*** Notice: For the protection of property rights, this catalog is available for online browsing only. Please drop us a line if you would like to receive a copiable version of this catalog. Thank You!
Computer Animation - 3DS MAX
With Tim Jones
In this DVD, Tim takes you through the entire process of creating an environment with 3ds Max starting with the analysis of reference photographs and determining real world object dimensions, all the way through the 3D modeling and texturing pipeline. Tim will teach you how to spot the visual cues that will allow you to quickly and accurately determine dimensions from set photographs. You will also learn how to build quick layout files for modeling and animation and how to model and texture an entire environment from photographic reference. Many artistic and technical challenges are addressed such as understanding perspective, modeling architecture, tile roofs, stone pathways as well as decay and general destruction.
TOPICS COVERED:
Understanding Perspective
Layout Modeling
Preplanning
Environment Modeling
UV Mapping
Texture Painting
Modeling Destruction
Review
"Tim Jones has been at Blur for over 2 years now and in that short time he's become a studio leader and one of our "go-to" guys for lighting. He has both a technical understanding of how light works and a critical artistic eye; both skills are needed in Blur's work environment where an artist may be called upon to do photoreal shots one week and light-hearted cartoons the next. Tim is able to solve ANY lighting problem that we throw at him with ease, coming up with great looking solutions every time." - Tim Miller, Creative Director, Blur Studio
DVD-ROM / 2000 / 167 minutes
>>> Add Cart <<<
With Eric Maslowski
In this demonstration the instructor starts off by walking the viewer through the many fundamental concepts and techniques necessary to create a successful project. He starts off with a tour of the 3ds Max interface stopping at key areas to discuss proper viewport navigation, selecting objects, moving objects around your scene and combining basic shapes to flesh out an idea.
Once the foundation is in place, the instructor takes the viewer through a wide range of techniques for modeling, texturing, lighting, and animating their creations to complete a city scene. The viewer is given the context necessary to take the core techniques and apply them successfully to whatever their end goal or respective industry may be.
DVD / 1290 minutes
>>> Add Cart <<<
With Michael McCarthy
In this DVD, Instructor Michael McCarthy goes in depth with some of the most important new features in 3ds Max 2011. Michael starts off with an extensive overview of "CAT" and then goes through creating a custom CAT Rig from scratch and even goes into great detail with using CAT Muscles. Next Michael goes into great detail with the new Slate Material Editor and ends up creating a custom Shader for a Character. Another exciting feature covered is the new Viewport Canvas tools to texture a character head. Other topics on the DVD include rendering with Quicksilver, Rendering out Surface Maps, and more.
This DVD is perfect for those who want to get up to speed fast with many new features in 3ds Max 2011 and how to use them in production.
DVD / 240 minutes
>>> Add Cart <<<
With JP
In this DVD, JP Self makes the character from the Low-Res Character Production DVD animation-ready by skinning it from head-to-toe. He goes over how to fit the biped to the mesh, using the weight tool to adjust the folds in those tricky areas (such as the hands, shoulders, and pelvis), mirroring the vertices from one half of the character to the other in order to achieve that professional outcome, and even resizing the character after the skinning is complete.
This DVD will help you get a better understanding of the methods and the reasoning behind the techniques that professionals use in production.
DVD / 150 minutes
>>> Add Cart <<<
With Raphael Lacoste
This DVD demonstrates the combined techniques required to create high quality digital illustrations or matte paintings. Raphael combines elements of photographs, textured 3D geometry, and freehand painting techniques, within Adobe Photoshop and 3DS Max to achieve a high quality illustration. You will learn how to use the right elements to create a high-end illustration, starting with rough mood sketches and finishing with a highly polished final image. The variety of techniques shown on this DVD are useful for Digital Illustrators, Concept Artists, Matte Painters, or anyone looking to improve their digital painting skills.
TOPICS COVERED:
Painting thumbnails in grey values
Painting a mood sketch in Photoshop
Perspective matching in 3DS max
Setting up a simple 3D scene for textures and lighting
Choose the right Textures for basic geometry
Painting a sky with photos and using channels selections.
