Autodesk Vision Series 2015

I think it is time to relax and let Autodesk be our entertainer. Okay, you might think I`m biased (or paid by Autodesk which is not the case unfortunately) I spend  most of my time using Maya. Of course I`m biased. I wish I had more time to do cool stuff with other softwares like Modo, Houdini, ZBrush, Dynamo, Krita and learn more about  Blender, Substance Painter and Designer, Photoshop, AfterEffects, Photoscan, PFTrack, FinalCut, Flix, Mari, Nuke, Hiero, Katana, Arnold, Renderman, OpenColorIO, ShotGun, Tactic, fTrack, USD, OSL, MU, Python, C++, JavaScript, never ending story...

Anyway, just relax and watch these videos:

Virtual production

Rendering and the cloud

The topic is Procedural Content Creation and the software is 3DS Max. I have to admit it is a bit disappointing for me because we waiting soo long ago a system like that in Maya. Okay, there is SOuP so Autodesk bosses think we don`t need proceduralism any more because we already have it.

And last but not least: Editorial

Digital Pyrotechnics at Industrial Light & Magic with Plume

I always think about how big studios deal with pyrotechnic (explosion, fire and smoke, usually). Do they use Maya fluid or FumeFx, Phoenix FD, Houdini Pyro FX, or Flowline, or something else (Blender)? And the answer is something else. Of course they probably use a lot of off-the-shelf stuff as it needed but since 2010 ILM has a proprietary solution called Plume. So there is an awesome presentation on youtube.

Visions of Autodesk - Maya

Okay, you can say it is a commercial again. I'm not paid by autodesk :) Truly. This is my commitment to the profession (I hope google translator worked on this right).

Maya Lighting & Rendering

Maya Animation

Maya Visual FX

Maya Fluid - Checking turbulence and fields

I have always had trouble with adjusting frequency of the Turbulence attribute on maya fluidShape or on a turbulence or volumeAxis field.

Then I find the ultimate solution. Because simulation of a 3D container can be really slow I create a 2D container with Base Resolution of 200. I disable any other simulation so it can be quite fast (usually real time). The Velocity Draw option is good to see the length of the velocity vectors but not that useful to see the scale of the turbulence texture.
We can map the color ramp like this:

And choose Speed as a Color Input. Do the same for opacity.

For the sake of the demonstration I set up a turbulence field for to fluid with these settings:

Play the animation and there it is. Almost like a Thomas Ruff picture.

In motion:

So after I adjusted the field I can apply on other fluids. Keep in mind volumeAxis field is a special to utilize built in turbulence because the size of the pattern depends on the size of the container. If you scale a turbuneceField it has no affect on the size of the pattern.