Dec06

ISSUE 11 DECEMBER 2006

CGArena

Get Attention in Computer Graphics Community

GALLERY

Showcase of latest 3d inspiring art

PHOTOSHOP

Maintain the Original Shadows

AFTER EFFECTS Flowing Lights

INTERVIEW Tata Elxsi

3DSMAX

Breaking the Stone

Maya

Melting Text

contents

05 Interview

10 3d Challenge

14 Photoshop

17 After Effects

22 3ds Max

28 Maya

Tata Elxsi

Maintain the Original Shadows

Breaking the Stone

Winter

Flowing Lights

Melting Text

34 Gallery

Showcase of latest 3d art

Magazine Designed & Edited: Ashish Rastogi Magazine Cover Image: Marco Menco, Italy

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Issue 11 Dec 2006

industry news After Hanuman Now Ghatothkach The success of HANUMAN has paved the way for animation films in India. Singeetam Srinivasa Rao, who has directed a number of big-budget films in the past, with the best of stars in principal roles, is now making an animation film called GHATOTHKACH. Ghatothkach is a 100 Minutes Animation feature film and will feature a mixture of classical and CGI animation.

Sun Animatics India P. Ltd. [previously known as Polygon], an animation company based in Hyderabad, is producing the film, which is slated for release in April 2007.

The production is taking place in Philippines, Singapore and United Kingdom.

According to the studio, production will be over by Jan 07 and the post production will be completed by March 07.

Autodesk laidoff approx 600 employees It’s always hard when companies make major changes... in the case of the latest news out of Autodesk a user might be left wondering who to call... and who are we going to see at NAB. While less than 10% of the approximately 350 employees in Montreal were laid off, what is striking about the recent changes is that the layoffs included some longtime employees of discreet/Autodesk. These aren’t low-level or mid-level employees, but instead key management indivduals with a high customer profile and a great deal of customer contact.

When spoke with Autodesk’s Marc Petit about the reasons for the changes (see below), but wanted to take a moment to thank our friends who are no longer working at Autodesk in Montreal and wish them luck. source: www.fxguide.com

Buzzword of the Month Video Tooning - Creating toon style video from the orginal video

is called Video Tooning. Creating a stylized or cartoon video requires a great amount of artistic skill and a considerable amount of time. On the other hand, capturing a video of a live scene is as easy as pointing a video camera at it. Unfortunately, transforming such a natural video to a cartoon-like style frame by frame is also a challenging problem.

Stylized rendering of video, which we dub Video Tooning is an active area of research in nonphotorealistic rendering (NPR). Although the Video Tooning approach provides a simple means to create stylized videos, the results always directly mimic the motion in the original video. An artist may want to add exaggeration or squash and stretch effects not

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Issue 11 Dec 2006

interview

AN INTERVIEW WITH Tata Elxsi Q. Firstly, I would like to thank you for your time and willingness to share your thoughts with the CG community.

Could you please start off by introducing yourself and giving us a little background information, facilities and services provided by Tata Elxsi.?

Visual Computing Labs, a Division of Tata Elxsi offers services in the areas of Animation, VFX and Games. Our core competence is graphics and its application to various end-uses such as animation content for TV and for Films; Visual effects and CG that goes into live-action films and into TV commercials; asset-building and engine development for Games.

We have a very talented team of professionals based out of the facility in Mumbai, India. Our artists use latest state-ofthe-art technology by virtue of ours being a part of Tata Elxsi which is a strong technology development company with the most prestigious list of clients worldwide.

Tata Elxsi itself is one of the 92 companies in the Tata group.

The turnover of the Tata group is USD 22Bn with 300,000 employees (largest employer in the private sector) and the highest market cap in India. The group is built on the philosophy of giving back to society what we earn from them and has been practicing Corporate Social Responsibility for over 140 years of being in business in India.

The Tatas are a very respected business group known to attain leadership in addressed markets through Trust and through Ethical practices.

Q. Tell us a bit about your pipeline and how data is shared between various departments?

The whole production pipeline is organized to derive optimum throughput. The systems in the unit are connected through high-speed networks to facilitate the objective of sharing data and resources with minimum latencies. An entire department is involved in this quest to increase throughputs and to make every resource available to the pipe.

