V-RAY: Refraction Interpolation

Under the shader attributes, enable the "use interpolation" under Refraction and it'll speed up the renders tremendously.  The only downside (or upside) is that it looks like a blurred version of frosted glass, rather than an accurate raytraced soft look.

BACKBURNER: WINDOWS 8 / WINDOWS 7: UNC Paths

Many thanks my buddy Wynbert for suggesting to use direct UNC paths under RUN, rather than hoping for the network view to populate all machines.  It's probably just my lack of networking knowledge, but Microsoft, you've always been a pain in the ass with networking.

WINDOWS + R, then type in \\COMPUTERNAME\

BAM.  Backburner mini-farm is up and running.

MAYA: Shrink Windows 8 Window Borders

This probably should sit under it's own "Windows 8" category, but it affects me most when working with Maya on my Windows 8 laptop.  I used the "regedit.exe" method mentioned in the article below.

http://www.howtogeek.com/130138/how-to-change-the-window-border-size-in-windows-8/

V-RAY: History Render Times

I can't seem to get the V-Ray render buffer to spit out the render times when I save a frame in the history panel, but if you uncheck "Hide Render View" under Render Settings, the Maya Render View will be blank, but it'll display the minutes and seconds it took to render the frame.

V-RAY: Refraction Errors with GI

My refractions were giving me little dots that look like photon map points, so I switched the Primary Bounce engine to "Light Cache" and it went away.  Also seems to render a little faster too!

Only issue is that the light cache is built depending on the render region size, so I was running into discrepancies when I was doing regional material tests.

AFTER EFFECTS CS6: Time Remapping to Save on Renders

I'm not sure if it's a feature specifically to AE CS6, but let's say you need to render a sequence of 1800 frames, but it's basically a still frame.  You can enable Time-Remapping and delete the frame at the end and After Effects will know that it's a still frame.

You'll notice that the status above your timeline shows green.  AE now knows it's a static frame and will not redraw every frame.  :)

FILM PRODUCTION: Calibrating a Broadcast Monitor

I always forget how to do this for my Marshall V-LCD70XP monitor after a long hiatus from shooting.  I am now immortalizing it with a link on my blog.

This is a wonderfully detailed yet concise tutorial by Guy Cochran:
https://vimeo.com/3723108#

Basic steps:
1. Adjust Brightness, 2. Adjust Contrast, 3. Adjust Color