Perry Harovas - The Best of Both Worlds, Part Two: Using Softimage and Maya to create a VFX pipline using the best tools for the job!

Now that the movement of data back and forth from Maya and Softimage is far easier, I plan to re-examine the pipeline methods for getting data out of one package and into the other.

ICEflow and the whole "Send to Maya" and "Send Back" system makes creating changes and making tweaks a far easier undertaking, even for the smaller studios.

I plan to take my example scene and improve upon it in multiple ways: creating cloth dynamics in Maya, and exporting the results with the camera move into Softimage; creating ICE effects and having them react to the Maya cloth simulations within Softimage; creating explosions in Maya Fluid Effects that are rendered in Maya, and brought into Soft via compositing.

This should greatly simplify the workflow, and be a good follow up session to the Siggraph Best of Both Worlds MasterClass session I did.

The tangible result of this masterclass will a coherent set of production-worthy ocean FX rigs. Being effective at using mental ray requires understanding what settings affect both rendered image quality and the time to complete and image. Materials, Lights, and Render Settings all work together to impact quality and speed, and the goal of this Master Class is to highlight the key 3ds Max/Design and mental ray features and settings you need to understand to help achieve fast, high-quality renderings with maximum quality.