After effects tutorial-Hack GPU ray tracing for unsupported cards

Today we are going to hack GPU ray tracing in After Effects. After effects CS6 is capable of doing GPU ray tracing. But due to the limited official support all the cuda powered graphics card are not available for this purpose in After Effects. But the fact is that we can simply enable the GPU ray tracing for unsupported graphics cards also. You need the CUDA powered NVidia graphics card. Simply follow the following procedure and you can get the GPU acceleration for Ray tracing.

Anyway this technique is not officially supported but you can get a good amount of acceleration in previewing and rendering. If you do not have a cuda card or your GPU memory is below 1 GB please do not try this technique.

Watch the video tutorial at the end of this page.

• Open after effects.
• Check whether your graphics card is capable of GPU ray tracing with in After Effects.
• Go to edit, preferences, previews.
• Click on the g p u information tab.
• You can see my graphics card information and capabilities are shown here.
• Under ray tracing you can see CPU is selected and a warning says GPU is not available is shown.
• Under open GL tab you can see that my graphics card is Nvidia geforce 425 M, which is a cuda capable card.
• But under cuda settings nothing is shown. It is because this card is officially not supported by after effects.
• We can simply enable this card for cuda powered ray tracing.
• Just note the name of the graphics card displayed in open GL section.
• Close After Effects.
• Go to Program files, Adobe, Adobe After Effects CS 6, Support Files and find ray tracer supported cards text document.
• Open it in a text editor.
• See my graphics card is not listed here.
• Simply add the name of graphics card exactly the same as displayed in After Effects.
• Save and replace the file.
• Due to the restriction in windows 7, I was forced to save it in desktop.
• We need to replace the file now. Drag and drop the file to the original location.
• Replace the original file with the edited one.
• Open the After Effects .
• Check the GPU information once again.
• See now we have GPU available for ray tracing.
• And now after effects is showing the cuda properties of the graphics card.
• Now we can switch between GPU and CPU.
• If you are experiencing any problem after enabling this technique simply switch back to CPU.

Check this technique and share your experience below.

Blender for Maya artist 01- Settings

Blender is a wonderful free software with amazing 3d capabilities. Being opensource every one can produce, share, compile Blender with out any cost. Don't mis judge Blender because it is freely available. It is very powerful as other 3d software such as Autodesk Maya, 3ds max, Cinema 4d and Houdini. Blender have both advantage and disadvantage over these commercial 3d applications. It is true more and more artist learning to use Blender.

You can produce your own movie in Blender with out spending thousands of bucks!!!( a single Maya licence cost more than 3000 dollars). More Maya artist use Blender in their home. It is true there are several studios who uses Blender for their production.

Anyway I am so much interested in Blender. At first it was very difficult to learn Blender. Being a Maya artist shifting to a new 3d program is little bit confusing. It took a whole while to start things perfect for me. It is impossible to drop Maya and using Blender and Maya in same day is totally confusing. Anyway Blender have some preset for Maya artist. So started using that and now I use Maya in studio and Blender in House.

This tutorial is meant for Maya artist. So some of the common shortcuts and other items may not work correctly if you follow the default Blender document and tutorials.

diamond 3d mesh free

Need a properly cut 3d diamond for your project. Download this 3d diamond with brilliant cut. You may use this model in your commercial project also. Please respect my effort to model this. So do not share it or upload any where. You can share a link to this page instead.

Click the download link below. The download link will lead to the download page. You may see interstitial ads before download begins.

The download will be in 7 zip format. You need to download and install 7 zip program first.

File formats include

• Blend
• Obj
• Fbx
• 3ds

Get the download link by clicking and sharing one of the button below.

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Billiards free 3d mesh

Want to play some billiards. Download this free 3d mesh with all the textures. You can use this free mesh in your commercial and non commercial projects.Click the download link below and you will redirect to download page. Download page may show sponsored advertisements. Use 7 zip to extract the downloaded files.

Mesh formats include

Blend

OBJ

FBX

3ds

DAE

Please do not redistribute the mesh files in any form. You may link to this page

instead.

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Chess Board 3d mesh free download

Want to add some 3d models into your 3d project. Download this free 3d chess board mesh with all the pieces including white and black. Download this free mesh and use it in your free or commercial project. The download link will redirect you to the download page. You may see sponsored advertisement at the download page.

