SoulburnScripts Updated May 3rd 2013

Max script update:

First off, new script pack has been checked in Max 2014 and everything works great.

1 New Script:

pFlowRemover: Even after deleting a PFlow Source object from your scene, you can sometimes end up with cruft nodes that are invisible to you, but exist in your scene, and can be viewed if you try and merge your current scene into a fresh scene. This scene flushes all of those nodes out of the scene. Also includes some tools for finding and printing out the nodes in case you need to delete them by hand.

Updated 2 scripts:

objectPainter: Added ability to limit random rotation to multiples of 90 degrees.
cornerEdgeToVertexMap: Redid the interface. Can now select concave and convex edges separately. Colors can now be defined per edge type.

http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_tools/soulburnscripts/soulburnscripts.htm

Toy Photo Page Updates for March and April 2013

Photos of all 16 3A WWRp Pure Color Squares
http://www.flickr.com/photos/soulburn3d/collections/72157625074299891/

Here's some samples...

3A World War Robot Group Shoot 64
88 Photos
http://www.flickr.com/photos/soulburn3d/sets/72157633242121037/

Here's a sample...

3A World War Robot Group Shoot 63
24 Photos
http://www.flickr.com/photos/soulburn3d/sets/72157633179672069/

Here's a sample...

3A WWRp Barguest De Plume Shoot 1
24 Photos
http://www.flickr.com/photos/soulburn3d/sets/72157633184365112/

Here's a sample...

3A WWRp Fantome De Plume Shoot 1
18 Photos
http://www.flickr.com/photos/soulburn3d/sets/72157633179645255/

Here's a sample...

Annex Labs Furio Tedeschi Gray Granox Shoot 1
31 Photos
http://www.flickr.com/photos/soulburn3d/sets/72157633179658685/

Here's a sample...

Hellboy II Golden Army Statue Shoot 1
14 Photos
http://www.flickr.com/photos/soulburn3d/sets/72157633179638457/

Here's a sample...

3A World War Robot Group Shoot 62
30 Photos
http://www.flickr.com/photos/soulburn3d/sets/72157633071306193/

Here's a sample...

3A World War Robot Group Shoot 61
18 Photos
http://www.flickr.com/photos/soulburn3d/sets/72157633028776064/

Here's a sample...

Soulkiller Webzine Metal News for the Month of April 2013

Visit http://www.soulkillerwebzine.com for all the latest metal news, release dates and reviews...

• (04.29) Marios Iliopoulos, guitarist and founder of Nightrage, is preparing to begin the songwriting process for the band's new album, which is expected in 2014. The band is also seeking a new label following their split with Lifeforce Records.
• (04.28) Can't believe I haven't added a section like this in the 15 years of the webzine, but just added an Articles section. This section is for various articles, from editorial pieces, to terms and definitions, history of metal, and various other things that a metal head should find interesting. What are the different sorts of blast beats? Is this band Power Metal or Classic Metal? What defines Deathcore? Stuff like that. Note, all of the stuff in these articles are my opinions, they're based on research and 20 years of metal experience, but still, there's plenty of room to disagree. So if you see something in here you heavily disagree with, please feel free to email me, I'm always up for a lively discussion.
• (04.25) Severed Savior have decided to start working on new music. They haven't yet decided if we will work on a whole new full CD, or an EP, or just record and release new tracks as they feel that they are ready.
  
• (04.24) Added a review to Putrid Pile's "Blood Fetish" album.
• (04.23) Kris Bolton will be the new vocalist for Unmerciful.
• (04.23) Added a review to Lost Soul's "Genesis: 20 Years Of Chaoz" Rare album.
• (04.22) Added a review to The Northern's "Imperium" EP.
• (04.22) Added a review to Icosian's "When I Stopped Calling It Home" EP.
• (04.22) Added a review to Rotten Sound's "Species At War" EP.
• (04.19) Broken Hope's new album willl be titled "Omen Of Disease".
• (04.19) Chimaira's new album will be called "Crown Of Phantoms", and will be out Tuesday, July 30 via eOne Music.
• (04.19) Red Chord vocalist Guy Kozowyk was one of seven men who were sworn in as a Manchester, New Hampshire police recruits on Monday, April 15.
• (04.16) Drummer David McGraw of Cattle Decapitation was forced to undergo surgery Monday, April 15 in Germany for "the gnarliest abscess" under his arm pit. However, he managed to recover in time to play tonight's show in Berlin as part of the band's European tour. Here's his statement: "Berlin! You rule! I had the gnarliest abscess under my arm pit, and you took care of me for only 50 [euros]. I had a full-on surgery, general anesthesia, private recovery room, everything, and I'm not even from here, just another foreigner on tour coming through town. I was treated like if I was at a private clinic. I had enough time to let the drugs wear off and made it to perform at the show tonight. I didn't get to see any of the sights, but instead I experienced something way more meaningful to me... seriously, thank you!"
• (04.16) A statement from Ozzy Osbourne on his Facebook page: "For the last year and a half, I have been drinking and taking drugs. I was in a very dark place and was an asshole to the people I love most, my family. However, I am happy to say that I am now 44 days sober. Just to set the record straight, Sharon and I are not divorcing. I’m just trying to be a better person. I would like to apologize to Sharon, my family, my friends and my bandmates for my insane behavior during this period… and my fans. God bless, Ozzy."
• (04.14) I was very sad to wake up this morning and read that Deftones bassist Chi Cheng has died (he was 42). The musician had been in a semi-comatose state for more than four years after being seriously injured in a car accident in November 2008. Visit http://oneloveforchi.com/ for more info.
  
