Learning Softimage - Ball bouncing and simulation

Hi everyone, I hope you all had a great week. Here is my latest work on the Autodesk Softimage software : a bouncing ball that interact with multiple mesh forming a little tower. In order to create movement in this little clip, two technique were used : 1) classic keyframing animation using the curve editor in Softimage. 2) Dynamic physic simulation based on gravity forces and collision between the ball (which is animated with keyframes) and the actual blocs forming the tower.I also included an environment in order to contain the different components in the scene.


As far as the rendering goes, I used mental ray with some reflection on the ball and individual blocs. This gives a more futuristic look to the whole scene.


I hope you like it, and as usual, every comment is welcome !

Initiation to Toonboom

Hi everyone, this week at CentreNad in our class of traditional animation, we learnt the basis of ToonBoom (a 2d animation application), our first homework was to create an animation that included acceleration and a deceleration. I decided to draw four different pictures of a skier and a single picture of a jump and then composite it all together inside of toonboom. I really had a blast working with the program : it's really intuitive and fun to use.

Learning Softimage - Cone and table modelling

Hey everyone. The school year at CentreNAD just started and we already have great project to practice on. During our class of "Organic Modelling", we learnt some new tips and tricks on how to model efficiently. One of those key point was not to use any triangle (when it's possible) and try to limit the use of five+ sides polys. The reason for this "pro-quad" approach is simple : when we "smooth" the surface, triangle and five+ polys tend to "pinch" the surface and create not-that-uniform surfaces.

In order to practice these technique, we had to model a cone and a desk. Here's what I came up with :

Learning Softimage - Ice + Lagoa

Hey everyone, it's been a while since I posted anything and I am sorry about that. It's been crazy out here with the jobs, events and everything. Either way, I found the time to experiment with some stuff in the past month. I decided to learn about the node based ICE module in Softimage 2011.5 and with the brand new LAGOA module (which is also node based in a more hierarchical kind of way).

 I used the tutorials at Digital Tutors to help me get started. This website is a great source for quality video tutorials on an extremely wide range of subject in the CG business. It does require a fee but it's well worth it. Anyway, I encourage you to dive in these module as they extremely fun to work with. LAGOA can be a bit resource hungry but once you get to know the settings, you can work around these problems pretty easily.

I hope you like the little showcase and comments are, as usual, welcomed.

Learning Softimage - Air Defense

Hi, this week at the CentreNAD we learned a lot about animating mesh on path, different constraint types. The planes in the video were modeled, textured and animated in Softimage XSI 2011.5. However, I wanted to try out a new program for the environment. It is called VUE 9. It was used in the making of great movies like Avatar and other big title. One of the new feature of the version 9 is the direct implementation of the VUE renderer and workflow directly into Softimage XSI. I used VUE 9 to set up my landscape including the water, the sky, palm tree and the mountains. VUE 9 also animated everything automatically so it would look right. There was quite a lot of tweaking to do in order to make it play right with Softimage, but once that was done : it was a great experience.

I hope you like it. Comments are welcome !

I hope you like it ! As usual, every comment is welcome !