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About The Author
This is the personal blog of Bastiaan van Rooden / aka Spot (CEO/ Head of Rocket Age Development) of Nothing and scholarship-winning graduate of VFS, one-time Siggraph speaker for Pixar about his endeavours in computer graphics.-
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Category Archives: General
time to learn python
no matter which 3d package you’re working with – it’s high time to get your hands dirty with python. while packages like blender, xsi and maya support this language natively, i’m pretty sure 3ds max will follow very soon, …
animator’s survival kit
i don’t have many books on my shelf that can stay there for a long time because they’re usually outdated very quickly as 3d software update cycle speeds are increasing more and more. but there are exceptions, one book …
the traffic light is alive
the opponent of lt. lou, the protagonist in my upcoming short is nothing else but a traffic light. as they will interact quite intensely, i decided to rig it, too. this time it was really easy: spline ik for …
lieutenant lou’s first smile
similar to the joy a programmer experiences when he learns a new language and the computer spits out a the first “hello world”, the creation of a 3d face smiling back to you after weeks of fiddling around with …
3ds max vs. maya
there’s a very interesting discussion going on over at autodesk’s area where users are comparing 3ds max and maya. luckily there’s not much of the usual flaming going on and most of the comments try to be objective, so …
comparison of 3d tools
“which is the best 3d tool?” – a question which can not be answered as it totally depends of what and how you want to achieve your goals. check out the detailed comparison available on the wiki of cg …
undo accidental camera moves in maya
i just couldn’t believe that there’s no undo for camera movements so i digged a bit in the manuals and there we are: go to view > camera settings > undoable movement. from now on you can undo any …
basic cartoon eyes setup
here’s a very basic cartoon eyes setup within maya aimed to be used in animation. basically this tutorial should help you getting you on the road for further development stages to simplify the control of a pair of eyes …
unwanted distortion of children
i stumbled upon a common problem when parenting lately: the children are miraculously distorting when transforming (rotating). freezing transformations will fix your troubles. the following snapshot illustrates my problem:
create a simple setup with two cones and two cylinders; be …
hole in a box: the right way
inspired by the tutorial of omno van braam i basically reproduced the same steps with maya: create a cube with subdivision width, height & depth 1, select one face and add divisions to the face (division levels = 2), …