So as you can expect this is the second and final part of my interview with Danny Williams.

Like the previous post I won’t be describing the entire episode as you will just have to listen to it to hear what we talked about.

But here is a few links of the people that worked with Danny (like the previous episode, in chronological order).

Links

Sal Melluso

Barry Sont, please create an online portfolio so I can link to it.

Jason Juan

Joe Pikop – Website - Vimeo

Kekai Kotaki – Website - Blog

ArtRage

Dave Melon

Ryan Wood

CreatureBox

Malcolm Gladwell (not Cadwell ) – Outliers

Claire Wendling

So there we go. Hope you check out some if not all of the links there. I’ve certainely bookmarked a few now.

Hope you enjoy the episode, I feel I talked a little too much. Think I might edit some of myself out because I just want to hear what Danny wants to say. Promise I will try not to be so verbose in future episodes.

Listen at the end of the show to see who I will be talking to next week. Those of you who frequent forums will know this person… for sure.

Again thank you so much Danny for being so generous and willing to talk to me and now everyone who downloads this episode.

So until then.

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Well, here we are again.

As promised here is Part 1 of 2 with my chat with Danny Williams.

Danny, if you dont know was a former modeller at Blue Sky Sudios for over 10 years (currently working at ArenaNet). In this episode we talk about what got him to that point, all the way upto Robots. And being a modeler it was awesome listening to his stories and experiences.

I cannot spend alot of the post waffling because there will be a plethora of links further down with people that have helped Danny along the way and vise-versa. (in chronological order)

Links

John Danison

Danielle Cambridge

Michael Defeo – Homepage – LinkedIn – Bobby Chui Interview

Mark Piretti

Jenga Mwendo

Alex Levenson – Homepage – LinkedIn

Shaun Cusick – Homepage – LinkedIn

Mark Baldo – R&H Announcement hiring Mark

Jaime Castañeda

Rob Cardone

Stephen Unterfranz – LinkedIn – IMDB – His Siggraph Paper on Procedural Rigging – Accompanying MOV

All that there is left to say is i hope you enjoy the episode.

And be on the lookout (or subscribe), for the next episode is when we talk about Ice Age 2 : Meltdown, Horton, his new job working on Guildwars 2 and other stuff.

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And we are back.

Well, not quite. There is a bit of an announcement in the beginning of the show that i guess will explain everything.

In this episode in joined with Jason Clark, someone who I have known for a while now. And I basically talk about his start into 3d, CAD, the various places he’s worked and his current job at the Vancover Film school.

I’m not gonna summarize the entire interview here so just listen if your interested .

But here are a few links to check out while you listen.

Linkedin Profile
Personal Site
CG Society Portfolio
VFS Digital Design Course

Apart from that be sure to listen to the end where I tell you what the next episode will bring.

Untill then, have fun.

It’s summer oh and it’s Independence Day

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Hey,

So here we are with the final part of our interview/chat with Jonathan and Sintel project and the final show that has been sitting in our vault ready to be released.

Im so glad now that we have no more shows to produce and publish and we can move forward and release new shows as we make them. Especially since i have a better way of recording and I’am no longer distracted by what is going on behind the scenes. ie Levels, the mixer, the recorder etc. It really takes my eye off the ball when we are talking about stuff.

Anyway, in this episode I begin by asking Jonathan how many character/lifeforms will be in the Durian Project. How many will he be modelling etc.
I suggest an idea that would invalidate the Sintel project for being known to have been created with open-source software.

The durian blog has had many contributions of the past few months and we discuss one particular persons’ views. Juan Romero felt the original design of the Guardians wasnt as strong as it could be. Original Design

So the Durian team let the public have a crack at making it better. Nad here is his attempts / contributions.
Image 1 – Stylized
Image 2 – Realism

And we end with would Big Buck Bunny be better today with the current version of Blender and we finally talk about Blender becoming a full featured professional production worthy tool in years to come and is it a question of ‘if’ or ‘when’.

As for the plug, i forgot mine in this episode so i let you know at the beginning of the show, of a place that i think y’all should check out, if your into Maya and/or Mental Ray.
Greensoda.tv

Its a cool site made by Alex Villabon (Twitter) a cool artist and a listen of our show.

Eugene had a few blogs to promote of people talking about the industry..
CG Supervisor
FX Corner

And Jonathan obviously had the Durian Project

So its a short show, but now we can move forward and talk about things that are currently in the news.

