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September 18, 2009

Secret Agent!

ok ok, we had none of those 3 things I noted in the title of the post, but hey, me and a collegue (Marc Lebuis) from school participated in the ‘Secret Agent’ CGChallenge on Cgsosiety.org Forum, one of the biggest, if not the biggest, 3d animation challenge. We finished right on time, and we are quite proud of our project. We must also thanks Derek McTavish Mounce, our music & sound genius, that did a masterpiece in about 24h before the deadline. If you are ever looking for a great composer, send him an email at d.mounce [at] fouressence.com

Most of the project was created in Softimage|XSI 7.01 but Blender also played an important role in production. I used it to create alot of smaller 2d effects (on the interior of the cockpit’s glass and during the scanning sequence for exemple), but also to generate the first drafts of our animatic at the beginning. I edited all of it in the sequencer. I also used it to re-compress all our video for the final files, because it was simply better than adobe premiere to do that hehe (adding Premiere to our workflow pipelane was a complete mistake on my part. I shouldn’t have used that software at all! stupid premiere!) .

Anyway, here it is on cgsociety:

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=292&t=793497

and here it is on vimeo:

Mission 4 – CGChallenge ‘Secret Agent’ from Js Guillemette on Vimeo.

I hope you’ll like it! And if you dare reply to our cgsociety.org link (here) we would be really happy to hear your comments

Js Guillemette

Posted in General | 1 Comment »

$200 in Donations and Counting!

September 9, 2009

I would like to truly thank everyone that has shown their support thus far by purchasing the Blender 2.5 Training! It is humbling to see the phenominal response it has seen so far.

There were a good few people who wanted to see this project supporting the Blender Foundation better, and so we have answered that call by donating $5 USD for every order to the Blender Foundation. In the last twenty four hours we have donated $200 USD! And this number just keeps growing!

Thanks again to everyone!

Posted in General, Training DVDs, Video Tutorials | No Comments »

Blender 2.5 Training, New Tutorials, Book Deal

September 8, 2009

Modeling a lowpoly Alien head with Retopo in BlenderHello everyone!

Man, seems like I haven’t updated this for a long time… but, that doens’t mean we haven’t been busy!

In brief, Jean-Sebastian is still marathoning his way through school. Ben is working away at his studio job and preparing to start on Project Durian. And I have been busy with more than I know what to do with! Rather than spread all of this out over a couple weeks, I am just going to do it one big blog post.

———————————-

Over the last year or so, I have had the honor of working quite closely with Wes Burke from CG Cookie on providing a Blender video tutorials. It has been a wonderful experience and we have had a lot of fun doing it. With the upcoming release of Blender 2.5 we are taking on our biggest project yet! I give you:

Introduction to Blender 2.5 Training Series

blender25 screen1 Blender 2.5 Training, New Tutorials, Book Deal This is a very exciting time to be involved with Blender and we have taken it upon ourselves to be one of the first to show you how to make full use of the new Blender 2.5. I won’t go into too many details here, check the site for that, but I can tell you that it’s going to be good!

Some of the topics you can expect to see:

Modeling a full character, complete with accessories
Modeling a scene, strewn with objects
Adding materials and textures to a vast array of objects
Animating walk and run cycles
Creating smoke simulations
Lighting day and night scenes
Post-processing with the node editor
Using the video sequencer as a video editor

blender25_screen1 And these are just some of the topics. The training is intended to take you through the entire workflow of creating a character and scene; everything from modeling to texturing, animating to rendering. This series is huge! If this blurb has piqued your interest (or if you’re thoroughly bored by it) head on over to the dedicated site here for more info and to preorder!

We hope to release the first part of the series by mid, late October. It all depends on the development of Blender 2.5.

P.S. if you’re one of the first 20 to preorder it you get one of the first-ever CG Cookie T-shirts!

http://blender.cgcookie.com

(more…)

Tags: 2.5, Blender, CG Cookie, cgcookie, cgtuts, jonathan, montage, montagestudio, packt, publishing, studio, training, tutorial, video, williamson
Posted in Blender, Contracts, General, Video Tutorials | 16 Comments »

Kaboom!

August 19, 2009

Hey readers!

Last week we finished our third project at school. By ‘us’, I mean myself (Jean-Sébastien Guillemette) and two other student at the NAD Centre in Montréal (www.centrenad.com) that aren’t part of Montage Studio. I was in charge of some modelling (building, alienship, artillery canon

It was an intense 6 week of production. Some stuff still need to be done on it, but we had to move on to another project. I’ll come back to it in a few week just to tweak a few things here and there including the lighting, motionblur and a few color correct. Oh and of course add sounds to it! But well, I wanted to show you guys

(make sure to follow the link to see it in hd on vimeo!)

Demo 03 – Centre NAD from Js Guillemette on Vimeo.

Hope you like it!

Js Guillemette

Posted in Artwork, Blog, General, Projects | 3 Comments »

Durian and Game Cinematic

August 13, 2009

Hi All! Most Durian related news will be relayed via the Durian Blog, but occasionally I might make a mention about it here. At any rate, the presale campaign is well underway.

