New Year, New Goals

Hey everyone!

So it is a new year, 2016!  Happy New Year!  I wanted to start off this year with a new direction and goals.  A friend of mine set for himself last year of making a 3D model every week, and for the most part he succeeded.  I would like to set a similar goal for myself.  To complete a smaller project every week in an attempt to get better and speed up my work.
As such, I am starting with a new project.  I am still going to be working on the other longer projects as well, since I need to work on these for better lighting and surfacing practice, but my hope is I can get on a schedule and use that to speed up those longer projects.  So I will be going back and forth throughout the week on these two projects.  Essentially, I will be doing one quick project focusing on different things, and then one bigger project that will take longer to finish.  So right now, those two are the Starbucks picture, and a brand new Rey Skywalker picture.
Yup, fan art.  But not just any fan art, i am going to attempt to model her in 3D and then stylize her to look like a character from the Star Wars Rebels animated tv show.  That should simplify her enough that I can speed up her production.  I will then pose her and make a still portrait.  If I can, I will try to figure out a basic cloth sim for her robe/sash thing and get some minor animation in it.

So let me for now give you guys a screenshot of where I am right now.  Feedback is welcome!

I am starting off with a single mesh for her boots, legs, pants, and shirt.  I am then going to complete a single mesh for her arms, hands, chest, neck, and head.  After that, the sash thing she has crossing her.  Right now she has relatively human proportions, so I will be using various references from the TV show to stylize her from here.  I also need to finish adjusting her edge flow, although since she is not going to be rigged for animation and only posing, I will not spend too much time on that.

Bleach short

It has been a little quiet here, but for good reason.  Lately I've been busy not only with my own work, but also with background acting (aka an extra) for several films and tv shows, as well as working on texturing and lighting background elements for a pilot being developed at ECG Productions.  These other projects have taken a lot of time away form my own work, so I don't have anything new to show right now on it, but I do have something to show for all this time.  A CG integrated element into a live-action plate.
This is a really simple scene, with no camera tracking or anything.  And while it is not perfect, due to the tight time constraints and budget, I managed to give them something decent.

Essentially I was asked to be on set to help direct two short scenes for setting up digital elements.  The first was to build a 3D sign for a community.  While I feel there is still plenty more that can be done, I did the best I could in the time I had.  I had to add this sign to a flat plate, and try to blend it in seamlessly.  While it isn't perfect yet, and doesn't have any color grading on it, I'm satisfied with what I gave them.

Original plate (flipped)

Final render (color corrected)

 I used Maya with mental ray to build the 3D element and Nuke to put this together.  The confusing part for me was that the premultiplied element was coming in with a very thick white border, which I had some trouble removing.  I will take a look at this later and see if I can pinpoint the problem, either in the render or the composite, and find a better solution.

So other than that, I will still be working on my Starbucks piece which I hope to finish soon, and working on a new short short.  I hope to have 3 new pieces on my reel by the end of the year, so I better get cracking!

WIP and updates, 10/3

So there are a few things I wanted to talk about briefly.  One, I have been doing a lot of background extra acting work and meeting lots of interesting people.  One of them suggest I look into the Air Force or the Air Force Reserves as a way of making some money, making ends meet, and maybe paying off debt.  It is not a small matter at all, and has huge ramifications, so I have taken the research and consideration very seriously and carefully.  If I do anything with that, it won't be right away, and will be after a lot of deliberation between my wife and I.
Second, I have a goal in mind for my demo reel.  I want to add at least 3 new pieces before the end of the year.  This is a tough goal, and one of them I would like to be a composite of a CG character into a live action background, this time a video with tracking.  It is a huge one, so I want to get started, and I want to make it short and sweet, something funny that will get lots of hits on youtube.
Third, I have been working on various aspects of the textures, this is going to take some work to get the level of detail I want.  So bare with me, and please give me good constructive feedback on anything you see as I go.  Yes I know it is too clean right now, but the next step is going to address that.
Finally, I might need to go back to the Starbucks where I took the original picture and capture an environment from a sphere, so I can use it for the reflection map, and possibly lighting (IBL).
That's it for now.  Don't worry about the Air Force, I've been talking to several people and decided it is right now more of a last resort option since I have some time.  Until such drastic measures, I will be continuing to work on refining my work, and making something really kick ass to show off.

