Archive for March 2009

Previous Lighting Tests

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Looking through my old footage on my laptop I found some test shots of my Final Year Project at university and I thought I'd put them on here so that I can compare my lighting techniques after learning some new tricks and techniques later.

My final year project was based around mainly using fluid particles to make a glass of water turn in to a flower (well a flower growing from the water). I knew I was going to be shooting it on just a black background as I was wanting to emulate the slow motion Sainsbury's food adverts that were out a few years ago. Lighting was obviously going to be one of the key things I looked at as I needed to make it efficient and yet still look good. For this I decided not to use caustics as the was no solid background for light to reflect to. Then I created a simply lighting rig using grids with a white or gray Lambert texture on them, hiding their primary ray visibility in the render and then using final gather. This cut the render times down by a great deal without the need of global illumination/caustics and gave me the ability to create a nice studio lighting setup using grids as reflected lights and reflectors themselves.



Above: a wireframe view of the full lighting setup for the stem rising up from the water. I added an environment map to add a little extra to the reflections.
Below: A closeup of the lighting setup used when the petals are created.


I don't remember the exact render times but they were at most 2-3 minutes each per frame. The only troubles I had were actually with using XSI and Realflow together. I made a decision at the time to stick with the package I knew as opposed to which had better fluid/Realflow integration and it caused some pretty nasty glitching problems during the render phase.

Here are a couple of test videos of the petals growing, hopefully the video compression on here doesn't make them look too bad. Unfortunately I don't have the final render/shot on this laptop but I was going to re-render it or infact reshoot it completely using Maya to make the most out of it.


Personal Project Progress I

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This will be a weekly or bi-weekly update of my current projects/ideas in development. I've decided to do this to keep me busy and give myself own personal deadlines which I think is important in order to maintain healthy motivation/pressure.

3D Modelling:
Currently learning some core modelling techniques from a tutorial researched at university. The goal is to build a simple Android model. I'm following the tutorial exactly here before I deviate away too soon. I think learning core 3D skills again will help me show off the areas I want to concentrate in (lighting/rendering/particles).
After this I'm going to do a few simple car tutorials and make the generic car model as a studio lighting and render test. While I could just use a premade model I don't think it will hurt to learn some extra modelling skills with this.

Mini Project Idea:
I want to use the techniques learned to create a 3D version of the image below. It will provide some modelling and lighting challenges and yet not be too complex to be impossible for me.


angel alita rendition by ~emotionography on deviantART

Lighting:
I've been looking back at some tutorials gather from university research as well a great lighting theory tutorial found here . I plan in the next week to provide some very very simply modelled scenes (cubes, spheres in a room, no complex geometry) to show things I've learned, maybe advance that to a few challenges not looked at much in most lighting tutorials (evening shots, multiple artificial light sources etc).

Sculpting:
While this is very much more fun still at the moment I've bought an anatomy book and intend to develop my sculpting skills. My goals currently in this is to create a full body maquette/statue and texture a head.

Long Term Personal Project Idea:
I currently have an idea to develop a short story I visualised near the end of my university course and adapt it in to a simple comic although using 3d models/zbrush sculpts instead of drawing it. As my skills still aren't as proficient as I'd like while I'll be developing this throughout I doubt any practical progress will be made on this till I am comfortable in the areas of organic modelling and sculpting although I can start on the sets.

Reading/Viewing/ To Buy List:
I am currently reading Anatomy for the Artist
I still don't have any of my books from university over here yet so I don't have much else to ready aside from the tutorials and research I've gathered on this laptop so I'm also reading those.
I'm currently watching a few Pixar movies for some lighting ideas and composition techniques. It's interesting to see the evolution of the camera angles used. As always generally speaking the films I watch in my own time I usually watch again in greater detail and write some notes or ideas as to how they did a certain shot. I might write a little essay on futuristic design theory soon as it has been on my mind recently.
My current to buy list are 2 dvds from Digital Tutors. I think Digital Tutors tutorials have improved greatly over the years and now provide some interesting workflow solutions and methods in a good range of 3D packages.
Character Creation in Zbrush - This is a start to finish look at creating characters from scratch in Zbrush and may help me in my comic idea.
Motorcycle Modelling Techniques in Maya - These tutorials have been developed with a bike company and have a lot of techniques regarding modelling parts visible on a motorbike which aren't necessarily shown when modelling a car. These shapes and parts would work well in an android based model as well as improve complex objects. Also one of my projects down the line is to model one of my father's motorbikes.
Mental Ray Nodes online Reference Library - I think this will be invaluable when the time comes to look at advanced rendering techniques. I am considering buying this although the others currently are more important to me for my short term goals.

I shall update this soon with any progress or ideas developed.

Zbrush digital sculpting

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I have rarely had more fun testing out/ 'Hobbying' as my lecturer used to call it than when recently trying out digital sculpting in Zbrush. It has got me hooked and I intend to learn this along side my current modelling / lighting tasks. It may slow my initial learning down but it is great fun and is helping me get more of an interest in organic modelling.

Above: My First attempt at sculpting a face from a sphere. No references.
Below: Adding ears and some room for the eyes (need to work on ears!). No Reference



Zspheres have been interesting to use and my first attempt at using them ended up with an interesting male torso a little heavy chested. As a note I find it best to create the base torso using zspheres and moving the body in to a basic shape then using the adaptive skin (default 'a' when still moving zspheres) and altering the density to 3-4 and getting the basic shape down. After this I create the polymesh3D and save it as a tool. Although I remove quite a bit of flexibility of the zspheres moving the character after doesn't seem too hard and I can start upping the poly count more.






Above: A turntable of my first attempt at a torso. No reference.

All of this learning has inspired me to buy an anatomy book. I bought Anatomy For the Artist a DK book. Plenty of pictures and character studies in there. Next week my goal is to create an anatomically correct model. Maybe even attempt a whole body (albeit a simple one).

Finally for those also interested in trying it please remember instead of saving the document you save the tool. I lost the above torso after wanting to do some more work on it today. I must have saved the document in error. It gave me another go at creating one from scratch though.


Above: my second attempt at a torso. No reference.

Fresh Start

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Firstly, I apologise for my lack of content since I've started this blog. My plans to complete a masters straight away changed after a bit of financial bother. Instead I am now working for a popular online games company (in the customer service area). This job allows me to work on my portfolio and actually encourages movement within the company.

I have now started to settle in a little here ( I had to move country for the job) and so I'm making it my goal to create a new portfolio showing the skills I've learned.

I've decided although my interests are lighting, particles and rendering I need core modelling skills in order to show these off so I've recently gone back to the drawing board and have started learning Maya again from the ground up. (I first used Maya in around 2001 but 'moved' to XSI at university). I've also started working on new projects that will go towards my final portfolio this year. My plans are to emphasise my lighting, texturing and rendering within the scenes I create and to composite some of them in to a real world environment. My particle work will not be neglected in this (especially as my final year at university centered around particles).

I intend to use this blog to show my learning and improvements as well as show you some of the films and shows that give me inspiration and ideas for my own work. I will also be posting up photography as I am keen on learning new techniques with the camera as well (as well as lighting techniques as soon as I get a proper lighting kit here).

Thank you for reading this and hope you stick around for the work to come!

Here are a couple of photos I've done since the last blog.


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