Look forward to making another episode. Sooner rather than later.

Sorry sorry sorry sorry. Yeah it’s been a while. Simply put… ive been busy.

This episode in particular was recorded on 14 February so its a little dated but hey. Most people are still talking about the topics we talk about in this episode so it is still a little relevant.

We chat about Avatar (for the first time) . We have a discussion about being burnt out on cg. Eugene refers to a couple who made a film in 3 years. I didn’t know it at the time but it has to be this one.

Meet Meline –  Amazing execution and cool story. I knew about this film years ago on CG talk where a lot of the work was displayed in their WIP forum.
Anyway, we also chat with one of the modelers on Sintel and guess who it is…

And we talk a bit about the open letter to James Cameron.

You can download the VFXTownHall meeting mp3 from VFXHaiku and the event with the slides and analysis on FXGuide.com (plus they have a lot of other insightful info on the topic)

Part 2 will be released next Sunday.

Bye

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We got a big episode here. It had to be split in two (and because I’m really nice I didn’t make you wait a week in-between).

The Oscars are right around the corner. And I wanted to get our predictions before it actually happens. I actually wanted to get our predictions in the last episode that we recorded (that’s the next one to be released) but I forgot and ran out of time.

We talk about the disgraceful CEO that ran off with the IP of his company that is going bust (Link) and then we move onto the CEO of Activision and how he wants his employees to feel like crap (Link). So happy stories this time ’round. But we move onto the main topic of the show.

Which to be honest is too much to summarize and when the Oscars come out and we do another show i will be sure to list our predictions. Really just listen to it, to know what we said.

More shows to come.

Until then… Enjoy

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Episode 10, wow, what a milestone. Only took 9 months

A little later than expected but hey, it’s here right.

So this is the second part of the chat we had about education. What did we cover…hmmm, we talk a little bit more about traditional training and our thoughts and feelings about that.

But the main topic that occupied this chat was tutorial length. How long should they be?. Jonathan and Eugene were of the opinion that is should be short… i wasn’t .

So it makes for some interesting listening. To be honest I don’t think I did a good job arguing my point, but oh well. Wish we had more time. I think later in the year we will do another episode on education, focusing on the real-world aspect and advanced training. If you have any comments, stories, opinions on education, let us know.

Apart from that not many links in this one, but i did forget a few from the last episode so you can now check them all out.

3D Totals Joan of Arc Tutorial
Painting with Polygons (Non-photorealistic Rendering Using Existing Tools) SIGGRAPH 2009

Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist
3D math primer for graphics and game development

3dbuzz – Houdini Rigging Series

Zack Petroc – Gnomon Workshop – Gnomonology

Check back very soon, got a good show coming up.

Until then…

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Happy new year….

In this episode Jonathan, Eugene and I have a chat about education. We did this a while back (November) and thought it stirred up some really interesting thoughts and opinions. However it was quite long and so i have decided to break this episode up into two parts.

First off I cover a few emails and comments left on the blog. Paul “villian” enlightended us on a blog that had a pretty in-depth ICE vs VOPS analysis.
Check it out if you into this sort of thing and thanks to Guillaume Laforge for actually taking the time and effort to put it together.

We also addressed/crowned our first “fan” Jason Marks, who happens to be a houdini user and has some work online. Check out his 3D World entry.

and Bo Scheuer from Postyr-PostProduktion lets us know he likes the postcast,  he just wished we update it more often. (we’re working on it Bo )

Apart from that you will just have to listen in.

Part 2 will be uploaded this time next week.

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Ho ho ho. No its not Santa Claus or Tiger Woods new interests’. (ughhh, that joke not only feels old already but its just lame… to be honest I just want to see when and if this post will pop-up on Google’s new Realtime search capabilities).

So what’s the deal. Well, I thought as this year is coming to a close I thought it would only be right to keep you updated and what we kinda have planned. Main objective…. More shows. I’ve had a few emails and just a lot of overall interest this year about the show and I really apologize for the lack of show. But listen to this message and you will not only understand why but also have something to look forward to.

So I’m not gonna drag this out, listen to the message have a happy holiday and subscribe so you don’t have to check back.

-andrew

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Hey there. As promised here is the second installment of our Siggraph 2009 Players roundup. (It’s actually a little bit earlier for UK residents).

We being exactly where we left off. This episode focuses on XSI, Mudbox, Cinema 4D, Blender and more.