The biggest changes this now are the addition of the white and green powders, as well as fixing the number of tiles and the size of the pattern on the floor.  I think I'll start on one side of the screen and work my way across refining the surfaces and then adding the grime/dirt/scratches/grunge after.

WIP 9/30

Well all the rough textures are in place except for the powder, which still needs geo as well.  It shouldn't take too long, and a lot of it will be bump mapped.  Speaking of bump maps, I still haven't figured out why I can't get the Renderman textures to show any bump.  I'll keep researching...

WIP 9/29 - Bump

Here's the latest with the rendering today.  The background in supposed to have a bump on it, procedurally generated with a grid texture node, but for some reason nothing shows up.  I haven't figured it out yet and it is bugging me.  I have tried all sorts of things, and the tutorials online so far haven't been any help.  I need to figure this out because it is a very important tool.
Let me know what you think.

Still rough textures, work in progress

The original photo for comparison.

More textures, WIP 9/28

As of right now, I've been putting in the rough placeholder textures.  Even though some of these look good, they aren't anything as good as I hope to get them to.  I still need to refine the textures/materials so they look exactly like the materials in the picture, and then i need to add all the dirt, scratches, etc.  While going through the scene, I've not only seen some geometry issues to fix and started fixing them, but I realized a giant error I'm not sure I want to fix.  It is not easy to see, which is why it might be worth cutting the corner, but the inner brown box that holds all the tongs and scoops (and the stuff within) are supposed to be 3 boxes side-by-side, and one is at an angle.  Not sure how I missed that before, but now that I see it, fixing it involved major overhauling of part of the scene.  I might go back and do this, but not yet.  It is something I will consider, but since it took so long for me to realize it, it isn't a glaring problem.
That being said, I am also struggling with the textures.  I put a granite texture on the counter top and it is not exactly behaving as it normally does.  Renderman is treating it differently so now I have to figure out how, if there is a fix, and how to make it look right.  But for now the placeholder is fine.  All that's left is the wall, the calk, the baseboard, the jugs on top (and their liquid), the small rivets, the limes, adding the geo and textures for the powders, and the background wall, which ultimately should have a metal basket and a lemon in it, which is something else I might add later, but now yet.
Let me know what you think.
(Also I think the IT is putting things in linear space, but for some reason it put this output from rgb and converted it as if it was linear, which darkened it.  So it is too dark now :\  I'll fix that.)

Converted on-the-fly from linear to srgb

Incorrectly converted from srgb to srgb as if it was from linear to srgb, making it too dark.

Materials in Progress... WIP 9/27

Here is where I am with the first step in the materials: rough blocked in materials.  Again, no lights, unrefined textures, no dirt or grime or imperfections yet.  Just putting something basic in place so I can start the process of putting things together.  Also it will be full of noise cause it's only a test render.

Tell me what you think so far.

More learning

Again, not much to show yet... but I finished some tutorials and I'll be starting the texturing next.  I have a few blocked in materials.  My goal is to put in blocked materials, then go back and refine each one to look at realistic as possible, then go back again and add dirt. grime, grunge, etc. to mess it up a bit, and then do one more pass overall to make sure it matches close to the original photograph.  Here is the start of a very rough blocked in pass.  Lighting comes later.

Just a hint of color

Not much to report today, except I've been doing tutorials for Renderman materials.  Good stuff!  It'll take getting used to with some of the different parameters/attributes, such as presence.  Well at least here is a small section I was briefly experimenting with.  It is way too clean and not refined and has no lighting, as it is just blocking in something, mainly messing with the shaders.

Some color at last!

