Houdini: Character Rigging Class

I'm checking out a Houdini Character Rigging class next monday at Side Effects studio in Santa Monica. I went there a couple of weeks ago for a class and they have some really nice facilities and some really nice people running them.

Houdini is a 3d application that's been around for about ten years. It's known to have a heavy focus in effects and dynamics, which it does, but in the last couple of versions they've really stepped up their character tools and it's become really well rounded and very powerful. It's incredibly fun to use as well.

The Class: Houdini Character Rigging Class, Monday April 20, 2009

Houdini/Side Effects: http://www.sidefx.com

Alas, Darkfall

I've stopped playing officially. Haven't been on in a long time but I wasn't quite sure yet if I was going to stop completely. I came to the decision that the career comes first and I really just don't have the capacity anymore to do both and give it my all. I can't play casually, it's not in my wiring. In Shadowbane I didn't have much of a job so it was totally fine to defend the city until 7am 5 nights a week. Can't do that stuff anymore though and keep up with life around it. I might come back later in the year but most likely not.

My account is spoken for already, sorry!

Tech-Artists.org - Scripting and Tool Building Website

I found this website last week through CGTalk, it's a forum and community set up just for tech artists and techie scriptie people in general. There is some great info there, check it out!

http://www.tech-artists.org

It's a great resource for learning about scripting and programming in Python, MEL, Maxscript, Jscript, C#, etc.

New Blog: Script Swell

I put together a new blog to keep track of all my snippets of code, scripts, tools, etc. that I've made that might benefit other people. Some stuff is proprietary of course so I can't post everything I make at work, but most of it is just little snippets of MEL and Maxscript that might help some people along. I've been doing a lot of work lately creating shelves and workflow enhancements for the artists at our studio and some of the things I make will be found at Script Swell.

http://www.scriptswell.net/

MEL, Maxscript, Python, JScript, etc.

Introducing: Awesome Ball™ - Maya Rig

I was experimenting with some expressions and things today in Maya and built this rig I call, "Awesome Ball™". It has full squash and stretch capabilities along with elite world scaling abilities. You'll not find a ball this awesome anywhere else. It was built in Maya 2008, but it's an ascii so you can edit the file and use it in any Maya you like.

You can find it here: http://www.jaygrenier.com/assets/rigs/awesomeBall.rar

Try it out and let me know if it works well for ya.

Slumdog Millionaire

Emily and I finally saw it! Holy wow this is an amazing film. Danny Boyle is my hero.

Final Fantasy VII - I still love this game..

After all this time this game still rules. Emily and I are playing through it again. Such good fun.

Tifa imo!