George Maestri

Does anyone know a good place to find great looking fx for Unreal? 3D vdb fx for pulse blasts, explosions, impact destruction of cement or rubble? The ones we are finding in marketplace look too basic. Tips? help? #animation

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When Scanline Rendering took 4 hours to render a 640x480 image...

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Have you ever wanted to crumple a paper using 3D software? And this crumpling shot you want just can't be filmed? In my new Patreon tutorial, you’ll learn two approaches for crumpling a paper ball - one fast and another high-fidelity - and when to use each in Houdini. Full tutorial and project files on my Patreon: https://lnkd.in/eKVDhk3s

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COMBINING SOCKETS AND TRACKED PROPS IS HELLA FUN In realtime, in Unreal Engine. But that's not why you're gonna watch this video. Cue outrage. WAIT WHAT? HE'S A WOMAN!!!!??? You wanna know the difference between tracked props and sockets when mocapping live action in 3D? Well look no further. Because here it is. Sockets are so helpful when getting props to stay where you want. Hands and collision are really quite complicated to do believably well in real time. So we do a combo of realtime interactions where appropriate and sockets for everything else. [a socket is just a plug for placing objects in the hands of your character]. When you then add in all the other super powers like proxy geometry and puppetry it's fun as hell. So.... then you get this. Most of you probably just skipped past the Zoe Zero shoot we shared last week and assumed we had an actress in the studio. https://lnkd.in/eR4YKK_v Nope. I do all the characters. It gets weird. Trust me. As always, the recipe is #vicon #stretchsense #faceware and a ton of imagination and hard work. #mocap #3danimation #performancecapture #realtime #unrealengine #UE5

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If you haven't seen #SideFX's 20.5 keynote, then check it out! It's well worth your time. This release addressed many things that have been sore-spots for years now, and it's impressive to see what's developed in such a short amount of time. Some of the highlights for me were: 1. Adaptive sampling for XPU 2. Procedural texture synthesis with COPs 3.0, easier cross-network compatibility 3. 150+ nodes that lay the groundwork for compositing that utilize GPU acceleration 4. Slap comp blocks that mimic PostFX operations 5. Improved sculpting tools 6. Yet another option for grain simulations / softbody deformations with the MPM solver 7. The new point cloud measure node which calculates curvature, density, and surface orientation. 8. A ton of new features for rigging / animation And that's apparently just the tip of the iceberg with this 0.5 release! In the near future, I'll be going through all CG Forge content and updating things to reflect the best workflows with these new features. In particular, this release may have a lot of implications for environments I and the shading techniques courses, so I'll be sure to revisit those and append to them as need be. Congrats SideFX Software! Well done 👍 https://lnkd.in/g-6Sq8hi

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Blocking out in Unreal 5 All dang day my head hurts...using the modeling tools set in Unreal Is ....UNREAL #Blender #UnrealEngine5 #digitalart #Envart

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Another great resource for level design and #gameart is Dimensions.com. It’s a database with common measurements and construction terminology used for everyday objects, buildings, trees, etc. A goldmine of information!

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The most important principle in acting for animation is appeal. #animation #looneytunes #2d #3d

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Here is a new tutorial. It's a big one. ADVANCED CHARACTER RIGGING IN AFTER EFFECTS. Hope you all will like it. https://lnkd.in/dxrf8yCF #animation #tutorial #design #motiongraphics

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As mentioned in my last post, here's a turntable of the Revopoint 3D MIRACO and MINI2 raw mesh data of the three elements used to create the final head scans, before any final clean-up was done, including the Per Vertex texture - although not as high resolution as the Image texture, you can actually get a half-decent texture in this mode even when not using the illuminator, even with just the ambient room light as the values get averaged per vertex. MINI2: http://shrsl.com/4kkhq MIRACO 16GB: http://shrsl.com/4kkg3 MIRACO 32GB: http://shrsl.com/4kkg7 Use MEDIAGUY7 for an extra 7% off the MIRACO, or MEDIAGUY12 for an extra 12% off the MINI2 at checkout #3dscan #3dscanning #revopoint #3dscanner #headscan #bodyscanning

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Revisting an old facial rig that I built in Motionbuilder for my Daz characters, ripping off some of the geo from the UE faceboard for metahumans. Going to use if for a little demo we are working on, taking advantage of the last months of my Performer license.. sigh Need to learn how to build these in Maya

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Nanite displacement appears to be the upcoming big thing in unreal engine. I used the same to build this scene, and I also experimented with several new material functions, geometry scripts, and blueprints. I'm hoping you will all find this exciting. Please have a look and feel free to comment. #gamedev #gamedevelopment #indiedev #indiegamedev #games #videogames #unrealengine #unrealengine5 #ue5 Unreal Engine Quixel NVIDIA 80 Level

