redmotion: 2008

01 December 2008

Black Mesa Official Trailer

Yep. It finally came out today and the reception has been pretty good so far. 

Many thanks to monkey junkie for recording inside the source engine and editing the trailer so brilliantly.

Downloadable versions:
rapidshare
Articles/News:

20 November 2008

Happy 10th! Black Mesa Media Release Nov'08

First things first - happy 10th birthday Half Life!

Been a pretty heated 3 weeks working towards this media release, although there wasn't much need for new prop art for these shots, just some UV mapping and skinning. Some of my own work goes public for the first time in these shots.

It's been a pretty successful release and we've received a lot of attention on forums and on a couple of websites, Kotaku being the most notable -  Google "black mesa media release 12".



Prop Art by me appeared in these Nov'08 media release shots:-

Cactus furthest away (modelling/texturing)

Green Electric Equipment behind fencing to left (remake of CS:S prop) (modelling/texturing)

Electric Transformers beneath tram platform (texturing - two diffuse maps - one visible)

Impeller pumps in area beneath rocks directly left of the tower (torus shaped items) (texturing - 3 diffuse maps/one normal map, minor modelling tweaks to fit in with other props)

Rusty Pipes (top centre - some modelling and texturing)

10 October 2008

Dxf importer for XSI v6 & v7

Here is the permanent link at SI NET for my dxf import plugin for XSI 6 & 7:
As far as I'm aware they should work with x32 and x64 systems. I'd like to thank all the people that helped with general testing of the dlls at the SI NET thread:
Please use this thread or the comments box on the download page to post any issues you have regarding the plugin and I will do my best to answer them.

New ICE compounds

There seems to be a nice momentum building with v7 now.

A couple of interesting free ICE compounds have been announced recently:

Eric Moootz's emNewton

He also assures me that he is currently working on an ICE node for his emFluids
plugin. I think he will get a much better take up with this.

Guillaume Laforge's Procedural fluid flow

Thiago's Function graph node

And the first commercial one I've seen: Gerstner Waves


19 August 2008

Pigeon Impossible


...is a short animated film directed by Lucas Martell. You can see the website here , his excellent blog here or subscribe to the podcast (all full of good advanced animation/character rigging/animation tips for XSI) here.

I wish him all the luck in the world in making the project a success.






09 August 2008

XSI 7 shipping! Redmotion plugins do not work in v7 yet

XSI 7 shipped last week. (There is currently a 'do not disturb' sign on my door)

I've evaluated all the current redmotion compiled plugins. None of which actually load into v7. I will upgrade to v7 very soon and update all the plugins at some point. The best workaround currently is to continue to import dxf files into XSI 6 and then open the saved scene file in v7.

02 August 2008

Fluids with Ice? (XSI 7)



metaball animation XSI v6 from Jason Wells on Vimeo.

People keep asking whether fluids will be possible with ICE in XSI 7. I think they will, but perhaps not right away. Why? Because stuff like this (video above) is already possible. This is half the battle. The other half is getting the particles to behave correctly. This is sure to be an ICE compound sooner or later.

28 April 2008

Morgan Cheetham Chair Visuals






These images are based on a furniture design by a work colleague of mine, Sam Cocker. You can find more info at his website - http://www.morgancheetham.co.uk/. Its been something bubbling under for a few months but I'm quite pleased with how they've turned out so far.(HDRI added to all objects with environment node, FG, AO shader on camera, architectural shaders, XSI 6.02 FND - rendertimes about 15 and 20mins at 2000x1500pixels).

EDIT : 30-04-08 - updated to show correct rear feet.

09 March 2008

Redmotion plugin development update

red_Dxfimporter goes 3d (again)
Finally got around to redoing my old vbscript as a C# dll (something long overdue). This time there will be more useful import options plus each dxf layer will be assigned a seperate, appropriately named material. (Image below shows 8000+ individual polygon cubes on five seperate layers imported in about a minute.). I've noticed that there are memory issues in importing huge DXF scenes (my computer crashed out after reaching the 2 gb limit) using the dotXSI format and I'm looking at some work arounds (each layer is loaded as a seperate dotXSI file).

I'm mulling over some improvements for the 2d plugin as well.



red_Archtools

Been developing quite a few new extras for the Archtools plugin including some tweaks to the existing toolset (all these are hacks are possible using sequences of existing XSI commands but the procedures are scripted to speed things up):

Primitive > Camera > Fixed Polygon Camera ( creates a standard orthographic camera locked exactly perpendicular/parallel to a selected polygon - helps with the accurate and fast trimming of meshes.)

Trim trim away.. (Use the knife tool to cut polygons accurately \/ )


Get > Property > Measure (this is a modification of Isner's original measuring tool but it gives you the option to copy-paste a measurement to another place (perhaps the windows calculator) and also to set a scale (SI units to mm) so that the readout can be displayed in equivalent units (like mm,  cm, etc.) Its applied to the scene root as a property.


Transform > Transform by 2 points (move a object by snapping two points: start position and end point only. No need to go through the whole moving centre routine everytime.)
Transform > Scale by 3 points (unchanged)
Transform > Align to Polygon (align an object (position and rotation) to the centre of a polygon witha few clicks)

Transform > Mirror by 2 points (this is a classic cad tool. It  mirrors an object over an arbitary line)
Transform > Rotate by 4 points (precision rotation of multiple objects - same as before)
Transform > Align to edge (similar to Align to polygon but moves and rotates an object to an edge)
Edit > Instances on a curve  (Will include this - its handy - see post below)

(May tweak these commands listed below)
Primitive >Polygon mesh > Draw Box
Primitive >Polygon mesh > Draw Cone
Primitive >Polygon mesh > Draw Cube
Primitive >Polygon mesh > Draw Cylinder
Primitive >Polygon mesh > Draw Sphere

red_SunPosition

I'm in process of TRYING to update the plugin to read a text file into which you can place cities, locations of your choice and select them through the sunpath interface to get the correct longitude, latitude, timezone, etc. I've tried this before and but have had technical problems with the combobox.

28 February 2008

Sunpath tutorial video


This is a quick video to demostrate the Sun Position plugin in use. Download from here.

23 February 2008

Instance on a curve (XSI)


This is command primarily for doing balustrades quickly. Although, I guess it could have other uses...

1. Create a model from the baluster item you wish to use.

2. Run the command with: Right hand EDIT > Instances on curve

3. Select the model and then the curve.

4. An options dialogue will appear. The number of instances evenly placed on the curve is determined with a slider and their tangency by checking one or more checkboxes. (eg: how they relate to the curve)

In the image, "X" tangent was used.

Get it here.