Course Overview

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  Allan McKay

  Working primarily on Hollywood films, some of his more recent effects sequences have been for Transformers 3, Superman Returns, B...

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• What you'll learn

  
  

  In this CGWorkshop, Hollywood Technical Director & Visual Effects Specialist Allan McKay will take you through visual effects from a production standpoint, and follow the process from the initial pre-production stages through to the integration of your special effect into a scene. You will be mastering all areas of FX and putting them to practice and applying it to a simulated production pipeline. Rather than following the practice of just creating FX examples, we are going to be working on real shots, from pre production to setting the shot up, creating all of the FX, dynamics sims and fluid simulations, and then looking at rendering techniques, after which we go through and actually composite our CGI over live action footage or still image plates. This workshop is designed to take things to the next level and prepare artists for real world pipelines and big studios. You’ll be using FumeFX and Afterburn to create amazing effects and then use Fusion to composite your effects into your chosen scene.

  Have a look at Allan's Showreel here.

  Some of Allans more recent effects sequences have been for Superman Returns’, ‘Blade Trinity’, ‘Exorcist: The Beginning’, ‘Paycheck’, ‘Scooby Doo 2’ and ‘Inspector Gadget’ , just to name a few.

  By workshop end, students should be very comfortable with effects, having developed a very good insight into the creation of some of todays’ bigger budget FX films.

  “The complete and through introduction to VFX. Was great to have a industry expert sharing both great tutorials with practical industry tips and tricks.".
  Chad Naeger, Student

  Allan’s training DVDs:
  Advanced Visual Effects
  Advanced Visual Effects 2

• Week by week outline

  
  

  Week One: Building Demolition Part 1
  In the first week we look at initial pre production on a shot, discussing what we want and how we’re going to go about it. We create basic concept work to help illustrate what we’re wanting to achieve in the coming weeks. We also discuss how we would be placed in a production pipeline and who we would be speaking with when starting a shot, people we would collaborate with etc. Once we have decided what we want to do for this FX shot, we get the ball rolling blocking out all of the 3D geometry, setting up a camera and all of the initial steps we want need to get done. What we are aiming for is to have a giant building demolition of buildings collapsing into piles of dust, breaking and falling apart and smashing into the ground as they all go down.

  Week Two: Building Demolition Part 2
  In week two, Now we have set up our geometry, we then look at methods used to fracture and break the geometry up, what is the best methods and how to go about them. We will fracture all of our builds up, and begin running rigid body dynamics simulations of each of the buildings breaking them up and having them interact with each other. And different techniques and processes we can use for doing this. What we want to do is get the timing and the weight and the feel of the buildings right to really give them the impact we are after. We also cover some basic scripting for automating tasks to simplify some of the larger processes we are doing.

  Week Three: Building Demolition Part 3
  Now once this is set up we will look at creating all of the particle layers of debris, dust trails, larger dust plumes and other FX layers necessary for our effect to look as intense, scary and affective as possible. This will involve building several layers of FX which we cover in depth as well as a lot of the techniques involved too.

  Week Four: Building Demolition Part 4
  By week four, we have finalized a majority of the 3D and we’re looking at preparing and splitting all our passes up for rendering and setting up specific lighting and rendering passes. We will then move into compositing, building up all our layers and setting the shot up and building a realistic final scene. By using many of the most powerful tools we can, we can take our effects even further to the final result ready for review!

  Week Five – Aerial bombardment - destroying a city Part 1
  The initial four weeks are highly intensive so that you are prepared for the next three weeks. In week five, we pick up the pace and, just as in the real VFX industry, push through to create the best results in the short amount of time we have left. This will entail shooting missiles into a city and blowing up the cities buildings, all of which is entirely automated once we’ve initially set it up. Creating all of the missiles animation and smoke trails as well as a lot of the initial impact systems.

  Week Six: Aerial bombardment - destroying a city Part 2
  Now that we have the initial animation completed, we are going to look at creating huge fiery explosions, smoke columns, fluid simulations of fire and the city buildings’ after effects where they break and shatter, and generate dust. Of course this is quite ambitious so hopefully you were paying attention the last few weeks! The idea is for this to look photo real. We also look at lighting the shot, splitting the render passes, and rendering it. Finally we bring it all into the comp and begin to polish and finesse our work until its ready for review!

  Week Seven: Nuking a city Part 1
  Now that we have accomplished some pretty intense FX already, we start to look at getting a live action shot of a large city shot from overhead (You’ll be provided with a plate image from a helicopter over a large city) and look at setting off a nuclear explosion which wipes out the entire city in a more stylized hyper real look. Over the next two weeks we will build the shot, match to the camera and look at creating some matte painting as well. Nothing too complicated, but working on areas of the city we want demolished after the nuke takes place. We then work on building the initial nuclear explosion.

  Week Eight: Nuking a city Part 2
  In our final week we generate dozens of other effects as our city begins to be wiped out. We develop all of the passes involved to demolish the city, cause chaos, fire, smoke, debris, and render it all out. Lastly we composite all of the elements and push it to look as intense and catastrophic as possible! Utilizing all of the techniques used heavily in the visual effects industry, we hope that you leave the workshop with some amazing visual effects pieces to put on your show reels as well as come away with a vast amount of knowledge that should have you ready for jumping into the visual effects field!

• Student requirements

  
  

  Level of Ability:
  Although this workshop is aimed at intermediate to advanced users of FumeFX, Afterburn and Fusion, a high level of commitment is required, as content will be kept mainly at the intermediate to advanced level. You must have a good understanding of 3ds Max to participate in this course. Although not essential to this workshop, it is recommended that you try Allan McKay's other classes, as all of these workshops are designed to complement one another. All of the material in this workshop is 100% exclusive!

  Students need to be familiar with using a bulletin board system (such as CGTalk.com).

  Software Requirements:
  Students need 3ds Max with the two Autodesk Certified Animation plug-ins AfterBurn 4 and FumeFX. Allan will be using 3ds Max 10, however students can use Max 20099. Photoshop is recommended but not a requirement.

  For those students who are without the plug-ins but would still like to do the workshop, we are offering students 65-day trials of both AfterBurn 4 and FumeFX, courtesy of Sitni Sati, Orbaz Technologies and Turbo Squid.

  At the end of the class, non CGS members using the trials will be eligible to purchase these plug-ins with a US$70 discount while CGS members will get the standard US$100 off the purchase of each plug-in.

   

  Hardware Requirements:
  Students need a minimum 512mb RAM and a 2GHz+ CPU but as with all 3D, the more powerful the better!

  A web browser and internet connection is required. Broadband is mandatory as the workshops' weekly tutorials are a mix of text and video.

  Extra Details
  On the official start of the class, all students enrolled will receive their 'Welcome’ email' together with all the necessary information regarding the downloading of the 65 day trials of both plug-ins AfterBurn 4 and FumeFX.

  Workload:
  Reading & Research: 3-5 hours per week. Assignments: Students will be expected to complete assignments on a weekly basis taking between 8-12 hours depending on individual proficiency and speed.