Currently however I am making use of Blender as well as 3ds Max, Zbrush and a few other toys on a Game Cinematic. Because it is part of a studio contract I am still not sure what I can share at what point, but it might be a nice surprise to simply share the finished product (if I can) when it’s done. It’s a sci fi game cinematic (as a piece to apply for more work, not for a specific game) and I am having a whole lot of fun with it! Using the .obj file extension to switch between Zbrush, Max, Blender and even Poser – it’s just quicker for facial blend shapes to make a start there. With the displacement and custom uv textures you can’t really recognise the base character. Of course, there are more than just humans in this project…

Happy blending!

Ben.

Tags: Blender, durian
Posted in General | No Comments »

Mavenseed: Going back to school Sale – Save 33%

August 10, 2009

Register today and save

In the spirit of going back to school, Mavenseed is offering 33% off their standard hourly rates for private one on one cg tutoring. A savings of 20USD from our standard 60USD hourly rate.

This is a limited time offer and will expire. To take advantage of this discount please visit Mavenseed today and register with your instructor.

What is Mavenseed?

Mavenseed is a CG private tutoring education website. We help connect artists in need of help with respected instructors in the topics of need. We understand that there is a place and time for a full online course, or education materials, but realize that some projects, or sole determination to improve ones self worth require an on demand private tutor.

The benefit of private one on one tutoring is that you are able to address your personal concerns, questions and goals immediately. There is no running through topics you already know in software manuals, or course requirements. Our instructors work with your schedule as best they can and are available to you for the requested time. Example: If you are interested in learning how to do an scene that requires a water shader with mental ray, you could find the instructor that covers those areas and ask those specific questions.

We are constantly trying to improve our end user experience for our students and instructors so please feel free to send us feedback, or suggestions on how we may improve our technology or presentation. Thank you for stopping by Mavenseed!

More Info:

For more info about Mavenseed, topics covered, available instructors, etc please visit it directly at the link below:

http://www.mavenseed.com

Tags: Blender, jonathan, mavenseed, training, tutorial, video, williamson
Posted in General, Training DVDs, Video Tutorials | No Comments »

CGCookie.com Sponsorship

August 9, 2009

This is slightly old news, but I am pleased to announce that Montage Studio is now an official sponsor of www.cgcookie.com!

This looks good for us on the surface, but what does it mean for CG Cookie and it’s visitors? It means there will be a much larger flow of content from Montage Studio to the site in the form of tutorials, tips and articles. You can expect to hear more on that soon but for the mean time just keep an eye on the site!

-Jonathan

Tags: cgcookie, montage studio, montagestudio
Posted in General | No Comments »

General update

June 26, 2009

Well, it’s been a little while since I’ve posted. I’ve certainly kept myself busy though. I am effectively finished the local studio internship I’ve been a part of here in Adelaide and the studio has offered me paid work for the next few months on a pre-rendered game cinematic. It’s a large application piece to help them apply for a broader range of projects so it won’t appear on your PS3 or anything a year from now, but it should be a whole lot of fun. Then as previously mentioned, I’ll be off to join the Durian team!

Steampunk Mousetrap from Ben Dansie on Vimeo.

Above is the first completed project from my internship, the second one is getting pretty close now. Hope to be rendering by Monday.

For the Mousetrap project, I needed flames as a pretty key effect. Seeing as volumetrics is still underway, I came up with another solution based on an older file I found online. To read a bit more about it an see some examples, please check the following.

http://www.blendernation.com/2009/06/23/ben-dansies-flame-test/

Finally, I couldn’t help but experiment with a new feature in Blender, even though I’m trying to cut back on the purely experimental stuff so I can finish a couple of things off. But I’m sure you’ll understand when you see the following image.

Blender now has Final Gather to play with! http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=146887&page=6 to get builds and see some early experiments / information. While this is now useable, it probably has a way to go before being officially included in Blender. Still – a whole lot of fun!

Cheers,
Ben

Posted in Artwork, Blender, General | No Comments »

Mavenseed Launched!

June 20, 2009

Wes Burke has just pulled off the covers on http://www.mavenseed.com

This is a project we have been working on for a while and are pleased to announce it’s launch!

Quoting the homepage:

mavenseed Mavenseed Launched! “Mavenseed is an CG education website that offers private one on one training from an expert in the respective field.

It has been a real pleasure working with Wes and I am excited to be one of the first instructors to offer their services on the site. If you are interested in personal Blender training head on over!

-Jonathan

Tags: Blender, cg, cookie, mavenseed, one-on-one, private, training, tutorial, tutoring, video
Posted in Blender, General | No Comments »

Ben in Project Durian!

It is with great pleasure that I announce one of our own, Ben Dansie has just been accepted into the core team of Project Durian. As the forth open movie/game project from the Blender Foundation this is an incredible opportunity for Ben. With all of the great work he’s been doing there’s no doubt he’ll continue making leaps and bounds in his Blender work. He will be working alongside a lot of other very talented artists and developers to complete this project. Congrats Ben!

For more info on Project Durian and the other team members head on over to the Durian blog.

Ben Dansie’s Durian Application from Ben Dansie on Vimeo.

Tags: ben, Blender, dansie, durian, montage, studio
Posted in Blender, General | 1 Comment »