiler tool, and a series of modeling and workflow productivity enhancements.

New features

Color Management
A completely new color management system that helps you preserve your creative intent throughout lighting and rendering workflows with more accurate color reproduction within Maya windows and editors, as well as frames rendered through the NVIDIA® mental ray® renderer.
A simple linear workflow is available out of the box, and you can customize it to match your color pipeline

Includes support for EXR floating-point data and for the Autodesk® Color Management component (SynColor), the OpenColorIO open source project, and the Academy Color Encoding System (ACES), which enables consistent color-safe handling of imagery across The Foundry's NUKE® software, Adobe® Photoshop® software, Autodesk® Flame® family of products, and other applications to help ensure color compatibility throughout the studio pipeline.

Third parties can take advantage of the SDK to implement support for the Maya Color Management system in other renderers and applications that work with Maya.






Performance Profiler
The new Performance Profiler helps technical directors gauge, measure, and debug the performance of individual nodes, character rigs, and Maya scenes.

Take advantage of a graphical interface that enables performance measurement and graphing for dirty propagation, evaluation, deformations, rendering, Qt events, XGen instancing, and Bifrost simulations.

A robust API gives you the option to extend the Performance Profiler for use with custom tools and plug-ins.

Productivity Enhacements

We made a number of general workflow enhancements that you identified as high priority, in an effort to make your everyday tasks more efficient and save you time.

• Expanded wireframe color choices ( no longer dependent on overrides !!!!!! ) 
• Per-menu keyboard shortcut to repeat the last command  ( press MMB over  a menu) 
• Object visibility toggling  ( h for multi object toggle, be sure to check the prefs!!) 
• Color coding in the channel box to reflect various key states ( this is awesome ) 
• Performance improvements and multi-UV tiling support for OpenSubdiv 
• Enhancements to the Multi-Cut tool
• Further integration of the Modeling Toolkit
• New custom pivot workflows ( takes getting used to , but is worth it ) 

August 27th Meet Up Recap

First off I want to thank our presenters Lee Fraser , James Dick and Will Frazier.  As well as Autodesk, and Great Eastern tech for providing the space and refreshments.


 Some quick notes from Lee's presentation:

Probably the biggest thing to look forward to in  Maya  2015 ext 1 is the new color management. This is going to be a huge leap forward!.  The profiler is great for figuring out what's wrong with your scene..the next step is figuring out how to fix what's wrong.  

 Bifrost and Xgen keep improving everyday.

 Lee briefly mentioned the "h" key will now be for toggling visibility, and using the middle mouse button on a menu to repeat last action in an effort to make it more "artist friendly".  I'm still not sold on the "h" key as it will globally hide or show all your selected objects. So its really only toggling off your last selected object.. Keep an eye out for accidentally hitting that key.

I'm actually excited for the new wire frame coloring options. As I tend to stay away from using display overrides for coloring my control curves ( display layers break this) .

The planned release for Maya 2015 Ext 1 is September 10th 


Also ,, Face Shift  is looking pretty cool and if you are into low-budgetish motion capture. It looks to be a great option.
http://www.faceshift.com/

 James and Will showed off the job they had to pull off from start to finish in about 30 days . AllState360 and really delved into some of the things you have to do to get that quality of work done in that little of time. In a word. Make a great track, and trust it will all work in the end.  Awesome work and super cool to see all the things that went into the making of.

http://www.framestore.com/work/allstate-360

In honor of the two presentations I made a quick ( like I spent maybe 5 minutes) making a house and covering it with bifrost rain..

AUGUST 27th 2014 : Maya Users Group Meet !

I know its been a while, but hopefully everyone has been enjoying this summer weather. But now its time for work.. Come meet up with your fellow artists and check out some of what's new in Autodesk and Maya technology from Lee Fraser. Also, from Framestore, James Dick will be showing some behind the scenes of some of the more interesting challenges he's faced in commercial production.

