FX video tutorials, by me, free

[zugz]

Hey Dave, thanks for putting together some tutorials to share with us.

I think there is a problem with your fluid transparency video. The audio does not match up. It seems to be almost a full minute ahead of the video. Unless it is a problem specific to my computer. Anybody else having this problem?

[destruct007]

argh crap! Someone else told me that. man, I just hate that it's such a hassle to get these things working smoothly. I'll see if I can figure out why that is. :(

EDIT: seems to be an issue with both Camtasia and BB flashback screen recording... I'm trying to export as an AVI instead of quicktime since it gets converted anyway after upload. But that will take some time... still working the bugs out of this video tutorial thing.

Thanks for the feedback.

[destruct007]

lucky for me or you I brought my computer to work. So uploading the avi version now. The sound is synced when I play the avi, so it shouuuld work, and it's faster to export, and smaller file size, which is awesome.

I'll keep you guys... (wait for it) "posted" Oh! YES! Great bad pun, love it *hi five myself*


EDIT: AUDIO-VIDEO SYNC issue fixed!

[PatrickVDK]

I love your blog and ur videos lol You are the funniest instructor I've ever seen or listened to haha :)

[destruct007]

thanks, always nice to hear. I got all the videos updated/uploaded to vimeo. So hopefully it's now dialed in. Let me know if you guys have any requests. I could do it if it's something interesting. No looking to do any easy into stuff, maybe, but probably not, it bores me.

[mr Bob]

Love your humour , you should try Houdini you don't get 99% of the frustration you get with Maya ....

[ovspianist]

Haha funny tutorial! but useful and awesome!
i watched it twice and that actually gave me a lot of idea on the rendering of maya fluids.
I appreciate that you did this tut.

hope you keep up with the good works, i can't wait to see the next one truly!
good luck.


P.S. and i do have a request that's a really a pain in my head. it would be really appreciated if you can help. when the texture method is set to grid and have a speed of 0.2, it works fine at first but as the velocity is changing more and more, the texture grid is too. i kinda want to use the texture grid to simulate high detail fluid by moving texture pattern with density but this is the issue, it distorts too much after a period of time. so is there possibly a solution of this? or it's a well known issue which is already has a workaround but i don't know?

thank you in advance.

P.S. AGAIN
i just watched the other tuts you made, OMG, man i love you so so so much! can't believe what you would put next. I mean you guys really rock the dynamic world here, and viki, another great guy i admire.
i had so much fun watching your tutorials!

[efecto]

Thank you David. :) Your tutorials are awesome.

[hkspowers]

Thanks for the vids man. Always good to get fresh techniques in the brain. Added to favorites. :bounce:

[ChewyPixels]

Thanks David! Subscribed! :)

[destruct007]

Thanks guys, Glad you like them/they're useful to you.

when the texture method is set to grid and have a speed of 0.2, it works fine at first but as the velocity is changing more and more, the texture grid is too. i kinda want to use the texture grid to simulate high detail fluid by moving texture pattern with density but this is the issue, it distorts too much after a period of time. so is there possibly a solution of this? or it's a well known issue which is already has a workaround but i don't know?

No good work around for that. I generally don't use grid b/c of that. I thought some times I'll figure out how to better use it, but so far I've not. My friend said he helped design a plug-in that was used at weta to sort of reset the grid states so that you could keep it looking nice. But it essentially does what we can do in many passes in one. You caaan do that too tho by re-rendering the same sim, with everything cached that you need except texture coordinates. then animate it on at different times and blend the renderes together. That is a horrible work flow so I wouldn't even try, lol. But thats A work flow to fix the issue, IF you really wanted to use it.

I'll let you all know if/when I post a new tutrial.

[watti]

I really love them :) Please keep going whit them.

// Simon

[zres]

wow, thank's for sharing your knowledge with us.
You're really very thoughtful and generous :D

[Htogrom]

You are best FX comedian. Awesome stuff. Keep on ruling :)

[Aikiman]

Yep, big thumbs up from me too David. I like the British accent lol. :)

[SePu]

Thanks ! really helpful ! keep them coming !

