Blender - completed spaceship!

I have now completed this tutorial from Andrew Price. It was great to learn the ins and outs of Blender in terms of modelling, applying materials, lighting and compositing. I'm quite happy with this final result :-)

Blender spaceship model

For those who are unfamiliar with Blender, it is a completely free 3D program, open source with a lot of free resources available.

I found this cool spaceship tutorial online by Blender teacher Andrew Price from Blender Guru. Over the past couple of days, I've spent a few hours modelling this spaceship. Blenders interface is nice and intuitive which makes it nice and quick to learn.

Here are a couple of pics of my work in progress:

For those who know Maya or 3ds Max, you are well catered for in Blender as you can use all the same hot keys. My next step will be to do the 2nd tutorial, texturing and compositing to create the final image.

In the mean time, here is some Blender Inspiration!

I am also intending to download a trial of Cinema 4D soon, it seems like every motion graphics job out there has it on their job description so it would be wise to learn it.

Kickstarter CBT promo video update & making of

I have almost finished this project now! It has been a bit of an epic and has drawn on my skills as a motion graphics designer, compositor, camera man, editor, 3D artist, time lapse recorder and musician! If anyone has any ideas of one word that I could use to fit these different roles, I would appreciate it! Audio-visual artist could be a good umbrella term.

Just a quick reminder - this work is for a promotional video made to represent Clear Blue Therapies on Kickstarter. Clear Blue Therapies is a therapy business founded by Saskia Griffiths-Moore. The video utilises motion graphics and draws on a news broadcaster theme to promote interest and help delineate Saskia's four phase plan.

Here are a few screenshots showing different parts of scene 2 on which I have created some nice bits of animation / motion graphics. The actual film itself will be out on Kickstarter soon - I will keep you posted. I just have a few final bits and pieces to sort out following some final feedback from Saskia.

I enjoyed getting the pencil out and drawing this piece to represent a conference.



Following this, I worked over it in Illustrator, then animated it in After Effects. Playing with the opacity of the fills adds a nice element of visual interest to the image. Also, conceptually, I reckon it enhances "the meeting of minds" element.



I also found it quite rewarding and satisfying working in 3D for parts of this project. The spinning logo and the books turning. Simple but effective!

And - this is a bit of an odd one - I'm quite proud of the train style LED text I put together. The font itself is called LCD Dot, and was created by Omer Kose --- http://www.omerkose.net/ I downloaded this off Dafont.

The bit that I'm proud of is the nice repetitive dot pattern I created in Illustrator for the LED light background! This lines up with the dots of the font. Then of course the colour and glow effect. It mimics the train style LEDs quite well. As things have turned out, I have been asked to change this style as it could be confusing, and takes away from the cohesion of the other fonts in the video. Think I may have taken Saskia a little too literally when she said 'text like you see on train displays'. Nevermind though!

Watch this space! The promo video will be out shortly....

Animation, vfx and self-promotion work

Since moving to London in September, I have actively been seeking work in animation and visual effects. Alongside this I have been developing the look of my website, creating a visual identity and two new showreels - one for my general moving image/animation work and the other - more specifically for my compositing work. Here are the shots I have been working on:

Unidentified sea creature - 2D animation

A 2D animation created using Flash, textured in Photoshop and composited in After Effects. This was sparked by a quick doodle I did of a Fish/Robot hybrid that breathes fire. No fire breathing in the animation yet but perhaps this is something I will come back to in the future!

'Harry' the crab - Match moved

I initially created this crab in 2010 using Maya to model and texture it. I always wanted to place it into a real world environment striking a pose! Back in Cornwall I filmed a bit of it's potential environment and last month I finally got round to stabilising the footage then placing the crab into this environment using Match Mover and Maya. Following this, I added a touch of colour in after effects. This is best viewed in HD. To do so - click this link, turn on HD and scrub to 00:54.

Vfx breakdown - Placing a house onto Bodmin Moor

Here is an image I used in an earlier post. I have uploaded this image here again in order to precede the matte painting breakdown of this shot that I completed a week ago. Breakdowns are always a fun way to display the amount of work that has gone into a shot. This shot was created for a MA student film project entitled 'Gone.'

  

These shots have been included on my Moving Image and Compositing showreels respectively. This week I am going to continue applying to jobs and learning new things!  

Level 3 Pitch Presentation and Showreel

Here is my pitch presentation (that was presented at our Animation Pitch forum) designed to showcase my skills and method of working in Concept Art, Environments and Storyboarding.

The subsequent showreel also demonstrates my skills in Compositing and Animation.