Our Technical team has set up the pipe with the twin objectives of sustainability over time and at the same time, not

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Issue 11 Dec 2006

interview

AN INTERVIEW WITH Tata Elxsi

being restricted by specific technologies. The goal is to be able to deliver to spec and to have a system that’s still flexible.

At the beginning of every project, Directory structures and naming conventions are mutually arrived at with the client.

All artists work with common assets through a centralized server.

Q. Please tell us about the total number of workstations; render farms, animators, modelers, software used in Elxsi. And how long does it take to complete a typical project?

At VCL, we address a variety of market verticals and hence, the production team is servicing multiple projects on the floor. Each project is given the required resources that it requires, as determined at the planning stage. Some resources like renderfarms are common. There is a project component and there is a studio component when it comes to resources.

In terms of Technology, we use Maya for 3D animation and its Flames plus Fusion for Compositing apart from various project-specific tools that are deployed. For example, we use Massive software for battle-sequences and crowds.

Since we address both Theatrical and Television markets, project durations vary from a few days to months and even

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Issue 11 Dec 2006

interview

AN INTERVIEW WITH Tata Elxsi more than a year in the case of large projects. We do a lot of R&D work too prior to commencing production which is the time when we learn new softwares and new techniques.

Q. You recently completed a work on a bollywood movie Dhoom 2, so how much you are satisfy with the results and please also tell us how much quality affected according to the budget?

Dhoom2 was very satisfying for our team because of the sheer variety of work and the creative freedom to contribute at the artists level. The film had over 45 minutes of work in over 600 shots. It had elements of R&D, testing new softwares/technology and a tremendous learning opportunity. The commitment and passion of our artists who worked on it is there to see in the final output which has been appreciated by the client, by the viewing public and even by the film critics.

Working with Yashraj Films is a pleasure because they want the best quality output for their audiences and there are no compromises. For Yashraj Films, Visual Computing Labs is a natural choice for the level of quality that they expect and for our ability to undertake research to determine what works best for each shot. This level of seriousness and commitment to their film is what brings to us clients like Yashraj, Karan Johar, Ashutosh, Rakesh Omprakash Mehra and Amir Khan who always work only with the best in the business.

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Issue 11 Dec 2006

interview

AN INTERVIEW WITH Tata Elxsi Q. What are the trends in India and in International markets one needs to look out for?

Indian audiences have always loved a well-made film. It’s not just about the use of technology and VFX in films. However, what has changed is the way films today use technology more to help in the narrative than to add shock & awe value. Scripts are being written with VFX being an integral part of the story. And hence, we, as the VFX specialists come in early on in the planning stage of the film along with the filmmaker. We are also there for onsite VFX supervision .That is why, although there is on an average over 40 minutes of effects in the recent films that we have done, its not visible. That is what has changed and has now become standard practice in the films that we work on.

Q. What are the major factors associated with taking up outsourced projects?

Studios taking up outsourced work need to consider sustainability, profitability, availability of manpower, quality of output, adherence to delivery schedules, efficient communication systems and their responsibility towards Brand India’s image through the use of licensed software and ethical business practices.

Q. To which extent do you think is true that these days many directors/producers nationally and internationally add visual effects in the movie only for the sake of having VFX and actually those are not playing the major role in the story?

This is not true for the clients that we do work for. The projects that we have worked on have all been serious about the utility/role of VFX in their films.

Q. Where do you see the Post Production industry in the next year or so, give us a 12 month crystal ball?

The Post industry in India is going to see a major push in the next 12 months, riding on the success of films like Rand De Basanti, Kabhi Alvida Na kehna, Dhoom2 and Krish. The audiences have been fed a certain level of graphics/VFX and they will expect more. Hollywood films will continue pushing the curve as they usually do but the Indian film industry is not too far behind and with the current generation of film makers that we work with, it’s getting better by the day.

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Issue 11 Dec 2006

interview

AN INTERVIEW WITH Tata Elxsi

Q. If people want to see Tata Elxsi Demo reel, so where we can look at?

The best place to look at our work is at our facility itself in Mumbai, India. We welcome people to come over and see what goes on in such creative environments and how our artists combine work with fun.

