ethical games rigidBody tut

This is a nice simple intro to rbd's in unity.  (video 6 & 7)
http://ethicalgames.wordpress.com/category/tutorials/

Nice to see how he scripted in the functionality, different than maya but not foreign.

First Post! Woot!

Hello world! I've decided to take my Maya FX skillz and see what I can do with them in Unity 3D for games.
My other site www.agentfx.com has my maya fx stuff. I'm working on learning unity at the moment, but feel like I'm picking it up quickly since I've learned a number of 3d apps before and its well laid out. I'd like to post what I learn and things I figure out.

Awesome XSI - ICE Dynamics

http://lagoatechnologies.com/

EDIT: After digesting the contents of the videos over a few days I want to change this post.  Initially I was, and still am, impressed and blow away by the awesomeness of these dynamics. Definitely some things in here that would be extremely hard to do get maya to do, but at the same time, I've also only once in my career had an need for most of those hard-to-make-in-maya fx.
Unlike Fume FX which is still the leader in my mind for smoke, fire, and explosion fluid solves, thats something I need often.  
I'm excited to see where Lagoa goes, and still very impressed and inspired by the demo. I would love to find out the sim times on it, which could be impressive or sim-ilar to RealFlow which is the standard.

Speaking of Demo reels

I'm always telling jr artist to see as many reels as they can, hell, I think everyone should see a lot of reels to get an idea of what your peers are doing and to motivate you to push yourself in raising the bar. New site out there that has just that all in one place.

http://www.cgreelworks.com/

If your lucky and they find your reel, sweet. Otherwise, it can't hurt to get your reel up there in front of more eyes. Anyway, check it out.

DD Intern

We just hired an intern on our show and I thought I'd share his demo reel with others to see what kinda of student reel gets you into DD.

http://www.cmessineo.com/

With this demo reel he basically flew threw the process. We were like yeah, looks great, hire him. Interviewed him, but mainly to see that he knows what he's talking about/he did the work shown. Anyway, he started yesterday, so if you're looking to get a job in FX, an internship like this at DD will fast track your career vs starting off in roto or the alike and working into FX. Work hard and work smart to show your best skills.

Negative effects of 6 day weeks

I feel like one can expect 6 day weeks to garner more work produced for a few weekends, but after a while that benefit fades into just taking productive hours from one day and moving them to another. My maximum production efficiency with the most usable work produced is 50 hours/week over 5 days, and honestly of that 50 I expect that I'm only REALLY productive for 6-9 hours/day but those productive hours shift from day to day and the 9-10 hrs caters to that.
We don't need just "FX elements" we need "good/final FX elements". In order to create that an artist needs creative energy and mental focus. There's only so much of that you can squeeze out of yourself a day, if you squeeze that extra back up energy it just takes some from tomorrow. Each day it takes some from the next day until you basically come it tired and useless. Unable to crank out final work in a timely manor just be as good as our auto pilot is. Managers often feel better about having artist around for longer/more hours. They feel like if they're in their seats they'll get more work done, and all time in a seat is equal. That misconception is why we work the way we work.
Our goals are the same, produce the best looking work in the fastest way possible. Get shots to final with the least number of hours. For weaker artist, or anal Sups/Directors that's done by producing the most iterations possible so that the notes can clearly define the direction. Iterations need to be done b/c there are things in the shot that are not right. Good artist can give themselves notes and final a shot with minimal iterations, when they have the creative energy and mental focus. This saves time in dailies and across the board and ends up working out for both the artist and the company.
The hard thing, from the companies perspective, is the weaker artist who need more iterations to get their shots to final. In that case the company might feel the need to ask them to do more hours. I get it, but across the board 6 day weeks, seems to be more costly than it's worth for both the artist and the company. I normally reserve the 6th day for the final 2-4 week push.
On this current show, after many 6 day weeks, I feel like I come in and don't have my usual artistic power to make final looking work with ease and crank out whatever is asked of me. I feel drained and artistically weak. I can't think of what to work on next, when I render something I sit and think, lose my train of thought and am comparatively unproductive. My joy in this occupation is cranking out work I'm proud of faster and better than expected.
Only the managers will know what works best for each artist on each show. There's a lot to consider on their part, and that's not my expertise. I only know management of myself. I hope that my perspective is helpful to you on  future shows.

Fluid Resolution & Simulation

The nature of the solve is to be different at different resolutions to a degree. Doubling resolution is common multiple for uprezing to get more detail. However 20x40x20 going to 40x80x40 is a huge jump in the fluids "mind" and the settings will need to be quite different between the two. Where as 100x200x100 to 200x400x200 is going to look close to the same with more detail.
Think of it like a picture 20x40 pixels can't make out what that looks like, 40x80 is now a tall icon and you can see a little more, once you get to a certain rez you can see the full image. Anything more will just be more clear/sharpness to the image. Fluid solve is kinda like that.
Now think about painting an image in photoshop. if you have 20x40 pixels how you paint that image and how you exaggerate colors and contrast to get it to show up and read is quite different then how you would paint it if you had more resolution.
This example is just to say low rez doubled is noticeably more readable where higher rez ends up just having more detail.
(click to enlarge)