The topic of visual effects is something that everyone in this industry loves or has some interest in, as it’s exciting and very non linear to the normal processes most people are used to. There’s a lot of problem solving and both technical and creative requirements.

Week One: Getting your feet wet with VFX and touching on some more advanced subjects

• Introduction
• Taking a look at the possibilities of VFX
• The fundamentals of particles
• The fundamentals of Shaders
• The fundamentals of Afterburn
• Workflow tips, when rendering, when working with large amounts of particles etc.
• Wrap up

  Week Two: Death from above
  A missile zooms through the sky and impacts into a military bunker, destroying it in a fiery explosion with debris raining down everywhere.

  • Introduction
  • Creating a realistic missile trail
  • Creating the impact explosion
  • Creating the debris
  • Creating the aftermath/Smoke plumes

  Week Three: Twister
  Picture a big twister spinning slowly to showing it’s size, revealing its thick and thin layers. As it nears, it begins to tear apart a fence as well as grass blades and dirt chunks with puffs pulled from the ground. As it moves closer it begins to tear apart the house (Interactive lighting will be included).

  • Introduction
  • Creating the twisters dynamics
  • Creating the atmospheric effects
  • Tearing up a fence
  • Tearing up the house
  • Wrap up

  Week Four: Decay
  A hand lunges out of ground (zombie) demonstrating a lot of agony as it shakes, dust falling off it the whole time from a phasing texture. Then it begins to lose color and layers of skin eat away. Soon it begins to shrivel up and fall apart and then finally collapse into ash.

  • Introduction
  • Creating the initial arm ripping out of ground dirt effects
  • Making dirt and ash fall off the hand as it decays
  • Decaying the arm and all of the layers (both Shader and Geometry)
  • Creating the final decaying of the arm
  • Wrap up

  Week Five: Action! And frequently used effects
  Demonstration of various effects that are used daily and quite crucial to a VFX specialist.

  • Introduction
  • Creating gunfire
  • Creating ricochets
  • Grenade explosions - procedural, grenades can all drop into room and blow up in quick bangs.
  • Mortar explosions - Automated mortars firing down on areas. Big war hammer explosions.
  • Gunfire into water interaction and splashes
  • Wrap up

  Week Six: Crowds
  An army of scarab beetles charging along the uneven sandy ground avoiding objects and acting accordingly.

  • Introduction
  • Creating the initial effects
  • Directing the crowds motion specifically
  • Letting crowds know to avoid specific objects
  • Wrap up

  Week Seven: Big Storm
  Demonstration of various atmospheric effects all at once. Violent winds, hard rain pouring down, as well as hail and other effects interacting with various objects and puddles.

  • Introduction
  • Creating the initial Rain
  • Directing the rain
  • Creating interaction
  • Telling rain to drip down surfaces
  • Creating a hailstorm and breaking ice
  • Getting rain to react differently to puddles of water than hard surfaces
  • Wrap up

  Week Eight: How to slay a vampire
  Demonstration of how to create vampires 'ashing' similar to effects seen in Buffy, Blade, Constantine etc.

  • Introduction
  • Creating the initial burning up effect
  • Creating the Fire elements
  • Creating the Smoke
  • Creating the Sparks
  • Creating the ash
  • Wrap up

   

Level of Ability:
Although this workshop is aimed at beginner to advanced users of Afterburn and PFlow Tools, 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. The material covered will be presented carefully and informatively to ensure students keep up throughout the class with minimum setbacks.

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

Software Requirements:
Students need 3ds Max with two Autodesk Certified Animation plug-ins AfterBurn 3 and Particle Flow Tools®: Box 1. Allan will be using 3ds Max 8, however students can use 3ds Max 9.

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 3 and Particle Flow Tools®: Box 1, courtesy of Sitni Sati, Orbaz Technologies and Turbo Squid.

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 to the Visual Effects for Film workshop' together with all the neccessary information regarding the downloading of the 65 day trials of both plug-ins AfterBurn 3 and Particle Flow Tools®: Box 1.