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Todd Sheridan Perry
Todd Sheridan Perry reviews the latest animation and vfx-related software releases and gizmos for Animation Magazine. He is the co-owner and vfx supervisor for Max Ink Café and Max Ink Productions. If you have review suggestions for him, you can email him at ducky@maxinkcafe.com.
Articles by Todd Sheridan Perry
Craft Director Studio
March 17, 2010 – Years ago, I took a look at Craft Animations’ rigs when it was exclusive to 3ds Max, and found it to be indispensable not only for pipelines with vehicles, but also for camera animation work. The w...
Pixologic’s ZBrush 3.5
March 17, 2010 – I have to admit that I only became familiar with ZBrush last year despite its excellent initial reputation as a hobbyist’s tool. The well-designed 3.5 version was introduced around the time of last...
ZBrush Digital Sculpting Human Anatomy
By Scott Spencer (Sybex Books, 416 pages)
March 17, 2010 – To celebrate the arrival of my newly found friend, ZBrush 3.5, I picked up the new book: ZBrush Digital Sculpting Human Anatomy by the ZBrush Guy, Scott Spencer. Spencer, who also wr...
StudioGPU’s MachStudio Pro
December 23, 2009 – As many have pointed out in recent months, expectations for speed in the 3D community have reached a breaking point. However, some companies are stepping up and pushing the envelope even further. O...
Autodesk Maya 2010
December 23, 2009 – Back around SIGGRAPH this year, which in CG time is a LONG time ago, Autodesk released Maya 2010 with a plethora of other Autodesk acquisitions. Within that release were some internal advances—anim...
Unity 3D’s Unity iPhone
December 23, 2009 – You know the iPhone app. phenom has reached its tipping point when even the Louvre Museum has jumped on the bandwagon. Meanwhile, I think the number of iPhone users has reach a gazillion now. That’...
Autodesk’s 3ds Max 2010
August 11, 2009 – A few months ago, Autodesk released Max 2010 with a brand new coat of paint to enter the Vista age, as well as some new features that fortunately have some chops.
The first noticeable change in Ma...
Orbaz’s Particle Flow Tools Box#2
August 11, 2009 – Particle Flow, for those outside of the loop, is the quite powerful particle system within 3ds Max. It’s not quite Houdini, but it does have some remarkable tricks—including a few that were added i...
Luxology’s modo 401
August 11, 2009 – Luxology is seriously out of control! I’m going to recommend that you go visit their website to check out all the colorful candy they have to offer in the Easter basket they are calling modo 401. I...
Autodesk Toxik
July 24, 2009 – For the purposes of this review, I sat down with an artist who has been using Toxik in production so that I could see how the software dealt with real day-to-day challenges. Autodesk referred me to...
Wacom’s Intuos4
July 24, 2009 – I know I’ve said this many times before, but seriously, folks: I love my Wacom. For what I do in the visual effects world, I get to rely on my Wacom tablet a lot. My productivity drops down to that...
3DAliens glu3D
July 24, 2009 – Fluids are difficult! Just ask anyone—scientists, physics students, crabbers in the Bering Sea will all agree. In 3D animation and visual effects, the goal is to make them not so difficult—or at le...
Autodesk Maya 2009
April 01, 2009 – This past year was a very busy period for Autodesk, which has added a few new jewels to its crown while keeping on top of its own current slate for products. One of the company’s more recent releas...
MotionBuilder 2009
April 01, 2009 – MotionBuilder 2009 is a new version of an Autodesk 3D tool which focuses exclusively on animation and all things animated. It is often used to edit data in motion-capture pipelines for both film ef...
SoftimagelXSI 7
April 01, 2009 – Softimage’s latest release of XSI is leaps and bounds beyond the previous one—which is saying a lot since XSI was already an extremely powerful piece of software to begin with. A huge list of advan...
Adobe’s Creative Suite 4 (CS4)
April 01, 2009 – You can’t really discuss any one component from Adobe without discussing the entire suite and how the programs work together. However, we can only fit so much info into such a small space that I’ll...
Luxology’s modo 302
August 11, 2008 – Sometimes I get the feeling that I’m constantly writing reviews of modo. But that’s because the talented team at Luxology keeps coming up with new versions of their popular tool. Luxology really ge...
