In this polished tutorial, Esteban Cuesta shows us how to create long cracks over
an ancient statue and shatter it using Pulldownit plugin in Maya,
Bounded cracks is a new feature introduced in Pulldownit 5.0
allowing to create cracks over the surface of 3d models and controlling the strenght and extent of the crack easilly.
Thank you Esteban for this great tutorial!
Hum3D Flying Car challenge 2021 winners announced!, congratulations to all of them.
As sponsor of the competition Thinkinetic is proud to award with a Pulldownit Pro license to the winners.
take a look to best images and interviews with winners in the official announcement:
Pulldownit , the destruction plugin, is already available for Maya 2023 an brings an important enhancement, Shatter it tool is now 4 times faster. This new update v 5.3 will be available for the rest of supported Maya versions in the following weeks.
Maya 2023 itself brings quite a lot of improvements in animation, modeling, and performance. Boolean operations have been revamped with new modes, more intuitive visualization in the viewport and a new Boolean Stack editor for easily manage your changes. Retopology tool has been boosted with a new auto remesh option allowing to get quickly good results with less preparation of the scanned model. There are more deformer options and important performance improvements when modifying hi-poly meshes, besides you can now control the transparency level of the wireframe on shaded, which is very useful working with dense meshes.
Regarding Animation Autodesk has introduced a new Blue Pencil tool allowing to create 2D drawings and annotations directly in the Maya viewport which are saved with the scene.
There are also usability improvements to the Sweep mesh tool and Arnold render has been updated, besides Bifrost now support USD assets.
Since several years ago Autodesk is focused in strengthen Maya for animation tasks, and probably it counts with the most powerful toolset on this area, this new version includes also important enhancements for modeling, that’s good, however making Bifrost supporting USD assets isn’t the most appealing update for those working in VFX , hope Autodesk moves forward and devotes time to improve seriously Bifrost aswell.
AntCgi review and test many of Maya 2023 new features in this nice video:
Pulldownit , the destruction plugin, is already available for 3ds Max 2023 an brings an important enhancement, Shatter it tool is now 4 times faster. This new update v 5.3 will be available for the rest of supported 3ds Max versions in the following weeks.
Max 2023 itself brings several useful improvements, Retopology tool has been boosted with a new auto remesh option allowing to get quickly good results with less preparation of the scanned model, besides Retopology now preserves important mesh features like uvs, vertex colors and such, which is a huge time saver when the model involved is already mapped.
In the modelling field Smart Extrude, introduced first in Max 2022, has been enhanced with the ability to cut partially through an editable poly, besides it can be used along with the new working pivots feature allowing to modify a polygonal surface quickly or merging other elements into it.
Other interesting features are the new glTF exporter for those working in 3d models for web visualization and a revamped autobackup behaviour that can be tracked and controlled easily in the UI.
Since several years ago Autodesk is focused in strengthen 3ds Max for polygonal modelling and visualization tasks, that’s good, however 3ds Max is being increasingly used for visual effects due to its power to handle large scenes smoothly and specially the bunch of third party plugins intended for dynamics effects tightly integrated inside it, so an update to Bifrost is highly demanded for those working in VFX.
Eloy Andaluz introduces all of these new features in a nice video you can review here:
At Thinikinetic we are concerned by the invasion in Ukraine, and want to express our affection for all Ukranian people these terrible days.
Recently we have known our friends of Hum3D, a well-known site offering quality 3D models, counts with several employees living in Ukraine, actually its main office was in Járkov (the city that is bombing regularly since 2 weeks ago) and they had to evacuate all employees to other cities and safe places, surprisingly they continue working as normal as possible among the havok.
Hum3D has launched a campaign to help all his employees from Ukraine and their families, at Thinkinetic we have already contributed to it and want to spread the word with our community , you can join its Ukraine Aid Campaign here:
we hope all its employees get in a safe place and this terrible and unfair war ends soon.
Thinkinetic is proud sponsor of Hum3D Flying Cars competition 2022,
Pulldownit Pro license is one of the valuable prizes and there are plenty of them!
We invite all 3D artists to imagine the World with flying cars on the city roads. You can choose any related topic to the Sci-Fi city vehicles
those interested can check rules and prizes here:
Remember you can summit your work until December the 31st May, 2021.
Lee You Young ,student at the prestigious SF FILM SCHOOL in Korea has published this stunning shot and breakdown claiming it is her first VFX showreel, that’s pretty amazing given the complexity of the animation and quality of the final footage.
‘Pandemos’ is a project that expresses the situation in the covid-19 era that is sometimes described to be “like a movie” in the form of a SF video using VFX
Lee You explains the creature was modelled, rigged and animated in Maya, then sent to UE5 for rendering the whole scene and final composition with real footage was finally done in Nuke.
Pulldownit plugin was used to shatter the bottle containing “Covid vaccine” when the creature stepped on it releasing the virus fluid made using Maya Bifrost. Pulldownit simulation was exported in fbx format to UE5 to render the whole shot there.
Amazing job Lee You, thank you for sharing!
Happy New Year and best wishes from the Thinkinetic team, we want to thank specially to all users who have purchased or renewed their Pulldownit licenses along 2021.
Latest Pulldownit updates for 3ds Max and for Maya are already available in your user area, these updates features a number of fixes in stability and usability of the plugin. You can review the whole list of fixes in the version log pages on the Pulldownit web site.
visit Pulldownit for 3D MAX Version Logs
visit Pulldownit for Maya Version Logs
Pulldownit 5 launched in 2021 brought, among other things, a new bounded cracks feature which makes the creation of surface cracks easier than ever, along 2022 we will continue improving the tool, adding more user control over cracks generation, faster shattering , animated objects in dynamics enhancements and several other nice features we expect will be useful for your productions, take a look to this blog from time to time, next updates of Pulldownit will be announced and featured here.
thank you for trusting our tools, have a great year!
Hum3D Car render challenge 2021 winners announced!, congratulations to all of them.
As sponsor of the competition Thinkinetic is proud to award with a Pulldownit Pro license to the winners.
take a look to best images and interviews with winners in the official announcement:
Some of Pulldownit users has asked us how we did the stunning cathedral destruction in latest PDI reel, so we have decided to make a video tutorial explaining it step by step, and as you can see in the video below , it isnt dificult indeed,
Thank you to Esteban Cuesta for this great tutorial and final shot, please remember to “like” the video if you liked it:)
KineticThoughts 