Issue 5

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FEATURING...

COVER STORY: THE MAKING OF SIN CITY
A behind-the-scenes look at how CaféFX helped create the gritty world of Sin City.
BY CHRISTINE BUNISH

I FEEL LIKE I'M GOING INTO ANOTHER DIMENSION...
With theater releases of Steamboy, Appleseed, and Innocence here in the States, it's no secret that Anime has finally reached the attention of your average movie-goer. Here are 20 quick tips that should help get you on the path to making your own CG Anime.
BY WILLIAM "PROTON" VAUGHAN

MENTAL RAY FOR MAYA PART 2
Boaz explains how to render custom passes with mental ray and how to control the Framebuffer.
BY BOAZ LIVNY

MAKING FACES IN SOFTIMAGE|XSI
Creating blendshapes and controllers within SOFTIMAGE|XSI using the advances made with v. 4.0 to create an economical and fast setup. Learn to create 3D control sliders to combine different shapes and the expressions needed to link these to the shapes.
BY MATT MORRIS

SPLITTING CELLS
Often applying image maps to HyperVoxels leads to unwanted results when animated. By using LightWave's integrated HyperVoxel textures, you can achieve excellent results.
BY DAN ABLAN

FACIAL EXPRESSIONS: USING ZBRUSH AND MAYA TOGETHER
Pixologic's ZBrush is starting to make a huge impact in the CG animation and modeling industry. This tutorial shows one of the many ways in which incorporating ZBrush into your Maya animation workflow can make an arduous task, such as creating blendshape targets for facial animation, easy and fast.
BY ERIC S. KELLER

PARTICLES AND HYPERVOXELS - THEY GO HAND IN HAND
Particles and collisions for bullet hits and the new gradient for HyperVoxels: Relative Particle Age.
BY DEUCE BENNETT

FINAL PREPARATIONS PRIOR TO BINDING THE MODEL
Part 3 of Peter Ratner's Setting Up the Human Model for Animation series.
BY PETER RATNER

SMOKE AND MIRRORS: NORMAL MAPPING FOR REALTIME
Create the illusion of tons of detail in realtime models while maintaining realistic polygon counts.
BY JAKE CARVEY

UNCLE ROBIN'S MINI GUIDE TO MEL
VOLUME 1: THE WAY OF PROGRAMMING
An introduction to programming with MEL in a way that makes it easy to learn, use, and debug.
BY ROBIN SCHER

MODELING A CREATURE WITH THE EXTENDER TOOL
By the time you're finished with this lesson, you will have mastered LightWave's Extender tool.
BY ROBERT CALANDRIELLO

COMPOSITING 101: LAYERS IN DIGITAL FUSION
Explore the flexibility we have when working with layers produced from any favorite 3D application in order to deliver a better final version of our creative vision.
BY GREGORY GLEZAKOS

ESSENTIALS: LSCRIPT COMMANDER
How to quickly create a plug-in so that every time a scene is loaded, a click of the button automatically adds a 3-point lighting setup. A great way to automate tasks!
BY BRAD CARVEY

INTRODUCTION TO MENTAL RAY PROGRAMMING
An overview of how even those with only limited coding skills can leverage some of the power of mental ray to create basic tools to enhance their pipeline, using the example of a reflection shader with distance-based falloff.
BY ALAN JONES

CHARACTER ANIMATION AND RIGGING
FOR LIGHTWAVE
This article describes how to use Maestro to auto-rig and then animate your character.
BY BRIAN PACE

KOOSHLINGS
An editorial by DARIUSH DERAKHSHANI

FAREWELL
An editorial by DAN ABLAN

STUFF
An editorial by BRAD CARVEY

JOB PERSPECTIVES FOR SOFTIMAGE|XSI ARTISTS
An editorial by RAFFAEL DICKREUTER

FINAL RENDER: POOPING IN THE RING
An editorial by ANDREA CARVEY

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