[rajsilentmusician]

hey Dave Thanks a lot dude...........you are awesome man and funny....keep going...
i think you are the funniest instructor ever.......lolz

[nevajno]

Thanks! Cool!

[destruct007]

thanks guys for the positive feedback. I was hanging out with Peter Shipkov last night and he thinks I should do a fire tutorial. I didn't think fire was particularly a mystery but seems like it might be. I was planning on doing a nCloth/shatter/destruction tutorial next, since that could be part of a shot for my Secret Agent challenge.. but I'll probably do both. This post is just to wet your appetites :D I have a wedding to go to this weekend so it won't be until next week that I'll be able to get to it.

I think the destruction one is cooler since fire has so many problems in film... I'll explain all that in the tut. You guys want fire or destruction first?

[thomwickes]

I vote fire.

[watti]

Destructions newer goes wrong ;) I vote for that :D

[Grgeon]

Hard choice, but i need some destruction myself :) So I vote for that.

Thanks Dave!

-George

[Aikiman]

I vote fire seeing we are on the subject of fluids anyway :)

[RFX]

I vote for a production approach destruction stuff, I've seen it a lot in other applications, but wondering how Maya's current approach to it would be. Specially in terms of speed and flexibility :-D

[KidderD]

Burn baby Burn

[ovspianist]

Actually it's like trying to decide what to eat at dinner, both tasty, hard to say.

but on the destruction part I'm really curious how you guys handle the pipeline(not the whole pipeline of course, just the fx part) properly to get the job done quickly and neatly. and fire seem to have whole different looks in different situation, but a fire tutorial focus on how to control the look towards our need is extremely useful and appreciated!

good luck with you david, and hope to see another nice sweet from you.

PS. and the texture thing, that's a big headache really. if you can have some talk on that, then great!

[jspence]

thanks for the tutorials! your dvds have also been very helpful

same here, i would love to see a fire tutorial and the issues relating to its use in film vfx

[destruct007]

hah guys I'm going to do both, lol. I just said what first. The difference in time will be like a few days appart, so for most people here that would be like next time you check both are there anyway.
This morning I took my computer apart to install the new heatsink to OC my proc... mostly put back together at anyrate should be next week when I get to them.

Hard thing with fire is it's quite different settings depending on the scale of the fire. So I'd show examples of 2 different scales but very large fire, like a building gets to a totally different setup. I'd do small torch to medium sized, I guess we'll see exactly what that means when we see it.

Destruction is what I'm working on now at work so it's forefront on my mind. Altho I'm also working on fire, just switched gears last week to get dev going on destruction in Maya.

[RFX]

Hey I got a better idea, why not destruction that's on fire? :D

[thomwickes]

Yep, big thumbs up from me too David. I like the British accent lol. :)

Thumbs up from me as well David. But (being english), I don't like the British accent :)

[destruct007]

Thumbs up from me as well David. But (being english), I don't like the British accent :)

LOL no, none of my English friends and/or coworkers like my bad British accent. They tell me it's awful, and doesn't sound like a british accent. Yeah, but that's because it's a bad british accent!

But you're right if i wasn't joking around off the cuff I might avoid it... Or I'll do you one better! I'll blend between bad Scotish, Irish, Australian, and British (South Africa and New Zealand are already that, Oh snap! Kidding Aikiman, Efecto M ;) )

[thomwickes]

for me personally, I find saying 'Sarth Ifrican' instead of 'South African' helps me nail that accent.

Oh and my American accent is the worst thing ever commited to sound. My (American) girlfriend cannot stand it.

