VFX project

VFX project we did for "Foeksia de Miniheks". CG teapot, alls 3d.
End result:


Making of:

Character design

quickie sculpt and rendertest

Concept art for Graduation project

Some Concept Character Designs for our graduation film I've sketched in the last few days.
Damn, haven't been drawing for a while! I think the last one's pretty cool, this is based on a sketch by Joscha van Deijk

FumeFX testing

I switched to FumeFX to create more realistic results with shorter calculation and rendertimes, here's the first test:

Maya Fluid Testing

First attempt at creating fire in maya, using the built in fluid system
(realsitic fire is tricky in maya)


Second attempt, more relaxed fire with whispy smoke
(damn long render and calculationtime:S)



Thinking about using FumeFX for better and faster results

Blah

Some renders of the same bust, still not really finished...

Still Comping

Rendering has been a real bitch....
We practically re-animated the whole short, so I kinda had to start over again. I don't really have time to composit yet, but here are some previews I made for testing stuff out.
We're now finishing up shot # 28 of 39. We've been rendering for 3 weeks now, on two quad-core machines (not full-time though), but still, it's going pretty fast:D

Busting Some Heads

Hey there,

As my fellow team members may seem dead, I will show a sign of life again...
This is what I've been doing for the last week. I created a very very basic Bust in Maya,
My goal was to create a realistic male Bust, I've never done this before (as I always tend to lean towards chracatures) So, very exciting! It took me a while to get all the proportions working for me, I tried as much as possible not to use any references.


The topology is realy bad, I'm actually waiting for Zbrush 3.5 (especially the new GoZ feature!!!)
to retopo this guy. I wanted to do some rendering and compositing tests, so I decimated my model from the highest subd, from about 3.000.000 to about 3.000 polys. So i'm not using displacement or even bumpmaps (as my model is nog UVed or detailed yet).

Maya gave me a lot of issues, so I thought I'd go back to my old friend 3DS Max, and used Vray for the passes, here you can see the composit sheet, very basic. I made this setup, so I can re-use it later with my finalized model.

Well, here's the final:


I also used the basemesh bust to create these characters. Just a Quick study with some stereotype features, planning to create more.

I hope you liked this,

Tom

Rendering away

Here is an image I rendered a few days ago. I saw this amazing WIP post on zbrush central by Ryan Kingslien. He used zbrushes new decimation master to export his high-poly mesh to maya. and photographed it with mentalray, an amazing result.

Here's my attempt:

Skin shading Exercises

I've been testing out mentalrays SSS system, pretty hard to tweak everyting realistically...
Here are my best results:

Compositing My Ass off

Animation was finally catching up, so I got to start rendering... After a lot of issues, we finally got it to work!
These are previews of shot 2 till 10... The background is a still images, as we use a fixed camera. The characters were rendered with shadows and AO, to be composited onto the still image backround.
I used maya 2009's passes system, it gave me both a lot of trouble and a lot of control and freedom. I used beauty/diffuse/indirect/specular and ambient occlusion passes to create this final look. A lot of post-work was done as well, using solids and textures with blendmodes.
We still have a few moths left now, finishing everything up...
This is our final look, hope you like!

Showreel Craze!

Hey Guys,

As my classmates are showing off their skills in these awesome reels, I want to show my work too.. Took me a hell lot of work, but it's finally finished!!!
Check it out!

The BIG one, Sorenson 3 codec, 256 mb
Smaller version, H264 codec, 91.5 mb
Small Ugly version, H264 LQ codec, 42 mb

Character Design WIP4

Here's a shot small turntable of my character...
This is just his face though. I didn't use displacement or normal mapping, this is a very High Poly model...



And here's another turntable.
I used normal mapping for all the details on this low-poly model.
added some particle rain and Ncloth wind

Wallpaper update

I wanted to put the poster in my reel, so I cut out all the charaters and made a 3d cam move in AE.
Did lose a lot of the image though, because of the 16:9 comp for my reel...:S
I used the clone brush to fix the background an used PS' vanishing point on in, to create a 3d environment. Positioned the characters back in place and used Twitches for distortion....

Character Design WIP3

As I'm currently working on my showreel, I wanted to put this caracter in there too.. I'm now busy creating a nice turntable for my reel.. Here's a preview!
I'll update soon!
Tom

Character Design WIP2

I used UV-layout to UV this guy,
and created normal maps for the details as shown right here:

2 more ss renders, i finally decided to use a Blinn instead of subsurface scattering, just with a diffuse and specular map...
Just a I did for all the characters in our short.

Character Design WIP1

We had a character design/modeling/sculpting seminar a few moths ago... i thought I'd post soem of my WIP.
In this image you'll see the modelling progress in maya and Zbrush.

I wanted to create a nice big dude, to apply my anatomical knowledge to its fullest. I tried not to use any references, but some muscle groups are just to complex..

I eventually ended up texturing this guy in Zbrush too, eventhough their polypainting tools aren't as good as they should be..:S

I foud a very efficient way to paint realistic skin, layers, layers layers..:D a lot of fun!

Here you can see some SSS rendertests from maya.

Rendering............^o)

So, here you can see some render and compositing tests i've been doing over the last few days.
We've had even more problems with the girl, just unexplanible.
Renders that used to take 44 sec (wihtout the hair) took almost 10 min (with the hair) just insane. I'm gonna make a separate layer for the hair and jsut render is very simple in maya software renderer.

Anyhow, here you can see her final look... (just imagine the hair in some images)

Finally some of the animation is done, so I can start rendering tonight.... yeah!

Some quick Updates

Hey hey,
We're superrrr busy right now, mostly problem solving. Maya's just been a bitch the last few weeks, been driving me insane....
Here's just a short summary of these frustrating weeks:
Ok, a problem with normal maps is, that they do'nt generate ambient occlusion:( So i imported our highpoly Zbrush meshes and baked the AO, and placed these maps on surface shaders in an extra renderlayer, here's the result:
This all worked out very nice....
I won't go into detail of our problem solving, there's just been too much crap going on....
Shader, rig and render issues, all generated by maya...ARGH!:@

After a few very very frustrating days, I created these turntables: I animated my father character, rene animated his girl and gijs created a walkcycle for his bot.
I lightend, did the camerawork, renderd and composited....

Quick Previzzz of the girl
Ok, after a lot of problems with the girls file, I was finaly able to render. Eventhough I drove poor Rene crazy....
I composited in AE using fairly simple but cool techniques to create a nice ambiance. A lot of sparks and steam are done in post too.
The characters are now presented, posing as actors...

The Father



The Girl



And the bot (not finished, needs 2 more shots) also, this isn't so much a turntable, but just some cool shots to put in our reels;)

Hand Close Up



Foot Close Up



Body Medium Close




Hope U like!

Shading

Here you can see a quick render example, I've been meaning to create nice metal and skin shaders for the robot for a while now. It's working out pretty good so far, fixing everyting in compositing... The next thing I'll be checking out is baking the AO cavities on the body, mentalray doesn't render this detail due to the use of normal maps (which ofcourse only deflect light instead of creating surfaces, like the use of displacement maps do).
I'll probably try it in maya first, using the "transfer maps tool" and use the normal maps as a source. If this doesn't work out, I'll reopen Zbrush and use Zmapper to create the cavities.

The plan is, to detatch everything with normal maps from the other geometry in the AO layer, and throw the cavitymap in the "lighter color Node".

You'll find out very soon if it worked out for me!