Fundamentals of V-Ray For Maya

Yes, V-RAY!  

  My good friend Dariush Derakshani has put out a new series on Plural-Sight 

The Fundamentals of V-Ray 

 https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/maya-vray-fundamentals

Dariush is known for his book series Introducing Maya: 3D for Beginners and Maya: Secrets of the Pros  . He also teaches at USC film school along with working as a VFX and CG supervisor in LA.   He is also just an all around good guy... 

UNREAL ENGINE FOR VFX ! @ SVA SEPT 29th

SVA is hosting the EPIC enterprise team in a training session for using UNREAL for VFX!
I'm super excited for this event.. as I keep putting off my unreal intro training and this looks like a great intro.

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DESCRIPTION
Real-time production techniques are driving bold new innovations in the VFX industry. Are you ready to discover how today’s cutting-edge creative teams in the VFX world are using Unreal Engine to revolutionize the film and TV productions of tomorrow?



Learn directly from the experts at Epic Games at the School for Visual Arts in New York City on September 29th! The upcoming Unreal Engine for VFX training event is an in-depth primer on the powerful tools and techniques at the center of real-time production. You’ll explore how the Epic team sets up real-time pipelines for major projects, learn how to set up Unreal Engine for cinematic shot production, and much more!



Don’t miss out on this exciting training event! The full schedule is below:



Schedule / Talks

9:00 a.m. - Registration, Networking w/ Pastries and Coffee

10:00 a.m. - Media and Entertainment Case Studies

11:30 a.m. - Connecting Maya to Unreal Engine with Live Link

12:30 p.m. - Light Lunch

1:30 p.m. - Advanced Look Development Techniques for Real-Time

4:00 p.m. - Sequencer Training and World Setup for Cinematic Shot Production

5:00 p.m. - Closing Reception



Hurry, space is limited! Register today to reserve your spot!


https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/unreal-engine-for-vfx-training-event-pro-techniques-for-real-time-production-pipelines-tickets-50125828703

Path Finder from Felipe de Jesus

Pretty interesting tools from Felipe de Jesus. 
   
Path finder is a tool to help with retargeting your animation to follow along a curve. At first glance it seems easy enough, but in the demo I like that this tool has functionality to keep the feet from slipping, as well as a nice bank control. 
  What I'm curious about, is how it controls the rig, if it's constraining on top of the controls? or it it needs to inject a parent over them for added offset animation. It does appear to be baking the animation out, so my guess would be it converts the animation to world space, and then constrains those controls to the baked animation.. 
 Since this tool works on any rig, it looks of it it uses a loaded selection for which controls to "control" , and which ones to "control, but ignore banking" .. but I'm not sure. 
 but for $50 it may be something worth adding to your toolkit 
https://www.highend3d.com/maya/script/pathfinder-home-edition-for-maya 


Pathfinder Home Edition from Felipe de Jesus on Vimeo.

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The second tool Felipe has posted is his "water jet rig" . Which looks to be a water sim that has been cached and then sent thru a spline rig..I've done this a lot in commercial work, as it's a great way to affect a water sim, which takes  a long time, and be able to tweak it quickly to fit your needs..  Great idea to make one and sell it to the public.



WaterJet Rig from Felipe de Jesus on Vimeo.

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Both these tools were released recently, so my guess would be there are more to come. If anyone out there tries these out, I'd be interested in their feedback

-=s