Archive for the ‘General’ Category
3ds Max Design and mental ray training by Jennifer O’Connor
This internet-connected day and age opens a myriad of opportunities to connect and communicate with people nearly anywhere on the planet. I recently provided 18 hours of mental ray training online for the new CG School to people from London to America’s heartland. In the last few years I’ve also become involved with individuals and companies around the USA that need more focused training and consulting in shorter bursts of two to four hours at a time; training without the commitment and personnel downtime of a multi-day training session, or the productivity delay of having to wait months for a class to become available, or the drawn-out experience of having to take a 16-week course and deal with the time, travel and delay in learning within a college course entails.
New Flexible Training Opportunities
I’m pleased to announce that my company, 4D Artists, Inc, and I are now formally providing individualized training and consulting in a flexible format designed to give you focused and timely information at a reasonable cost. This training can be provided online via GoToWebinar/GoToTraining, live at our new facilities in Lake Villa Illinois, conveniently located just one hour from Milwaukee and O’Hare airports, or training can be provided at your location.
mental ray Training with Jennifer
As you may know I am the author of the highly acclaimed new book “Mastering mental ray” (Wiley/Sybex April 2010 http://tinyurl.com/y94ase4) and an experienced 3ds Max Design/mental ray trainer the college level. My courses include “3ds Max Level 1″, “3ds Max Advanced”, and “Architectural Illustration”. All classes feature 3ds Max Design and mental ray. My mental ray training is based on the thousands of hours devoted to the development of my book, and the tens of thousands of hours of experience gained over the past 19 years using 3D Studio/3ds Max.
Troubleshooting and Consulting
One of the best ways to get targeted training and solve your problems is with consulting on difficult projects. There are few things as frustrating as needing to hit a deadline and to have your renderings not meet your expectations. Working with a reseller is often expensive – over $200 an hour in many cases – and there are very few people that have the knowledge and expertise to assist with troubleshooting and training in mental ray. Unless you pay for separate training you may not get the feedback you need to improve your work in the future. We can take a look at your scenes (NDA is okay), work through the issues, and give you a summary and any training you desire to learn how to improve future scenes.
Revit, Inventor, Solid Works, and More
These days, whether you are unemployed or just looking to enhance your skills to help improve your value, gaining skills quickly is exceptionally important. 4D Artists can provide your connection to experienced instructors and practiced professionals that can help you to gain the skills you need.
Call Today to Schedule Time
Call 4D Artists today to schedule your training or consultation via GoTo or live. 847-546-3901 or via email at jenni@4da-inc.com
SIGGRAPH 2010
This past week (July 25th through 29th 2010) Ryan and I attended the annual SIGGRAPH convention, this time held in downtown Los Angeles California.
To say we had a great time would be an understatement. It was our first time at SIGGRAPH so we had a lot to explore, and being ‘newbies’ to the event it was all a fascinating and unique experience for us. On Sunday we flew in to LAX and spent some quality time exploring the Convention Center and looking at the poster gallery. Each poster held a summary of the sessions being held during the week, and the technology on display at the convention.
Monday during the day was mostly spent in the Emerging Technologies area. In this large hall it was one thing after another of cutting edge developments, the strange, and the interesting. One of the first things we found was an electronic eye being developed by Disney’s engineering group. It started out as an eyeball free-floating in a fish bowl which could be directed to look in a particular direction via electromagnetism, something to have in their haunted house. This eventually turned into a large eyeball prototype consisting of a free-floating eye in a plastic sphere with coils arranged along the outside to control the orientation of the eyeball. The really unique things about this is that they can also pull video from the floating eye! The eye is now about the same size as a human eye and can be placed easily in robotic heads, and because it has a stationary outer sphere that encloses the floating eye it also has potential as a prosthetic eye for people.
There were a number of demonstrations going on including one about lenses and optics by the guy that designed the camera optics for the lunar missions for NASA. Fascinating. There were interactive articulated humanoid robots, terminator-like robotic arms that work from a video image of a human arm/hand and could (remotely) pick up and set down items from a table, albeit slightly shakily. Some things in the gallery were art, or art as proof-of-concept for ideas, and often times the simplicity of the display masked the difficult technology and years of research needed to get to that point. Groups from around the world – Japan and Germany in particular – made the trip to show the world what they were up to. I won’t go into all the things that were there, but it took most of the day to get through and was fascinating.
We coincidentally ended up behind Ludwig von Reiche and Barry Ruff of mental images while in line for lunch, and got to meet them both and chat briefly about the book. As Ludwig put it, it is one of the great things about SIGGRAPH; you never know who you are going to meet.
Monday afternoon was the Autodesk Education Summit at the new Marriott LA Live, and they had three speakers including Chicago’s own Perry Horovas of Tribeca Flashpoint. All the talks were exceptional, and unfortunately we didn’t have any time after this to mingle as we needed to get to the mental images event immediately afterwards.
