Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Three shots completed

I completed three VFX shots already for the film, suffice it to say, they were fairly straightforward except the third one which was slightly more complex in that it required 3D tracking & rotoscoping.  The changing depth information was a challenge to match in Maya, but thankfully my job was made easier due to the parallel nature of my 3D camera.

I fly to Korea tomorrow to be a part of the Pusan International Film Festival director's training program, so who knows?  Perhaps this film can gain some traction in Asia.  The shots were farily easy to render, standard passes, beauty, ambient occlusion, ambient occlusion for the floor and shadow.  Lighting was simple, a directional light to simulate the sun and an HDRI.  At every location I shot at, I made sure I took an HDRI picture.

The spider mech was modeled, textured and rigged in only two days, whereas the big Bobo robot was created in like 3 years...He is truly the hero robot and every part of him is accounted for, texture, model, rig, its all well thought out with plenty of TLC.

 I wanted to create a few battle shots between Mihael (aka Bobo) and Sariel but these shots once again took longer than I expected.  Working with only one computer (no render farm) definitely has been a limiting factor in my workflow, not to mention the linear nature of my 3D pipeline.  But for this project, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Here is a VFX demo of these shots:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVrFXXQKeGU

Saturday, September 11, 2010

September Update

It is September, time is really flying.  Looking back at my previous blog, I had set a goal for myself to finish Bobo robot (aka Mihael), as well as finish CGI characters of Xaphan and Adam.  Well, as usual, the robot took much longer than I originally planned, and so I am only about half way done with modeling Xaphan.  Haven't started on Adam.  I am however, finally finished with rigging Bobo, and 99.5% done with his parts.  I have to make one more additional part for his arm and that's it.  However, the rig works, he is almost completely accounted for and it works well.  It was a lot of work to get to this point.  I shot a short film this past weekend and Bobo will make a guest appearence in it, it will be a sort of test run for the rig and the shaders.

I would say the most complicated part of the rig was trying to constrain the right things to the right things.  I would constrain some group to some joint but only find out that it wouldn't work if I moved the bot a certain way.  A lot of trial and error.

I did figure out how to rig up arms and legs with this guy though.  Next step is rigging organic humans.