Tutorials abound

Update for tonight isn't as exciting as I'd like it to be.  Had Maya crash and lost a bunch of work I did.  Oops.  Should have saved.  But I decided that most of what I was doing was flailing around in the dark with Renderman.  While that sort of technique is great and all, I figured maybe I should spend some time looking at tutorials on Renderman and the like.  I learned that since the newer Renderman versions (19 and 20) have come out, they've added a whole new rendering system.  The old one was called REYES (Renders Everything You Ever Saw), and the new one is RIS.  Might as well jump into the new one for now.
One of the cool things I found out was about the unusual Image Tool... or IT for short.  It is just like the render window Maya gives you, except a separate program Renderman uses.  And it has some cool features.  By default, everything is in Linear, with easy tools to adjust for srgb.  It also has a much better image comparison system, using catalogs and wipes, so you can compare between old and new renders.  It even lets you select objects and shaders in Maya from within the IT.  Very cool!
So for today, I don't have anything newly rendered to show yet, but I have spent many hours just getting used to the new interface of Maya 2016 and the new tools in Renderman.
I have to find some more tutorials on this stuff.  If anyone knows of some I can get access to without spending money, please send me a link and I'll take a look and review what I find on here.

Life comes in waves...

As I have noted in the past personally, life and all that it brings with it tends to come in waves.  Sometimes literally.

I will not say that I have had the worst time, or even a really bad time, but I have had better.  And all these not so great things (and the great as well) have just taken time away from what I have been wanting to do: 3D art.  So a (really) quick run down of all I've been doing and all that's happened.

I went to SIGGRAPH as a volunteer in Vancouver last August.  Great fun, lots of cool people, worth the trip, but I hurt my foot pretty bad.  Then, I freelanced for a while and did the whole "looking for work" thing.  I wanted to keep working on the current file on this blog, but I was waiting for the new free Renderman to come out so I waited and worked on other things.  I will post some of it in a little while.

After a while, the freelancing ended up getting put on hold as my wife and I decided it was time to move to save money.  After all, student loans are starting to come in.  So the moving process started, and we ended up with a new place just down the road that will save us a pretty bundle every month.  I started working on a new demo reel you can find on my website, and went to the SCAD career fair in Savannah, where hurt my foot... again.

There, I got to talk with some really awesome people from Floyd County, Method, Primal Screen, Turner, and more.  Despite my foot, I had a great time and got some leads out of it.  As a result, I started to learn 3DS Max as was recommended to me.  Maya isn't the only 3D software package out there, and several companies use 3DS Max instead.

As I'm doing this, my actual move takes place.  Stressful.  Things get lost/broken/whatever as always happens during a move.  About two weeks later, I finally get my computer running again but didn't have the time to keep learning things.  Finally, Renderman comes out, I manage to download it, but got too busy with unpacking and setting things up that I didn't have time to play with it yet.

That brings me to this month.  Let's see, I volunteered for the Atlanta Film Festival, and while I had a great time, one of the patrons outright stole my jacket (the only one I have that isn't falling apart), my sunglasses (the only ones I have that weren't stolen or lost), my earphones, my car keys, my copy of my wife's car keys, my apartment key, and my mailbox key.  About $700 of replacement in all, right after the move which cost more than we planned for.  So as I am recovering from the theft, we decide to plan a house-warming party to help give us incentive to finish unpacking so we can get back to job hunting/freelancing/artwork.  We buy some new Ikea furniture for the unpacking just as I come down with a cold.  Immediately after that, I hurt my foot again.  Immediately after that... the wave literally hits.  My upstairs neighbor decides to flood her apartment, my apartment, and the apartment beneath mine.  Things are still being worked out, walls and ceiling being torn down, carpets being dried and replaced... but the real torrent of water poured like an ice-bucket challenge from a garbage bin onto my entire entertainment set up.  TV and all.  So now I've been dealing with that.  Another $5,000 bill.  Still have to work things out with her insurance.

However, I am getting fed up with all these distractions, intentional or not, major or minor.  I need to get back into things, and so I am going to make myself work on both this Renderman file (the Starbucks scene) AND learning 3DS Max (which could lead to a job).  I am going to stop letting things get in my way, and just do it!

So like I said, busy, bad luck, but not the worst by far, just distracting and time consuming.  I will be back!

WIP, Tuesday Sept 16th

I had a bit of a delay this weekend, but I have just about finished the modeling.  I have a few minor details to add (like the little feet and screws on the middle holder, better edges and details on the larger holder, and grout along the edge of the wall, a small object toward the foreground I missed before, and the powder in the containers).  I should have all this done tonight, and will start looking at UV mapping and MARI next.  So here is the latest WIP.

