Game Dev Blog

Fire Reference Photos - links

It's of course, important to study real elements when creating them digitally. That is very true with fire. The more you study it the more you realize the wide variations of fire and the many forms it can come in. For your convenience and mine here are some good links.

http://celestiniosity.com/wp-content/fire.jpg
http://www.sces.uk.com/content_images/flame1.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_photography
http://my.firereference.com/
http://www.firephotography.com/
http://www.firegroundaction.com/
http://www.shutterfly.com/progal
http://www.printroom.com
http://www.pbase.com/fotoguy77/mikes
http://www.juanguerra.smugmug.com

and a awesome rocket launch reference
http://www.wghartenstein.com

Here we start with the basics of fluid fire in maya. We just get the ball rolling, but it should be enough to get people well on their way to making fire, play with this setup and get to know it, understand how and why it moves. Next time we'll be pushing it further but when you make your own you'll need to know why things are moving the way they are. 90% of making fire will be knowing how to tweek it per-shot and per instance of your fire. Fire is a tweek fest of the highest regard.

Please to enjoy!

Vimeo videos

Upload complete. All video's now on vimeo, and future ones will be there too. It's got the best playback and general viewing. Just watch it fulls screen (or not) but it should still have the resolution 'n all.

Please to enjoy.

AUDIO-VIDEO SYNC issue fixed!

Talk on Fluid Transparency in Maya

Fluid Transparency in Maya from destruct007 on Vimeo.

Not a tutorial so much as it is me explaining some things about how I understand fluid transparency. It's a confusing thing since there are so many places it can be edited, and it's unclear what effects each slider has on the final render. I try to get into where and why it's confusing but I don't really make it clear since it is confusing... but I make it clear-er.

Fluid Rendering Optimizations Maya/MR

Fluid Rendering Optimizations Maya/MR from destruct007 on Vimeo.

Speeding up fluids renders can be key to farm efficiency and iterations to a better effect. Using Mental Ray with low AA -3, -1 gives a fast good looking fluid render, so long as there are no hold out geometry objects. This is by no means the perfect tutorial, meaning you'll have to play with the settings to get the quality you need to the shot, but this is the way to get a big time savings.

We also cover, instanced destruction and voronoi shattering. But that's just a bonus side effect to get the main effect.

NEW COMPUTER!

Just got a new computer and I spent more than I planned to. I wanted to spend $1350, spent $1600. Taxes, quiet fans, 2 HD instead of 1, best head sync instead of just OK, is what threw me over the top. But for my money I got a LOT so check it...

Leaving out the more boring parts, case, drives etc

NewEgg:
Proc: Intel Core i7 920 Nehalem 2.66GHz (OC to 3.8GHz eventually)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB
RAM: 12 GB DDR3 of CORSAIR DOMINATOR 6GB (3 x 2GB) 1600 Triple Channel
Mother Board: EVGA E758-A1 3-Way SLI Intel X58
Power Supply: PC Power & Cooling S61EPS 610W Continuous @ 40°C

CrazyPC:
Best Air Cooler for Core i7:
Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme RT 1366 CPU Cooler

Email me if you want the links to these, or the whole list. Man this post is GEEEK!

Crap servers!

Just found out the reason for the video to stop loading or freezing is the servers they are hosted on are not streaming/not made for video. So... I'm looking to get better server to host them. Until then, crap apples, it's hit or miss if the whole thing will play.

EDIT: Just got new servers, will transfer the videos over tonight.
EDIT: Too expensive going to figure out vimeo