Q. During recruitment, what does a VFX company like Tata Elxsi look for?

We have built a reputation in the marketplace as a quality studio with ethical practices. We do a variety of projects from film effects to episodic TV series animation work to TVCs to Game assets. We set very high standards of quality for ourselves and benchmark ourselves with the best in the industry. Naturally, we have to ensure that the best talent works for us at all times. We look for a keen creative eye, good attitude to work, a strong desire to learn and to experiment and most importantly, a certain level of pride in the work that the artist has for his/her work. As a company, we plan for a long term career of the candidate and see if there is a creative and cultural fit.

We are currently recruiting key talent for our various projects and interested candidates who believe that they have the potential and the desire to travel with us in our journey for excellence should apply to the careers section in our website www.tataelxsi.com Thanks a lot for taking out sometime for us from your busy schedule.

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Issue 11 Dec 2006

challenge

Already Running

CGArena is proud to present “Winter” Challenge (3D Challenge), 24 Nov - 15 Jan 2007, sponsored

by Craft Animations, Hyperfocal Design, Vertus, RPManager, ambientLight, The Best 3D, Duber Studio and Daz 3D. We want different ideas and approaches in a more creative way.

Your Mission Create an image which shows Winter in a scene, and remember winter doesnt mean just add an ice in a scene. This Challenge is a Work-In-Progress Challenge -- all contestants are required to post their work-in-progress images for community to critique/comment in order to qualify. Last date to enter in this challenge is 25th Dec 2006 after this no registration for challenge will be allowed.

How the Challenge will be Run This challenge will be a WIP (Work in Progress) Challenge. Each challenger is required to submit Work In Progress (WIP) images, from the initial concept sketch to the final render. The purpose is that everyone can learn from each other, offer feedback and critiques.

1. Enter the Challenge by registering yourself on CGArena forum.

2. Submit your work in progress images in forum on a regular basis.

3. Participate in the community by critiquing other challengers works in the respective threads.

4. Submit your final entry till 15th January 2007, midnight 00:00 GMT. 5. There will be 3 winners in this 3D Challenge and CGArena, Sponsers decision will be final.

Note: You are required to submit work in progress images, obtain feedback and give feedback to other challengers.

Final Image Size - Your final image dimensions should be print resolution. Do not send in a low-resolution.

- A guideline is minimum 1200 pixels wide and/or 1024 high, JPG, 300 DPI. - Send your final image in zip format with your complete shipping address and telephone number on email address ezine@ cgarena.com with subject “Winter Challenge Final Image”.

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Our sky HDRIs use only the best quality digital optics for crisp, clean images - we don’t use mirror balls or distorted, low quality fisheye lenses. Due to the huge resolutions achieved, these images are amongst the only HDRIs available that can be used for background images & reflections as well as lighting. They provide maximum flexibility for your virtual camera and scene, allowing long zooms and extreme detail in reflection close-ups.

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Carrara 5 delivers a robust suite of modeling, animation and rendering tools wrapped in an intuitive user interface that experienced 3D artists and novices alike will embrace. And this product is marketed by Daz3D. And DAZ strives to bring 3D art directly to the masses by delivering the highest quality digital 3D content and software at the most affordable prices. DAZ also offers premier 3D software programs such as Bryce 5 (a 3D environment package), Mimic Pro (a 3D lip-sync program), and DAZ|Studio (a 3D posing application) all at rock-bottom prices.

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PD Artist - $39 USD

PD Artist is a paint toolbox, powered by Project Dogwaffle. The current version 1 is based on a subset of PD Pro 3. It’s a great companion to your existing popular paint shop or photo image editor. This project is promoted and marketed by thebest3d.com. Here you will get various softwares at great prices including free tutorials of various softwares.

Second Prize - $1661 USD Craft Animations Bundle 2 - $1187 USD

This Bundle 2 includes Craft Helicopter, Craft SphereCam, Craft SteadyCam, Craft ObserverCam. Craft Animations AB produces, markets and sells real-time software to the 3D animation, VR and gaming industries offering Craft Director Tools, a series of plug-ins based on several years of development and research into neural networking, AI, and autonomous control systems.

Hyperfocal Skies 2 - $219 USD

Hyperfocal Skies 2 features 51 photographic, hemispherical sky textures averaging 12000X4000 pixels.

