The Hobbit: Battle of Five Armies

The trailer is now released and here is some grabs of one of environments I worked on. Was a cool concept.

 Man of Steel Work.

For most of last year I was working on this movie. I was the Lead Environment Modeller for Krypton City.  The city was a crazy concept and very challenging, but it was cool to part of an iconic film location.

Visual Effects Society Award Nomination

I was lucky enough to get a nomination for the environment I worked on in Tintin, Bagghar. Here is the list. Will know on the 7th Feb if I win! Exciting stuff!

Work of 2011 cont.....

And the last film I worked on for the year was The Hobbit and something I did got in the trailer. Background for this shot. So my blog didn't get much action, but I was busy.

Work of 2011 cont....

After Tintin I was again lucky enough to work on Prometheus, but since it aint out I don't have anything to show.

Work of 2011 cont..

Then I was on Tintin. I got to do the baghaar environment. The hills, terrain, roads, bridges I was lucky to model. I had a blast.

Work of 2011 cont.

Next up was Apes. On this film I worked on the primate shelter. I modeled the dome windows you see in the grab and all the gantry mechanisms that Ceasar uses below it. I also did a car for the golden gate sequence.

Work of 2011

This was my first film modeling at Weta. I was part of the team that built the Kresta battleship. I did a few things on the boat, but they are hard to see, the main ones you can see there are the big guns.

BPR tests

Well I was just bored the other night and wanted to play with lights and rendering a little in Zbrush with the BPR.Just 2 lights ambient occlusion and shadows. Basic material and bumpPreview mats.

Scott Spencer Workshop

Over the weekend I was in zbrush workshop, with Scott Spencer of Weta Workshop. Was great, he covered almost everything in his books over the course of 2 days. It was pretty good for me cause I have not got into zbrush for ages! So nice to sculpt and then learn the tools that are version 4.
We did sculpt all the time but I tried to get as much done as I could, here is the result.

Small improvements

We are told that things should get better the more version we do, or the more time spent on it. I have wondered about this one, in all the years that I have been plugging away at this are things really going to get much better? Got to ask yourself sometimes.
Here is a shot I am updating. Below is my first pass, which I am proud of. Hey its pretty ugly but it was part of getting all the passes and all the shots comped together. Not much has changed, I am rendering fur with raytracing, sand is decimated from zbrush, octos have SSS, Not alot but it has made a difference, and I am happy that I am still working away on it.

Latest take, 2011

First pass, 2008

Dingy Model

So i was wanting to model something again and I had seen this very nice dingy model at work, so I talked myself into needing this in one of shots, it looked empty under the house,any excuse would have done it. So 5 hours to model and then 1 hour to unwrap,texture material etc. Then I did a quick turntable, just because I can, not required at all. And down below you can see how amazing it looks in the shot!

Depth map to raytrace shadows.

As I stated in the previous post I have to render some shots with raytraced shadows. I used depth map shadows before. I think the depth map looks better, softer, more natural. The raytraced one is very harsh and the colors are different. But the depth map flickers and its just not acceptable. Got to raytrace!!

Fur render with depth map shadows

Fur render with raytraced shadows

Shot updates

Lately I have worked on updating all the interior shots with the textured files, and at the same time going over the lighting and rendering. Did find out that in many of the shots I will be rendering the fur with raytraced shadows. I had been using depth map and they are good, but in close up shots there is fair amount of flickering. Not so with the raytraced, downside is that fur look less soft. Will post up some images to compare.
In this shot I wanted to do something with the sand. Its about the most we see of the sand in any shot, however it looks dull. So did a quick zbush of the sand and got it rendered out.

Here below is the old sand


and with the zbrush sand.

Lost Concept Challenge Result.

Well turns out , after voting- I won the challenge.!I gotta say I am really happy about this! Really enjoyed making it and so it was very nice to win.
here is the link.

Final Images for Challenge

Lost Concept Challenge
Here are the final maya and zbrush renders that I submitted. Had some good advice for the sack and it did improve, but I think its not there. Didnt get enough fine detail into it.
Will always think to do a proper lit and textured version, but you never know. Had a great time with this, good to get some rest now.
I will watch the voting over at cgfeedback to see how I do.

Lost Challenge Update

First pass on the sack in Zbrush. Not feeling it right now, some work to do.

Lost concept Challenge

Right so work continues on this piece, here some un-smoothed renders.Got most of the geo I want done. Now its time to take the sack into Zbrush, I am hoping to finish the sack sculpt tonight which then will leave me one night to final it all, tweaks, renders etc.