Obama 3D

Scanning a sitting Head of State, so you can 3D print a likeness. Sounds like an oddball idea but the Smithsonian got Paul Debevec (the one who scanned the Parthenon) to make it a reality:

Full arcticle: SIGGRAPH.org

Maya / Mental Ray not batch rendering blendShapes

There seems to be a bug in the currently installed version of Maya 2015 (SP2) that causes Mental Ray to ignore blendShapes when batch rendering (or even mess them up?). But there is a workaround!

• Select the object that has blendshape animation on it
• From the animation menu, choose

  Geometry Cache → Create New Cache

• The default settings should work is you have your entire animation visible on your timeline, if you only use blendShapes for a small part of your animation you may explore the options
• Repeat for each mesh with blendShapes

How does this fix things? It creates files in your project directory (yes, you do need to set your project!) with the correct vertex (=point) positions of the deformed mesh. These vertex positions are then directly used for rendering, ignoring all deformers.

Render Farm coming soon to a lab near you!

Oscar Short List

Bill Plympton posted the shortlist for the Academy Award for animated sorts on his (and Patrick Smith's) blog, and his "Footrprints" is on it: Oscars Short List

Cover Contest

Anybody interested in creating a cover for an Italian comic? Here is the info:

http://www.medhelangraphicnovel.it/covercontest.htm

It's in the eyes....

To break the awful silence on this blog, here is a link to an interesting article questioning whether the uncanny valley has been concoured: Have We Finally Conquered the Uncanny Valley?

Poly Modeling Part 1

I finished cleaning up the first part of the demo video I recorded in the Principles of 3D Animation class, and posted it to YouTube.

Maya 2015 Modeling Improvements (Part1)

This movie by Autodesk's Steven Roselle shows some new features and can also function as a refresher for old ones:
 

MetroCAF 2014 coming up!

Want to see the best student animation produced in the last year in the greater (like huge) New York Metropolitan Area? Want to check out the show where you will be presenting your animations next year, hopefully? The date and time(s) for this years MetroCAF have been announced: Friday September 19 at 6:30PM and 9:30PM. The screening will take place in the beautiful NYIT Auditorium on Broadway.

More info at MetroCAF.org. Here's the trailer:
 

Welcome!

This blog will function as the digital workbook for 3D animation classes I teach at Monmouth University