No 180 degree panoramas or single row panoramas, just full hemispherical sky textures with enough resolution to allow completely unrestricted camera movement in all directions. Hyperfocal Skies 2 includes a wide range of times of day and weather conditions to suit any scene. Sky textures are mappable onto a hemisphere, cylinder or background.

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Fluid Mask is a highly advanced software tool designed to make life easier for everyone who creates cut outs. Built as a plug-in to Adobe Photoshop, Fluid Mask is the new next-generation cut-out tool. Behind the product is breakthrough technology that mimics the way the eye, optic-nerve and brain perform visual processing. It offers an intuitive, accurate and fast approach to cut outs. A key feature is the new Edge Overlay showing object edges within an image. Suddenly masking become a whole lot easier - it’s now possible to select, group and mask objects in images to make great cut outs.

Duber Studio Portrait of a Girl 2 DVD’s Set- $56 USD

These DVD’s that sets its goal to finally teach you in-depth how to effectively model, map and texture your meshes. Duber training didn’t want to create an ordinary, average training DVD, we decided we would like you to actually understand what modeling, UV’s and texturing are and how they work! More than 3 hours of exclusive training.

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This Bundle 3 includes Craft ObserverCam, Craft HumanizerCam, Craft SteadyCam, Craft ZeroGCam. Craft Animations AB produces, markets and sells real-time software to the 3D animation, VR and gaming industries offering Craft Director Tools, a series of plug-ins based on several years of development and research into neural networking, AI, and autonomous control systems.

Duber Studio Portrait of a Girl DVD - $28 USD

These DVD’s that sets its goal to finally teach you in-depth how to effectively model, map and texture your meshes. Duber training didn’t want to create an ordinary, average training DVD, we decided we would like you to actually understand what modeling, UV’s and texturing are and how they work! More than 3 hours of exclusive training.

PD Particles - $19 USD

PD Particles is a software program for sketching, doodling, painting and drawing with particles. It is loaded with features made for professionals, yet priced low enough for artists, students and hobbyists at all levels. If you like to draw, this is for you.

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photoshop

Maintain the Original Shadows

When we composite the images then generally we create a fake shadows or don’t able to make them transparent because of complexity of masking. But actually this is very easy task and can be achieved by loading a luminosity channel and dont require any plugin. Luminosity means The brightness of either a light source or a reflective surface.

Step 1: Open a photo of an object whose shadows you want to keep intact and transparent. Make a selection of the object in the image through any selection tool like Magnetic lasso tool, Pen Tool and others.

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photoshop

Step 2: After you make the selection then press Ctrl + J to place the selected object on their own layer.

Step 3: Now select a background image on which you done the selection in first step. And press Ctrl + Alt + ~ to load the luminosity. Press Ctrl + Shift + I to Inverse the selection, so instead of the highlights, you now have just the shadows selected.

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photoshop Step 4: Don’t deselect the selection. Add a new blank layer and fill with black. Now you can see a lot of transparency in the shadows. This is exactly what we’re trying to achieve transparency in the shadows.

Final Step: Now you can deselect the selection and delete the background layer. Merge down the layers left in the project and drag on the different background image on which you like to composite. Now you will see the shadows are intact and transparent.

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after effects

Flowing Lights You have seen this effect in the commercials, MTV and other music channels lots of time and always think of creating something like this. So, in this issue we like to create a simple version of flowing lights.

Step 1: Create a new composition 640 x 480 in After Effects. Then create a new solid layer Ctrl + Y (50 x 50) of any color.

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after effects Step 2: Open the Motion Sketch Dialog from Window > Motion Sketch

Step 3: Select a solid layer and press the Start Capture button in the Motion Sketch dialog box. After pressing a button start moving/drawing a solid layer in the composition like you want to move the lights later.

Step 4: Apply Window > The Smoother to the motion path and choose iterations 3 in the Smoother dialog box. This step is necessary to smoothen the path you drawn in the previous step otherwise motion can be jerky and also not looks good visually later.

Step 5: Now open the Motion Sketch position key frames in the timeline and copy those.

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after effects Step 6: Create a new composition named Comp 2 (640 x 480) and create a new adjustment layer. Select the pen tool and just draw one point on the adjustment layer, so you can paste the motion sketch key frames as a mask in the adjustment layer.

