BattlestarVFX

Well I’m finally done (more or less) with Iron Sky after 7 months and a bit of being in Finland working on the show. Fun times but I’m glad to be away from there and sleeping in a real bed again.

Now that I’m back this site will get a bit more attention paid to it although I’m considering phasing it out or turning it into an open gallery for BSG fans to post stuff that they want to see and the rest of the world can suck on it frankly. That is of course if the legal twats and NBC/Universal behave themselves. That and a few other fuck heads need to get a grip and move on with their pathetic lives and realize that it was just another disposable TV show designed to sell soap at the end of the day. Which is what it all comes down to. Money. The show is effectively of no value any more in my opinion. I can’t even watch now because I see through all the moody drama and pseudo-action for what it is. A TV show. In the end it wasn’t even that good. It could have been WAY BETTER! And now they are doing this blood and chrome thing. Pfff… Webseries? Aired? Make up your fucking minds folks. It’s pretty clear NBC-Uni doesn’t know what to do with the franchise itself so maybe its time to move on and give it a rest before it becomes Jane E.  Star Trek (as apposed to Rick Berman Star Trek). It’s a term someone used to describe what went wrong with Star Trek over the years and also to explain the horror of ST: Enterprise. Oh hell, let’s just say it  – Ron, David? You fucked up. Now walk away and stay far away from SciFi as possible. It’s in everyone’s best interests.

More of that to come I suppose, but that’s all a topic for some other future post. I don’t even want to get started on Terra Nova, another trek alumni conceptualized horror.

Now then – where was I. Oh yes, making the site more active! Well that’s going to take a few days or weeks to sort out but it is coming. Don’t panic and always remember your towel.

To the people who continue to try and fuck with me using other entities to try and “get back at me” for some misunderstood or misdirected “harm that I have done” to them of some off the wall kind (in other words, bogus), piss off.

To WB. Where the fuck is my money from the videos you sold and said you were going to pay me in July of last year?

To AR. Are you done yet?

To AD. No one cares.

To JF. You are still the same jerk you were 10 years ago, you fool no one.

To CC. Are you sure you know what’s going on?

To US. Be happy you didn’t get sued.

You know who you are.

I’m told that very soon we will be all happy LightWave kats as 10.1 is almost ready for release. This is good news and awesome because its just in time for Siggraph!

I know I haven’t been around much because my attention has mostly been over at Liberty3d.com and of course I am working tripple time on Iron Sky here in Tampere, Finland, but there will be a lot of updates coming soon. For example one thing you can check out now if you are looking for a new workstation to use LightWave or Fusion or whatever you want on it – you can get 100 bucks off our brand new Liberty3D HD workstation built by Shuttle Computer USA.

Check out www.liberty3d.com for more details.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been working hard with Luke Whitehorn and our VFX producer Samuli (from StarWreck Fame) here at Iron Sky to translate all of the ships in the show from Maya to LightWave.

LightWave may have its “warts”, but I will tell you this. People who model in LW and work in LW are SO MUCH MORE DEDICATED to making things look awesome.

More details and info on this to come.

Ok so now that I have arrived in Tampere, Finland I can let you know that I am working on Iron Sky. A film produced in conjunction with Blind Spot Pictures, Energia Productions here in Tampere is where I am currently and taking LightWave 10.1 through its paces and then some with the assets from the show.

For the moment I am doing previs and tech stuff, in preparation for next week when we really start to throw down the hammer and bang out shots. I am joined by Luke Whitehorn (the guy who wrote vRoom for LightWave) and we are having fun for sure but have barely stepped out of the office over the last 5 days of being here.

More details and fun times to be described when I can.

For more details on the movie and to support it, hit www.ironsky.net!

As I mentioned yesterday, although in vague terms – here is more information on Alan Elder’s BSG movie.

He made this himself, on his own personal time with a single computer. I have been watching his progress on the boards here with models of BaseStars and Battlestar construction over the last year.  With the release of his completed video which is several minutes long, I have to say I am very impressed.

Now before anyone from some network or some parasite says anything – again I stress that he did this all on his own, from the modeling animation and comp work its all his.

More information can be found here on our board.

http://battlestarvfx.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=171&p=1553#p1553

You can also hit the YT video direct. http://youtu.be/T0GI2GHgwBI

I must first of all apologize to everyone out there for seemingly disappearing off the “grid” for the last few months. However there are several reasons for it.

First off I have been rather busy with a few things. Let’s see now…

1. Continuing to fend off personal attacks by various individuals who have a grudge against me and others associated with me.

2. Finishing and then re-writing a sci-fi feature film. That’s pretty much done for the moment. More info on that later.

3. Working hard when I can, on my 12″ EP release that I hope to complete over the next couple of months and have out by the summer or early fall.

