Module 1 – Fundamentals Module
· The very first week is all about getting up to speed FAST! Covering all of the material that we are going to be doing over the coming MONTHS! There is so much to do that this entire module is about getting your feet wet in many different areas and making you comfortable NO MATTER what your SKILL LEVEL and EXPERIENCE is!
· Foreword from your Mentor, Allan McKay
· Scripting 101
· Particle Scripting 101
· Building an FX asset library similarly based on studios like ILM and Blur Studio with interactive view previews, extended interface options and publishing system to automatically drop effects into shots with ease.
Module 2 – Essential System Tools for our productions
· Render-Pass Generation
· Auto scene set up tools
· Interactive Fire pass generation for automated lighting of shots based on fire and explosions
· Scripting with Thinkbox Deadline - in-depth (Industry standard tool for advanced render management and automation)
· Note to TD Transformation graduates - as it's essential to build a lot of key tools we will use throughout this production there are a few key ones that we build this week that are necessary for the remainder of the course, such as Render-Pass Generation which will be a re-cap of the lessons covered in TDT.
Module 3 – Advanced Caching Tools
· Advanced Auto-Cache tool: Krakatoa (deadline)
· Advanced Auto-Cache tool: Particle Flow (deadline)
· Advanced Auto-Cache tool: FumeFX (deadline)
· Advanced Auto-Cache tool: Thinking Particles
· Advanced Auto-Cache tool: X-Mesh
· Advanced render submission and caching submission tools and callbacks introduction
Module 4 – Environmental Effects
· Static FX vs Dynamic FX Environment Tools overview
· High-Storm dust simulations over desert asset creation
· Sand terrain simulations of sweeping sand and rocks dynamically over terrain
· Particle and scripted operations with Krakatoa
· Developing Environmental FX scripted tools and exposing controls to art direct effects from within our GUI
Module 5 - Pyrotechnics
· Explosion styles, creating explosive effects. This module focuses entirely on explosions! There are many types and here we focus on the key techniques to develop amazing explosive effects! Both fuel based explosions as well as more heavy duty larger styles as well as mortar blasts that impact creating dirt, smoke and dust. We cover many styles and wrap these into tools to make for a one click pyro-technic suite!
Michael bay would be proud!
· Explosion styles and how to create realistic explosive pyrotechnics!
· Full blown mortar blast and impact system, dirt, debris, dust and realistic effects
· Pyro Tool development to create completely customizable and dynamic explosions of all types from a click of a button! Both static and dynamic types!
Module 6 – Fire and Dispersions
· Dispersion and Randomonium effects. Creating a case study of the 'nanomites' effect similar to films like G.I. Joe and Weta's The Day the Earth stood still. Creating millions of particles and procedural effects to 'eat away' at geometry and control the animation of millions of Nanomites swarming, and taking the shot from creation through to compositing and finishing the effect.
· FumeFX Instant Fire.Using the latest techniques for creating ultra-realistic fire, we develop a large scale fire simulation and develop a tool to instantly generate dynamic fire onto many objects in multiple shots with ease. Here we are able to make the task of fire as easy as a few clicks to create, and then submit to Deadline. We focus on the style and control and really learn what it takes to create realistic high-quality feature film fire!
Takeing this step further - we begin work on a crashed airliner shot, creating 15ft tall flames and interactive lighting and showcasing how to approach the creation of a cinematic shot like this.
Module 7 – Pipeline Series
· Sparks and embers, discussing the different types and the typical 'epic fails' most artists tend to do when working on these types of effects. How these sorts of effects typically sound straight forward but there is a lot of subtlety that comes into creating stunning effects
· Spark generation impact tool
· Flying embers tool
· Fire tool updated to also generate embers
· Cloaking effects design and tool developed for easy controls to make characters or objects cloak and to generate all of the render passes easily for mass distribution through many shots and sequences
Module 8 – Network Rendering Tools
· Where are we at? Put our tools to work on a heavy duty battle scene implementing many effects quickly to generate an effective and destructive high intensity visual effects sequence! Generating all of the render elements and building the shots passes QUICKLY and AUTOMATICALLY!
· Introduction to Python scripting in Nuke
· Creating an auto comp tool to automatically build comps of all of our elements automatically, combing spec, ambience occlusion, diffuse, reflections and everything else together automatically and assembling shots with ease, currently naming and pathing nodes and developing a workflow which we will use moving on, and you definitely will begin to use in your day to day productions!