Paint over photos
Modify, stylize silhouettes
Relighting elements in 2D
Photos integration / color matching
Layers management in Photoshop
Atmospheric Depth
Detailing / polishing
Scaling and Proportions
Color correction
Review
"Whenever I happen to fall on one of Raphael's images, I instantly recognize his unique style and color tones that definitely put him into a league of his own. From his sketches to the finished images, the sense of wonder and hugeness is always extremely present, stimulating the viewer's imagination, wanting him to know more about each scene, exactly like in a captivating epic tale. A truly fabulous body of work!" - SPARTH
DVD-ROM / 184 minutes
>>> Add Cart <<<
With Laurens Corijn
In this DVD, Instructor Laurens Corijn demonstrates how to model and render an entire high poly military dozer from scratch. Laurens explains many hard surface modeling techniques that will help you create complex shapes without pinching artifacts when smoothing. Next you will learn how to add a few simple materials and then render out different element passes using Mental Ray. Finally all the render passes are taken into Photoshop where Laurens shows a few interesting tricks on how to composite them and get a final image for your portfolio.
This DVD is perfect for those who want to want to learn many practical hard surface modeling techniques and rending out your highres 3ds Max models for your portfolio.
DVD / 540 minutes
>>> Add Cart <<<
With Laurens Corijn
In this DVD, Instructor Laurens Corijn continues from Part 1 and constructs the Low Poly version of the Dozer including the Modeling, Uving, and Baking. Laurens also starts each major section off with a brief introduction on what to expect during the process. He starts off by carefully modeling each section of the Dozer's low poly mesh. Once the low poly is complete he goes into creating the complex Uvs required for baking and texturing. Laurens then goes into baking out the normal and ambient occlusion maps. And finally applying and adjusting a shader in the 3ds Max viewport.
This DVD is perfect for those who want to want a comprehensive look at how to take a complicated high-poly vehicle and create a low-poly version ready for real-time applications and games.
DVD / 480 minutes
>>> Add Cart <<<
With Laurens Corijn
In this DVD, Instructor Laurens Corijn continues from Part 2 of the Dozer series and creates all of the textures and shaders needed to get the vehicle polished, finalized and inside UDK. Laurens starts off by laying the foundations of the textures and even bakes out a few more to get a solid base to start from. He then goes through the full texturing of the diffuse, specular, gloss, and even adding the diffuse details into the normal map. When the textures are done, he goes over how to create a very nice shader using his very own Xoliul shader. Laurens then brings everything into UDK to get it looking great in-game. He goes into great detail about cubemaps and even has a little fun exploring next-gen DirectX 11 features. Laurens finishes by talking about presentation and goes over the simple environment he created.
This DVD is perfect for those who want to learn more about texturing, shading, and presenting their models. A lot of people have mastered the modeling, baking, and mapping (from the previous DVDs) but still struggle a bit with texturing. Proper texturing and presentation can really bring a subject to life and make it look amazing.
DVD / 330 minutes
>>> Add Cart <<<
With Tim Jones
In this DVD, after setting up various production lighting rigs, Tim discusses the pros and cons of each solution. You will learn when to use one type of rig over another based on the goals of the project, as well as how to deal with the challenges that different scene elements create for your lighting setups. Tim will also show you how to render passes out of 3ds Max, composite them using Digital Fusion and set up your lighting in real-time using floating point image formats. Finally, you will learn how to set up a scene for multiple lighting scenarios including day, sunset and night shots.
TOPICS COVERED:
Setting up Light Rigs
Rendering Passes
Compositing
Night-time Lighting
Sunset Lighting
Review
"Tim Jones has been at Blur for over 2 years now and in that short time he's become a studio leader and one of our "go-to" guys for lighting. He has both a technical understanding of how light works and a critical artistic eye; both skills are needed in Blur's work environment where an artist may be called upon to do photoreal shots one week and light-hearted cartoons the next. Tim is able to solve ANY lighting problem that we throw at him with ease, coming up with great looking solutions every time." - Tim Miller, Creative Director, Blur Studio
DVD-ROM / 162 minutes
>>> Add Cart <<<
With David Lesperance
3D Environment artists require an extensive set of tools and techniques in their arsenal in order to deal with the complexity of a full 3D environment. Environment artist David Lesperance will guide you through his process for developing 3D environments in Environment Production Workflow - Tips, Tricks and Concepts. Various topics are addressed in this lecture, starting with the composition and layout of the scene, lighting, materials, textures, and sculpting techniques. David begins his lecture on composition and layout, along with some of the techniques he uses to find the best composition for the environment he is designing. This includes finding the right mood and using some quick Adobe® Photoshop® tricks to enhance the lighting in the scene He then moves into Autodesk® 3ds Max® to go over his process for developing materials in V-Ray®, starting with glass and various metal materials, pointing out various options in the V-Ray® material to make it easier to troubleshoot issues when they arise. His lecture then moves into terrain modeling, discussing a series of techniques he uses to design convincing terrains. He first discusses a technique for blending surfaces, starting by sculpting some high resolution rock formations using ZBrush4R4® and combining them in 3ds Max® using some Boolean operations. He then demonstrates how blend materials across the surfaces using vertex paint to control a mask within a Blend Material. Next he moves on to terrain building using World Machine to generate fractal based terrain maps and exporting displacement maps to rapidly create terrain assets. David's next series of lectures focus on the practical layout, composition, texturing, and lighting a digital environment. Here, he focuses on the build process, starting with rough layout, then adding various rubble assets before moving into lighting and texturing the environment. During the texture phase, he discusses texture scale issues and demonstrates how to keep texture scale consistent across multiple assets. His final set of lectures focus primarily on rapid modeling and sculpting techniques he employs in his workflow. Here, David discusses everything from high-resolution sub-D modeling in 3ds Max® to high resolution sculpting techniques in ZBrush®. His primary focus inside ZBrush® is the use of the new Insert Multi Mesh tool and the latest updates to Dynamesh in ZBrush4R4®.
