Proud to say Pulldownit plugin has been nominated for the CG Awards 2015 in the “best plugin” category.
Each year the CG awards by 3D World magazine, rewards the finest art and best tools for animation and VFX.
You can participate with your vote to choose the winner of each category, If you like Pulldownit plugin, you can support it and vote for it here:
https://thecgawards.com/vote/plug-in/pulldownit-3/
good luck to all the nominees!
Pulldownit v 3.5 is available for latest 3d Max 2016 and Maya 2016, in addition it comes with several fixes and useful new features :
Congruent vertex normals after shattering, removing in this way the visible seams of light reflection between the broken pieces,
Uniform\Local\Radial shatter pattern auto-adjust to selected shards region only, making reshatering more user-friendly while keeping the nice Conform Voronoi reshattering introduced in v 3.0, besides Uniform shatter pattern can be offsetted/squeezed, very handy option when user is interested in destroying only part of a model.
Fracturing hi-poly meshes dynamically can be time consuming, user can now force convex shapes on fracture bodies creation to speed up computations of fracture, or to make faster destruction previews.
Transition animation-dynamics is one of the most powerful features of PDI, in this update we extend it so user can animate a group of fragments with motion keys and set it to start in dynamics after being hit or at a desired frame.
There are also other improvements and fixes specific for 3d Max or Maya plugins, here the full list.
New Features:
Fixes:
3DArtist #issue 81 makes a review of best plugins for 3d Max and Maya, Pulldownit by Thinkinetic is included among best FX plugins for both of them.
This issue features other interesting articles as Modelling a hi-end velociraptor, Rules of animation by Pixar artists and many more,.. worth to chek it!
https://www.imagineshop.co.uk/magazines/3dartist/3d-artist-issue-81.HTML
James Little member of FX team of POLIS film has confirmed Pulldownit plugin was used for the destruction of the combat bot , POLIS teaser is a Vimeo “Staff Pick” and has won several awards,
James kindly explains several details about how this effect was done
Using PDI allowed me to quickly visualize the shot and iterate in a timely manner . It’s speed and accuracy with collisions is a very powerful feature in pulldownit.
I actually did the simulation in three stages to get the look and feel I
wanted. I used PDI’s awesome rbd engine to sim the major armor panels on
the robot as straight rbd’s with no fracturing, as metal isn’t so brittle
that it would shatter at room temperature.
After I got a motion I liked I baked out the geo. I then selected a bunch
of key pieces inside the droids innards that would create interesting and
unique silhouettes when they are ripped out of the body cavity and set them
up as rbd objects.
I then used the earlier baked sim to be passive colliders to drive the new
PDI sim. I wanted a richer feel to the effect so you see shapes more like
nut’s bolts, and wires coming from his insides.
After that step was done, I cached out that sim as well and used the
resulting cached geo as a passive collider yet again to actually fracture
random pieces inside so you get irregular shapes filling up the explosion
cavity and adding overall materia/mass to the effect.
This workflow is very friendly for getting the exact look you want, as you
can preserve the parts of the sim you like and then focus on a single
aspect of the effect at a time to get the desired end result. It’s also
much easier to sim when only one layer is calculating at a time.
After the PDI sims were done and cached, I emitted instanced nParticles to
make up the extremely fine particulate material that would not be suitable
for an rbd sim. I then used the nParticles to emit Maya fluids to create
the dust cloud.
I really enjoyed doing this shot and using PDI really made the task much
easier and manageable.
The Full POLIS teaser
3DWorld magazine issue #194 includes a full page article about Pulldownit 3 new features, besides Thinkinetic is proud sponsors of The 3DWorld Cg Awards 2015 in the category “Best VFX short Film”,
You can vote for your favorite VFX tools and works here,
of course you can vote for Pulldownit in the “Plug-in” category if you like it:)
Thinkinetic and CICE “La Escuela Profesional de Nuevas Tecnologías”, have signed a collaboration agreement, because of it Pulldownit training is now included in VFX courses by CICE, besides Thinkinetic will perform special workshops and software evaluation tests in the computers and outstanding facilities at CICE.
Carlos Pegar, Product Manager at Thinkinetic met at CICE facilities with Marco Antonio Fernández Doldan, Innovation & Education Manager at CICE, to sign the agreement.
Pulldownit by Thinkinetic is an innovative software for realistic simulation of digital destruction available as a plug-in for Autodesk 3D Max and Maya.
CICE is an accredited school offering education programs in VFX, 3D, compositing, NLE and Sound, authorized by most leading software companies from around the world. They are located in Madrid, Spain – one of the most important European cities in terms of production, quality and innovation.
More Info:
http://cice.es/noticia/cice-formacion-oficial-en-animacion-3d-y-vfx/
Televisor studio and ColorTV created this thrilling intro for Deadfall Adventures, game by Nordic Games, official launch. They confirmed Pulldownit plugin was used in the jungle plane scene:
One of the most spectacular scenes is the plane flying towards the camera. The number of elements we had to generate for this scene was overwhelming. You can see the amount of work that had to be put into this scene on the “making of” material. We used the Pulldownit plug-in http://www.pulldownit.com to crash the trees, which saved us a lot of time and workload.
making of video:
You can read the full case study here:
http://www.cgmeetup.net/home/making-of-deadfall-adventures-cinematic/
Pulldownit updates to v 3.3 fixing several issues of release 3.0, this update is available in the costumers area, after download it you have to replace the current plugin for the new one.
FIXES for Maya plugin:
Added warning when shattering and active layer is hidden
FIXES for 3DS Max plugin:
Added set object layer for shattering when current layer is hidden
RenderOut issue #18 includes Battle London Case Study translated to Spanish, this amazing shot by Igor Gozalez won the last VFX learning internet contest,
Pulldownit plugin was used extensively int he making of the shot along with Maya fluids, worth to read the full article!
3DArtist issue #72 includes a review of Pulldownit plugin by Aldo Vicente, he makes several tests and the final score is 9/10, thats great, althought anyone using Pulldownit knows it is an excellent tool:)
The Magazine is plenty of other interesting articles and tutorials, dont miss it!
KineticThoughts 