4. Continue client work.

5. Continue to provide advice and tips to various good people who want to know more about how the VFX of BSG and other shows are done. This has proven to be a very rewarding experience even with the amount of barriers that have been thrown up in the way by people from item 1 in this list and more. You will very soon see what I am talking about and the results are very very impressive and I am very humbled by them.

6. Start work on a new feature film as the LightWave3D VFX team leader for a very very cool film out of the EU. More on that later. Again because of issues and jerks concerned in item 1 of this list.

Now then that I have give you a small and frankly vague update on where I have been and what I have been up to (and others) I hope you will all understand that even if I seem to disappear for a while its for very good reasons. This site is not abandoned in anyway. Actually I think its going to get a lot busier around here very shortly.

Stand by for the reason why soon.

Your friendly VFX Feline,

Kat.

I finally got around to recording the third installment of Advance Space Scenes Creation. Volume 3 covers several topics but focuses on Stars, how to make them and more importantly how to make them “warp” like in the series Star Trek (which btw, happened to use LightWave3D almost exclusively throughout its entire new series runs from TNG to Enterprise – that’s almost 20 years!) when the enterprise or some other ship needed to get from planet X to Star System Y really fast.

This video is available exclusively from Liberty3d.com and is only $17.99USD. It’s approximately 110 minutes in length and covers everything you need to know about how to replicate the Warp Stars effect in StarTrek and how to make your own Stars if you don’t have StarPro from MaasDigital (google it, its worth the money!). There are also some ship lighting tips, and some details about how to add a more dynamic look to your scene with simple camera moves and positioning.

Check out http://www.liberty3d.com/2011/01/advance-space-scene-creation-volume-3/for more details.

And without further delay, NewTek today officially released LightWave 10.0.

This is said to be the most powerful and robust LightWave to ever be released and I would agree. As I have been a beta tester for LightWave since I started on BSG in the late spring of 2005, I have watched this application evolve over what is now over a full 5 year span. A lot of things have changed, but thankfully the most important thing has remained the same. It’s still LightWave and that was the most critical feature that MUST, for at least me and many others remain the most solid part of the application.

I am happy to report that this is the case. LightWave 10 is the strongest LightWave release to date because even with all its new features, speed and functionality, it remains easy to use and fun. That is so critical in a sea of apps that are so called “industry standards” that are brutal to learn let alone use day in and day out. LightWave has always been artist friendly. It didn’t matter if you were just starting out or have used it for close to two decades like I have. It’s just great to use. I wish more people would see that. Now with LW10 here on the scene and turning some heads again, maybe more people will.

I want to thank NewTek, their developers and Rob Powers and the rest of the crew responsible for making this release as awesome as it is even though it had its ups and downs over the course of the last two years. It’s an amazing product and I can’t say enough about how happy I am to be able to continue to use LightWave as a LightWave artist.

Cheers kats~! =^..^= and happy mew year!

Well I hope everyone had a Meowy Christmas! For us at Liberty3d.com it was pretty good all things considered. It seems though that there are still a few assholes out there with an agenda (or simply too stupid to realize they are being used as meat puppets) against me. Alain Rivard… This means you. You need to stop being a moron and just live your life. You have so much hate against people its poisoning your soul. So give it up. No amount of your threats against me or people who I know is going to do you any good, in fact its making you seem like an even bigger idiot and its costing you future work. Don’t let the man at crooked studios bend you into being his tool.

Ok now onto better things.

I’ve been working hard over the past week building up additions to the render farm in my place. I am now pushing almost 150ghz of CPU power available for rendering with the new x6 core AMD PhenomII’s running at 3ghz per core. I have been testing them while I move a lot of old data around from shows I have worked on over the past 10 years. It’s been quite fun watching these new additions chew through test shots from BSG and other productions with lightning speed! Each new box cost under 700 bucks all in. Very nice.

During this time I have also been working on my feature film script and it’s now very close to be finished. Two more acts and its golden. Once that completes, I have begun enlisting recruits, some of who I have worked with professionally in the past (see Alain, you could have been in on this, as I could have used your modeling skills but since you have been a massive dick over the last year and a half you are now excluded from this project and anything I do, forever) at various companies and on other shows to start the ground work leading into actual production, pending financing. Even if it doesn’t get financed through the regular channels who are interested, I’m going ahead with the project because its excellent for showing people who something like this can be made on next to nothing and look top notch. So from a tutorial stand point alone its going to be a full course from shooting to final FX and editing, plus sound design and DCP (whats that you might ask? Look up Digital Cinema Package on google). This is going to be a very long production and process as I still have paid work I have on my plate and coming up next year that takes priority for the moment. However I am moving forward with it. That show will eventually get its own site dedicated to its production, so be on the look out for it.

More stuff soon!