Tuesday, 12 July 2011
enthusiasm shortage
Monday, 27 June 2011
VFX artist come web designer?
Right well, I know I have a few things on the go at the moment and though my summer job is taking around 50hours a week of my life away from me I'm trying to keep some motion in the creative work load. Keeping it varied I decided to look into the world of web design, I know the fundamentals and a little more but want to become a little more acquainted with the www for a personal portfolio website. To begin with though I wanted a small project to practice and experiment with formats and styles, html, css, flash etc. A good candidate project was one suggested to me buy a friends dad who used to give me a lift into college on his way to work that wanted someone to update his companies site due to being a bit off a visual shocker [sorry Ian] http://www.utt.nl/ . At the time I kind of shrugged it off as I didn't feel I knew too much about the web at the time but I think if I can produce something of a standard the I'l present it to him as a free-bee for the the free lifts that were greatly appreciated.
So here's what I have so far really. http://www.swfcabin.com/open/1310070260 I wanted to experiment with a flash based web site as its all a little more interesting that linking from page to page with no real.. wow factor. It took a few days but after following a good tut on-line I managed to come up with this, the scripting to a while to fully understand and trying to find problems in script equates to the 'trying to find a needle in a haystack' saying. However problems were overcome and plan to move onto designing the site so make it hopefully visually pleasing no I have the body of development created.
Wednesday, 22 June 2011
Matte painting
The first of many. Recently we were informed about the course change options at herts uni and were advised to look into what profession we wanted to go into as the second year would be much more focused and specialised. So I delved into the course pathway modules to see which would offer me the most in terms of what area of the industry I wanted to aim towards. Visual FX. So obviously I was more inclined to look into the VFX pathway however I still researched the others to see if they could offer me more. Sadly not but I still think it was important to look. Main skills of the VFX course that came up were things like rotoscoping, tracking, lighting & rendering and.. matt painting. Something I am really keen on is concept art, I find it of high interest however I'm no artist. Yet Photoshop is my friend :) and has been for a little while now so I've learnt over the past 4/5 years how to make the most of it.
Now having the life story out of the way I can move on to the matte painting its self. being the first I didn't really know how I would go about creating it, however seeing as many VFX reels as I have its pretty clear how its done. I had a few attempts at it and referred to 3dhit (http://3dhit.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=18582) for feedback where I took that on board to get to where I am. It still needs work but I plan to go back and retouch things for when I compile it into a show reel. Enjoy :) [hopefully] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5cDYzFjJLY
Finnished?
Well I think I have got to the stage where I can say I'm finished? Since I kind of got on with the process rather than stopping to blog every day I'll go from start to finish, from modelling right through to texturing and lighting.
Lets start with the basics Genrally knowing where I want the project to end up i firstly came up with this, looking at it now its a pretty poor shot and you cant really see much, pinched it off 3dhit where i originally posted it but I'll take you through it. Basically what I want to produce is 19th century american skyscraper/steel structured building with a overgrown roof garden. From the previous research I have established what these kind of gardens consist of and have done my best to replicate some of the features, i.e. the water tower that seems to feature quite heavily on most american roof tops, billboards skylights and television/radio aerials.
From here onwards its time to kind of dive into the realm of paintfx. We had a few brief lectures on the subject but I was pretty much going in from scratch. It took a while to work out what does what but I ended up with something like this, now I didn't want to go mad on the pfx but from here I was at a block, I mean I knew it wasn't finished however I didn't really know what to add. I was going for an early morning sunrise look but after posting on 3dhit there was many opinions and ideas thrown around to get me back on the creative train to get this piece finished. (http://3dhit.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=18413&st=0)
OK, so after taking on the comments and feedback from the forum I finished with this. A lot was mentioned about the composition of the scene and that it had no real main focal point and that it was almost as if I was trying to show off the assets in the scene. To resolve the issue I lowered the camera angle and tried to focus the viewers eye more towards the centre shown by all of the angles leading towards the plants in the middle of the two green houses. Typically deadlines arrived and since it has been a month or two since completion I still think there is much more to do to really bring the scene up to a higher standard but hopefully its something i can tackle i the near future when I have some free time.
OK, so after taking on the comments and feedback from the forum I finished with this. A lot was mentioned about the composition of the scene and that it had no real main focal point and that it was almost as if I was trying to show off the assets in the scene. To resolve the issue I lowered the camera angle and tried to focus the viewers eye more towards the centre shown by all of the angles leading towards the plants in the middle of the two green houses. Typically deadlines arrived and since it has been a month or two since completion I still think there is much more to do to really bring the scene up to a higher standard but hopefully its something i can tackle i the near future when I have some free time.