Autodesk 3ds Max 2009
August 05, 2008 – I’m not sure when Autodesk is ever going to pull the trigger and just marry Maya and Max together; probably because the marriage is going to end up in death and violence like the Montagues and Capu...
Alienware Area-51 m15x
August 05, 2008 – I’ve been reading that the new Alienware Area-51 m15x is a gaming machine. Sure, it’s great at games, pushing through high polycount mayhem at 1920 x 1040 and allowing for death and destruction to ...
Alienware Area-51 m9750 Notebook
October 01, 2007 – I have to begin this review with a little confession: I already own an Alienware laptop computer, and it has treated me with the utmost love from the first day it came into my life. We are still to...
Eyeon’s Rotation and Vision
September 06, 2007 – I’ve been a Digital Fusion user for the past decade and have seen the evolution of the software to its current form. (The Toronto-based company unveiled the Fusion 5.2 at the recent SIGGRAPH confab...
Maxon BodyPaint 3D V.10
August 20, 2007 – BodyPaint comes to us from the developers of Cinema4D, and it’s now in its third generation. Obviously, with new generations comes more maturity and stability … and new cool features. This handy to...
Massive 3.0: A Real Crowd-Pleaser
August 20, 2007 – The rat pack in Ratatouille, the armies of thousands in 300, the herds of animals in Evan Almighty, and before that, in 20 other feature films, all animated with Massive, might...
NVIDIA Helps Bring Short to Life
August 20, 2007 – We meet the two slacker stars of animator/director Tim Heath’s short film Plush Life as they drive to work one morning. Lundo is furry and looks a little like a Muppet. Flint has plastic eye...
Caligari Truespace 7.5
August 17, 2007 – Caligari Truespace has been around since the beginning of time; i.e., in terms of 3D content development. In fact, Truespace was one of my first 3D programs running on an Amiga … yes, a Commodore A...
Maya Professional Tips and Techniques
May 23, 2007 – You may have noticed that I have a tendency to like previous primers published by Autodesk Maya Press. They have a way of taking the apparently mundane problems of the 3D geek and put them into a p...
Maya Visual Effects: The Innovator’s Guide
May 23, 2007 – I’m often a stickler for abiding to methodologies that conform to ways tools are used in the production world—especially when it comes to manuals, books and tutorials. This is because most people t...
Advanced Maya Texturing and Lighting
May 23, 2007 – Lee Lanier, the author of the more general Maya Professional Tips and Techniques (also reviewed this month), has focused his knowledge into the realm of digital lighting in Maya, which is a ...
Craft Animation’s Director Tools
May 22, 2007 – Swedish company Craft Animations has come up with a series of tools that not only save time in rigging, but additional savings are gained because the rigs are meant to create not only procedural an...
Skymatter’s Mudbox
March 01, 2007 – With the release of Mudbox from Skymatter, 3D sculpting and modeling has jumped to a new level. The guys at Skymatter—Weta Digital alum—created this modeling tool based on their personal trials and...
Sitni Sati’s FumeFX Version 1.0
March 01, 2007 – In almost every conversation I had about the differences between 3ds Max and Maya, I used to bring up Max’s lack of a fluid dynamics system. But that’s a thing of the past since Sitni Sati, the bri...
Autodesk’s MotionBuilder 7.5
May 08, 2006 – Autodesk’s new MotionBuilder 7.5 is the first software release since the company completed the acquisition of Alias last January. Not a general 3D program that handles modeling, dynamics, animation...
Adobe Production Studio
May 08, 2006 – Since I’ve been around for a while, I’ve grown up with Adobe products. I’ve watched After Effects migrate from CoSa. I’ve seen Illustrator absorb and supplant Freehand. And I’ve witnessed Photoshop...
Razer Pro|Solutions’ Pro|Click v. 1.6
May 08, 2006 – When I first received the Razer mouse to review, I thought “this is a mouse … how much more advanced can a mouse get? How much more productive could I possibly be with a different kind of mouse?” W...
Eovia’s Carrara 5
April 25, 2006 – Sometimes big things come in little boxes. Such is the case with Carrara 5 from Eovia. I have to admit, the product never really crossed my path—and I’ve been around. So, when I started to look thr...