These are areas I would like to focus on throughout my third year and hopefully build up an Industry standard portfolio/showreel. It may be that I end up focusing down onto one of these areas or that I continue to be more of a generalist. Time will tell! Ultimately, I would like to work in the Industry on feature films, short films, music promos etc..

Presentation

The only bit that isn't really explained - as it's a presentation the explaining was done verbally - is after my first concept piece. The subsequent slides show how I produced that piece, starting on a city I put together in my room made from things found around the house (for initial reference and inspiration.) It builds up from there switching between Maya models and working over it with pencils and pastels.

Final Pitch

Animation and Compositing Showreel



This was produced a bit last minute and combines work from my Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Film, my previous Showreel and my last main project from Uni 'Colours and Cogs' that I produced at the end of level 2.

Projected History.. My ship is now in ship shape! Woo!

This project has been chugging along happily in the background alongside all our other projects and so it has taken a while but.. the ship is pretty much complete(depending on Simons approval.) This image shows my work in progress.



Firstly, I created two patches for the front and back of the ship that imitated the curves of my original Polygon ship. Then I stitched the patches together - adding another curve to the front half before stitching to keep the result in the right shape (second image.) Following this I converted it to Polygons (third image) then divided up the hull into six areas (fourth image) in order to add on the 6 separate texture maps. This allowed for the texture to be detailed all the way across (which is important as this will eventually be projected to a very large size.) Since this work in progress image, I have changed the font and perfecting the texture as much as possible in photoshop to keep it looking as life like as possible.

I think ultimately it would have been good to get photos of this ship using a good DSLR camera on a more overcast day as opposed to using my compact camera on a sunny day. The problem was these ships come and go fairly quickly, so the opportunity for photographing on a day with overcast weather whilst this ship was at the docks didn't present itself (typical!)

Here is a little test movie of the most basic way in which the ship will be animated. At this stage I'm not sure to what extent the building will be in front of it - you may just be seeing it through the buildings windows. The idea is that the hull will occupy the size of the whole building as it goes through it.



Since the completion of my ship, I have been experimenting with the ocean shader in Maya. The first image has been rendered using mental ray, and the second - using maya software. As shown both cause problems, but I'm sure there will be away around these. It requires a bit of research and playing around with render settings, using alpha channels and composite. The question is whether there is need for the ocean. It looks cool but would it make sense perspectively looking at it going through a building..





Here are a couple of images I rendered just for the sake of it. (I used photoshop to get rid of the visual errors that came out in the renders like those above.)





Nice :)

Post Production - super bins - final piece

Ryan and I handed in our project last night a bit last minute :



I have to say that despite all our efforts - it is not of the standard I was hoping for. In the future we must be clear of when the deadline is early on and plan in contingency days. I think we could have used at least 2 - 3 extra days on this to overcome the following problems:

- The fire (which appears to look like a cloud following the bin.)

- The bin also appears to judder as its rising up - perhaps this could have been edited out or made smoother in Maya.

- Rotoscoping to loose the edges of the real bins that you can see come through our CG bins.

- A final bit of lighting correction would have been nice as well - as the edge of our virtual spotlight can be seen as the green bin rises up and out of the lit area.

Still, on a positive note, I have learned a lot from this project. Mainly the techniques behind integrating 3D animation with live action footage but also some more unusual things such as placing 2D animated textures on 3D surfaces.

Heres a breakdown of the work I contributed towards the project:-

Design and Animatic
Filming
Tracking and Stabilizing the footage
Matchmoving and placing the 3D bins in the scene
2D Animated textures and eyes
Lighting the scene
Painting/touching up the bin textures
Compositing and rotoscoping
Rendering

I am pleased with how real we have managed to make the bins look. I also like the little bits of animation we've added. It is a shame we couldn't finish it properly in time for the deadline. The best thing we can do now is learn from this and apply it to the next project.

The ship continues.. Projected history update

So the battle between Polys and Nurbs continues..(wow! a slightly geeky comment there.) I think as a result of my efforts today I have realised Nurbs are far more efficient for this ship in terms of speed of getting them made, and quality of the result.

So first, I completed the Polygon ship as much as possible. While it looks fairly good, I was sure that Nurbs would end up looking smoother. Pictured at the top here is my latest update on the Polygon ship. As you can see, I made several lines around the Polygon ship and the result at the bottom of the picture is what happened when I lofted the lines producing a Nurbs ship..



Yeah.. a bit of a monstrosity! I think its probably because a lot of my control vertex points on the curves are not consistant from curve to curve. Then, I was struck with a moment of inspiration. I had watched a tutorial on stitching Nurb surfaces earlier and produced a quick sketch of how I could make two different Nurb Patches - one for the beginning and one for the end of the ship, and then stitch them together.