DVD-ROM / 212 minutes
>>> Add Cart <<<
With David Lesperance
This lecture will provide an in-depth look at the workflow David Lesperance uses to design environments. Starting off, he will cover basic concepts of asset building including kit bashing, grid space modeling, basic UVs and asset cleanliness. Normal and displacement mapping will also be covered. Dave will then move into his lighting setups using V-Ray. He will discuss lighting and rendering in V-Ray, covering HDRI and physical camera setups, along with efficient render settings. Throughout the class David will be sharing many time-saving tips and tricks that he uses in his day-to-day workflow for 3ds Max, ZBrush and Photoshop.
DVD-ROM / 171 minutes
>>> Add Cart <<<
With Riki Babington
In this demonstration the instructor creates the high res version of a complex modular fountain from scratch with 3ds Max 2010. The sculpting portions of the video are done twice, once in Mudbox 2009 and again in Zbrush 3.1.
The techniques used in this video have been proven effective in production to quickly create professional next-gen game meshes.
DVD / 510 minutes
>>> Add Cart <<<
With Riki Babington
Learn how to create professional low res meshes for next-gen games. The bulk of this demonstration is in 3ds Max 2010 where the instructor uses the new graphite modeling tools to optimize and create meshes to be used to capture the details from the fountain high res mesh. After the low res mesh is created the instructor creates the Uvs for all the modular pieces of the fountain and then goes into great detail about the baking options to create your normal and ao maps.
The techniques used in this video have been proven effective in production to quickly create professional next-gen game meshes.
DVD / 300 minutes
>>> Add Cart <<<
With Jeremy Engleman
3d Studio Max is an industry leading application for design visualization, game development and visual effects. 3ds Max is powerful and flexible enough for professionals, but intuitive enough for the beginner. Whether new to 3ds Max or new to 3D, these lectures provide ample discussion of the tools needed to create visually rich imagery and animations. User interface foundations are presented, focusing on 3ds Max's ease and simplicity. Learn core concepts as well as efficient, professional modeling, animation, texturing and lighting techniques.
System Requirements
Microsoft® Windows® Vista®
Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional
Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
DVD-ROM (Win) / 410 minutes
>>> Add Cart <<<
With Eric Miller
Maxon Bodypaint 3D has become the standard 3D painting tool used in the film and game texture pipelines. Renowned for its stability and performance, Bodypaint excels in the arena of integration with 3rd party 3D and 2D applications like Autodesk Maya and Adobe Photoshop. Bodypaint's extensive toolset including a powerful projection painting engine has made it the tool of choice for painting textures on a 3D surface. Containing over 8 hours of lecture, this DVD covers everything you need to get started with Bodypaint. Beginning with the fundamentals of navigation, UI, and document setup, the topics progress to more advanced setup and workflow related lectures. The lectures will also address painting modes, like surface and projection painting, along with effective methods to create and utilize custom brushes in BodyPaint.
System Requirements
Microsoft® Windows® Vista®
Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional
Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
DVD-ROM / 494 minutes
>>> Add Cart <<<
With Alessandro Cangelosi
In this DVD, Alessandro Cangelosi will lead you through various rendering techniques necessary to accomplish different tasks such as architectural realistic rendering, creating procedural natural environments, live integration, scripting, and secondary effects such as depth of field and volume lighting. He talks about procedural modeling, shading, lighting, and scene management using mental ray, then composites the rendered passes using Autodesk Combustion and Composite, (aka Toxik), to achieve a film or photorealistic look. Alessandro also takes a look at how to control rendering features using MAXScript to add some custom tools to the pipeline.