[Grgeon]

There's such a thing as an american accent? ;)

-GC

[Aikiman]

But you're right if i wasn't joking around off the cuff I might avoid it... Or I'll do you one better! I'll blend between bad Scotish, Irish, Australian, and British (South Africa and New Zealand are already that, Oh snap! Kidding Aikiman, Efecto M ;) )

hey we are definitely not a blend of Australian accents, lets get that one straight k? LOL thats the whole point of this being funny, your British accent is really bad, its not like we are laughing at the BRits, far from it LOL

[PatrickVDK]

OF course there's american accent, I mean there are different ones like california accent, new york accent, alabama accents but I don't know what my accent sounds like cuz I 've been speaking and hearing it since I was born!! I know people from London don't really take notice of their own accents either. I am sure if I move over there and get use to their accent, I will come back to california and notice our own accent

[Bonedaddy]

How do you have free time for this, you nutjob? :P

[HowardM]

Cool tuts, thanks David! ;)

I dig the softbody particle one, such a simple idea for a cool effect!

One question, for some reason my object is vibrating where it is emitted from (when the path is drawn, the front tip is always sparatically vibrating due to the particles being born all over the place), and I cant tell from your video if yours does the same? Is there a way to make this nice and smooth?

[destruct007]

One question, for some reason my object is vibrating where it is emitted from (when the path is drawn, the front tip is always sparatically vibrating due to the particles being born all over the place), and I cant tell from your video if yours does the same? Is there a way to make this nice and smooth?

Yeah it does that by nature. The NURBS model will pop everytime a new point is born. You can hide this with higher point counts + higher emission rate, and a smaller emission source.

Thanks guys. I find the time. I'm basically going to do tutorails as I do the fx for the cgtalk challange. 2 birds, 1 stone. What sort of caveman skills do you need to be able to kill a bird with a stone? Maybe they mean a slingshot...

[Doerge]

soooo god damn subscribed to your Vimeo profile... SWEET!

Thanks a lot! These are great!

[destruct007]

http://agentfx.blogspot.com/2009/07/fire-part-1.html

BOOM! Fire! Well part 1 anyway. We need to build the foundation before we build the tower. Fire is probably the hardest effect in maya fluids to control and make. (That's in maya fluids not all of maya) It takes a lot of attributes to edit and I want to give first the ground work for what we will build on to get awesome realisticish looking fire. I say relisticish is because all you can ever hopefor in fx is to get close and the comper take it to the next level of integration. Anyway, hope you guys like it, if not? Go suck and egg!!! <- a nice quote from many 80's movies.

[ovspianist]

Thanks dave! Always loving your tutorials, each in my fav tab!

[HowardM]

hahaha you are funny mate, kinda sound like Ren from Ren and Stimpy sometimes ;)

[igorfx]

Thanks man, great work....

[Aikiman]

http://agentfx.blogspot.com/2009/07/fire-part-1.html

BOOM! Fire! Well part 1 anyway. We need to build the foundation before we build the tower. Fire is probably the hardest effect in maya fluids to control and make. (That's in maya fluids not all of maya) It takes a lot of attributes to edit and I want to give first the ground work for what we will build on to get awesome realisticish looking fire. I say relisticish is because all you can ever hopefor in fx is to get close and the comper take it to the next level of integration. Anyway, hope you guys like it, if not? Go suck and egg!!! <- a nice quote from many 80's movies.

Thanks David, another informative video that had me cracking up again.

[ah-fx]

Great tutorial, look forward to the next ones.

[DariuszLacheta]

great videos! thank you! :* ;)

[SebKaine]

thanks for sharing david ! great infos ...

[AllegroTucker]

Love your humour , you should try Houdini you don't get 99% of the frustration you get with Maya ....


Ahahahaha

I swear destruct007... I didn't put him up to it.

Thanks for the tutorials. I'm back into Maya for a bit right now and have completely forgotten everything.

[destruct007]

Thanks for the kind words guys.

Hey "AllegroTucker" I thought we were on more of a first name basis than user name basis. lol. We've only know each other for a few years now, but I feel that's enough time to call me Dave. Altho this is, the first time I've seen you on this side of the tracks.
I totally ignored that Houdini fluid comment not b/c I disagree per-say (I do), but more b/c I wasn't going to get into the whole this-software-is-better conversation that is so easy to happen.

My stance on software: It doesn't matter what you use so long as it looks good in the end. Hand paint every frame in photoshop for all I care. Make pretty pictures, bottom line.