The invitation only mental images event, also at the new Marriott LA Live, and that was a lot of fun. I got to meet Zap Andersson in-person finally, and he is, of course, a really nice guy. I didn’t get much opportunity to talk with him as the place was packed beyond capacity, I ended up mingling a lot on my way to drop off business cards for a raffle, and there was an endless stream of interesting people to meet and talk with. I got to meet Bart Gawboy, the mi Director of Training and overall mr guru, but again didn’t get much time to chat. Zap and Bart were in high demand, I’m sure, and the place was packed. There were several tables where it looked like they were going to do demonstrations, but that was impossible due to the crowd and the noise. In mingling I got to meet Alexander Keller, mi’s Chief Scientist, and Juri Abramov, the Director of Software Development, and got to chat for a while with them. Juri was in a deep discussion with Ivan or Rainmaker Entertainment (Vancouver) and discussing the advantages, disadvantages and workflows of mental ray and Renderman. Ivan was critical of mental ray and felt that – compared with Renderman (Rman actually) – it lacked essential tools for production use. The main difference between Pixar and mental images is that Pixar also produces animation and they build their tools to work in a production environment whereas mental images does not have a production studio.
Once I made it back to the other end of the room near Zap and Ryan I found Ryan hanging out with and getting his picture taken with a group of people I didn’t know. It turns out it was Rolf Herkin and friends. Rolf is the CEO and CTO of mental images, and one of the people in the group saw the book on the table next to Ryan and had Ryan join their group. Rolf and many others had no idea that I had written a book and we all talked for quite a while about the book, along with the writing and publishing process.
After mingling some more there was a raffle (we didn’t win anything) and then I got a chance to talk with Rolf and Ludwig together. Ludwig mentioned how difficult it has been to start mr User’s Groups anywhere but LA, and where they have existed briefly elsewhere there has been only a couple/few people involved. I told him of my experiences in the Chicago area how the Max user’s are very interested, and we have had two annual “mental ray Seminars” that had between 60 and 80 live attendees along with online attendees. So, perhaps, there are some opportunities to get some things moving in a more mi-sponsored way for the mr Seminars and groups.
Somewhere in there I got an invitation to come to Berlin, and offers for a lot of support for my efforts with mental ray and iray. Having never been beyond the US and a little piece of Canada, going to Europe would be exceptionally cool. Gotta get that passport now. :)
The mi/mr event was very fun and a lot of interesting conversation, and certainly a highlight of the week.
After the mi event Ryan and I went to the CG Architect gathering at a bar near the hotel. I got to meet Jeff Mottle in-person, and we also got introduced to the two Brians with 3DATS. I’ll be taking over Pete Draper’s mental ray class next week as he is in India working and won’t be able to do the training. Mark Gerhard had considered doing the training, but is now part of the TurboSquid team (congrats Mark!). I’m excited for the opportunity.
Again, it was nice to put names to faces and to meet the other players in the new CG School in Miami. The first book by Brian Smith of 3DATS was inspirational to me in that it was written in a style I could connect with, and focused on the essential tools and practical techniques, and in many ways I kept those things in mind as I developed my book.
Tuesday I had a video shoot for Sybex, which will appear on Amazon.com and their web site, and that went very well I’m told. Next I did an appearance at the Sybex booth to demo and answer questions to anyone that was interested. I got to meet Chip Weatherman of HNTB, a fellow Beta Tester and a reviewer of the book. Chip said that the book has been an invaluable resource and had helped them out time after time. Comments like that are what I appreciate the most, to know that the book has helped someone with their work. Eddie Perlberg stopped by to take a picture, and I have to make sure I get a copy of that.
We spent a couple hours looking through the first section of the convention floor. Ryan found some trick Photoshop tools that solved a number of problems he was having and we bought that right away. We had to run to a 3ds Max session, and Ryan bugged out of there early to play with his new toys (he had a project due Thursday, too).
Wednesday I went to the first NVIDIA session on iray and cloud computing, presented by Alexander Keller and Michael Kaplan of mental images. It was very interesting to learn about the how and why of GPU-accelerated raytracing and some of what is going on with the workings of iray in particular. I hope the PowerPoint or other similar documents will be available at some point. The iray demo was excellent, of course, and there was a lot of horsepower behind what they were doing. It was amazing how fast it got to a resolved image.
The remainder of Wednesday was spend going from booth to booth (stopping if interesting) and seeing what they were showing. I met a lot of interesting folks, picked up a lot of material, and gave away a few books to key people (courtesy of me and Sybex). I spent a lot of time at Autodesk and NVIDIA/mental images and meeting people and getting demos, or watching as many of the presenters at Autodesk as I could. I figure those will be on The Area at some point, eh?
One highlight at the show was William Shatner and Dick Van Dyke appearing at the NewTek booth. Dick was an absolute delight, and just what you would expect; ear-to-ear grin, outgoing, and funny at every moment. He has been a user of 3d software (Lightwave) for over 20 years, and active in user’s groups and the like. A fan and a hobbyist. Bill was returning a favor to the Lightwave people for help with www.myouterspace.com, and had no clue what was going on. Both were funny on stage and very outgoing, but Bill looked unapproachable as he walked past me twice to/from the stage. He only came up to my shoulder, too (which isn’t that hard). Dick was very approachable and I got to thank him as he went by. Dick truly beams joy, and loves the crowd as much as they love him. They showed videos of him in various shows on the screen behind them, like Chitty Chitty and The Dick VD Show, and the crowd would let out a big applause. He’d look back and laugh, and then joke about not having the legs for that anymore, but you got the sense he’d be up there dancing and singing if he could. He was fascinated by all the technology, and told a story about his friend Walt Disney and how he would have just loved every bit of what what was at the show. Dick talked about the early ‘special effects’ days and they had these sulfur lamps to light the background so they could then composite backgrounds, animated creatures, or whatever. The event was recorded, and I’m guessing it will show up on the NewTek.com site at some point.
