I look forward to seeing you continue to grow from strength to strength and continually produce mind blowing work. Work that people don’t just accept but actually stop, look, look again… all whilst their jaw hangs loose from amazement. All the best for the future!

and remember, ‘Just Keep Deancing!’

~Csec

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1. Shy the Sun directing Jack Splash Short Film
2. Friskies Adventureland

We are hard at work on the ‘Making Of’ so be sure to keep an eye out for that! It will have all sorts of behind the scenes stuff showing character & enviroment developement along with shots from the orginal green screen shoot

Some of the comments going around on the web at the moment include,

Friskies ‘Adventureland’ – leaving us ‘almost’ speechless – Zandland

This is one of the most incredible commercials I have ever seen in 50+ years of watching TV. It is an ambitious, impressive work of creativity and imagination. Kudos to Purina for sponsoring this work of art – autocinematic on youtube

Its exciting to see it being so widely accepted

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Always nice to be recognised… even in the small ways!!

On a side note, I am really hoping to get some of the work I have done in the last year on the site soon! I should at least be able to get the Friskies Television Advert up on the site within the next few weeks! So keep checking back for that!

Also I decided to go large (not really) and get myself a flickr account… just to post some of the pics I take! Go Check em out!! Comment too

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1. Sale of 3D Stock Models
2. Stable Pipelines?!
3. Car Modeling in Max with Nurms

Comments always Welcome!!

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1. Moving from Gaming to Animation
2. Comments

In the meantime though, I have begun selling 3D Models online! I decided to go with 3DOcean.net instead of Turbosquid, simply from the viewpoint that Turbosquid is filled with a lot of potential rubbish and at the same time the user specifies the prices for their models. On 3DOcean.net however each model gets checked & approved before going online and also the price for each item is set by 3DOcean.net themselves, thus controlling the market a lot better!

Go check it out! Its a great site – Online 3D Model Portfolio

Above is my latest addition to my Model Portfolio

So on that note… I am 6 days away from a huge deadline and can hear my producers whips cracking behind me!! Setting Up & Checking passes is a slow process and whilst I wait for renders I am busy writing this!

Hope you are all well!

C

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1. Featured Author on 3DOcean.net

I also did a small freelance job of the Interior of a Boeing 747-400 upper deck, but until that short film is released I am not going to post my renders! When the film comes out I will post a link to the film and the renders of the boeing!

ps. Production on Jack Splash has completed and should be released anytime soon *crosses fingers and hopes like hell*, its been long enough! Anyway once that gets launched I can finally show my work from that too… Yippee

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2. First Screen Shots of Current Project
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So anyway, after 44 responses to the survey! I submit the results for your reading pleasure!! I have only shown the highest two results in most cases!

1. Freelance or Full Time Employee? – 62% are full time employee’s
2. How long is your average working day?! – 8-10hrs = 50% and 10-14hrs = 31%
3. How often do you work weekends or public holidays?! – Occasionally = 50% and, All the time = 27%
4. Do you work by choice, or because your production schedule?! – By Choice = 62% and, By Production Schedule = 37%
5. Do you get paid for overtime work?! – No = 61% and, Only if it was Scheduled Work = 16%
6. Do you receive meals at work?! = No = 46% and, Only during a big deadline = 26%

So there you have it… interesting the results actually… summed up in  a single sentence… ‘lots of people working pretty long hours, by choice and not getting paid for it!’

Use it, don’t use it… Ur choice

~C

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1. SA Animation Worker Survey

So please (if you work in South Africa) take a second and fill out the Survey, its only a few questions so it shouldn’t take to long!

If you have questions you would like to suggest please leave a comment below!

Survey Questions

* Survey Closed – Click to see the Result *

Thanks for taking the time to fill out the survey! I will post the results soon!

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1. SA Animation Survey Results

Firstly, go straight to www.portableapps.com and download their latest suite.. but only download the ‘Platform Only’ version. You seriously don’t need all the default applications that they have in their bundles. You could even be brave and try out their Version 2 beta 3… I did and some of the new feature are awesome and totally needed, like the ability to hide apps from your app list.

Secondly, whilst surfing portableapps.com go to their applications section and download a few apps that you might need.

Moving on from here…. here is a list of the apps I currently have on my 16gb portable apps specific usb disk.

Mozilla Thunderbird

You cannot go wrong having your email with you where ever you go. I check 3 different email addresses at the same time via Thunderbird. My secret though, if you are like me and have a desktop machine at home… this is your portable email so whilst setting up your email account make sure to leave the option ticked to leave the messages on the server. You can always empty your email server from your desktop machine. My desktop machine however is set to only delete messages after 7days from the server… therefore I will always receive all the mail to both my Portable Apps and my Desktop Machine.

Mozilla Firefox

Straight up for surfing the web. I love firefox its my browser of choice and with the Xmarks Addon installed I never need to concern myself with having different bookmarks stored in different versions of Firefox… Xmarks keeps that all neatly organised for me.

Portable Digsby

Yes I know… technically a portable version does not exist.. however ‘Carsten Knobloch’ has written a version that works perfectly with the PortableApps platfom and even downloads the latest Digsby updates. Instant Messaging on a portable device has never been easier, allowing me to connect to gmail, msn, facebook and twitter. Portable Digsby’s only draw back is that it does not store your message history.

