recovering from lulu....

lulu.com  has decided not to carry a certain product type anymore and focus on book and E-book publishing.
Let's just say that my entire video tutorial library was part of the 'certain product type' and now my links to lulu are empty.  So I have set up a new account with www.bytecommerce.com and am serving them myself through another provider.  
It has been 10 some-odd years since I had created a webpage...  the last program I used was called Web Dwarf.  I have given Google Sites a chance, and I really like the ease with which I can put up webspace.  It's certainly not as easy as a blog, but Google products are integrated, and I can cross reference media and galleries.
So.. if you all want to take a look at the sparse offerings at www.joecosman.net, a short page will redirect you to my google site... where you will also be able to 'buy it now' on the tutorials that *were* on lulu.  drop me a note if you have any questions or difficulties getting the videos.

Ch6: Effects

a simple explanation of how to use and layer Messiah effects on an object for complex deforms.

Rigging 1 foot re-explanation

It's strange how things come back to haunt you, even if its not your fault.  I have had my instructional videos out for 8 years now, and the only complaint I have gotten has been this tutorial video not yielding the same results for other people.
It turns out that some default settings had changed in messiah over the years, causing some headaches with my learning materials. But there isn't anything wrong with the project files or video at all.  Here's why:

Messiah's metaEffectors

Way back in messiah:studio V2, I had decided to animate this skeleton model.  This was my stress test for their new MetaEffector tool back when it was first introduced.  MetaEffectors are weight fields that can be used to isolate different meshes, change how skeletons deform meshes, and even influence how shaders are blended, since it is a value-driven volume.  while I may not be good at explaining *what* they do, I can show you this example. I used MetaEffectors to isolate and assign 160 bones in this skeleton model file to the animation controls within messiah. back then, it was no easy feat. this skeleton easily exceeded 100,000 polygons. so much that it had to be modeled into 5 parts  in the beginning, and took up to 5 minutes to even open on my workstation.

albertasaurus walk cycle

I found an older animation I had done with my skeleton of Albertasaurus libratus.  rigged in messiah, connected to maya through Messiah's live connection and rendered out from there.

Rigging1 and teaser for minituts1

I was digging through my archives when I saw my old portable hard drive.  I had to load it up to see what was on it.  Lo, I found the teaser vids that I had created to sell my first two instructional videos: Minituts1, and Rigging1.  This was back before youtube, so they had to be small, and load fast off of my site.

 Well, joecosman.com hasnt been up for quite a while, the times have slowly replaced it with automated entities such as blogger.com, youtube and vimeo and other various forms of online self-authoring.  So.. here they are from the grave.

you can still purchase these videos still  on www.lulu.com.

I am  sure I have another teaser showing off minituts2 on another backup.  I will keep finding those things and dust them off for you to see.  In the meanwhile, here are some press images from animate2

the Noob teaches you about keyframes and animation concepts in Animate1

 Rigging a full character with facial as well as a four legged character in Rigging2

just parts of a lesson on rigging in Minituts1.  I really like the topology I made for it.

weekend sketches

My brother came over on the weekend, and we had some fun sketching and chatting.  I was showing him the shading pens I had, and some of the charcoals.  I dug up some old pastels I had inherited and played with those.

it sure felt good to just goof off on paper for no reason at all.  the face was drawn from memory, brown pastel/charcoal. smudged away with an old rag until I had my values set in.

A good example of getting down to detail from wide strokes. It started out as a rag smudge and went from there.  I was showing my brother when to stop adding and adjusting... which is when the idea finally shows itself.  Messing  with it more just leads to ruining the whole drawing, as I have clearly done here with the torso and backshading.. ahh well..

Ch5: IK Chains

  This video explains how to quickly set up an IK chain inside Messiah Studio.

2d Picture dump

Its about time I started putting some older stuff up.  alot of it is from my old website from years gone past, but some of these pics are just quick sketches during meetings, or traditional painting back in the day when I thought I had some real talent.   Enjoy!

Ch4: items and heirarchies

Ch4: Items and Hierarchies

 

I upgraded to V5! so... now its time to continue explaining the Messiah interface and methods.

I dont know if I can be consistent about releasing these videos in a timely fashion, but at least they will be available for everyone to get a basic understanding of the program. 

if you are having some issues with using the program, head over to http://www.setuptab.com and enter the chat.  I am there sometimes, and I may be able to help you out.  who knows, it may just wind up as a tip on youtube!....

traditional sculpting dump.

Here are a few pics of sculptures I did a while back.  I am a big believer in traditional media.  there is nothing like feeling, touching, and observing actual materials in an object.  Engaging as many senses as you can, such as smell, feel, touch, will help you learn more about the object you are creating;  It will solidify your understanding of shapes and flow. You will understand composition, and build out the habits of visualizing in 3 dimensions.

this macquette was commissioned for a private estate...

 

...which turned into this 30 foot monster.

 

my good friend Nathan Lindsay designed this fellow, which I turned into 3d.

 

Everyone wants to dream.  I was steampunk before it was popular...

 

Real media lets you explore textures and understand them in a different way than digital can.

 

This sculpture was commissioned by the North American Museum Of Ancient Life.

It is the only life sculpture that the kids can play on, and was masterfully engineered to be bulletproof by my brothers, who are technical geniuses.

Dare to share. a PMG success...

Yes, I have not posted in a few years, and I need to get back in the swing. This is worth writing down:

PMG issued a challenge. In one week, how many people could pass along a message about an animation/rendering package called Messiah:Studio. Ten bucks a license was the reward if they could get enough people interested. Viral marketing in this day and age was a perfect fit for a challenge like that. Well... in one week, they got 100,000 views from over 114 countries, and countless numbers signed up for a license to "give it a try".

I am excited about this because I have been teaching this software for a decade to people who were willing to 'give it a try'. Hardly anyone knows of its existence, but it has flown under the radar doing its magic in studios and freelance jobs for decades. It is robust not because of the things it has done in the past, but because of what it can do now and tomorrow.

Seriously, the power of this program has not even been scratched. It has a full fledged nodal based shading system and renderer. You can even composite shaders on top of shaders for that Non-Photorealistic look, all linkable to cameras, lights, even bones, and weights.

it has C-language based scripting that can also program shaders, a realtime iconic interface system(armatures) that can control any aspect of your 3d scene, and even execute expressions.

It's got bone dynamics, cloth dynamics, sub surface scattering, network rendering, multithreaded, multicore rendering and interface acceleration. It can hook into Maya, Lightwave and MAX and 'puppeteer' your models live in their own native interface.

You can export models out to game engines, such as Unity3d, complete with animation and whatever else you need. Here is an example I made a while back in V4.5 straight export with some unity-programmed logic thrown in.

Now that PMG has the attention it asked for, it needs people to show off their software. We have all the tools we need to make what we want. We just need good artists to leverage them and push the software into the mindspace of the average user looking to tell their own 3d stories.
Everyone who has taken the leap of faith has not regretted it.

And yes, me and my friends can get you up to speed pretty fast with a tightly knit community with people who use the software daily.

Will you 'give it a try'?

Then head over to http://www. setuptab.com and see what the members are doing, as well as view and purchase instructional videos, models, and chat live with the users through IRC.

I also sell instructional videos from Lulu at http://stores.lulu.com/joecosman.