Categories
softimage tutorials

Balloons in ICE

Hey guys, I’ve recorded a new tutorial showing how to simulate some party balloons with ICE and a small dose of vector math. 🙂

Part 1:

Part 2 will come soon.

Categories
softimage tutorials

Vectors 101: Understanding “Push” math

Here’s a two-part series to understand the basic vector math behind a simple push, and elaborating on it:


If you enjoyed this, don’t forget to like TD Survival on Facebook to get the latest news of future videos and whatnot. (New content posted almost every week!)

Categories
softimage tutorials

Tip: Dynamic jaw pivot trick

Here’s a trick of meddling with the StaticKineState property to allow deforming and adjusting the position of a deformer at the same time:


I worked this out myself but I’m told Bradley Gabe thought of it first, so kudos to him. 😉

Categories
softimage tutorials

Tutorial: ElasticReality Morpher

Ever played with the ElasticReality morpher node in the FXTree? 🙂

Categories
softimage tutorials

Tutorial: Bike Chain Rig Setup

Here’s a sweet “bike chain” / “tank treads” rig explained:

I’m open to ideas for further short-form tutorials. If you have any, or found this particular tutorial educational, speak up! I welcome your feedback. 🙂

Categories
softimage tutorials

Tutorial: ICE Weightmap Gradient Controller

Here’s how you can use ICE to create a null that controls a weightmap gradient:

Categories
finished works

Pacific Rim trailers!

Here’s a little project that kept me busy for several months last year and it’s finally public domain knowledge that my employer worked on it. 🙂 Enjoy!

Categories
finished works

Trailer for “Now You See Me” is out!

Hey everyone, earlier this year I started working at Rodeo FX.

Loving it there and just wanted to share with you this new trailer for one of the first projects I got to put my hands on here.

It’s for the magician heist movie “Now You See Me“. Enjoy! 😀

Categories
softimage

ICE Strings Revisited: Numeric String to Integer or Scalar

Some of you may remember I wrote about some ICE trickery with strings some years ago. The other day I pondered if one could turn a string of digits into an integer or scalar (float) value. Well, I’ve found a way!

Categories
softimage

Softimage: Align center using faces, without scripting …LIKE A BOSS.

Did you know you can do this? 😉
How to orient an object's center without scripting

BREAKDOWN:
1. Set an OK center position with "Move Center to Bounding Box" / "Move Center to Vertices".
2. Enter "Center" mode. (top right)
3. Right-click on "Ref" button (below Local) and choose "Pick Polygon/Edge/Point Reference".
Click an object to select it and highlight the desired components.
4. While still in both "Center" and "Ref" modes, reset rotation to 0,0,0 then go back to "Object" mode (top right), go "Local" mode and reset rotation to 0,0,0 again. — That’s it!
ps: The faces need not be in the same object. (It could be another’s!)