Download it Here

FileZilla

I host and manage quiet a few websites in my spare time for friends, so having a portable FTP client with all the FTP account details stored within it is great. I actually don’t use a none portable version of filezilla because this version runs fine everywhere and has all the details stored in it already.

Opera Portable

What? Do I hear you asking… why do I have Opera when I have Firefox and have already said I love firefox… well basically… firefox for my cellphone has not come of age yet, and therefore I still use Opera Mini on my phone. Opera has a built in ’synchronise’ feature similar to that of Xmarks and therefore I use Opera to manage my bookmarks coming from my cellphone browsing. My next goal is to merge my Opera Browsing with Xmarks, or to even dump Opera Mini on my phone. Time will tell which I follow through with, but for now its a simple matter of exporting the Opera Books Marks as .html and importing them into Firefox.

Skype Portable

Yup… sadly Digsby does not yet support skype… but until it does Skype Portable works just fine logging me into my skype account.

Download it Here

WinWGet

Its a basic Download Manager that lets me surf at local coffee shops or via my cellphone but then to simply cue up lager files for download and then download them on my fast line at the office.

Nedbank Money Manager

Yup… being a Nedbank Client! I simply installed their Money Manager software to my USB disc. I don’t think it was intended to be Portable but it is and its a great little tool. Using the new PortableApps Version 2 made the world of difference with the Money Manager because it allowed me to hide so many of its annoying extra .exe files that showed up in Portable Apps.

Download it Here

So What Else?!

I also have a few other apps installed, but honesty they don’t get used often.. Lurking on my disc I also have :-

1. ClamWin – Antivirus
2. HP41C Calculator Emulator – Its an old school reverse polish notation calculator
3. JkDefrag – Never know, Defragging could come in handy
4. Mozilla Sunbird – Haven’t found a use for this yet..
5. Notepad++ – I love Notepad++ its a great tool and I use this when editing CSS code for my websites.
6. Toucan Backup – A simple backup / mirror application, its great if you want to keep a portable copy of a folder synchronised with your Desktop Machine
7. WinDirStat – Its a cool way to visualise data storage use on your USB Disc

Portable Apps are changing the way we compute… and I am totally going along for the ride, because I consider them to be the medium step in computing.. that’s because the big step is complete portable operating systems and netbooks.

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1) Explorer is your Friend

This may be obvious to some, but not to others…. but it really makes a world of difference! The explorer is probably the easiest ways to manage your passes efficiently and quickly! Just open it up by hitting ‘8′, then by hitting ‘p’ to take you to the passes!

2) Never Duplicate the Current Pass

When you are busy working in the render options never click Pass -> Edit -> Duplicate Current Pass. Its a straight up time saver. Duplicating the active pass simply takes XSI double if not longer to duplicate a pass. Having moved to another pass or the original ‘Default_Pass’ seems to clear up resources that allows XSI to create a new pass quicker by simply using cntrl+d in the explorer.

3) Make an Empty Pass

An empty pass may seem silly, but in heavier scenes it may simply be the quickest route to setup a new pass. Duplicating passes (cntrl+d in the explorer) functions and works well, but when scenes become large and complex and you have many partitions with multiple overrides within each partition, they can really take a long time to duplicate. The only draw back is that if you are not rendering to .pic format you will need to change that every time you create a new pass. In my opinion, better that than wait for ages for a pass to duplicate (or not to duplicate and XSI to crash)

4) Hide Base Partitions

I have heard arguments against this, but in my opinion a good starting point is to always keep your ‘Background_Objects_Partition’ and the ‘Background_Lights_Partition’ set to ‘Hide Members’ on both View & Render Visibility. The reason for this is simple, if you are working in a team, and each shot file grows as elements are added (by different people) such as a back plate, then the foreground animation, and then background extras, you need the person who is going to open the file next and import more objects not to be worried by the fact that they may be changing the passes that were setup before them. Turning off these partitions to start with means that any new object imported will simply be hidden and never effect passes as your scene goes forward.

5) Create Passes Based on Layers

Here is a tip for those users creating multiple passes for the same group of objects. Using the New Pass -> Based on Layers option, will change your work flow forever. Effectively you create and store all your partitions as layers, you place all your objects and all your lights in their own specific layers. This speeds up the process of creating new passes because all your partitions are setup during pass creation.

A few downfalls of the system include the fact that if you use your Layer Manager (shortcut = 6) for greater scene managment then you may not be willing to destroy your current layer setup for pass creation. A work around for this would be to create a layer system with your scene structure by using ‘nulls’ and grouping objects under nulls. You simply middle-click the null you wish to hide and hit ‘H’.

Note:- Make sure all layers are set to Visible, Renderable & Selectable, otherwise v7.0.1 x64 crashes.
Note:- All lights & objects in the ‘Layer_Default’ will be moved to a new partition. It will not be ignored and they will not be left in the ‘Background_Objects_Partition’ or the ‘Background_Lights_Partition’

Note:- This is experience based solely on XSI 7.0.1 (Adv 64bit)

Related Posts:

1. Setup for a Complex Character in Torque – Part 1 of 2
2. Delete All Missing Materials & Texture Files from Scene
3. XRef and My Workflow