insight to an industry modeler

taken from simply maya, thought it might interest those of you about to leave sunny cornwall and head for the yukky real world :)
http://simplymaya.com/interview-jason-edwards-2011.mhtml?utm_source=newletter_march_02&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=jay_interview_dc

show reels

Since I know that the third years are starting to think about showreels this one is worth a look

http://vimeo.com/19368587

Ok, it is very funny and if you look at his other videos he clearly knows what he is doing but this has gone massively viral around the VFX communitiy, I have been mailed it by about 15 people. If he doesn't already have one it would not surprise me to hear he gets a job off this. Nice way to do something different

A good post to read for those who think you can learn everything from online tutorials

http://gennyx.blogspot.com/2011/02/newbie-trials.html

I tell people this as well, so it is good to hear it from another source

kinect as a 3d Scanner

Been playing with the xbox kinect as a 3d scanner, this is just two scans roughly cleaned and overlayed. Next up is scanning something on a calibrated turntable and see if it is possible to get a half decent model out of it.

ok slightly narcissistic but hey

Rare internships

For those of you kiddies interested in a career in games this is worth a punt....
http://www.rare.co.uk/careers/internships101112

You need to be quick as the deadline is 31st of Jan, but it is a 11 month placement so could be invaluable experience

sharing custom attributes between multiple geometry

Having seen in the Generic Male rig (http://www.characteroutsource.com/) that the author had shared a shape node with custom attributes through the rig I set out to work out how it was done.

The technique turned out to be surprisingly simple and utilises an instance of a curves shape node with custom attributes applied at the shape level.

This script simplifies the task as it allows you to select the shape node and propagate it to multiple objects and also to remove the node when not wanted. Sharing the shape node can not be done directly in the interface as it requires flags only available in a mel script.


This is a tool for riggers and should make access to your custom tools very simple for your animators.


I'm trying out a new way of sharing the files so this one is available on creativecrash you will need an account to access it but then again you should already have signed up to read about your subject :)

(script pending at the moment on creativecrash so check back if it is not available)

quick tool for ik fk blend set_up

Fed up with connecting all the nodes together to create your ik fk blends. This little tool allows you to pick the bones, type in the name of your switch attribute and it will do all the dull connecting.

Nothing special about it, but saves you some time. Just open in the script editor and run it. Will need a little tweaking if you want to be able to source it automatically.

Script here:   LINK