WIP, Friday Sept 12th

Almost done with the modeling.  I have the top of the machine int he back to finish modeling, and there are some smaller details like screws, grout, and feet to put in, not to mention the powder in the containers, but I think I'm almost there!  I am pretty satisfied with how the blender containers and handles came out.  Still waiting for Renderman, but I might have to bypass waiting for it, and either texture and light at SCAD on campus (if I can get in), or use 3Delight or Mental Ray.  Well, we'll see what happens next week.

Tell me what you think so far.

WIP. Thursday Sept 11th

So I have been busy trying to figure out some modeling, and looking for work.  That and fixing technical bugs with my computer (please play my music iTunes, I promise to behave.).  Of course it took longer than I hoped, but I have an update, and I hope to have far more for tomorrow.  I am almost done with this phase of modeling.  Afterwards I will do a once over on everything, and look for feedback before focusing on textures and shading.

Original picture for reference

Full render so far with smooth models

Close-up of tongs (notice the chipped container in the back)

Close-up of container with feet (one broken)

WIP, Tuesday, Sept 9th

Well after taking a short break for the weekend (while working on other projects), I've come back to the Starbucks picture.  Right now, I am (finally) done with matching and placing the objects.  At last I've started making the refined models.  I am using a combination of subdiv and polygons (with a few NURBS).  After experimenting with the Maya 2014 feature of creases sets, which I have worked with before, I've found that while they are are useful, not everything supports it properly.  Case in point, I am planning to render this using PR Renderman (whenever Pixar releases it... they said they'd release it at SIGGRAPH but that was a month ago), so while I wait, I am using a copy of another Renderman renderer, 3Delight.  Apparently, it doesn't like crease sets that much, and there have been other issues.  But I can say this, it is a lot better and faster than Mental Ray.  I haven't gotten to texturing or lighting yet, but with a simple test at full resolution, it took Mental Ray about 1 and a half minutes to render the scene, while 3Delight actually added shadows (turning them on on the default lights) and took only 16 seconds to render the same shot.  Much faster.  So right now, I am using 3Delight, but I am hoping PR Renderman comes out soon.

Until then, here are the visual updates:

No wirefreame

With wireframe

As you can see, I have refined the models of the nozzles in the foreground, as well as the lid in the foreground to the left (also added the indents), refined the cups in the tower, remodeled the containers in the center with better lids and more details, as well as the pumps on them, and the handles sticking out of the containers behind them.  I am hoping tomorrow to finish modeling the containers in the stand, the pitchers on top of the larger case, and get cracking on the machine int he background.  One large challenging piece for that will be the odd-shaped structure on the top of it, which I have mainly avoided for the rough placement, but will need to be figured out and addressed soon.  Once that is done, I will do a once over on the models and their placement, and finally get started on shading and texturing.

I also have plans to start modeling a minor character, from Dexter's Laboratory, as a practice on modeling a character and texturing it.  It should be easy, but will let me explore Mari some more.  More on that later.

WIP, Friday Sept 5th

Here I am in my project.  I had to redo a lot of work from the previous day or two because I discovered that by trying to place the foot of the large machine int he back cause me to realize how off everything is.  How does it go?  It is a strange fate that we should suffer so much fear and doubt over so small a thing.  Well thanks to that tiny little cylindrical foot, I had to realign most of the object all because I didn't have the actual dimensions of any of the objects, so I have been forced to eye-ball them.  I think I'm pretty close now, but that did put me a little behind where I wanted to be.  Today I will begin actually refining the models so I can move onto texturing.  I think this is a lesson learned, get measurements.

WIP, Thursday, Sept 04th, 2014

Almost done with aligning objects.  I hope to spend more time tomorrow on this than I could today, so I can catch up.  I hope to have the placement finished and the modeling well under way by tomorrow.  Just have a few nozzles and "stuff" to add for placement, but I think it is coming along nicely.  I'm going to try using subdivs for a lot of this.  I'll start polygon then go into subd.  I also plan on trying out Mari for texturing after that.