I got to meet Louis Marcoux and chat with him for a while and catch the “3ds Max Tips and Tricks” which was very cool. Then the day was done. There was a two-hour gap between the end of the show and a party we were going to so I crashed at the hotel, out like a light. I woke up too late to really get a cab and make it anywhere, and added to the fact we had a very early flight and were exhausted, decided to call it a show.
A fun and fascinating week that I definitely will try to work into my schedule every year that I possibly can. Next year is Vancouver!
FBX issues with Revit 2011 and 3ds Max/Design 2011
When working on multiple machines, or when network rendering, you will most likely experience and issue with missing bitmaps from an imported or linked Revit FBX scene. As I understand it, a change related to the new Autodesk materials required the developers to place bitmaps into a user’s Temp folder (c:\Users\<username>\Appdata\Local\Temp) and rename maps to seemingly random GUID (globally unique ID) names like “C6488DF3-560C-4420-BFFF-AB5788FF368B.png”.
For a single user on a single machine this may not be an issue, beyond the fact that every time you update the Revit file via the File Link, or re-import the FBX, new files are created. In one recent scene I ended up with numerous copies of the HDR sky bitmap from Revit within the Slate editor, saved over and over again with a new name. All combined, I now have around five thousand jpg, png and exr bitmaps in my Temp folder, and this from just a few relatively modest Revit FBX scenes. This functional change also places into the Temp folder the preview images for the individual materials as files called “_ADSK(B679D47).png (for instance), and this is a big part of the five thousand files.
As a work-around for network rendering I’m using my SmartSync Pro software (www.smartsync.com) on my machines to synchronize my Temp folder with a “Net Maps” folder in a shared directory on my server. Adding that path to my project MXP file (see Chapter 1) allows the remote machines to render without issues.
For users running 3ds Max/Design 2010 you can download the latest FBX plugin from Autodesk at http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/item?siteID=123112&id=10775855
Initial tests with importing a Revit 2011 FBX file into 3ds Max/Design 2010 shows the geometry looks fine, but there are no Autodesk or ProMaterials materials whatsoever, and all objects have a flat-gray Standard material.
Jenni
The “mental ray Seminar” 2010
On May 20th 2010 I will be hosting the second annual “mental ray Seminar” to be held at Moraine Valley Community College in Palos Hills, IL.
This is a free event sponsored by Autodesk, Moraine Valley Community College, 4D Artists, and Hagerman. Additional details and sponsors will be announced as the event gets closer. If you are interested in providing door prizes, please let me know via email: jenni at mastering-mentalray.com.
Registration details will follow, and registration is required for the live event. Hagerman has generously offered to provide GoToMeeting access to attendees worldwide.
The mr Seminar will be based on my book “Mastering mental ray” and we are planning on covering many highlights from the book. The meeting is tentatively scheduled to start at 8am for breakfast and networking, free lunch from 11:30 to 1, and then more seminar from 1pm to 4pm. Additional networking and socializing time ends at 5pm sharp.
Watch for more details!
Fast, Cheap, and Good
This is a book about rendering, and rendering takes two basic commodities: Time, and computing Horsepower. Although every effort was made to keep settings to a minimum, if your goal is to learn and use mental ray then it will take you time to learn, time to render, and sufficient memory and computing power to make the journey enjoyable.
The first chapter is about the Essentials, and in there I look at some typical settings for mental ray, both for production and draft settings. If your computer can handle larger settings, and you have the time to let the machine run, then by all means tweak things up a bit. If you have limited resources, every effort was made to give you the knowledge you need to turn down settings where appropriate.
There are few things as frustrating as waiting for a render to finish as a deadline looms, so much of the focus of the book is examining the factors that go into how quick a render takes, and what affects the quality of your images. The old joke is that a client can have things Fast, Cheap, and Good, but can only pick two of the three. The same goes with rendering. If you need it fast, then quality will suffer or you need to spend some cash on additional hardware. If you want it cheap, then it will take some time but you may have quality you need. Untill all the computers in the world are one big parallel processor, fast and good will come at a price. The good news is that faster always gets cheaper day by day.
To blog, or not to blog
At first I was not going to blog on this site. Joomla and the forums should give enough flexability to post anything that would be pertinet, and those will remain the main source of communication. A blog, however, is a less formal method of posting random thoughts and musings about a subject, and separates me a bit from the formalities of book progress and helping readers, and this can be syndicated. I’ll be placing any mental ray related comments here, in addition to posting important resources in the user forums.
Enjoy!
Jenni
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