Vampyre A FNS 478A-U1

Well after having so much fun with the satelite I wanted to tackle something harder. This is the Vamprye. Its a pretty cool design. There are loads more I can model, but I have to stop sooner or later. There are few issues with the render and I have no close ups as these are just frames from a turnaround.

Catapult Satellite turnaround

Catapult Satellite

Such a long time since I have had the time to do some modeling. So I got around to some. I was put on to this Japenese robot design a few years ago called Maschinen Krieger. It was designed by a guy called Kow Yokoyama. Anyway here something I did based on the Catapult Satellite that is on www.maschinenkrueger.com/joomla/

Avatar

So my work on Avatar is done. Well it was done a month ago almost. It was super intense period of production. I was working on the this sequence which is in the trailer. I did get to be a TD on 3 shots from this sequence, which are my first for film(These stills are not my shots). So to get 3 shots in a film as huge as Avatar was more than I ever hoped for. Cant wait to see the film! And see my shots!

Off to Weta

That ain't Charlie Brown, its me and they are Weta's. Having the good luck to go to Weta. I start in 2 days. Whoa. My fiance Shoo made this fantastic card as a farewell to me She has been super amazing and supportive over this decison. Makes it soo much sweeter to share it with her. Its a little bittersweet as she is not able to join me. Its hard, we have never been apart and we always are happy, so yay, we get to apart and sad! It wont be forever of course. I also dont think that I will be doing much work on the film. I know where I am with it, 6 shots left to animate, very close. It came down to Weta or my film...tough one

Shot 03

Sequence Renders

Well I can't just animate all the time(even though I am supposed to be), so when I wasn't animating I was doing some rendering. Getting there, I still have some work to do. These shots have the grade that I like, trouble is that is got loads of banding, not great, but I do love what it does with the subtle colours and blooming.


.

Latest Sequence

Shot 25

New Scarf

So here are some renders of the new scarf. Amazing no?! But it looks soo much better than the last one. Have almost rendered out all the shots that have it in, still a few to go. And at the same time I am getting the dynamic scarf in.

Shot playblasts

Shot 38

Shot render with Vimeo Player!

Scarf Test

Got a scarf for the kids rig, work super well in this shot,thats why I am showing it! It looks good makes him even cuter.. I have some problems with it other shots so looking like I will have to bake out the dynamics and keyframe it.

Interview

My old school found out about my film and wanted to interview me about. If you want to read more about that click here
Thanks.

Shot Updates

Mostly working on the animation lately, still hoping to get all the animation done this month. But when I am not on this I can render any shot and get some fixes in. I have also being working on the grade, and these shots have the grade on them. I have got to animating and rendering some shots with the octos in them. Was pretty excited to be getting that in. They are looking good, the rendering is not too complicated( thankfully) Nice to render something on this project that does not have fur on it. Fur is a challenge, some shots have just never wanted to render. I have tried to different renderers, dmaps resolutions, anti-aliasing settings blah blah blah. At the moment I am using all of. Can depend on the amount of light that the fur is recieving, size in frame. Crazy, but worth it of course. I have added a dynamic scarf to the kid, it looks great but takes some time to get right, so I am having a internal debate about putting in or not. Dont really want to be adding stuff late in the piece, but can be hard to ignore a good idea.

More playblasts

So here are 3 shots. At this point in the film, the kid has to secure the house. With a very strong chair... So these are final animations...I hope. I think they run together quite nicely.
These ones have been rendered also, but I will not be posting them here, as the details get lost. I think I have 27 or so shots to go, done 20. Its been hard to get this far, but just working on it everyday, adds up, like a savings account. I am putting off the walk cycle for the octos still! The shots with the octos are the most complicated. It might have a better idea to tackle those shots first, but oh well.

New Animation

Have been re doing all the animations for the last few months. Here is the final animation for shot 38, the second to last shot. At the moment I have 20 shots animated and rendered. Will be posting the rest soon.

Camera Mapping Shots

Some work has been done on the exterior shots of the house. Camera projection of the house taken in maya with a pretty flat render.. Taken into Photoshop and worked over by Shoo. Came out very nice. Mapping works very well as long as the camera move is nothing extreme.