Step 7: Apply Effect > Render > Vegas and select the following settings.

Step 8: Apply Effect > Stylize> Glow and choose the following settings in the dialog box

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after effects Step 9: Duplicate the above composition (Comp2) and change the few settings in the Vegas and Glow effects. Now drag this composition to the Comp 2.

Step 10: Create new composition named “final” and drag Comp 2 on this.

Apply Effect> Distort> Turbulent Displace and increase the complexity to 2..

Now you can create a camera and change the X, Y, Z position of the layer. Also duplicate the layer to create more flowing lights and enable to 3d layer to move the layer as you want. Also create a background as desired.

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3ds max

Breaking the Stone Breaking any object and then animate the fragments manually is a tedious task specially when there are lots of fragments and getting realism on such animations also a difficult task. So, here comes Dynamics. The term dynamics refers to a system of controls that generate keys to produce animation that simulates real-world physics.

Dynamic simulation tool in 3ds max called Reactor. And in this issue we will break a stone in parts through reactor and fracture. The fracture feature simulates the breaking of a rigid body into a number of smaller pieces as the result of an impact. To do this, you need to supply the pieces that are glued together to create the whole object.

Step 1: Create a box and right click on that and choose convert into Editable Poly.

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3ds max Step 2 : Select the Cut tool from Edit Geometry rollout in Editable poly and cut the box in various shapes and sizes like the way you want the chunks when broken.

Step 3: After cut the box. First decide in how many parts you like to break this box. Suppose if we like to break in 2 parts then select half polygons and click the Detach button in Editable Poly. Press Ok in the Detach dialog box. Now your box is divided into 2 parts.

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3ds max Step 4: But when you move the parts then you will see from inside the boxes are hollow and when they break then not looks good or say nothing is visible. So, now we will create the inside polygons. First hide the other detach polygon.

And start working on the other one. Select some inside vertexes and duplicate them by pressing the Shift key and move the vertexes.

Step 5: Go into the polygon mode and click on Create button. Now start clicking on the vertexes and polygon on those vertexes will be created. Remember on vertex where you click first, at the same vertex you need to click at the end to create polygon and don’t create polygon by choosing more than 3-4 vertexes. Same procedure need to follow on the other part.

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3ds max Step 6: After creating the inside polygons your main part is completed. Rename all the parts. And create a plane in the scene to collide. From the reactor rollout create a RB Collection and Fracture Solver. Add all the objects in a scene to RB Collection and all the stone fragments into the Fracture.

Step 7: Go into the Utility>Reactor. And in the Reactor properties change to “Use Mesh” for the plane in the Concave Rollout. And also give different masses to different stone pieces so all of them behave differently.

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3ds max Step 8: Click on the Preview Button in the Reactor Preview & Animation panel. And if you are satisfied with the results then you can click on Create Animation button. Now all the animation key frames will automatically created according to the preview you have seen. When you watch the timeline then key frame will be created on every frame which is useless and very cumbersome if want to change any animation. So, into the Utils rollout and under Key Management click on Reduce Now with threshold to 0.5.

For texturing apply a UVW mapping and select Box in the mapping coordinates. If the object is too complex and break seams are shown then duplicate the object in starting and select Acquire in the UVW mapping alignment dialog.

Hope you enjoy this small tutorial. If you want to show many small chunks in the air then you can also use a Particle Flow and on collide emit the custom object instances.

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3D Objects, Textures, E-books, Free digital Art Magazines, you will always find a way to be inspired in the : IT’S ART STORE

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maya

Melting Text In this tutorial we will explore some tools and options of fluid to create melting text effect like smoke, this tutorial is very handy for those of you who are going to create short movies or demo reels to give it heading using this method describing in this tutorial.

Fluid effect is one of powerful tools inside Maya which can achieve realistic result easily within few minutes if you are expert and have creative mind, before going to start with this tutorial I am suggesting you that you should basic knowledge of Maya.

Ok let’s get started.

Step 1: First of all we need some text in (Targa), or ( Jpeg) formats, write the text what you want with black background. Open Photoshop and create new fresh page with the same setting as in image describing below.

Note: this setting is just for this tutorial you are not bound with the size of document you can create it in any desired size you like.