• (04.14) Bassist Slawomir "Mortifer" Archangielskij of Hate, who died in his sleep a week ago, it has been revealed died of natural causes (cardiac arrhythmia). The 27 year old suffered from a reoccuring irregular heartbeat. "It is also known that Slawek suffered from asthma and had problems with breathing whilst asleep (obstructive sleep apnea)." stated the band.
  
• (04.11) Drummer Dave Lombardo revealed that Casey Chaos from Amen will front a resurrected version of Lombardo's Grip Inc. project. A tour is in the works, with the possibility that a new studio album will follow.
• (04.10) Visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNRGcLkR0ds to listen to the track 'Indoctrinate' off the new Immolation album.
• (04.09) After revising their original pledge goal, Man Must Die have fully funded the production of their new album on pledgemusic.com They will enter the studio in May / June.
  
• (04.07) Slawek's Slawomir 'Mortifer' Archangielskij, Hate's bass player, passed away yesterday. Here's a statement from the band: "[During the] night [of] April 5-6 near the German town of Munchberg, our friend, best comrade and longtime bass player unexpectedly passed away. After the show in Stuttgart last night, he went to sleep and never woke up. We found him lifeless early in the morning and immediately called an ambulance. He was reanimated, but to no avail. Results of Slawek's (Slawomir 'Mortifer' Archangielskij) autopsy should be known soon. In this situation, we decided to cancel the remaining shows and return home. We gave detailed testimonies to the German police. We are shocked and shattered by his sudden, unexpected death. We mourn together with Slawek's family and friends." RIP dude!
  
• (04.05) Glass Cloud and Volumes will be touring the west coast in May, they'll be in San Francisco (Walnut Creek) at the Red House on May 26th.
  
• (04.02) The Amenta's new album is out now in Europe and Australia, and will be released May 7th in North America.

SoulburnScripts Updated Apr 8th 2013

Max script update:

Updated 3 scripts:

objectPainter: You now have the option of painting on all scene objects instead of just specific objects. Warning, this can get slow, so use with caution, but it can be very cool to build up objects on top of other painted objects.
groupWithPoint: The Hierarchy smarts mentionned in my last fix ended up causing a lot of problems so I've simplified the functionality so at least it returns consistent results.
objectReplacer: Improved the copying capability of position Controllers to work with more complex hierarchies.

http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_tools/soulburnscripts/soulburnscripts.htm

Thanks to everyone for your support.

Soulkiller Webzine Metal News for the Month of March 2013

Visit http://www.soulkillerwebzine.com for all the latest metal news, release dates and reviews...

• (03.28) So as many of you know, Suffocation's second album "Breeding The Spawn" had great songs but horrible sound. Since then, the band has re-recorded one song from the album on each of their later albums. In an interview with Derek Boyer (bass) on "The Racket" on their March 26th, he states that the plan now seems to be once they've re-recorded the entire album (2-3 songs to go), they'll release an album, maybe called "Cloning The Spawn", that will be the entire album re-recorded, by assembling together all the re-recordings from their last 8 records. Now that would be cool. Check out the full interview if you can, Derek says some really interesting things about the complexity of being a good father and husband, and also trying to juggle a career as a professional musician, and how the different members of the band have dealt with this issue over the years.
  
• (03.27) Added a concert review of the Mar 24th Nile concert in San Francisco.
• (03.25) Those Who Lie Beneath have renamed their band to Vitriol.
• (03.23) Carcass have recruited Andy Sneap (Megadeth, Arch Enemy) to mix their comeback album, "Surgical Steel", after the CD's producer, Colin Richardson (Fear Factory, Machine Head, Napalm Death), quit the project two weeks into the mixing process.
• (03.23) Obscenity are writing songs for a new album.
  
• (03.22) Lost Soul have started recording a new album.
  