Again a lot of topics are covered, including the eternal question, will Maya/Max/XSI merge into one? Personally I’m still split. To me, they show no signs of deserting their cornerstone 3d apps but then again look at what was included. Not a lot of new feature development from what i can tell (at least from 3ds Max and Maya). So maybe those guys and gals are working on something new…. who knows.

We also talked about a company known as Alioscopy Inc. I heard it got quite a lot of buzz on the Siggraph floor which is not surprising given its eye catching 3d monitors. Imagine 3d monitors without the glasses? Ultimate dream or Limited dream? David Lynch seems to think its pretty decent. Check out the video below.

Also just to let a few of you know, and to not keep you in the dark, we are also going to take a small break. It wont be for long, we are hoping to be back around the 15th with a brand new *relevant* show, but it could go over that so don’t build your hopes up (I doubt many of you will). If it does stretch out I think I have a few bits here and their that might be interesting to listen to, albeit non-relevant chit-chat(the chances are they will be from last years audio tests), but if you are really looking for something from us, send us an email.

And that also goes for the show. If you want to get in touch, maybe add your opinion about a topic we have discussed in the past. Or talk about something with complete anonymity then feel free to email us at feedback@cgroundup.com

So we hope you enjoy the show and hopefully we wont be gone too long.

-andrew

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PS: There is a little blip in the show. I cant be bothered to go back and fix it. It’s late

Hey guys and gals, apologies for the wait. Been updating my audio gear just for you. Just so that you can listen to us with ease. This whole site is just for you. So if you want to blame someone for the wait, blame yourselves. Its all your fault.

But in all seriousness… sorry.

Though you may find this episode sounds a little nicer (obviously there are things I hate about it) but here is some good news. Its only going to get better.

Anyway this episode was a mammoth 2 hour extravaganza, talking about one thing (we decided for your listening pleasure, to split the discussion into two episodes.). The one event in the 3d calendar that everyone has their eyes on. No Matter where on the planet you may reside, Siggraph is the santa’s grotto of 3d.
Although there are other (just as intriguing) aspects to Siggraph. This episode we will be focusing on the updates of the software creators, otherwise known as the players.
Now I know Siggraph is over a month old. But like I said we had issues and we had always planned to cover the event.

This is really a jam packed show and I wont be able to do it justice to list what happened and what we talked about, so im not even gonna try. Your just gonna have to listen to it. One thing we lightly touched on that really requires a link is a talk done on TED last year about Benjamin Button.

Also there are a few corrections i will be making in next show about some of the stuff we…. I said. So don’t get your panties in a twist if i have said something out of turn… ie Face Robot used to be 100k a license..when in fact it is $94,995 for the creation/animation tools and $14,995 just for the animation suite.

On a side note, I just wanted to say I this is Eugene’s first official episode. He did a great job don’t you think.

Welcome aboard mate.

The second part of this talk will be published next Monday.

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Hey oh. Well here we are again. This episode is a little bit different from the norm (with the exception of Episode 2). It is the introduction of a new member to the cgRoundup team. His name… is Eugene. When i first thought of cgR i thought of a show with 3 people. 3 opinion, 3 voices, 3 specialties.

The reason why this episode isn’t the norm, will become apparent after the first 3 minutes of the show so why not I give you a rundown of what we talked about. Simply put it was all about Houdini. We speculate we debate and dream of features that will make it into the next version of SideFX cornerstone app. I would like to add for those hardcore users that this will not be our only discussion about Houdini.

Because of the nature of the test there are many many things we skip over and neglect, so i apologize to those guys and gals who might feel a little short changed especially since this particular portion of audio goodness wasn’t intended for mass consumption. But I thought what the hell, since Eugene has a lot to say and he is pretty easy to listen to (unlike my foghorn sounding voice ), I figured someone out there might want to tune in to hear we talked about.

This episode isn’t that hard to follow but I felt it might go a “tiny” bit over people’s head since not an overwhelming amount of people use Houdini and for those outside that very special circle it might be a little bit intimidating. Which is why…

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and no… customizability is not a word, i don’t care what urban dictionary says. (thank you Eugene for making use of the correct term “customization” )

Howdy Do! If i apologized for the wait on the last episode then i really have to get on my knees here. Sorry, but its all Jonathan’s fault hehe. But hopefully that will be the last time for the near future where you haven’t got a show to entertain you.. or put you to sleep.