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maya Step 2: When your new file is open write anything you like in this case I wrote the words below, make sure your background is black and save it as .tga and name it (Density).

Step 3: Now create the duplicate of this image and change the text color to whatever you like, and then save it as .tga and name it (Color) like the picture below.

Step 4: We are done with Photoshop here, now switch to Maya. On the view port hold down (H) key from your keyboard and then hold down left mouse button from popup menus choose (Dynamics), now we have access to Fluid effects in the top menu, now click on (Fluid Effects) from dropdown menu hit on that small rectangular beside 2d container like the image illustrating below.

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maya Step 5: Fluid option box will appear in the (X Y Resolution) give value of 300 by 300 in the box. This will increase detail when we import our text images, then hit (Apply and Close) like the picture below.

Note: the bigger resolution value the slower render and system performance, do not increase the values out of your requirement.

Step 6: If you look at your scene you have created a 2d fluid container, with the 2d fluid container is still selected again go to (Fluid Effects>>Add/Edit Contents>> then select the option box for (Paint Fluid Tool).

Step 7: Ok expand (Paint Attributes) tab, on the (Paint Attribute) dropdown menu by default it set to (Density) leave it like this, now expand (Attributes Maps) you will see one more tab (Import) expand it too this will reveal (Import) button, click on it and the file browser will open for this one choose (Density.tga) where you saved your images and import it.

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maya

Step 7: Press (6) button from your keyboard and you should see something like this image.

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maya Step 8: Go to (Paint Attribute) tab again and this time choose (Color) from the dropdown menu and the this will ask you to (Set to Dynamics) and hit the Set to Dynamics button, Click once again on (Import) button and choose (Color.tga) image from your hard drive.

Step 9: Now you should see something like the following image if you follow me along the tutorial.

Step 10: Hit CTRL+A to bring the (Attributes Editor) now find out Dynamic Simulation tab and expand it and set the (Start Frame) to (45) whatever number you like your animation to start.

Step 11: Expand the (Contents Details) tab from (Attribute Editor) and then expand the (Density) tab too set the numbers like the image below.

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maya Step 12: Scroll down little bit to find out (Shading) tab and expand it. Set the (Glow Intensity) to (1) or whatever you like your texts reflect the glow.

Final Step: Here we are done set your frames to 200 or as your choice then hit play you will see your texts are melting down and then dissipating slowly like smoke, these 2 renders are just to show you how its looks like after rendering.

I hope you enjoyed doing this tutorial and try it your own pace with different images to get different kind of results.

Author : Aziz Khan Email: a_k517@hotmail.com Website: www.3dgroup.3dk.org

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gallery

Smoking Creature Marco Menco, Italy drummermenco@yahoo.it XSI, Zbrush, Photoshop

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gallery

Self Illumination Andre Kutscherauer, Germany info@ak3d.de 3ds Max, Rhino, Photoshop Page 35

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gallery

Guitar Legend Marcin Klicki , Poland klicek@o2.pl 3ds Max, Mental Ray, Wings3D, Photoshop Page 36

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gallery

Warrior Diego E. Rodríguez L., Venezuela cuatrod@gmail.com 3ds Max, Painter, Photoshop Page 37

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gallery

PiazzaGrande Tiziano Fioriti, Italy designtiziano@hotmail.com 3ds Max, Vray, Photoshop

Avlu Sinan Ilkaz, Turkey sinan@sdu.edu.tr 3ds Max, Vray Page 38

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gallery

Parasite Eve Vaclav Krivanek, Czech Republic washek@washek.com 3ds Max, Mudbox, Brazil, Photoshop

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Green Frog Massimo Righi, Italy massimorighi@fastwebnet.it Maya, Mental Ray

Nokia N93 Jakub Goda, Slovakia jakubgodeee@yahoo.com 3ds Max 9, Mental Ray Page 40

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gallery

Cycle Rickshaw Furqan Qidwai, Pakistan furqansf@yahoo.com 3ds Max, Photoshop

Spider Hammouda Moise, France hypnotik@wanadoo.fr Maya, Zbrush

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gallery

Tirpitz Stian Ervik Wahlvåg, Norway agep_tm@hotmail.com Animation Master

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submission

How to send in your images...

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