As a result of this, I tried a quick test which took around 10-15 minutes and I was happy to see that it was possible to make a Nurbs ship using this method. Not only did I do it a hundred times faster then my Poly ship, it has come our looking much smoother :-)

Projected History

Just a quick note to say I have been working on this a bit every week. The model is pretty much done. The texture you see here is temporary, I think I will physically paint a texture and then layer that on. Simon said he would like it looking worn and weathered.



I have quite enjoyed doing this.

25/2/2011 - update

Just when I thought the model was complete..it pulled me back in ! I feel comfortable within my time restraints at the moment, Simon is expecting the ship scene to be complete by the end of term - so in 4 weeks. This has allowed me time to experiment with different modelling techniques. I looked at the model above and thought it would be best to match the front of the ship to my initial reference. This took a surprising long amount of time to do as I had created so many faces and points on the model. In the end I deleted a large chunk of the front of the ship and filled it in again fairly quickly with edge loops. See below.


The rest of the ship still needs sorting out. Ideally, the lines should wrap around the entire structure. I also created some rails that line the deck. Here is a rendered version of the front of the ship.


Here, I tried recreating the ship with nurbs to see the difference. This was pretty straightforward - I just created 4 bezier outlines around and up the ships structure - defining the shape at the front of the ship, then lofted them and created planars for the top and bottom. It took less then an hour to recreate something that had taken me many days! Oh well I guess thats the nature of learning software. To be honest the nurbs ship wouldn't look half as precise if I didn't have the original poly one to model around.

Here is the front of the nurbs ship rendered.


This does look a lot smoother - the way the light bounces off it. But the other one has a bit more character and shape. I also think it would be easier to model the back of the poly ship. Nurbs or polys.. who will win in the end ! Watch this space...

6/2/2011 - Update

I have been very busy recently on my post production project so unfortuantly have not made a great deal of progress on this since the last post. I have modelled the end of the ship with polys now, but the model as a whole still needs to be complete and I would like to try and make a nurbs version again as it does seem to make a much smoother result. So here is my most up to date version:



I have just done a time plan and I would ideally like to aim for a finished model and texture by the end of this week. Leaving next week for the other elements ie. Fog and lighting etc. and the final week for putting it all into the final scene, animating and Rendering.

Crew Assignment - Projected History

I'm going to be working for two third years projects this term (and next I expect.)
One of which is 'Projected History' directed by Simon Carter.

The aim is to do a 3d mapping projection onto Tremough house (The old building situated in between Darington and Tremough campus.) We will be visually portraying the history of the building alongside references to the ages its been through (ie. the Industrial age.) It's quite an exciting project to work on and interesting to be behind the scenes.

My job so far has involved being part of the pre production team, but has also extended into modelling. Below, I have designed some of the shots for the Animatic.
Tremough house used to be a Nunnery..











Here is a boat I designed which I made an Animatic out of quite simply in Flash. The seagulls are a nice little addition :)



I have now started modelling the boat using the 2d image in the animatic above as reference, along with a couple of photos from the internet to show the front/top viewpoints of the boat. This all helps with the 3d modelling.





For these I have used NURBS as you get nice curves with it and also it is easier to texture then polygons. After speaking with Georg I've realised its now best to convert the NURBS to Polygons in order to join the side with the front. Texturing should still be easier as it transfers the NURBS UVs across. So the model is still in an early stage at the moment.

Face Sculpt and Environment project from last year.

Another 2 posts I accidently deleted last night, but now I have re-uploaded the images here. I think its a bad idea working on the computer when you're really tired..

Here is my Face sculpt from earlier last term. Never quite got round to completing it. Still it was a worthwhile pursuit that I enjoyed (at times) and learned from. It did get a bit tedious occasionally - I remember it taking a surprisingly long amount of time to do.







And going back even further in time to the beginning half of last year, here is the 3D environments project which I also quite enjoyed doing and learned a lot from.





The feedback I got was that I should have put shadows in there as it looks like the objects/elements are floating. Also that I could get a much more interesting composition with my viewpoint and I should think about what I'm trying to tell the viewer.

Harry the Crab -- Maya practice

Here's some work I actually did in April last year, but accidently deleted the post whilst adding labels. oops! Anyway, this could be cool to use on the post production project. I quite enjoyed making this crab and thought it would be cool to have it look real with one twist. It's doing Tai Chi. I've never rigged anything so it would require a lot of work so its definitely a maybe for using this idea in the post production project.