In this episode we begin with a semi-dissection of the interview we did with Richard. I brought up how amazed i was at the revelation that animation was part of the long term plan for wings, which lead me to briefly touch on an animation package that was written in LISP (a very similar language to Erlang) a few years ago. So for those of you who are interested to see how this thing worked right-click here (7.31mb).

Also with Siggraph going on right now we couldn’t, or should i say, I couldn’t resist talking about some of the revelations that were made during the first day of the event.

But our main story for this episode was Silo. More specifically the user reaction to a post made by the developers around 3 weeks ago (yeah i know, but we had this show planned out for a while it’s just we couldn’t get round to doing it).

And finally we ended with two plugs, one for a new one-to-one training site (Mavenseed) and i had to plug Wings3D since they implemented something i was very happy with.

So not the most jam packed episode but we wanted to get back into the swing of things with a lower profiled show. Our next show will be a chat i had with Eugene and then after that a more thorough wrapup of the Siggraph event so stay tuned/subscribed for that.

Enjoy.

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Hello campers! Apologies for the wait (if indeed you were waiting), but our absence is explained in the episode. There were a few technical issues with this session, but it is more than audible and it shouldn’t be difficult to follow. Its the first time I’ve recorded 3 voices. Gimmie a break .

But boy do we have a show for you. In this episode Jonathan and I talk to Senior Wings3D developer, Richard Jones (aka “Optigon”). We talk about a multitude of things, from Richard’s background to the future of Wings3d and almost everything in between.

Richard also talks about the Home of Erlang, the current aesthetic of the Wings3D Official Forums and the Animation / Rigging Plugin written many moons ago by the user “Moth” which sparked his interest in writing for the application.

I tried not to exploit this opportunity to ask “will wings have this… will wings have that…” but i couldn’t resist. I never feel wings gets the level of exposure it deserves so hopefully this interview will shine a bit of light their way and for people to try it out. Remember it’s free.

Other than that, this episode isn’t for new users to modelling or cg in general and here is the discussed screenshot. (My Wings3D Setup) .

Enjoy.

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Wow. I cannot begin to describe out difficult this episode was to put together. The main reason, preparation…. we didn’t do any. I learnt something very important. If we don’t have the time to do proper research and look into every aspect of the stories we talk about, then we shouldn’t bother recording the show.

This show will be like no other we record. It deals with multiple segments and not by choice. Why?

Well we begin the show with a apology in advance, followed by some discussion about the initial responses to the first show. Then we detour. Since there was something that we forgot to talk about and only realized until after the show. I could go on and describe every segment but suffice it to say the result is a not-so-charming Frankenstein creation.

But we touch on Killer Bean, Lightwave Core and Wings 3D.

Hopefully i might have salvaged the best audio and cut it together in way that is easy to listen to, but only you can be the judge of that. Apart from that, the only thing worth noting is this episode is brought to you in glorious stereo (although i think it doesn’t make that much of a difference). Hope you enjoy it. I can tell ya i didn’t enjoy editing it.

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No notes for this episode, because most of them of on the right side of the page and the others are very easy to find. Ie Killer Bean Forever.

Here we are….finally Episode 1. To you (the listener) it will seem like a we have just arrived, but we have in fact been conducting tests for quite a while now making sure that we can deliver the best audio and content we can muster.

In this episode I briefly explain what the site and podcast is about. Since Episode 0 was about what weren’t going to be, i thought i should take some time to explain what we hope to be. This was then followed by the first topic. One that will go down in history as being the very first news story covered on this soon to be highly disrespected podcast.
Our topics centered around the announcement of Project Durian , Pixar’s studio in Vancouver and the demise of 3D Realms with some inevitable chat about Duke Nukem Forever (Concept Art).

We purposely wanted to keep this episode under and hour. Not too long as to bore you (hopefully) and short enough to keep you wanting more. Even though tests have been conducted, you are our final test and although forgot to mention it in the episode, we invite you to tell us what you think about our show.

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Most places start at Episode 1, but there needs to be some setup, so this is Episode 0 (I wish Star Wars had an Episode 0 to explain everything instead of reading that warped text scrolling up the screen). So in this Episode, I talk about the way we will present the show or maybe more importantly how we wont be presenting the show.

Although it wasn’t discussed in the show, i think the subject of main discussion is fairly obvious.

I make some apologies in advanced, letting everyone know that im not a “web guy” and this is very much a work in progress. Issues like Length, Size, Compression, Formats, Feeds etc if you any Problems/Sugestions/Ideas let me know either via the comments or email (Contact Page).

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