 Refreshments are graciously provided by Great Eastern,

  Please be sure to RSVP to :  nycmayausersgroup@gmail.com

New York Autodesk Office

6:00 to 9:30

Wednesday, August 27th  

6:00 PM - 9:30 pm

38W 21st Street, 9th Floor

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Lee Fraser , Technical Specialist of Autodesk. Will be presenting a post siggraph recap and run down of some of the new stuff in Maya, and  take some QnA. 

http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/lee

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James Dick, CG Supervisor for Framestore studio will be showing off some of their latest work and giving a little look into the making of some of his favorite commercials.

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sponsored by :

Creating a body of water simulation ..

It's been pretty slow news lately here in NYC,, so I'm just gonna post some awesome biFrost tutorials on creating water simulations.
I'll also tag this for tutorial and bifrost..
-=s

Mudbox and Maya interoperability Webinar

http://www.autodesk.co.uk/adsk/servlet/pc/index?siteID=452932&id=17144365

Flappy Bird in Maya

Yes it's true, you can play Flappy Bird in Maya.
Thanks to Guiallume Brunet for creating and sharing this .

Probably the thing that will surprise most people is that the code is all written in MEL.
and for those of you that know MEL, you will find it't not even  a true global proc, but just sourced mel bits.
I recommend, using a fresh maya, and closing that maya without saving preferences if you choose to try this out. But it does work. and well, yes it is a lot of fun.

you can get the code here:
http://www.partage-facile.com/JCD7E91KHN/flappymaya.mel.html




Flappy Bird in MEL Script on Maya from Guillaume BRUNET on Vimeo.

SVA Computer Art Lecture series : Game Art June 12th 7 - 8:30 pm,

SVA computer art , Computer Animation and  Visual Effects Present:

Maya 2015 SP2 now available

Autodesk  is moving pretty fast this year with the updates. Service Pack 2 is now available for Maya 2015.

Major updates all look like bug fixes. Especially for the MTK modeling tools.  but I don't see any major changes.
for the full list go here:  http://download.autodesk.com/us/support/files/maya_2015_service_pack_2/Maya2015_SP2_Readme_enu.html

For windows, this is a patch install over your current install of Maya 2015, for OSX and linux its a complete re-install, so be sure to un-install on those operating systems.

http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/downloads/caas/downloads/content/autodesk-maya-2015-service-pack-2.html

Maya 2015 SP 1 available

For those of you that haven't heard the first service pack is available for MAYA 2015,
this is not a complete install but a patch on top of your current install.

you can get it here:

http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/downloads/caas/downloads/content/autodesk-maya-2015-service-pack-1.html

HIFI 3D : Toy Rush Launch Trailer

Nice animated spot from HIFI3D for the iphone game "Toy Rush"

Toy Rush launch trailer from HiFi 3D on Vimeo.

Thanks to everyone for braving the rain to come out for the Meeting

Just wanted to throw out some special thank yous to the artists, Artur Elson, Alex Cheparev, and Chi Chang Chu,  from Mr X Gotham as well as Eric Robertson ( vfx sup/ owner of MR X Gotham)  coming in to share with us on such a nasty rainy night.    Also to Jep Hill,   Nuke User Group president. as well as Cg Sup of MR X Gotham, for the support and putting together such a great team.  ( you too Myung !) 

Huge thanks to Steve and Kate of Cinesys-Oceana for making the space available and providing the refreshments.  As well as taking care of all the RSVP info.. and On that note.. for the next meeting(s) we need to be a little more diligent  on the RSVPs. That's how we figure out the amount of food/drinks we need to get.  

Thanks to Autodesk , and to Ben and Ryan of The Foundry  for supporting the meeting.( as well as showing us a look into Heiro and Nuke Studio. I'm always eager to see what they have coming out next.)

 Super Huge thanks to Hannah from Wacom for supporting us and providing the Wacom Wireless Mini Intuos prize, and for those of you that picked one up, the Intuos styluses.  I'm sure David Avetisov can attest to that.

And also thanks to Digital Tutors for the support and for offering up the 2 Monthly subscriptions to DT taken away by George Jiminez and Vicotria Di Liberto.  I always find some good nuggets of wisdom in their tutorials.

