Just a quick post with another photograph taken Thursday.
Happy Holidays all! (if I don't post before the new year Happy New Year as well)
Archive for December 2009
Amaryllis II
Amaryllis shots
We bought this flower last week and it has just bloomed. Really fast blooming Christmas/Winter blooming bulb plant. Took some shots of it as we don't know how long it blooms for.
There are a few more shots I took of the flower and the bulb itself which I want to have a play around with.
In other news I went to the final Drink and Draw of the year. I only drew a few things but will paint them up and put them on next week. It's great to have a regular event where you can get together and chat with other people interested in all areas of art/design. There are plans of setting up life drawing sessions which I'd enjoy and can't wait to see what the new year brings for the group!
I have recently got the book Stop Staring: Facial Modeling and Animation Done Right which has nice advice on creating and modelling a head with animation in mind. It was recommended to me by a friend as it seems to be a great way of modelling a head which I can then take in to ZBrush.
As far as other projects go I'm currently moving my University project from Realflow/XSI in to Maya and continuing particle/realflow studies with a new CGSociety course starting in January (Realflow Essentials with Allen Mckay).
Sculpting
Just a quick post. I currently have a nasty virus/bug/food poisoning thing at the moment and I've been in bed and off work for the past week or so. During the time I've not even been able to get any 3D stuff going but I needed to do something to take my mind off it.
I had some clay I bought over summer and still hadn't used it so I got it out and for the first time ever I tried sculpting.
Aside from the few little tries at making things (my original plan was to make Christmas decorations for a tree which went a bit pear shaped). I tried making a foot using a simple wire base and building on top of it. I have now found out you are meant to fill out the wire bone/base with something like tinfoil to give it more form so perhaps I might try a torso using that technique in the near future. Here's where I got anyway;
Back to Boujou
Long time no post. I've been finishing the Lighting and Rendering in Mental Ray course. It's been really good and I've learned a lot of techniques and tips for not only making my lighting/rendering better but also more efficient. One of the most important things I've done to improve is to no longer just 'guess' lighting work. It may take a little longer at first to take time to set up your key lights etc but taking time on small changes instead of adding new lights to overwrite errors in the scene is worthwhile in the long run.
Since finishing the course I've been planning on how to use it, as well as starting a redesign for my website. I updated my current CV/Resume (which can be found to the right of this page). My new website will be easy to use and just have simple links to gallery, videos, CV and then the news can be updated from here.
Finally I've been dusting off Boujou and doing some motionmatching. As most starting 3d jobs within VFX/film require motionmatching skills I thought I'd pick it back up and start to test footage/ scenes to bring me up to scratch again (I last used it last year while at university).
I have a friend at work who has a good camera and did a favor and shot the above footage for me. While it's still a little slippy I'd say I have more of an understanding of the program now and setting the co-ordinates/scene geometry made a lot more sense than previous tests. I'm going to work on it till there are no slippages and then concentrate on shadows/lighting etc.
I did come across a few problems within Boujou and Maya, looking on various forums I found the solution to some of it. Here are a few tips if you are unable to find them.
The image plane sequence may not load in Maya, or if it does it may only be freezing on frame 1. If this is the case you will need to make sure the sequence is something like filetype.sequencenumber.fileformat - eg testfootage.1.jpg - having it as testfootage_001.jpg can cause some issues.
If you are using XSI remember that it is required first to change the playback speed to the correct fps (in my case PAL) as well as rotoscopy playback and size. Overall I found Maya easier to use for getting a preview as XSI did not render the background image plane on the default pass (as this is test footage currently I'm not splitting up passes till I have the camera moving smoothly with no slip).
I managed to get a smoother camera within Boujou when testing geometry in there but unfortunately I'm getting crashing issues when trying to export the sequence with the geometry within Boujou. In future I might just get some screen capture software to capture it.
Anyway I have a lot of work to do although it is coming up to Christmas so I'm going to take it a little easier and take the time to really learn the ins and outs of the program, maybe try some harder shots to match when I have become comfortable with the software again.
I did come across a few problems within Boujou and Maya, looking on various forums I found the solution to some of it. Here are a few tips if you are unable to find them.
The image plane sequence may not load in Maya, or if it does it may only be freezing on frame 1. If this is the case you will need to make sure the sequence is something like filetype.sequencenumber.fileformat - eg testfootage.1.jpg - having it as testfootage_001.jpg can cause some issues.
If you are using XSI remember that it is required first to change the playback speed to the correct fps (in my case PAL) as well as rotoscopy playback and size. Overall I found Maya easier to use for getting a preview as XSI did not render the background image plane on the default pass (as this is test footage currently I'm not splitting up passes till I have the camera moving smoothly with no slip).
I managed to get a smoother camera within Boujou when testing geometry in there but unfortunately I'm getting crashing issues when trying to export the sequence with the geometry within Boujou. In future I might just get some screen capture software to capture it.
Anyway I have a lot of work to do although it is coming up to Christmas so I'm going to take it a little easier and take the time to really learn the ins and outs of the program, maybe try some harder shots to match when I have become comfortable with the software again.