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If you're an After Effects artist and you're tired of waiting forever to preview animation or having to constantly solo/unsolo multiple layers or go back to the ancient times of proxies, go get our new Lightswitch script here: https://lnkd.in/ehpgdSAT Lightswitch lets you go between being able to art direct and being able to animate with a single click. You tag layers and/or effects and toggle them on/off whenever you want. It works project-wide, and it's nearly instant! We built it last year to handle the very heavy glows and camera blurs for our work for Spectrum. Everything in those spots is made up of simple shapes and text so animating those shouldn't take forever. But nearly everything is blurred or glows, and usually it's both. Plus it's After Effects we're talking about. It's not known for speed! With Lightswitch I can turn off what I need to, and see all of the movement nearly in real-time. If I need to check the look of something, it takes no time to turn it all back on. It has changed my workflow substantially. I've used it over the past year for every project and it has probably saved me days in either previewing or toggling things on and off manually. And since it adds the tags to the names of things, you can also make presets that can work with it too! If you're working in After Effects, I can almost guarantee that this will speed up your workflow substantially. Get it from us on Element Supply Co. https://lnkd.in/ehpgdSAT

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🎬 Why Animation is Essential for Accident Reconstruction Experts 🔍 Clear Understanding Animation transforms complex accident scenarios into visual narratives that are easy for everyone to understand—jurors, judges, and opposing counsel alike. 👨‍⚖️ Enhanced Testimony By complementing expert testimony with dynamic visual aids, animations make technical explanations accessible and engaging, boosting the credibility of the testimony. 📊 Detailed Analysis Animations allow experts to dissect each moment of an accident, presenting different angles and hypothetical scenarios that clarify disputed facts. 🎥 Memorable Impact Visual content is more likely to be remembered than verbal descriptions alone, making animations a powerful tool in the courtroom. 🤝 Builds Consensus By providing a clear, unbiased view of events, animations can help all parties come to a faster agreement during mediations or trials. 👉 Swipe to see examples of our cutting-edge accident reconstruction animations and discover how they can make a difference in your next case. 🔗 Contact us today to learn more about how Austin Visuals can help provide the visual edge your legal team needs! Email us at info@austinvisuals.com Call us at 512-591-8024 #AustinVisuals #LegalTech #AccidentReconstruction #VisualAids #LawyersOfInstagram

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Modeled a Moog 3.5mm modular synth patch cable as a little weekend exercise. The trick was getting their logo to appear on the plug body using Redshift render-time displacement. I love how it turned out. #moog #modular #synth #patch #cables #3D #render Maxon #cinema4D #redshift #colors #patchworks #product #visualization #plastic #metal #materials

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Chroma 0230 - In Which The Author Talks About Teaching Compositing - Part 1 Everything looks the same. For the last 10 years, I had to listen to recruiters, senior artists, leads, comp supervisors, and even former students tell me the same thing: why do you always use the same plates (background footage)? All the comp reels look the same. We did our best to acquire costumes, props, get shy and introveted students to act, find the time to do makeup and special effects, scout locations, prep for shoot, shoot, ingest data, plate prep, gather assets for compositing, shoot behind the scenes footage for marketing, and finally teach these new shots to students who barely understood what an alpha was and also had convinced themselves that they couldn't do math. And it's not like we could pick up these shoots if we messed up. We had to shoot it within that one day or night because we had to return to our regular work schedule the very next day. Despite all this, we shot hundreds of plates. Yes, I do admit, sometimes it was easier to shoot similar things because we knew it worked, and any risk we introduced usually did not pay off. We didn't have plates tracked nor did we get rendered cg elements from other departments. Students did everything. Also, no ones realized how hard we worked. Try teaching 20 students of varying skill levels and attention spans from 10 am to 5 pm and then going for a shoot. This is why no one did what we did and why most VFX schools, to this day, focus on teaching CG. The burden of creation falls onto the students' shoulders. Look no further than the yearly Rookies entries for Visual Effects. Not a lot of plate-based VFX. Even 4 year university programs who had the time and resources couldn't match our intensity and dedication. Innocently people ask, why can't students shoot their own plates. The truth is, it is going to look rather amateurish because of the students limited knowledge in filmmaking and the lack of resources, and the amateurish plates make their composites look amateurish. People are terrible at judging composites objectively. They look at the plate and immediately assume that this person isn't a good artist. You are judged by the worst aspect of your shot. How do I know this? Because my former students used their original portfolio to get a job in the VFX industry and were rejected outright. After getting rejection upon rejection, they start searching for a place or a person that can get them to where they want to go. That is why we founded Alpha Chromatica Education (ACE). We decided that the only way we could get these students noticed was to niche further down. We plan to spend hundreds of hours with a small group of self-motivated individuals and do our level best to guide them to work on unique plates that are not only challenging but allow them to demonstrate the skill sets that are necessary to work in a comp department. And we did just that. 💬 #AlphaChromatica #Chroma #HeyGanz

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Here's a little Autodesk MotionBuilder Python tool (created in MB 2024) to help you deal with the dreaded "Unreal Take" in animations exported from Epic Games Unreal Engine!! This tool will Batch Rename the embedded Take Name on a Selected Folder of Files to the Name of the FBX file (minus the extension) enabling the user to then quickly merge multiple animations without having to change the take names manually each time! 🔥IYKYK 🔥 Accelerate your process... KNOSIS CREATIVE #MocapTD #MotionBuilder #Python #Tools #Animation #Mocap https://lnkd.in/gnvjbBM7

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