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Papervision & Maya training in Brighton – March 2nd-4th January 27, 2009

Posted by animnation in Uncategorized.
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On 4th March, I will be running a masterclass in Maya 3D modelling specific to creating Papervision 3D assets (which enables you to create 3D websites). Recently, I have been working on a number of Papervision 3D projects for clients such as CBBC/CBeebies and MLB (Major League Baseball) – as a result, I have become quite familiar with creating 3D assets for Papervision-made websites.

My Maya workshop is aimed at developers without any 3D modelling experience or 3D artists who want to know exactly how to get their models to look good in Papervision3D.

The morning will cover the basics of 3D modelling in Maya, covering primitives, materials cameras and lighting.

After lunch we’ll learn more Papervision specific techniques :

* Making low poly models look good
* Exporting for Papervision
* Baking textures
* Making your models accessible to actionscript
* Animating Collada files

On 2nd & 3rd March, Seb Lee-Delisle from Plugin Media will be doing workshops on how to create Papervision 3D sites from a developers point of view, and my Maya workshop will be following on from this.

Both workshops are being held at Lighthouse in Brighton, UK.

More information about the workshops & registration can be found HERE.

I’m running a Flash Brighton group workshop on creating 3D in Maya! November 15, 2007

Posted by animnation in Animation Tutorials, Flash Brighton, General AnimNation News.
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I have been helping Flash guru Seb Lee-Delisle run the Flash Brighton group for a while now – but this is the first time I have actually held a workshop for the group!

There seems to be a bit of a growing interest in 3D within the group – so I thought I’d give them all an insight into the world of Maya and what the software is capable of doing. Plus a lot of the research and technology used for many years in the 3D industry is now making it’s way across to the Flash platform. News has it that the next version on Flash will have IK integrated into it (for those who aren’t “in-the-know” about IK – it basically is an amazing tool to assist character animators. It links a series of skeleton joints together in a chain – enabling you to simply pick up a handle in 3D space and move, for example, a limb around without having to manipulate a series of individual joints). So I thought it would be nice to show where that technology came from.

Seeing as Maya is such an immense piece of software & has quite a steep learning curve – I’m limiting my talk to demonstrating character modeling and animation, lighting, particles and dynamics, and also how to integrate 3D animation into Flash (a technique I have done a few times to bring in 3D character animation into online Flash games).

It’s beginning to remind me of the days when I was assisting Techex – demonstrating earlier versions of Maya to potential buyers!

When & where is it?

The Greene Room (upstairs in The Cricketers)
Tuesday 20th November, 6:30pm

Register to attend here – http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/319259

Flash On The Beach Update November 9, 2007

Posted by animnation in Brighton Digital Festival, Flash Brighton.
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Well I’ve just got back from the Flash On The Beach conference & feeling incredibly inspired! The conference guest speakers were amazing – & really opened my eyes up to the advances in the Flash world. I was very lucky to be given a ticket to this year’s festival through coming 1st in a competition to design a Flash banner to advertise the conference – so a big thanks to the Flash Brighton group and John Davey for making it all possible.

I’m off now to download a copy of the Papervison3D Collada Maya converter software to see what amazing 3D models I can drag into Flash!

And the best news of all – the next version of Flash is incorporating Inverse Kinematics! Now why they couldn’t include that technology into Flash years ago, I’ll never know! IK has been around in the world of 3D for donkeys years & revolutionised the way us 3D animators work. But it’s great news anyway for any Flash animator!

Out of all of the guest speakers, three stand out as being very inspirational to me:-

Chris Orwig – freelance interactive designer, photographer & lecturer at Brookes Institute of Photography. Chris gave an hour long talk on story, branding and visual design. A few things I took away from his talk are to keep things simple, how to explain my niche work in one sentence and how my work could tell a story (colour conveys emotion, typography a voice etc) & also complete admiration for his photography work.

GMUNK – an amazing Motion Graphics designer who combines Maya dynamics & modelling and design to create brilliant visuals. And very often his work has been produced to an extremely tight deadline – so I’m sure his tips and tricks will come in handy!

The Ronin – again, an amazing Motion Graphics designer & UK based! I recognised one of The Ronin’s animations “Black Day to Freedom” from the McLaren Award at Edinburgh Festival a few years ago – second time round watching it, I still found it incredibly moving. The Ronin combines photography and illustrations by his brother to make some very inspirational pieces. I would definitely like to try out some of his techniques to combine my photography work and get some motion into it!

As soon as the tickets become available for the 2008 Flash on the Beach – I’ll be getting my credit card out to book a bunch of tickets!