Join Olivier Archer for an electrifying episode of CGCast as he dives deep into the latest CGI marvels! From the stunning visuals of the new Final Fantasy Advent Children movie, packed with breathtaking graphics and realistic effects, to
an in-depth look at Autodesk's Max 8 updates featuring innovative tools like Pelt Mapping and improved cloth simulations, this episode is a must-listen for any CG enthusiast. Olivier also compares Reactor Cloth and Max 8 Cloth extensions through hands-on
testing, sharing insights that could revolutionize your workflow. Plus, he explores the world of ZBrush with beginner-friendly guides to help you get started effortlessly. Get ready for eye-popping demos, practical advice, and exclusive test videos—this
episode promises to inspire and inform every CG aficionado.
Welcome everybody and welcome to CGCast episode 3. My name
is Olivier Archer and today is the 17th of September.
Today I'll be hosting the show alone. We have a fun show
ahead of us.
Today I'll be talking about the new Final Fantasy movie
Advent Children, the new Max 8 feature videos,
I did a little test, Reactor Cloth vs Max Cloth, the new Z
Brush learning kit, and some other stuff.
So I hope you stick around and enjoy the show.
Okay, so I just saw the new Final Fantasy Advent Children
movie today.
And I have to say, it's an amazing CG movie.
The graphics were mind-blowing.
It's like just pure eye candy to the max.
They have almost every effect in that movie.
And it's just pure non-stop action.
The hair was great.
It reacts to water.
I saw hair that was partially wet in one part, dry in
another part.
The rendering of the hair was amazing.
It looked so real.
There was wind blowing through the hair.
It was so cool.
There were lots of particle effects.
There were monsters that were just changing into dust.
And then back, particles were just great.
You just have to see it.
There were lots of fluid effects.
Towards the end of the movie, there was rain.
The rain would wet up the characters.
It would wet up the environments in a realistic manner.
The water would act real.
There were tons of fluid effects.
was so cool there's also a lot of cloth all the characters
had cloth animations on them they had
long coats and everything their cloths react with other
characters react to the environment i saw
characters grabbing other characters by their cloth and it
was all very well done there were
lots of crowd simulations there the react running it's not
like massive but it's a bit different
it's on a smaller scale there were amazing models there was
this monster that was very well
modeled and you could see a ton of details that went into
it the animation was pretty good too
um i can't complain there um it wasn't boring animation
there was a lot of exaggerated
animations like stuff that could never be done in real life
that's why they probably didn't cg
They just exaggerated everything to the max.
The fighting, the character looks, the cities, everything
was just purely exaggerated and I enjoyed it.
There were lots of volumetrics.
You could see a character coming from the clouds.
It was really good.
And this movie had a ton of details.
I remember I could see the stitches in Cloud's coat jacket
thing was just so cool.
The characters, on the other hand, they look very real but
they're not exactly realistic.
um they're kind of like realistic mixed with anime and i
think that's what saves them from
the uncanny valley because you don't really notice it most
of the movie they don't look
like dead or zombie-ish they have they're expressive so
that's pretty cool um except
for a few scenes like in the beginning with that little
girl she looked weird to me a bit a few
times but um just those few scenes looked weird but the
movie was great the environments were
pretty detailed there was nice camera work it was the
camera was very dynamic moving
and stuff but it didn't feel weird they make you nauseous
like if when you move the camera a lot
but there were some weird cuts in the movie um it was kind
of confusing following the story the
story was very weird you'd have to know about final fantasy
7 to get the story but it was
pretty good um i recommend everybody who's interested in cg
to watch it just for the eye
candy wow there's explosions everything man that movie was
good just for the graphics alone it was
good you have you guys have to check it if you're in
serious in cg you have to check this this is
very inspiring i remember the first final fantasy movie the
spirits within i know it got a lot of
bad press because the story was a bit different it was very
eastern just like this but it was a
boring story but the first final fantasy is what got me
interested in 3d and this is and the new
one is just as inspiring it's even more inspiring so go
check it out it hasn't been released in
north america yet the english versions haven't been
released but you can get a japanese version