For those who don't know Steven is one of the guru's of Houdini Fluids... or at least one of the better people who knows it. You can check out his tutorials for fluids on the SideFX site. He interned at SideFX where they basically said, "hey learn Houdini fluids! Any questions? Ask those guys, they wrote it." (I'm paraphrasing and kind of making it up but the idea is right)

Anyhoo glad these tutorial's are helping out. More to come.

[AllegroTucker]

Bah! It wasn't an internship!

And yeah, I *very* rarely come on CGTalk. Though now that I'm using Maya I'm doing an awful lot more of sitting around waiting than I'm used to... so I might be here more often. ;-)

Anyways, thanks for the plug. And certainly, as much as I promote Houdini, I totally agree that you gotta use what gets the job done. There is lots that is frustrating about Houdini fluids.

[thematt]

David your tuts are great!! if you put small google ads on your site I'll click them everyday to make you rich and to thk you..hahaha..think about it ;).


cheers
ps: Please keep them going. I vote for ncloth destruction!

[sherridge101]

Cheers David, your tutorials are excellent.

Great to see what techniques you use for special effects.

Cheers,

Steve

[Aikiman]

Hi David,

I had a look at some of those reference links to fire on your home page, do any of these go to video footage? BTW when is part 2 coming out? No pressure, but when? Hopefully tomorrow cause I have this massive FX job to do....joking ;)

[destruct007]

hah, I don't reference much animated fire only because it's very hard to find footage that tells you what fps it's filmed at. I mostly reference movies. Backdraft, Reign of Fire, Harry Potters, HellBoy are a few. I also look at footage from stock footage sites. I can look them up and add that to my site's links list.

I've been busy with my secret agent challenge, altho this weekend I'm goin gout of town with my laptop. I plan to make a few tutorials then, altho I probably won't make part 2 of the fire on my laptop :( hmmm. I was thinking of turning it into a 3 part deal. Explaining more about how fluid sims work.... naw lets just get to the goods, lol. I'll get more tutorials up soon.

[wat2k]

First , I want to say thanks to you. You 're very kind to make this for free. Can't wait to see more from you. Thanks very much. :bowdown: :bowdown:

[ovspianist]

Who in this forum doesn't like him? No one i think!
don't have to say too much good things for him coz i don't know what to say...just thanks, really! and another thing, like a suggestion, david i think it's better to do a tutorial that you start from scratch to the final comp of a fire scene, that would be more useful for us. even for a specific situation, it's always nice to see a complete workflow. the problem i bump into for the most of time is that i can't get into decent enough for final, that's a bit annoying for me, it usually starts very well, but as the process get further and further, i easily get confused. especially multiple layers of fx such as an explosion from the big boom to its resting state, that's hard!

anything from you would be appreciated!

[destruct007]

good idea, I can take it to comp. Altho fire... I'm not sure it will look as good as if a pro comper would work his magic with it. But I will try.

[ovspianist]

haha that would be great~! just leave it to the compositor! actually it's still good to see where you start to finish your part and pass to the comp. um...a sad truth is that in our studio, we don't have any compositor to do real comp work, no actual people just for comping, in fact that's one of our jobs... i don't think this is a good idea, you know, as i know somebody said that composition is half of the battle. we're not experts in comping, that won't lead to a result too good. :banghead:

[destruct007]

welp, I got too tired to really finish it up but I'll take it from here/there when I do fire 3. Also I want/need to work on my secret agent project. So for better or worse, here's the next fire tutorial:
Edit: naw deleting it. I'll make it right later. It was just OK, and I was WAY too tired to make it good. I'd rather have good tutorials than ok ones. Anyway, hang tight those of you who missed it, better one coming. Probably more after Secret Agent tho.
(http://agentfx.blogspot.com/2009/08/fire-part-2-ish.html)

[destruct007]

haha that would be great~! just leave it to the compositor! actually it's still good to see where you start to finish your part and pass to the comp. um...a sad truth is that in our studio, we don't have any compositor to do real comp work, no actual people just for comping, in fact that's one of our jobs... i don't think this is a good idea, you know, as i know somebody said that composition is half of the battle. we're not experts in comping, that won't lead to a result too good. :banghead:

You'll never be able to make awesome FX with out a compositor. You NEED, absolutely NEED a compositor to help out. Someone to focus on just integration and finessing all the pieces together, borrowing this and mixing that, some old some new, and in the end, you're amazed what the final looks like. It's SO hard to try to get there on your own. Making FX looks great in one pass, or even a few takes so much extra work, you save time in the end hiring an extra person to just composite. Talk to your boss and ask him/her to just try out a compositor. You'll need someone awesome so they impresss them, but once they see the result they'll never go back.