• (03.21) Visit http://www.decibelmagazine.com/featured/streaming-immolation-kingdom-of-conspiracy/ to listen to the track 'Kingdom Of Conspiracy' off the new Immolation album.
  
• (03.19) Wolfkahn have decided to call it quits.
• (03.19) Behemoth have entered the studio.
• (03.19) Visit https://soundcloud.com/brady-popkin/reach-us-predator-official to listen to a new track 'Predator' from Reach (Us).
  
• (03.15) Check out the Tesseract new album trailer for a taste of new music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIysXnFSEdo&feature=youtu.be
  
• (03.14) Visit https://soundcloud.com/kcclips/hetfield-grunts for a song comprised of every time James Hetfield from Metallica has ever yelled "Yea!"
  
• (03.14) Visit http://www.blabbermouth.net/soulflypremiere/arsisunwelcome.jpg to see the new cover artwork to the new Arsis album.
  
• (03.12) Visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0w-UtTTMcTY to watch the first single '15 Minutes' from Shattered Skies' new album "The World We Used to Know".
• (03.07) Visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuPYJ0bzOdM to watch drummer Alex Rudinger of The Faceless playing 'Xenochrist' (Really high quality vid and audio).
• (03.06) Visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75Mc7ymQq1M&list=UU_u_u8JGzMTUE5SwiaIcQTQ for a teaser of new music from The Amenta.
  
• (03.06) Visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aiz9EidxUSE for an awesome cover of Metallica's 'For Whom The Bell Tolls' by Lost Soul.
  
• (03.05) Thank heavens, vocalist Randy Blythe of Lamb Of God has been acquitted of charges that he caused the death of a young fan in Prague in 2010. The verdict is Not Guilty, and he is free to go. Yay!
  
• (03.05) Visit http://www.blabbermouth.net/soulflypremiere/immolationkingdom.jpg to see the cover artwork to the new Immolation album.
• (03.05) Arsis will release their fifth full-length album, "Unwelcome", on April 30 in North America via Nuclear Blast Records.
• (03.05) Suffocation have recruited John Gallagher (Dying Fetus) to handle lead vocals for a week's worth of shows on their upcoming North American tour this April. Gallagher will be filling in for Suffocation's regular vocalist, Frank Mullen, who is unable to make the dates due to personal commitments.
• (03.04) Visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=x6GxdXSCp5Q to listen to the song 'The Pendulum' off the new Pyrexia album.

Custom Painted Ghost Hunter Bertie MK3

And here's the final results of my painted from scratch MK3 Ghost Hunter Bertie. It took quite awhile to do, but I learned a lot from the process, and I highly recommend it, especially if you're a digital texture painter, there's actually a lot of similarities between digital texturing and the traditional.

3A WWRp Custom Bertie MK3 Mode A Ghost Hunter WIP Shoot 2
102 Photos
http://www.flickr.com/photos/soulburn3d/sets/72157633133825309/

Here's a few samples...

Check the link for a bunch more photos.

Traditional Texture Painting: 3A Ghost Hunter Bertie MK3: Complete Tutorial

So for those of you waiting for Part 4 (Weathering) of my tutorial on Traditional Texture Painting, what I did was took all 4 parts and put them together into a lesson on my website in the Education section. It's available here:

http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/traditional_texture_painting/traditional_texture_painting.htm

I also refined the original 3 parts with more photos and info, so if you're interested in seeing the conclusion, or seeing the whole process from beginning to end, check it out.

SoulburnScripts Updated Mar 29th 2013

Max script update:

Updated 5 scripts:

groupWithPoint: Fixed an issue where the script did the wrong thing if you tried to Group a Group. And tries to be a little smarter about grouping inside a hierarchy.
objectReplacer: Added ability to copy transform and visibility controllers. Use if the object you're replacing has an animated transform and you want to keep the animation.
selectionHighlighter: Fixed a crash bug when selecting non Editable Poly objects.
surfaceSnapper: Fixed a bug where the object would invert its z scale when moving along the ground.
transformSelector: Fixed a bug where the wrong values would be searched for in rotation.

http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_tools/soulburnscripts/soulburnscripts.htm

Thanks to everyone for your support.

New Speed Creature Sculpt Called "Magic Carpet"

Quick speed sculpt in mudbox, just blocking out big forms and not worrying about details. The long tentacles kinda reminded me of drapes, so went with a textiles based name.

Click here to see a smooth turntable from above (approx 10 meg).

Click here to see a smooth turntable from below (approx 10 meg).

Neil Blevins Art Gallery on Tumblr

Speaking of Tumblr, I've also added my work to a Tumblr Art Gallery. Same material, just different format for those of you who are Tumblr fans.

http://soulburn3d.tumblr.com/