with subtitles but it's damn good man okay discrete i mean
autodesk has released some
videos of their new max features and some of them are
pretty damn cool i wasn't expecting much from
this update i thought it'd be just 7.5 plus some extra
stuff but they're adding a lot of new things
in this update there's the asset tracking which helps you
organize all your files and and everything
into one big database which is i think is more for big
companies and studios where they have
multiple people working on the same files and things but
this could be good for freelancers
when they want to organize all their files pelt mapping
which i think is just amazing i really
hate doing unwrapping and this makes it look so easy i mean
i wish i had this right now this is
wonderful um i think this is the going to be the feature of
max 8 the pelt mapping it what it
basically does is it puts a mesh on a rack and then it
pulls it out so it looks really good so
it helps you they have also improving the skin and edit
polying the skin it's easier skinning
the characters now so that's good i'm not if you want to
see this in detail just go to the autodesk
site and check out the videos but i'm just going to give
you a quick explanation they've updated
the bipeds the hair which look is looking pretty cool which
would be in max 8 if you don't if you
don't have max 7.5 you can't have the hair yet but i've
been testing it on max 7.5 and i haven't
been able to get it to work right right um it always comes
out weird um it renders out weird
also they're improving the cloth if you have max 7 point if
you have the subscription you have the
cloth extensions i heard they're improving it for max 8 but
later on as you show i have a segment
reactor cloth versus max cloth so you can see i'll talk
about that more they have the open exr
which is like hdri but better it was a file format
developed by ilm industrial light and magic and it
looks very interesting you can really edit the images in
that format the contrast the levels
everything much easier be good for compositors and i heard
you can even use it as hdr lighting
They have more DirectX features for shaders if you're into
games this would be cool for you.
And other stuff if you want to check it out just look at
the videos on the Autodesk site.
And I highly suggest you check this out.
Okay so with the new cloth extensions coming out for Mac 8
I was wondering what's up with Reactor's cloth.
Will it still have a chance?
Well since I have Max cloth extensions for 7 I decided to
do some tests.
It was pretty interesting because I found out that Reactor
maybe might still have a chance.
The test I did was I had a ball that fell through the
curved tube into a little bar.
And I attached a cloth to the ball and I attached a little
cloth drape in front of the exit of the tube to make the
test.
First I tried cloth. I used Reactor and I simulated the
ball falling through the tube first.
and all that without any cloth.
Then after I went to use the max extensions
and I attached the plane,
I made it a cloth material
and I made the draping over the thing,
over the tube, a cloth material also.
I calculated it with self-collisions first
and every time the simulation kept failing
when it was in the tube.
I put the sub samples all the way up to 30.
I kept trying and trying and trying.
I could not get the ball to go through.
I could not get the simulation to go all the way through
without failing.
So I went back.
I tried without the cloth self-collations and it went
through no problem.
It took about 3 minutes and 3 seconds to calculate.
So I wasn't too impressed with that.
Another thing I didn't like about cloth.
When you're attaching it to an object you have to make a
node.
But the cloth doesn't react to the node itself.
It doesn't collide off of it.
So I had to make a copy of the sphere and put it as a defle
ctor itself.
So that was a bit weird and annoying.
Then after I tried Reactor.
Reactor was pretty straight forward.
It just went.
Calculated.
No problem.
With self collisions and everything.
And it just went through all the way.
But I did it with the.
I did it with the pre-calculated ball drop.
I didn't make Reactor calculate the ball drop again.
Put the ball and all the other objects as deformable mesh.
It came out pretty good.
The simulation was much different than the last one.
Then the cloth extensions was like a different reaction.
But it took a while to calculate.
It took about 7 minutes and 44 seconds to calculate that.
It was only 200 frames.
I found that a bit weird.
But then I did another test.
I made everything simulate balls.
Started a new simulation for the ball and the other objects
in the scene.
I made the ball collide with the other objects.
And to calculate the cloth, I wanted to stress the cloth.
So I made it an environment where it had a lot of different
interactions.
But this one went pretty fast.
It was 2 minutes and 4 seconds.
But the thing is with the cloth and the ball.