[ovspianist]

I just watched it late last night, but as a foreigner i sometimes couldn't understand what you're talking about... :banghead: BUT thank you for doing it with comp, even it's not a happy ending with that one.. Haha and again, i heard that English boy coming out for a moment... :twisted: OMG.

Cheers!

P.S the compositors... you know what, we actually have compositors, but they can't go for another step further after they correctly connect the footage, sometimes just connecting the footage could be problems for them. God i don't know how this can work for such a long time in this studio. I'll definitely try to let them know how important compositors are! I will...

[ah-fx]

I just watched it late last night, but as a foreigner i sometimes couldn't understand what you're talking about... :banghead: BUT thank you for doing it with comp, even it's not a happy ending with that one..OMG.

Cheers!


haha... Dave, I shouldnt say anything because your video is free and all, but you could save us (by us I mean you and your viewers) some time if you make your videos when you're sober.

Although I do feel informed know that....

hmm I was going to go watch the video to get the name of the beer that you were talking about.. but I the blog post is missing..

anyway I DID feel informed knowing about some beer that was extremely bitter..

[Aikiman]

welp, I got too tired to really finish it up but I'll take it from here/there when I do fire 3. Also I want/need to work on my secret agent project. So for better or worse, here's the next fire tutorial:
Edit: naw deleting it. I'll make it right later. It was just OK, and I was WAY too tired to make it good. I'd rather have good tutorials than ok ones. Anyway, hang tight those of you who missed it, better one coming. Probably more after Secret Agent tho.
(http://agentfx.blogspot.com/2009/08/fire-part-2-ish.html)

Nooooooooo, I missed it. More Pyrotechnics please! :(

[Stellios]

aha your videos are hilarious and informative. Keep them coming!

[destruct007]

haha... Dave, I shouldnt say anything because your video is free and all, but you could save us (by us I mean you and your viewers) some time if you make your videos when you're sober.


No you're right, it was only up from the night I posted it to the morning when I deleted it. It wasn't good. I'll make one that is good, but you (and my friends who graciously told me the same) are right, and I know it. I was 50/50 on even posting it so when people were like "ummmmm" I just took it down. I know it wasn't horrible but it wasn't very good, and WAY too long for the information given and not even finished. Fail.

Anywhoo, sorry for those who lost 45 minutes of their lives along with me, lol. You were too quick on the draw, hah.

[VTeixeira]

Thanks a lot for sharing so useful tutorials.
Cheers

[ovspianist]

Anywhoo, sorry for those who lost 45 minutes of their lives along with me, lol. You were too quick on the draw, hah.

Well, at least i spent it with big laughs!
that's all, my friends said to me next day in the morning that david is so funny!

[efecto]

I also missed the second part! >_< i wish i had seen it before you removed it even though it was a fail. Thanks for helpign us out Dave.

[Cheesestraws]

Remember to include the kid breaking his arm when you record the new version, I felt that was perhaps the highlight. :p

[thematt]

anxiously waiting for part2 :drool: hope it's soon I love the tuts you made.

cheers

[destruct007]

New fluid fx tutorial
http://agentfx.blogspot.com/2010/08/fire-15.html

by new I mean I recorded it a couple a months ago, but never posted it. Its a fire tutorial but I call it 1.5 instead of 2. hah. anyway check it out.

[SePu]

Hey David ... Thanks man ... keep them coming of course whenever you can !

[Cainor]

Thanks again David!

[SGIFreak]

Thanks David, i wish you make a new gnomon maya 2011 advance fluid dvd

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