Paige - Garjin activates hidden power

Rough Pass on Garjin's Hidden Power effect.

Flash Assignments!

I'm just going to copy and paste the email I sent out to everyone earlier this week (Wednesday March27th):

Greetings Comrades:

So, FX had an impromptu meeting today!  If you weren't here, here is some of what we covered.  Read this thoroughly, it is important!

To this point FX have been going all different directions and this meeting was to unify us and the style we're going for. 

-For the video game look up a lot of Marvel vs. Capcom 3!  We are matching those fx as far as style goes.
          -So, here's the rule for FX for Owned: if you can make your effect match that graphic 2D style in 3D with sprites, or volumes, or whatever, do it.  If you can't, draw it. 

-For all of the video game fx we will be bringing image sequences as animated textures into houdini on cards.  We'll also be using houdini COP for fx comping.... (We're going to have a tutorial session for how to do that soon, hopefully within the next week). 
           -Your image sequences should be stored in the asset's images folder.

-Everyone's assignment for this week is to do the effect you have been assigned as at 2D animation (in flash (but really, I don't care what you use for your 2D animation software as long as it matches the Marvel Vs. Capcom Style)). 
         - Your animation should not be in color.  Keep it Black and White so that you can adjust the color however is needed in comp.
         - We're also going to hopefully set up a flash and houdini cop tutorial soon as well.  I'm working on trying to get in contact with Ryan Woodward to see if we could do a video conference and have him teach some 2D fx.  Watching him animate fx is super helpful, so pray that he has a spare moment for us.

- Resource materials!
         - A book I highly recommend every fx artist buy is a book called "Elemental Magic Vol. 1".  It will help you design your fx and understand principals behind fx.
         - If you aren't experienced in 2D animation, I would also recommend you pick up some other 2D animation resource.  I like the Animator's Survival Kit, but there are definitely other books out there that are helpful.

Flash Tutorials!!!










I'm sure I probably missed some things that we talked about, but if I did, and anyone that was at the meeting remembers, just reply to all and say what else we talked about that I missed.

On Wednesday next week we will all review the 2D fx you guys have done!  They don't have to be perfect, but make an effort to learn the steps we should be using for creating fx for the game.

Garjin kick review

I'm supposed to have my final review today. Here's a video of what I've got.

Pyro Sim Digital Asset

Creating a digital asset in Ownedini with a working pyro simulation in it is incredibly annoying. Apart from changing all the paths to be relative you have to lock about a dozen obscure parameters or it won't work.

I created an asset with a working default pyro sim in it called owned_pyro_test. For anyone who is starting from scratch creating a pyro effect, use that. Create your own container and then copy and paste the nodes from the pyro test inside it.

If you've already created an effect outside of the pipeline and want to convert it into an asset, I've created a list of everything you need to do to get it working here. 

Flare 1st Pass

Some progress of the Caliber's flare to call in the space ship.

Garjin kick fire WIP

This is the progress on Garjin's kickfire so far. I'm happy with the shader, but the shaping still needs some work.

Organizational Things

Dang.  Ethan beat me to the first post.

Anyways, as you probably figured out, this is the Owned FX Blog.  I want everyone to use this blog to post and store reference and post progress on your FX.

A couple organizational things:

• When you post, please tag your post with your: name and what it is.  (E.g. your effect progress, reference, other, etc.)

•  I want everyone to be posting your fx progress and when you finish, you're final fx.  
• This way, other members of the FX team can see what awesome stuff you're doing and you can also use each other's effects as reference.  (This is especially important when it comes to keeping consistency for the character's effects, like all of Garjin's smokey fire fx)  
• Going along with this, if you see someone is working on an effect that is closely related to yours and its looking totally different from what you have, you know to get in touch with them and figure something out, so that we keep consistency throughout the film.
• This also lets other people who aren't on the FX team see what awesome stuff we're doing.
• Also, we can use this blog to collaborate when we're not all in the lab without starting a huge email chain. 
• Make sure you are all FOLLOWING the blog, not just contributing to it.  You need to follow it to see the updates as they happen.

That's all I can think of for now but expect more posts from me.

Happy VFXing!