The ball didn't make it through the tube.
So I guess the first one was better.
I have all of these tests videos on the show notes.
So if you want to check it out.
It's pretty interesting.
But right now the reactor is still strong.
The cloth just kept failing on me.
I tried to use cloth on a character I made.
And every time I was trying to do a simulation of the
character sitting down in a long robe,
the simulation kept failing.
I tried making the poly count high.
Failed.
Tried making quads.
Failed.
Triangles.
Failed.
Low poly.
It failed.
I don't know.
But I heard they're going to fix that.
It's going to fail much less.
It's just going to go right through.
So, so far, Reactor is stronger.
I kind of like Reactor.
It's easier to set up.
And I don't know.
I've been using Reactor for a long time.
But the cool thing about cloth is the garment maker where
you can make your own clothes.
So right now I'm not too sure which one is better.
But right now Reactor has my vote.
But we'll see in Max 8.
We'll see how it would be cool if they just mix the best of
both worlds.
I hope you enjoyed this little segment.
If you want to see the videos of the tests that I did, just
go to the cgcast.com show notes.
And you'll be able to download the videos of all the tests
so you can see for yourself the differences in the
simulations.
Because they're a bit different.
reactor and cloth extensions. But yeah, check it out. So
you want to learn ZBrush, but you don't
know where to start. Well, you can download the ZBrush 2
demo now, so that's pretty cool.
So you don't have to spend any of your money before finding
out if it's good or not. And trust
me, it's good. I've tested it out. But the interface looks
daunting, you say. Don't worry.
Pixologic has solved it for you. If you go on their website
and check out the classroom,
there are seven guides you can download to help you learn Z
Brush. ZBrush is not that easy to
learn. It's a bit daunting at first, but once you get the
hang of it, you can do a lot of cool stuff.
There's the welcome guide, there's the quick reference
guide, quick start guide, quick start
sculpting, sculpting polymesh, zbrush mask, stencils,
projection master, and the practical guide.
The practical guide is where all the meat is at. It's 500
pages long, it's 22 megabytes, and you
have to sign up to the forums for it or something like that
. But I remember I downloaded it and it's
well worth it. In the practical guide there are tons of
tutorials and everything you need to get
started with ZBrush. If you look at all these guides and
you read, you spend the time and you
practice, you can get to learn ZBrush pretty quickly and
you can do some amazing stuff without
that much effort. ZBrush is definitely worth it. If you
have used Max, My or whatever, you can just
export your base mesh from that application and you modify
it in ZBrush and then you port it back
with the new displacement map and it's wonderful it saves
tons of time and it's fun to use so i
highly highly recommend if you're interested in zbrush
check it out now you don't have to worry
about paying since you can pay on so you can get a demo if
you're worried about learning there's
tons of info available you can even have the z scripts
which play out its tour for you and that's
pretty fun to watch but it's a bit creepy since there's no
voice it's just the mouse moving itself
but these practical guides are really worth it especially
the last one the 22 megabyte one
there's all sorts of tutorials in it but yeah have fun z
brush definitely check it out well that's the
end of the show for today i hope you enjoyed it next show
hopefully we'll have an interview by
then and i'm still working things out with a few people but
i'm going to try and get some
interviews pretty soon maybe hopefully by the next show we
'll have an interview make things
more interesting um i would still like to hear your
opinions if you have any if you have any
questions comments ideas whatever send it to info at cgcast
.com i would love your feedback to make
this show better also i heard that dreamworks is making mad
agascar 2 i mean seriously instead of
making a sequel they should make something new but we'll
see but i think that wraps up the show
I hope you enjoyed it.
I hope to see you next time.
If you want any information about what was said on the show
,
just check out the show notes at www.cgcast.com.
The website is coming soon.
Ruben is still working on it, fixing out some bugs.
What else?
About the cloth things I said today, don't forget.
You can check out the renders I made on the show notes to
compare.
Max cloth, first reactor.
Okay, that's all.
good night and I hope you enjoyed this show. Oh, and one
last thing, I would like to thank
John for donating a jingle for cgcast.com. Thanks, John.
