muscles and cloth tutorials

I`ve found Autodesk Online has Maya tutorials for muscles and cloth under basic documentation. It`s basic stuff but still useful for a quick start.

The muscles are the old stuff from cMuscle Systems from Comet and nCloth is new for me, but looks good!

for TDs, save these links:

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=13710022&linkID=9242256

http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/mayanclothadvancedtechniques2010.pdf

http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/mayanclothadvancedtechniques2010lessondata.zip

MPC L.A.

this article is about our new L.A. commercials post production office and talks also about how they take advantage of having MPC London as its base:

http://vfxworld.com/?atype=articles&id=3958&page=1

recently they worked on new Depeche Mode "Wrong" video.

chill out radio

here`s one of my recent favourite web stream radios, it plays very good chill out music:

www.sofaspace.ch

always interesting sound, I`d say perfect for rigging when you need to focus on some stuff :)

about Pixar`s UP

first comments about next Pixar film from inside the studio, mostly accenting that movie was generated as 3d (stereoscopic) and how it will take the story even further.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McxtPAhYuDQ

I thought Monsters Vs Aliens looked great. Let`s see how UP will be doing. As Pixar was always ahead with image quality I`m really curious this time. Maybe even more than about the story. That seems a bit linear, grandpa (the serious one) and annoying/cute boy go for adventure and meet bad guy with his robotic dogs. But it might turn out as a nice surprise, as it was with KungFu Panda or Over the Hedge. Actually Dreamworks have succeed a lot with their 3d animated comedies. Have to say that I wasn`t laughing so much on Rat. and Wall-E.

a commerical...

I`m posting this because of a lot of great digital effects used in this spot... ;)
http://beta.stinkdigital.tv/work/flegima

Autodesk Maya 2009 service pack

here is the page for downloading and below the details of the release:

http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/autodesk_maya_2009_sp1_release_notes.pdf

I`ve picked some notes interesting for riggers:

Preserve Child Transform added to Rotate and Scale marking menus

You can now select the Preserve Child Transform option from the Rotate ('E' +

the left mouse button) and Scale ('R' + the left mouse button) marking menus.

When this option is selected, moving a parent object does not move its children.

MayaPluginWizard now works with Maya 2009

The MayaPluginWizard has been updated to work with Maya 2009.

Importing a .obj with Create Multiple Objects on

In previous versions of Maya, importing a .obj file with the Create Multiple

Objects option turned on rearranged the vertex order of the meshes. This has

been fixed.

Locking rotateOrder attribute no longer locks its rotate attributes

In Maya 2009, attempting to lock a transform's rotateOrder attribute also

locked the individual rotation attributes (X, Y, Z) as well. This has been fixed.

Error when opening Maya Muscle Spline window

A problem with the Muscle Spline window has now been fixed. You can select

Muscle > Bonus Rigging > Create Muscle Spline to open the Muscle Spline

window and set up a spline rig as expected.

Using curve influence objects with the wrap deformer

A problem that caused unexpected deformations when using curve influence

objects for the wrap deformer has been corrected. You can now use curves to

deform surfaces with the wrap deformer as expected.