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Instancing Animated Geometry to Particles |
Maya's particle instancing feature saves you time when you need to animate
many identical objects in a scene. For example, suppose you want to create
a group of flying bugs where only the placement and orientation of the
bugs differ. With Maya, you can animate a single bug, then create instances
of the bugs that move with the position and orientation of animated particles. |

Instancing without Instance |
Instancing without instance by Daniel Harjanto a.k.a misterdi. This
tutorial will discuss on how to instance geometry without using instance,
how to implement the concept in making connection for a blendshape target.
The case: * I need to create several objects that have almost the same
geometry, so when I modify the master all duplicates will reflect the
changes too. But, I also need to have freedom to tweak the duplicates
independently.
* If I use duplicate instance, if I select a component in the model with
show affected region on, it also shows it in all other duplicates, and
it is a bit annoying.
* After creating a blendshape, I can not tweak the model. As soon as I
move the blendshape slider all the tweaks that I have made are overwritten
by the other blendshape target. I need to tweak all my blendshape targets
to match the tweak that I want since I have to use several blendshape
slider at once. |
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Light - A Detailed Tutorial |
Having never found a detailed article about light on the internet I
decided to write this one. Most of what I say here is based on my own
observations, so there may be the odd inaccuracy. It may be that this
stuff is so obvious that it doesn't need explaining, however that does
seem unlikely to me since careful observation of the world around is required
you to realise exactly how light behaves in different situations. |

Lights - Angle-Based Hue Falloff |
Angle-based Hue Falloff for Maya Lights. Most CG lights only lose luminosity
as they fall off. This can look dull. If you can calculate what amounts
to the light's facing ratio with respect to objects, you can use it to
drive ramp-based color on the light itself. |

Light Linking |
Light Linking in Heavy Scenes, by Alex Alvarez. A crucial technique
to successful lighting is the process of light linking. The process of
simulating reflected light is very much achieved by exclusively associating
lights with objects. Yet new lights are automatically linked to all surfaces
in the scene. |

Light Linking |
Light Linking using three point lighting: Light linking is the art of
using multiple lights to create the illusion of one. I normally start
with a three point lighting scheme (which I will cover later) and then
add lights were needed. Linking a light to an object or objects will allow
you to control what that light affects. This sounds complex but will make
more sense as we get into it later. |

Lighting - Advanced Lighting Techniques Part 1 |
If you wish to only use standard lights, the following method is necessary
to make the scene look more realistic and detailed. In this tutorial I
will show several examples to guide you though the process of simulating
advanced realistic lighting. The most important thing however is to first
make your own observations of lighting in photographs. Advanced
Lighting Techniques Part 2. |

Lighting |
The overall thrust of this writing is to produce photo-realistic images
by applying good lighting techniques. I will use Lightwave 3D to demonstrate
the lighting techniques used, but these techniques can be applied in any
3D software. |

Lighting with Final Gathering |
Mental Ray's Final Gathering feature illuminates your scene by taking
samples of light from nearby surfaces and the environment. When used alone
(ie no GI) it achieves the same type of effect as the skylight in the
Brazil renderer, and produces the now-quite-common 'GI look' that people
use to show off their models. Here's an example rendered in Mental Ray
with no lights, Final Gathering is taking samples from the environment
for lighting (click on the images for the full-sized version): |

Lighting Flat Objects |
You'll need Mark Davies rayDiffuse plugin to generate the self shading
maps (I think it's more or less ambient occlusion maps?). The use of normal
maps is nothing new, but the use of rayDiffuse and « cubic ambient
occlusion maps » adds a nice touch. |

Lighting In Layers |
Lighting In Layers - By Jeremy Birn. The color and shading of the backdrop
is very important to the perceived look of the ant in the final rendering.
Even without the ant appearing in this rendering, you can already get
a sense that it is going to be red and translucent. |

Lighting -Semi-Outdoor Lighting |
The semi-outdoor lighting uses a similar technique to the interior lighting
in my previous tutorial. The semi-outdoor is slightly different in that
the opening is bigger and divided by columns. |

Lighting - Three-Point Lighting |
Three lights: the Key Light, Fill Light, and Back Light, are adjusted
to achieve the classic Hollywood lighting scheme called three-point lighting |

Lipsync |
dreamLipSync is a trade mark of dreamslab.com, but it is also a lipsync
software, as you maybe already understood. So dont loose time in
unusefull words and get in the software. |

Low Poly Hair |
Creating low poly hair for game characters using lots of images and some printscreens directly from the application used ( Maya, Photoshop etc...). The idea for this tutorial came from the polycount forums; for the Dominance War II contest i joined Polycount team and the folks there asked me if i can make a little tutorial about Varga's hair so here it is... |