MARZA Revolutionizes CG Animation Rendering with Unity

MARZA Revolutionizes CG Animation Rendering with Unity "A breakthrough in advanced technology for CG production, “THE GIFT” integrates MARZA’s forte — Hollywood style CG film production – made possible by Unity’s rendering engine. The new pipeline uses full, feature-quality character motions and shaders, and requires no “pre-rendering” via other programs. Moreover, contrary to the existing use of CPU for pre-rendering, Unity’s use of GPU has led to increased rendering speeds allowing directors and artists to simplify and optimize their interactions."

Working with instances in Maya

This video explains how to use instancing in Maya to speed up your workflow. Enjoy!

Digging for Disney Gems: Audience Reception and the Problem with Plot

Michael Cooper provides some great points on plot and story at the following link

Iron Giant Ultimate Collector's edition available on Pre-Order

Brad Bird promised an Iron Giant blu-ray release worth of a classic. and he is on his way to deliver.

The beloved animation cult classic is available for pre-order on Amazon and will be released on September the 6th.

Let me tell you, this release is loaded with tons of goodies, with the art of the Iron Giant book included! WOW!

Also you'll get a mini figure, 4 Mondo Iron Giant postcards and the blu-ray (of course, with tons of extras like art, commentaries and the documentary about the making of the Iron giant).

Do yourself a favor, and take advantage of the free shipping your are getting with this release, and get some boxes of tissues. You know you are going to need them, don't deny it! :D

Thanks @WBHomeEnt and @BradBirdA113

Forget about 3D printed stop motion and think about solid porcelain stop motion

Forget about 3D printed stop motion and think about solid porcelain stop motion by the Creators Project "Estonian artist Anu-Laura Tuttelberg just dropped an enchanting experiment in animation that envisions rainforest plants and creatures coming to life within the confines of her workshop. Each puppet is made from porcelain, giving her subjects the magical look of living ceramics. The music is by Estonian composer Maarja Nuut, who will also be composing Tuttelberg's upcoming film, Winter in the Rainforest. For an idea of how long it takes to animate with this process, watch from 0:27 as three full candles burn down to the nub in the space of a few seconds."


More information can be found here

Hayao Miyazaki has a bone to pick with consumerism and computers (but mostly consumerism)

Hayao Miyazaki #ghibli has a bone to pick with consumerism and computers (but mostly consumerism) by Rocketnews24. You have to grant that Hayao Miyazaki is one of the few top rank artists out there that doesn't compromise and stands by his opinion no matter what. Check the following link for some insight of this amazing aniamtion master

Want to learn more about body mechanics in animation?

Body mechanics is the fundamental you need to help you make your character animation believable. The more you know how the human or creature body works, the better off you'll be setting up poses and defining the arcs you need to take your animation to the next level.

So come on down to the following link and learn a lot from it.

Need maya rigs?

Need a maya rig? The animation buffet guys have a treasure trove of free rigs that you can you for your animating needs and to expand your knowledge on what can be done with rigs and how to work with them. So drop by the following link and get to it!

Fixing Common Mistakes When Animating Walk Cycles

Lester Banks helps you fix those recurrent problems many animators have with walk cycles. Walk cycles are the starting point to a character's traits and getting it done right quickly will let you spend more time giving your character more personality and pizzazz than fixing some odd problems.

Follow this link for more Lester Banks goodies

Python in Maya

Learn about how to use Python in Maya for some technical animation goodness. It includes a convenient PDF you can have handy for future reference and it covers all you need to know to get you going.

Follow the following link and get coding!