TOPICS COVERED:
Procedural Modeling
Efficient Scene Management
Lighting Strategies
Shading Pipeline and mental ray Features
Production Shaders
Render Passes
Scripting
Compositing in Combustion and Composite (aka Toxik)
Review
"Alessandro has a proven track record and deep understanding of creating shaders that reproduce natural phenomena - like sand, ice, water surfaces, and lava. These are technical achievments, but Alessandro has a passion for cinematography, composition, lighting, and color. Having a solid foundation in these areas will always create better work - when artistic prowess meets technological understanding and not the other way around. Alessandro has helped us immensely on difficult effects shots, and we were able to trust his judgement on how a shot should be lit and composed. He always concentrates on the importance of a shot, its form and subject, before dealing with all the technology that goes into producing the end result. Alessandro's careful observations and strong technical skills have made it a pleasure working with him." - Matt Moses Lighting Director, Renkewitz Studios
DVD-ROM / / 314 minutes
>>> Add Cart <<<
With Adam Schuman
In this DVD instructor Adam Schuman walks you through the entire process of constructing a low resolution character worthy of any "next-generation" game. Follow him as he shows you his techniques in exporting the high-res model from Zbrush, reconstructing the low-res meshes, creating the UV's for all of the meshes, baking out all of the maps (3ds Max and xNormal), creating all of the textures, using real-time viewport shaders, and rendering out the final for your portfolio. This DVD is geared to improve your workflow by helping you understand what is expected of professionals in the field today.
DVD / 270 minutes
>>> Add Cart <<<
With Riki Babington
In this DVD, Instructor Riki Babington guides you through many of the powerful features in Autodesk Mudbox. Riki starts off with the UI and then goes into importing and exporting your meshes. From there he gets into the sculpt brushes and then into the extensive painting features. Further topics include using pose tools, curves, cameras and lights, viewport filters, map extraction, sculpting with maps, and rendering. As a bonus he then goes into the new features recently released in the Subscription Advantage Pack including the Gigatexel Engine, smoothing groups, creating and combining normal maps from bump maps, using the tiling plane, and much more. Finally, Riki demonstrates how to create a portfolio quality sculpt of an old wall. He begins inside 3ds Max and goes all the way through completion.
This DVD is perfect for those who want to understand the power of Autodesk Mudbox and how to use it to create a portfolio quality environment piece.
DVD / 270 minutes
>>> Add Cart <<<
With Tim Jones
In this lecture, Tim breaks down the process of rendering passes out of 3ds Max and demonstrates how to composite them together in Digital Fusion. Learn how to generate many different types of passes and how they are used in production. Identify and correct commonly occurring issues, from incorrect matte edges to bit depth and color correction. Acquire an understanding of what happens under the hood inside your 3D software and how to mimic that behavior while compositing to produce the highest quality renders. Tim demonstrates his techniques using Scanline, V-Ray and Brazil.
Review
"Tim Jones has been at Blur for over 2 years now and in that short time he's become a studio leader and one of our "go-to" guys for lighting. He has both a technical understanding of how light works and a critical artistic eye; both skills are needed in Blur's work environment where an artist may be called upon to do photoreal shots one week and light-hearted cartoons the next. Tim is able to solve ANY lighting problem that we throw at him with ease, coming up with great looking solutions every time." - Tim Miller, Creative Director, Blur Studio
DVD-ROM / 260 minutes
>>> Add Cart <<<
With Riki Babington
In this demonstration the instructor starts off by explaining the very fundamentals of using Photoshop for texturing. From there he goes into depth on how to set up your high res and low res meshes for rendering Normal, AO, and other Maps.
Once the scene and basics have been defined it's on to the entire texturing process of the self contained scene. Everything from the Diffuse, to Spec, Normal, and even a little Emissive and Alpha Maps. The Main textures created are a Concrete Texture set, Wood, Cloth, Grass, Ground, and Metal. This video has almost 5 hours of teaching and demonstration that will serve as the ultimate texturing resource.
DVD / 300 minutes
>>> Add Cart <<<
With Riki Babington
In this demonstration the instructor takes you through the entire process of creating a next gen 3d model starting from scratch and ending inside Unreal Editor 3.
This DVD is targeted for both professionals and students.As a professional you will be able to learn efficient ways to keep your models high quality when it comes time to ship the game. As a student you will become exposed to professional techniques in the game industry.
DVD / 210 minutes
>>> Add Cart <<<
With Brandon Young
Brandon Young presents his production FX workflow by reconstructing a shot from the Dragon Age: Origins cinematic created at Blur Studio. He goes over the shot breakdown, the goals of the shot and how to achieve them quickly. Brandon shows how to use Particle Flow, FumeFX and stock elements to make the effects shine. He then delves into rendering and compositing the effects elements into the actual production shot.