More of the shots that have had the camera mapping done. Interior shots next.

Shot 22 movie

Here is the reworking of shot 22. I had to change this as I couldnt quite get this working how I think it should have been. It had a POV to start with, but I just found the action of the otco jumping in the air a little strange. So I worked it into 4 shots, its nice and I think the last shot has a nice revealing of the next bunch of octos.Will be able to convey some nice emotion of the Dad and build on the danger the son is in. Still have some issues with the Dads fur but did make some progress. I was rendering his fur with rasterizer and some Dmap shadows. Got better results with raytracing, and raytraced shadows, without a huge hit in the render time. Also got a more working texture on the dead octo. Will update the texture on all of the octos when I finish the final weighting.

Shot 22 Stills

Some stills of the new shots.

Shot 22 Stills

Some stills of the new shots.

Final Render For Lighting Challenge

This the final render I did for the cgtalk Lighting Challenge. It was a film noir theme. So I went for a render with loads of black, skewered angle, deep shadows. Nothing fancy as most of these films were made like this. To me it feels like old film so I am happy with that. Doing a render these days its hard to turn off all the fancy new rendering tricks like final gathering and occlusions, but I wanted this to look old. Those elements are in this render , just not obviously.Didnt go nuts with texturing, wanted to focus on the the lighting and composition. On a downside I never quite got the body on the ground right. Will do some touchups in the future.

Did alot of layers in the end. Found this to be the fastest way to get all the elements working. And I could use Mental Ray for some layers and software for others.

Lighting Challenge

First render for the CGTalk lighting challenge.

First Pass on Rendering and Lighting.

Right, finally got this done. This was a milestone in the production. Set all the passes up! And have organized all the render layers in Maya. Then into After Effects and started to sort out any post work, such as motion blur(Real Smart for this, great plugin) A rain plugin and some lightrays. Alot of work too with the lights in After Effects. This is very handy, and helps to flesh out a shot, add a highlight, change the ambience. Changed the edit in the house, before you didnt see why he was scared, so I have added a few shots to deal with that. Much clearer. So now that is the last change.
Other reasons for sorting this out is to try to evaulate the work remaining. I have done my first pass on the lighting, now I can see what worked and the elements that need more work. Colour pallete, shot consistancy. Even just the rendering. The same lighting set up might not work for all shot. The same rendering settings might not work. Shots inside the house I am starting to like. Different tints on the occlusion pass help to change the ambience. The other major factor was the fur. I really need to see how the fur behaved and how it rendered. Which settings work, etc. Fur renders change depending on the distance to the camera, so fur would need to be adjusted - made thicker and amount decreased. All pretty obvious, just has to be sorted. I didnt have the fur on the character until most of the animatic was done, so I didnt bother with any test. This is my test, and this way I can fine tune my renders and animation to suit. Dad fur is very poor, have alot to do, I am hoping that is just a rigging problem primarily, and then I tune up the fur. Other thing I have had trouble sorting is the flicker on the fur and getting the nicest settings here. Imposable to see in this movie, its rude and is high on my list to fix.
Next up is a breakdown for me regarding fixes. Will show the animation to some collegues, and get feedback. Get the octo rigged, fix the dad and kids rigging. Do all the animation again.Render it all again. Do the final grade on it.

Darkus

This character is from Strontium Dog. Darkus and his Howlers. Its by one of my favourite comic artists, Carlos Ezquerra. I Love this character, very much a creep. I have been doing lots of work on the one project lately, I need to do something else. So will make this guy with maya, Z brush, maya work flow. And with lots of fur, SSS etc. Looking to get a lot of character and narrative in a single render.

Shot Renders

The last two shots of the piece. Time permitting, will have some flying beasts in the background.

Shot Renders

Shot Renders

For this series of interior shots, I am working with the colour pallete. Strange purple fill, will pinkish key light. Trying to avoid the conventional green/yellow horror film setup.

Shot Renders

These renders are getting somewhere. They are un-textured so far. The Kid has his textures. I have a light beam plug in After Effects to help with the feel. Gives a nice beam, rays across the scene.

Shot Renders

I like the rain and lighting in the shot the approach to the house. I do have him trip up, just for a laugh, I mean poor guy has just lost his Dad...