· Further Nuke tool development and automation through Python
Module 9 – Scene Submission Scripts & Preview Tools
· Rain/Drip/Splash tool - creatively constructing an effects shot involving rain, to allow for rain splashes to automatically happen in any given shot very easily. After which we move further into developing extensions to the script to automatically cache and retrieve particle and geometry assets of the rain back into the shot after they are submitted from the GUI for remote generation.
· Snow FX - We dive into atmospherics and creating snow effects as a complete shot through multiple atmospherics and particle systems and dealing with the entire production process.
Module 10 – Dynamic Vehicle FX!
· Vehicle FX
· How to build tools that will automatically read your cars rig and adapt to the ground it drives on, it's acceleration and snap into your shots very easily. This is great for car commercials and where you need to distribute effects very easily through many shots FAST! Utilizing Thinking Particles for vehicle dynamics.
· Creating procedural vehicle destruction and dynamics for having cars deform, bend, buckle and break as cars react to the environment during crashes. As well as demonstrating how to have the cars interact with the environment, smashing through fences and other cool effects!
Module 11 – FX Tools
· Taking the latest and greatest concepts for burning characters and creating an entire creature 'ashing' or 'creature death' effect and creating it from the ground up. Designing an entire application around this to not only create the effects from scratch but completely create the entire process and art direct it with dozens of controls to take the entire effect through from initial design to simulation and submitting all creature render passes. The end result is a canned open ended powerful application to create effects for one or dozens of creatures specifically tailored around our design for use in high-end production! This is a core concept that will allow you to literally take anything and build it into your own custom software solution!
· Create an actual vampire burning shot 'sequence' start to finish all the way through compositing!
Module 12 – Fracture & Destruction Tools
· Destruction 101 - learning the in's and out's of destruction. Here we go through the system of developing a robust fragmentation and dynamics pipeline for breaking surfaces dynamically based on many different conditions. Utilizing Thinking Particles and other tools. We then take the concept and completely expose it through scripting to be completely dynamic and customizable to almost any situation. This lesson allows us to develop very robust and powerful tools for using in almost any given situation for destruction very easily. The end result is a powerful tool that will smash objects or cause building collapses or many other things very easily with as little as a few clicks to set up the entire event. Lastly with added network support we can submit our simulations to bake and then even mesh via Deadline to return a published asset to bring back into our shot! For a completely robust and powerful
Module 13 – Interfaces, Distribution & Databases
· Taking a look at soft body's and cloth we develop a completely customizable tearable material system for creating paint peal (or skin or many other ways this can be applied) to allow for a very popular subject seen a lot these days (however not necessarily always done right) to build a powerful scripted tool to allow to easily peal paint or other effects off of an object. You will expose many controls to allow for easily choosing where the peal will begin and for how long as well as many properties of the peal itself. This is something that once created is so customizable you'll be able to use it for many different effects very easily!
Module 14 – Realflow
· This module is exceptionally powerful, as we dive into both a crash course in fluid dynamics with Realflow to get up to speed with Realflow 2015, as well as focusing more on creating realistic simulations of large scale water, utilizing the Hybrido solver, and additional elements such as Foam, splashes and other dynamics. There is a lot to cover in this module, so we get in there quick and cover a vast amount of information over multiple lessons. In addition we also look into scripting with Realflow and Python to get a better understanding of some of the ways you can utilize fluid driven scripts within Realflow!
Module 15 – Cloud sculpting and environments
· This module we dive into the development of cloud assets, and sculpting realistic CG clouds both built for daylight and nighttime shots. This massive lesson goes through the initial creation and developing a workflow to eventually build our own library of 'cloud types' and then developing tools around it to be able to easily roll our epic cloud shots completely intuitively designed for making large cloudscapes and cloud fly through sequences for the masses! Using many of the concepts behind movies such as 'Flight' for creating photorealistic clouds on the go, we take it much further, creating photorealistic clouds are very frequently in high-demand, yet there are not that many sure-fire solutions for creating them within 3DS Max, more-so developing large cloud shots typically take weeks, here we develop a tool that will give you complete power and flexibility, and SPEED!
Module 16 – Destruction, Dynamics and everything else
· Using real production assets and actual production shots, we target pre-visualizing an epic spaceship destruction shot. This lesson starts out focusing solely on the pyro and then begins to shift into production where we begin to follow through with all of the destruction dynamics, lighting, and other effects and taking it through from start to finish as an entire FX shot!