WIP Wed, Sept 3rd, 2014

I'll keep this post short.  I have been working on taking one of the existing images and recreating it into CG, rather than taking more pictures.  With the weather misbehaving this week, I rather start working than waiting for it to clear up.  So for now, I am working on one of the Starbucks images I took.  This will be the first of many projects.
The biggest problem I ran into was trying to align the camera to get it just right.  It is still something I'm struggling with perfecting, but I had to do some research to figure out why it was always a little off.  I had already adjusted the focal length of the image, but what I was missing was the size of the digital back.  This is the sensor of the camera, and I had no idea what it was.  I knew it wasn't a full-sized one, so I couldn't use a preset in Maya (which is based on film, like 35mm), so I looked up the size of the sensor for my specific camera online, adjusted the image plane to view the entire image, and voila!  The image now matched a lot closer than it did before.  It is still hard to get it just right, but that is part of the nature of this without having exact measurements and the like.
So for today, I will post an image of the first round of blocked in objects, trying to align them to the positions and sizes as those in the photograph.  I also drew another picture on my iPad, but I am not satisfied with it, and won't be sharing this one right now.  I rather do more work on it or move onto something else.  It was an experiment in technique and I haven't quite figured it out yet.

Image Based Lighting and more

So last time I showed some photographs I took studying light, specifically time of day outdoor light changes.  I have been working on a short animation that involves an outdoor shot of a market as the sun sets.  Right now it is suffering from rendering errors that our renderfarm occasionally puts in, so my next step is to fix all those.  I also have a slight displacement problem, but the other big factors include the light colors and positions of the street lights.  I have a lot of work to do to make this scene work, but once it is finished, it will look really nice.

Time of Day lighting test 4 from David Hixon on Vimeo.

But that isn't all I've worked on.  I have also been taking this to another level and creating a scene that uses actual photographs and actual light information from the environment and integrated by own CG element into the scene.  In other words, like action plate CG integration.  I went out and took a series of images at SCAD Atlanta's DMC, where I captured "background plates" and environment maps.  These environment maps are made as HDRI so they hold more information than a regular image, and are then manipulated in a program called HDR Shop to fit into my CG scene.  I can then use this to capture the light information in the scene to capture the ambient light, and then tweak it from there.  I also had to render in passes, so I could isolate everything from the shadows to the reflection of the chairs to the ambient occlusion.  I finally used Nuke to composite it back together, and voila!  Movie magic!

 
Image Based Lighting with CG Character Integration from David Hixon on Vimeo.

But that's not all!  I've been a REALLY busy bee.  I can't show anything currently from my last 2 projects I've been working on (not to mention math), but you can check out my other blog to see updates to my senior film, Last Light, at LastLightFilm.blogspot.com.  Besides working on my film, I have been lighting and rendering and compositing Michelle's film, Leaping Place.  It continues to be a challenge, but this entire thing must be done in one week, so it's crunch time!  I'll update more on that later!

Eggs and Ice

So I've been busy working on various shaders and am moving onto lighting.  I have been working on Michelle Ionesue's senior film doing her texturing and lighting.  I have just finished a shader focusing on icicle stalactite/stalagmites in her cave scene.  It is supposed to have an eerie other-worldly feel to it, and I think I managed to get the feel she was going for.  Once I finish with the final tweaks on the textures, I am going to be moving onto the lighting for her scene.  I also have my film to texture and animate, and another friend, Raymond, who's film I'll be helping him texture and light.  And I am going to try to help with the 3D Group Project film as well.  Busy busy busy...
Other than that, I've been diving into the advanced Photorealistic lighting class.  This is promising to be a challenge, and is somehow both frustrating and fun at the same time.  The current project we are working on is to recreate a photograph of a bowl (or plate?) of eggs as accurately as possible.  I am struggling to get the lighting just right, but the biggest problem is trying to get the geometry just right, repositioning, resizing, reshaping, and adjusting every single object dozens of times and then fixing the lights and shadows.  It is far from perfect right now but I am well on my way with it.  I want to make this look as close to the original photograph as possible.
So I leave you with 2 images, one of my eggs, and the other of my ice shader.    Enjoy! (Updated)