Okay, well, thanks again,  Here are some random pics I took during the night.  and look forward to seeing you all at the next one

-=s

our awesome sponsors 

  

April 30th Maya Users Group Meeting MR X GOTHAM

Come out of hibernation and join us with the Nuke users group in an:

"Evening with Mr X Gotham" 

  Mr X Gotham has been in NYC for a little over a year and they've been very busy, from "Pompeii" to "Noah" and a whole bunch of "AnchorMan 2" .  Come see a little behind the scenes of their work on these jobs and learn  a little bit about what makes them tick.

7:00 pm to 9:30 pm

50 Eldridge Street, 7th Floor

New York, NY 10002

please RSVP to events@cinesysinc.com

Special thanks to Cinesys-Oceana for hosting the event and providing refreshments and AV support!

also sponsored by: 

 

Maya 2015 Modeling Improvements ( part1)

Steve Roselle goes over some of the new modeling improvements in Maya 2015

Vray 3.0 for Maya

The V-Ray 3.0 for Maya Beta program is now open! This major release is just around the corner.

A new Progressive Rendering Engine, support for several open source technologies, plus up to 5x faster ray tracing and rendering performance are some of the features included in the initial round of enhancements.

The new website V-Ray.com has been updated with a complete list of new features and improvements to the already powerful toolset.

V-Ray 3.0 for Maya public beta is available now and open to all V-Ray for Maya commercial users.
http://www.chaosgroup.com/en/2/vrayformayabeta_join.html

Dariush Derakshani shows off some of the new updates in V-ray 3.0 for Maya

V-ray 3.0 for Maya - Progressive Rendering




V-ray 3.0 for Maya - Rendering Hair



V-ray 3.0 for Maya - VFB



V-ray 3.0 for Maya - Max Ray Intensity




V-ray 3.0 for Maya - V-Ray RT GPU

Nathan Love Gets Physical

In case you haven't noticed, you can now take 3D models and print them in real life...

 Joe Burrascano and his amazing Nathan Love team recently posted a few images of their Toucan Sam printed in glorious 3D and hand painted to match their shaded models from the commercials. The detail on this print is truly amazing, along with the character design and build in 3D.

From the Nathan Love page :

"Hats off to the amazing Dave Cortes and his Cortes Studio! This guy knows toy prototyping and has an amazing printer - this isn't even the highest resolution!"

Not only is Dave Cortes a amazingly talented artist, he also offers 3D modeling and rapid prototyping services. Be sure to check out his site for his sculptures in both 3D and physical forms.  http://www.cortesstudio.com/  and for more info on his 3d modeling services .
 http://www.cortesstudio.com/Rapid-Prototyping-Services

Hopefully we'll soon be seeing prints of all the Nathan Love Characters !!

( in case you missed the Froot Loops commercials.. here are the two that I know of ) 

Kellogg’s® Froot Loops® "Carl the King Crab" from Nathan Love on Vimeo.

Kellogg’s® Froot Loops® "Detector" from Nathan Love on Vimeo.

HIFI 3D : updated website and Demo REELS

The artists over at HIFI 3D have been busy and they want you to know about it! 

http://www.hifi3d.com/

http://www.hifi3d.com/

Color space and workflow for Post Production Professionals

VES and PNYA present Color Space and Workflow for Post Production Professionals 

http://colortheorypractice.splashthat.com/

School of Visual Arts

133-141 W 21st Street, 3rd Floor, #301

New York

NY

10011

March 19 2014

730pm -  930pm

Add some color to your Wednesday.

This event is intended to an introductory explanation of the complete color chain from camera (ingest) to delivery format (output).

With:

Mark Russell (VFX Supervisor):  Host, Moderator

Chris Healer (CEO, The Molecule):  "Color Theory & Practice in a Nutshell: Condensed Version"

Joe Gawler (Colorist, Harbor Entertainment): The Art of Color

Dave Satin (DIT): On-Set Color Decisions