Thursday, 26 May 2011
my not so secrete garden
okk so moving on from my character project, part of the same module is the task of creating a corner scene, mainly forcusing on lighting and the use of paint effects, essentially as a way of saving time.
to begin with then, influences... I recently purchased the wonder that is crysis 2 and was pretty in love with the environments featured. the main theme being an over run city which in my opinion they really hit the nail on the head. throughout the game I think you probably spend at least a third of game play running through the city jumping across roof tops and so on which was my initail inspiration, a rooftop garden! I wanted to make it a little more over grown and derelict as if it has been a while since the gardener had been about. so reference #2 was one that I covered as a history project in secondary school, the nuclear disaster of Chernobyl. I found this useful as the whole city was abandoned after the disaster leaving shrubbery to take over and cover a once occupied landscape. The other man source I looked into was old English country houses, more over grown ones than most but I was mainly focus on Victoria/Georgian styled green houses, for that again overgrown, chipped paint, rusting look. so i think after doing a bit of research that kind of rounds up the influences so erhhh.. on with the creation stage!
so I'll post up as I go I think and just keep you updated with short annotations :)
to begin with then, influences... I recently purchased the wonder that is crysis 2 and was pretty in love with the environments featured. the main theme being an over run city which in my opinion they really hit the nail on the head. throughout the game I think you probably spend at least a third of game play running through the city jumping across roof tops and so on which was my initail inspiration, a rooftop garden! I wanted to make it a little more over grown and derelict as if it has been a while since the gardener had been about. so reference #2 was one that I covered as a history project in secondary school, the nuclear disaster of Chernobyl. I found this useful as the whole city was abandoned after the disaster leaving shrubbery to take over and cover a once occupied landscape. The other man source I looked into was old English country houses, more over grown ones than most but I was mainly focus on Victoria/Georgian styled green houses, for that again overgrown, chipped paint, rusting look. so i think after doing a bit of research that kind of rounds up the influences so erhhh.. on with the creation stage!
so I'll post up as I go I think and just keep you updated with short annotations :)
Wednesday, 25 May 2011
An even longer timeeeeeeeeee..
okk so it has pretty much been an age in my last post and have really been slacking, ishh. well i wouldn't really class it as slacking, more like scrambling around trying to get work complete for hand in's. so I think I'l just pretty much kind of pick up from where I left off.
So from looking back at my last post I was explaining the development of the character model I was creating for an axe man themed look. looking at what ide posted to date looks like i never got as far as explaining that but there you go! From where i left off i was trying to create godly topology as it has pretty much been beaten into us from day one of the task. from liking at the images of a half modelled body and head i think it seems as if the rants of clean quads and no triangles got across. however skipping alot here it all went pretty pear shaped, when coming to the mid point of the project of where i went to sculpt the model i wasnt entierly sure on the whole concept of uv'ing.. so i ignorently continued regarless of knowing what the outcome would be. TERRIBLE is one of the words that come to mind, it was a complete polgon mesh overload that took a life time to open let alone render.
so like one of those films where you see a scientist working relentlessly late into the night trying and find a cure to a monstrous disease. i was doing the same, but like 50x times harder and later over the next few days and the end result was more than worth the sleep depravation.
Thanks to saving many versions of the model i was able to go back and continue before i had this mad notion of ignoring uvs, i watched a few tutorials, digital tutors (other brands are available) was pretty much a god send when i came to this stage as i previously couldn't tell my uvs from my.. something rather, you know the saying. Now having a lovely uv'd model i went on to sculpt, yes for the SECOND time. Earlier on in the process i uploaded some of shots of the sculpting i had previously done and alot was said about proportions. Again addressing the issue with countless hours of searching for good sculpting videos, muscle structure and the golden proportion bringing me to this stage in the creation.
Now before I went on to anything else I really wanted to pose my character, so this meant rigging, MORE countless hours spent researching finding out how things work but again, though it was tricky and i got a lot more wrong than i did right to begin with i managed to make a working basic rig with working finger, hand, wrist, forearm, shoulder, neck, leg, knee and foot joints, now as much as i would like to screen shot it all i don't really think it would do the rig any justice as i could be completely making it all up so i plan to post a video of it in action when i get hold of a screen capture programme.
That aside this is where I got on to with the sculpting side of things, exported a displacement map that i applied to my low poly model as well as creating a texture map for the face, quite a tricky task but after a bit of tweaking and moving around it all eventually lined up. however with the displacement map there seems to be something not quite right as there are hard and smooth edges still showing through, im thinking of leaving it as it is for them moment so i can crack on with the clothing!
