Adobe After Effects Tutorials

Some good tutorials are on Videocopilot and Creative Cow.net for Adobe After Effects. They show you some of the basics as well as some more detailed expressions.

Adobe After Effects Tutorials

Some good tutorials are on Videocopilot and Creative Cow.net for Adobe After Effects. They show you some of the basics as well as some more detailed expressions.

Referencing Images Less Speed More Haste

Can you see the difference in them... the lower the quality obviously the quicker it'll take to load up.  However its no good for templates really so I fixed that in preferences... Took me an hour today but I got it eventually and we all learn from our mistakes!! HAHA

Maya Tips

Rob Jones:

Its imperitive that you set up a new project when creating a new Maya file - this will then act as a database for your project where you can keep your textures and scene files and all renders.  Its a lot easier to access than a messy hard drive if you name it correctly.

Clean up your Hyper Graph and Outliner as you go along - this allows you to render in Layers more easily.  Big objects eg - houses etc as one group under another Group of Houses.  Not only does it make the file run faster but if its not in shot you don't need it THERE at that time.

Referencing files allow you to look at other peoples work to the latest save each time you open it up.  This will save you importing it each time and then deleteing and importing and deleteing and OMG LOOK AT THAT HYPERGRAPH!  Its easier with Referencing however I need to experiment with that.

Rendering in Layers makes you file run smoother if its not all visible AND its possible to tweak Occlusion layers, specular, diffuse, shadows, lights, anything on its own layer!!!

Optical Light Effects In Maya

This site HERE is really useful at explaining all the different sources of lights. I'm going to be referencing this for our group Medieval Project.

And so another week Passed.  Some peoples Models have really come along now and mine just seemed Puney in comparison.  Images are working backwards.  I suppose at least you can see its kind of human now which is a major plus, even if his legs are out of proportion - I knew this would happen due to the drawings, but hey... that kinda thing happens occasionly.  He's coming along now I suppose.

Rendering In Passes

If you get a dodgy/funny looking shadow being cast on our model it could well be because it's casting a shadow on itself.  Go into The Render Stats (Attribute Editor) and change the Cast/Recieve Shadows.

Is there anyway to recieve a shadow from one light source but not another I wonder - I'll ask Rob next time or maybe Jared or Alex.

Rendering Layers:

Where Layers are - bottom of the non attribute editor part of the attribue editor side - if you get me.  Create a New Layer (Right button with a cog I believe)  The Master Layer is the layer with EVERYTHING in your scene on.  From this layer select what you want to render out (eg just one model out of your scene) and then add this to the new layer 1 you've just created.  Add A light as well from your scene so its just not BLACK.  Then right click on your layer 1 in the layers box and go to Presets.  This allows the options to render in a variety of ways including Occlusion, Shadows, Specular etc.

Notes: Occlusion - use multiply in AE

Save as Targa's as Black is an alpla channel and then ADD in AE.