Review
"Brandon Young is truly one of the worlds most talented and complete visual effects artists. With the quality, creative ingenuity and sheer force with which he approaches his work, his shared knowledge will prove invaluable for the sincere aspiring artist." - Wayne England, Creative Director, Spatial Harmonics Group
System Requirements
Microsoft® Windows® Vista®
Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional
Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
DVD-ROM / 240 minutes
>>> Add Cart <<<
With Alessandro Baldasseroni
In this DVD Alessandro shows his workflow to model a stylized character for production, based on a given concept. The essential steps are covered, starting with the presentation of the initial 2D concept and associated reference materials. Alessandro then demonstrates blocking out the character with ZSpheres in ZBrush using the concept as reference for proportions. This becomes his base in 3ds Max to block out all the main components through polymodeling. Next, he details the character with a combination of polymodeling techniques in 3ds Max and ZBrush sculpting. Particular attention is paid to keeping the topology of the various parts consistent for an animation environment, showing in particular how to efficiently retopologize parts in 3ds Max to achieve a better geometry distribution. After modeling an addition to the character not present in the initial concept, Allesandro renders and presents the final model in ZBrush in the form of a character sheet and a turntable.
Reviews
"Alessandro's approach to character creation is technically advanced and intuitive. He has been in production for game cinematic for several years and has incorporated numerous effective workflows from Modeling, texturing, UV layout, shaders/material setup in 3D studio Max to Zbrush sculpting, polypainting and rigging." - Sze Jones, Freelance Character Artist
"It's rare to find someone like Ale who is well versed at both the artistic and technical spectrum of character modeling. These skills allow him to define the key aesthetics of a character through both texture and sculpt while allowing for dynamic movement and energy which is key in any animation production pipeline." - Dan Rice, Art Director, Blur Studios
System Requirements
Microsoft® Windows® Vista®
Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional
Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
DVD-ROM / 294 minutes
>>> Add Cart <<<
With Hristo Velev
In this DVD Hristo Velev starts from the very beginning by explaining what Thinking Particles actually is and then begins to build upon a solid foundation of theory and technical knowledge of the program. From there Hristo goes through an extensive set of basic concepts to guide you through the massive amount of features in TP4. During that time he creates several practical effects that are very useful in production.
After the basic concepts are covered he then goes through creating an entire project from start to finish to help you understand the entire process. With over 9 hours of training this DVD will help you understand Thinking Particles and start creating amazing effects.
DVD / 540 minutes
>>> Add Cart <<<
With Hristo Velev
In this DVD Hristo Velev takes up from Part 1 in this series, to go deeper into the intermediate concepts of Thinking Particles. Everything from Raycasting, Referencing, Motion Inheritance, Generation, Driving Scene Objects, Shape Collision, Fragmentation, Caching, Joints, PhysX Dynamics, Deformation, Displacement, Map-Based Interaction, Particle Interaction, Custom Data Streams, FumeFX Interaction, and more are fully explored in this DVD.
This DVD is perfect for those who want to learn more about Thinking Particles and why many studios are using it in production today.
DVD / 480 minutes
>>> Add Cart <<<
With Maxime Deleris
In this DVD, Maxime breaks down every visual effect, from texture to behavior and integration into an alpha stage game level, using the UDK Unreal Engine 3. He shows how to use Adobe Photoshop®, AfterEffects®, FumeFX and 3ds Max to create textures, and demonstrates essential methods for efficiency and optimization of visual effects to be used in a video game. Watch as Maxime deconstructs numerous realistic effects such as smoke, fire, explosions, muzzle flashes, bullet impacts, and more.
System Requirements
Microsoft® Windows® Vista®
Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional
Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
DVD-ROM / 74 minutes
>>> Add Cart <<<
With Mike Jensen
In this DVD, Instructor Mike Jensen is back by popular demand to demonstrate even more hard surface techniques using Zbrush 4 R2. Mike starts off giving an overview of all the techniques and basics that will be covered in the creation of a full armor set. He then starts concepting the character armor and then building out the main shapes for the final. Mike then begins to detail the final armor and brings it all to portfolio quality sculpt. Finally he talks a little about how to pose your model and bring it into 3d Studio Max to render with Vray and then compositing the final in Photoshop.
This DVD is perfect for those who want to learn how to create hard surface character armor inside Zbrush 4 R2.
DVD / 450 minutes
>>> Add Cart <<<
***Price on web-site may not be current and is subject to modification by quotation***