So from looking back at my last post I was explaining the development of the character model I was creating for an axe man themed look. looking at what ide posted to date looks like i never got as far as explaining that but there you go! From where i left off i was trying to create godly topology as it has pretty much been beaten into us from day one of the task. from liking at the images of a half modelled body and head i think it seems as if the rants of clean quads and no triangles got across. however skipping alot here it all went pretty pear shaped, when coming to the mid point of the project of where i went to sculpt the model i wasnt entierly sure on the whole concept of uv'ing.. so i ignorently continued regarless of knowing what the outcome would be. TERRIBLE is one of the words that come to mind, it was a complete polgon mesh overload that took a life time to open let alone render.
so like one of those films where you see a scientist working relentlessly late into the night trying and find a cure to a monstrous disease. i was doing the same, but like 50x times harder and later over the next few days and the end result was more than worth the sleep depravation.Thanks to saving many versions of the model i was able to go back and continue before i had this mad notion of ignoring uvs, i watched a few tutorials, digital tutors (other brands are available) was pretty much a god send when i came to this stage as i previously couldn't tell my uvs from my.. something rather, you know the saying. Now having a lovely uv'd model i went on to sculpt, yes for the SECOND time. Earlier on in the process i uploaded some of shots of the sculpting i had previously done and alot was said about proportions. Again addressing the issue with countless hours of searching for good sculpting videos, muscle structure and the golden proportion bringing me to this stage in the creation.
Now before I went on to anything else I really wanted to pose my character, so this meant rigging, MORE countless hours spent researching finding out how things work but again, though it was tricky and i got a lot more wrong than i did right to begin with i managed to make a working basic rig with working finger, hand, wrist, forearm, shoulder, neck, leg, knee and foot joints, now as much as i would like to screen shot it all i don't really think it would do the rig any justice as i could be completely making it all up so i plan to post a video of it in action when i get hold of a screen capture programme.
Saturday, 26 February 2011
Its been a while
As stated, it has been a while since the last post, basically due to an extreme case of laziness and zombies on black ops. nevertheless its time to commit, there's been a fair bit going on, vis nav story idea's, character modeling and this C&CS module that pretty naff to be honest.
So lets start with an up date, the character model.
to begin with i was kinda struggling with things as in relating what i was creating to the wire frame back plates we were given, i couldn't really get how other could get it all to match, you move one vertex in one view and its out of line in another. i ended up modeling flat, for example, i modeled the front half of the body and then the back. I'm now currently shaping it all together because i have two flat side at the moment that need joining. now having overcome i have to create the hands, like them and the head to the body then pose the character, simples?
Now back to some crazy vis nav stuff, after doing some of the tasks set by Jeremy, which at the time made no sense at all, i finally realise what he was getting at. the concept of creating new words for things and the idea of getting from wheel barrows to bungee jumping is basically a way of creating original idea's. as our time with Jeremy comes to a close i decided to do some more of this to create some story idea's to show and get feed back. A few emails and new stories later this is what I'm aiming for and I'm currently waiting for feedback on this too.. enjoy :)
to begin with i was kinda struggling with things as in relating what i was creating to the wire frame back plates we were given, i couldn't really get how other could get it all to match, you move one vertex in one view and its out of line in another. i ended up modeling flat, for example, i modeled the front half of the body and then the back. I'm now currently shaping it all together because i have two flat side at the moment that need joining. now having overcome i have to create the hands, like them and the head to the body then pose the character, simples?
DEA - DEJA VU
The story begins as a 1st person zombie video game, played by and office worker that gets interrupted by the thud of a large stack of files being dropped on his desk by his boss. stressed and tired Darren heads to the staff room for coffee. On route office is in panic, people rushing frantically around, due to Darren's tired state he doesn't take any notice of whats going on. now with a strong cup of coffee Darren sits back at his desk puts his feet up and slowly dozes off. waking several hours later he gets up to stretch noticing the office is empty, again heading to the staff room he sees on the TV there that there has been an extreme stress disorder outbreak driving people to excessive violence. the story goes on to include Darren being chased by his crazed boss. resembling the scenario in the video game, resulting in Darren pushing his boss out of the window and viewing the worlds end as buildings burn and sirens echo.
IDEA - DEJA VU (in shot detail)
- (POV SHOT) character running through city streets
- (CLOSE UP SHOT), showing sweating face, scars etc
- (MEDIUM SHOT) character running still, seems to be running from nothing,
The story begins as a 1st person zombie video game, played by and office worker that gets interrupted by the thud of a large stack of files being dropped on his desk by his boss. stressed and tired Darren heads to the staff room for coffee. On route office is in panic, people rushing frantically around, due to Darren's tired state he doesn't take any notice of whats going on. now with a strong cup of coffee Darren sits back at his desk puts his feet up and slowly dozes off. waking several hours later he gets up to stretch noticing the office is empty, again heading to the staff room he sees on the TV there that there has been an extreme stress disorder outbreak driving people to excessive violence. the story goes on to include Darren being chased by his crazed boss. resembling the scenario in the video game, resulting in Darren pushing his boss out of the window and viewing the worlds end as buildings burn and sirens echo.
