FX Houses Open for Biznass

I know when I'm looking for a list of US FX houses it's a pain in the ace. I found a list of some on a reply to some talk about Asylum closing, I added the links... Anyway, the list!

Psyop    
Eight FX       
Motion Theory       
Prologue       
MPC LA           
The Mill LA       
Public           
Logan           
Brand New School
OOOii           
Svengali       
D-Train           
Method           
Sway        
Look           
Hydraulx       
Eden           
Stargate       
Zoic           
Buck           
Radium           
A-52           
Brickyard FX       
Blue Room       
Sight           
Luma Pictures       
Crazy Horse       
CIS

Getting Good with Maya Fluids

Maya Fluid Testing from destruct007 on Vimeo.
Ok ok ok its been a while since I last posted. I have for you my "scientific method" of fluid testing. I use this a few times a week when in heavy development of a new effect. There are so many combinations of settings, it could be arguded billions of combinations, but lets say even a few million. There is no way and no one who can predict how a fluid will react given a set of attributes and influences. This is one of the key parts of fluids that make it hard to learn and harder to master. A master of fluids is someone who knows how to narrow in on the attributes that are effecting the fluid... well faster than someone who would just be good with fluids. I use this technique to help me understand different attributes. A lot of the time I fine my understanding challenged, and refined as I continue to learn what the hell is going on in there.

2D Maya Fluid Sun

If you don't know to right click and save as...
http://agentfx.com/mayaFiles/2DFluidSun_m2011.ma

What's all this? A Maya file? What? Thats a first. I never share Maya files! Well an exception. For years I tried to make a file that looked like this just for fun, but its harder than it seems. You'd think, turbulence no buoyancy. Yeah sorta, but that still tends to build up velocities that are hard to control.
Anyway I was messing about trying to make a sprite for a fireball with no buoyancy... and it worked for something else. It looks kinda like the surface of the sun. Try other resolutions, high detail solve, I feel like I stumbled on this, and just stare at it playing back. The high turbulence "breaking" is controllable in a few ways like substeps but I didn't care to slow the playback down.

Maya 2011 only, Enjoy.

(oh and try to go to http://agentfx.com/mayaFiles/ to see if there are other files... there arn't, hah but I would have tried that)

Delete History, Maya Nodes 1

Delete History, Maya Nodes 1 from destruct007 on Vimeo.

In order to become better at Maya we need to have a better understanding of what's happening "behind the scenes" in Maya. How the node network functions and how Maya automatically connects, disconnects, deletes, etc nodes in your scene. This is a really quick look at a simple shape node network, and what is really happening when you delete history.

Mel script to mess with 2

I posted before a script to mess with, that was a short script, well I've added a UI to it and now its a crap load longer, but there are new features. It will save your cache settings with the file, so if you oversample it will remember the oversampling, etc.
http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/scripts-plugins/dynamics/c/cache-fluid-and-playblast
So check it out, I'll make it work for windows this weekend. Right now it's only Linux.

EDIT: now version 2.1 with changes from "Alberto" plus a few extra things that I needed to do like error checking.

Switching to Unreal for a while

I needed to switch to learning Unreal engine as I'm looking to get into games next, probably mainly using UDK, so I'll have to come back to Unity in a couple a months.

New Laptop (nobody cares)

$1000 budget, and I was || close to getting a 13' macbook pro, the cheapest one, when I said screw it, I don't care, going Dell. I got so much more computer for my money.

Studio 15 Laptop
Intel Core i5-520M 2.40GHz
6GB DDR3 at 1066MHz
15.6" Full High Def (1080p) High Brightness LED Display
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470, 1GB
500GB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Disk Drive
Back-lit Keyboard
$1022 total (After tax n stuff, - discounts)

vs the mac has less on all fronts except: body, battery life, arguably video card, iPhone app dev, and resale price.
But the 13" mac is $1225 with tax even after the $100 savings from teaching at Gnomon! Lame. That's about a 20% cost increase, over budget, for less. I'm still not a mac.