Download contains a 7zip file. You need to download 7zip.

The chess board 3d mesh is available at the following formats

• 3Ds
• OBJ
• FBX
• Blend

Materials and textures included.
Please do not upload or distribute this anywhere. You may share a link to this page instead.

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Slow rendering? Fix it yourself!

Most of the time you may face this problem in cg field,especially if you are doing a photo realistic render,i.e. architecture rendering. You may aware that several factors affect render time. Remember I already covered about the Mental ray rendering tips for Maya. Anyway this article is different. It is nor going to cover any 3d application or render software. This article is intended for windows users who are working on their home computer. If you are a Mac or Linux user you may get 50% improvements  with this article. If you want to tweak your work computer please ask your system administrator to do so.

    Before discussing the steps I like to share the motivation behind this article. While working with small studios I realised most of the cg artists are unaware of hardware and system tweaks. If you don't know about the capacity of your system how could you optimize it? Computer of an animator or cg artist is like a sports car. You need to repair  every part before a race(render). Seems too complicated? Just follow these steps, you will get the top performing system for heavy render.

1. Install a good antivirus

Viruses and mal ware programs are the main reason for the slowing down of your system. They steal your private information such as password,credit card information etc. Viruses and mal ware can harm your system even if there is antivirus installed. Windows user are the main target of these viruses. But now Linux user need to worry. I don't know about Mac.

   I recommend Avast free antivirus. It can be installed to PC and Linux. You can get a mobile version also. Avast has several advantage over other free antivirus. You can search it on Google, Bing, yahoo etc. If you are using a paid antivirus continue it. Instal avast. Update and scan for viruses. If found any viruses use recommended action and do boot scan also.

2.Hardware upgrading

    Hardware is the most important part of your system. Try to upgrade the graphics card, processor, ram, mother board etc. This is the most recommended but less practical method.

3. Software upgrading

Upgrade your operating system such as Windows, Linux and Mac to the latest version. Also upgrade your favourite applications such as Autodesk Maya, 3ds Max, cinema 4d, blender etc to the latest edition. This is also a high priority task but less practicable except for Linux and Blender users.

4. Update the driver and software

Don't confuse with the above step.Regularly update the system driver and 3d software. Most people ignore tis step,but this is very very important. Software drivers are the  major part in controlling your PC. At least try to update the graphics card and chip set drivers. Vendors like nvidia and ATI regularly release new drivers for their product. Updated drivers add extra functionality,performance improvement and bug fixes. Also update your OS and 3d software. All these updates are free. So you can download without spending any money!

5. Defragment hard disc regularly

           Files in your system will be cluttered and fragmented after continuous use. This will drastically affect system speed. Thus increase render time. This problem is seen in windows only. Regularly Defragment hard disc using inbuilt defragmenter or use powerful and automated intelligent tools such as iobit system defragmenter or defraggler. Both are free.

6. Clean the registry and system

         After a long use your system is filled with unwanted files. Windows user have to face another problem, the registry dumps. These problems will slow down your system and eat enormous amount of space also. Affect the rendering. Use programs such as iobit advanced system care, Tuneup utilities, CC cleaner, Glary utilities etc.

7. Tweak the system process, services and startup programs

     Limit or stop the unwanted system processes and services . This will free the ram and processor and the render can be fastened.

          These are some steps I used for speeding up my system and rendering.

Basketball 3d mesh

Giveaway of the Day.You can use this basketball scene file in your commercial and non commercial projects. Please respect our effort to create this. So please do not upload or publish it anywhere  And do not redistribute it. You may link to this page if you want to share.

File format includes

FBX 2012

.OBJ

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Particle instance tutorial

Particle dynamics is a wonderful addition to the 3d software. In Maya you can create a wide variety of effects using particle dynamics. Instancing is the commonly used method to create mind blowing Hollywood effect and motion graphics. In Maya particle instancing is easy and more productive. You can control the instancer using custom expressions and attributes. This technique gives maximum freedom to technical artist to create whatever he like to do. But these possibility can be achieved only if you know Maya well and some scripting.

In this half an hour length video tutorial you will learn the basics as well as some advanced functions of Maya particle instancing. This tutorial is more towards motion graphics but using the same technique you can create debris of blast and other possible instance of dynamic object. Please note that this tutorial skips some basic of dynamics and collision attributes because those are not necessary for this tutorial.