IDEA - DEJA VU (in shot detail)
- (POV SHOT) character running through city streets
- (CLOSE UP SHOT), showing sweating face, scars etc
- (MEDIUM SHOT) character running still, seems to be running from nothing,
then a wave of zombies come running around a corner
- (CLOSE MEDIUM SHOT) boom, "DARREN!", (files dumped on office desk) i need these by tomorrow
- (CLOSE UP SHOT) of screen, GAME OVER in big flashing letters (showing that the character Darren has been playing computer games and has just been interrupted by his boss)
- (MEDIUM SHOT) Darren walks to coffee machine, there is absolute mayhem going on in the background, people rushing around frantically, Darren walking past oblivious
- (CLOSE MEDIUM SHOT) at the coffee machine, still not paying attention to whats going on around him and then retreats back to his office cubicle
- (BUST SHOT) Darren sits back at his desk, stretches and rests his hands behind his head, puts his feet up and falls asleep
- (CLOSE MEDIUM SHOT) Darren awakes hours later, gets up for a stretch to find that the office has been trashed and abandoned
- (POV SHOT) Darren looks left then right out of his cubicle and then heads to the staff room
- (CLOSE MEDIUM SHOT) arriving at the staff room that is also empty, the television is on, flickering from static to the news
- (CLOSE UP) reporters explain that there has been an extreme stress disorder outbreak driving people to excessive violence
- (MEDIUM SHOT) distressed Darren heads back into the office to grab his car keys, once there he hears a low mummer, a slightly snarling sound
- (CLOSE UP) turning to find his boss standing at the entrance of his cubicle
- (MEDIUM CLOSE SHOT) both staring at each other
- (EXTREME CLOSE UP SHOT) eyes twitching, his boss's with an angry twitch and Darren's with a worried look about them
- (BUST SHOT) Darren See's something flashing in the corner of his eye, he turns to See the zombie game and raises his eye brow
- (MEDIUM SHOT) Darren reaches for a compass and stabs it in his bosses neck
- (CLOSE UP SHOT) the boss pulls it out and growls
- (MEDIUM LONG SHOT) a chase begins round the office
- (MEDIUM CLOSE SHOT) Darren trips and a scramble on the office floor, resulting in Darren kicking his boss out of a window
- (BUST SHOT) Darren brushes himself down and looks up
- (CLOSE UP) a shocked expression
- (BUST SHOT)an over the shoulder view out the window at a burning city with sirens going on in the back ground
- (BUST SHOT) still over the shoulder view, Darren says, "deja vu?"
- (CUT TO BLACK) end
- (CLOSE MEDIUM SHOT) boom, "DARREN!", (files dumped on office desk) i need these by tomorrow
- (CLOSE UP SHOT) of screen, GAME OVER in big flashing letters (showing that the character Darren has been playing computer games and has just been interrupted by his boss)
- (MEDIUM SHOT) Darren walks to coffee machine, there is absolute mayhem going on in the background, people rushing around frantically, Darren walking past oblivious
- (CLOSE MEDIUM SHOT) at the coffee machine, still not paying attention to whats going on around him and then retreats back to his office cubicle
- (BUST SHOT) Darren sits back at his desk, stretches and rests his hands behind his head, puts his feet up and falls asleep
- (CLOSE MEDIUM SHOT) Darren awakes hours later, gets up for a stretch to find that the office has been trashed and abandoned
- (POV SHOT) Darren looks left then right out of his cubicle and then heads to the staff room
- (CLOSE MEDIUM SHOT) arriving at the staff room that is also empty, the television is on, flickering from static to the news
- (CLOSE UP) reporters explain that there has been an extreme stress disorder outbreak driving people to excessive violence
- (MEDIUM SHOT) distressed Darren heads back into the office to grab his car keys, once there he hears a low mummer, a slightly snarling sound
- (CLOSE UP) turning to find his boss standing at the entrance of his cubicle
- (MEDIUM CLOSE SHOT) both staring at each other
- (EXTREME CLOSE UP SHOT) eyes twitching, his boss's with an angry twitch and Darren's with a worried look about them
- (BUST SHOT) Darren See's something flashing in the corner of his eye, he turns to See the zombie game and raises his eye brow
- (MEDIUM SHOT) Darren reaches for a compass and stabs it in his bosses neck
- (CLOSE UP SHOT) the boss pulls it out and growls
- (MEDIUM LONG SHOT) a chase begins round the office
- (MEDIUM CLOSE SHOT) Darren trips and a scramble on the office floor, resulting in Darren kicking his boss out of a window
- (BUST SHOT) Darren brushes himself down and looks up
- (CLOSE UP) a shocked expression
- (BUST SHOT)an over the shoulder view out the window at a burning city with sirens going on in the back ground
- (BUST SHOT) still over the shoulder view, Darren says, "deja vu?"
- (CUT TO BLACK) end