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!

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!

Gnomon School Master Classes

Hi everyone!  While we are all getting into a full Holiday swing, I have been busy with tutorials and projects, working from building ice and tree shaders to Maya dynamics and Sub Surface Scattering.  I am really hoping to get as much out of this break as I can, and one of the things that has come to my attention are the Gnomon Master Classes for 2013.

 
These 14 classes are taught by leading professionals in the industry in Visual Effects.  They've done everything from commercials to video games like Star Craft II and films like Gravity.  These classes last for 2 weeks, and cover a wide range of topics, with private forums and 2 hour long HD tutorials with over 28 hours of instructions.  I know this is a little last minute, but I figured it would be better to post this now rather than later.

The best part is, if you can't make it every day for the instructions, you can come back later and watch all the videos as many times as you want!  So you won't miss out on much if you have family obligations.

But in case you need more convincing, check out this video:

Gnomon Master Classes 2013 from Gnomon School of Visual Effects on Vimeo.

Remember students get discounts as well!  So consider this a great opportunity to get some master classes from veteran Visual Effects masters!

I will post more of my own stuff soon as well.

SCAD Generate 2013

Hey everyone!

So I just finished a competition for art students here at SCAD Atlanta, called Generate.  It is a 24 hour challenge where each department gets sponsored by a different company and we have 24 hours to break into teams and create an original work based on their criteria.  They often give prizes, free food, and have a lot of fun.  We had trivia (which we were surprisingly bad at), which helped lighten the mood, and waaaay too many sugary foods.

All that aside, our team was part of the Visual Effects challenge.  But why is an animation major taking the VFX challenge you ask?  Well this year the VFX department added a Technical Direction challenge which was right up my alley.  Our goal was to spend 24 hours making an environment for a character.  We didn't need to include the character, but we did have to describe the character.  We had to include an element of animation and part of our project had to use Houdini in some aspect.  Our character was a woman named Fern who lived in 1945 in Paris, France.  She has been getting lettings from her husband, a soldier in the war, and the last letter promised to meet up with her at the cafe they first met at.  Fern waits for him at Cafe Maison, but he never shows.

Sad, I know, you can blame me, I came up with the sappy details.  And I did a ton of work on this with 6 other students, all contributing their skills to the project.  Nicole and I were the two Houdini artists, so we made a billowy smoke effect for a blown out candle on the table, but she really did all the work there.  I was mainly in charge of making sure the work got divvied out and shaded most of the glass work and such.  I was also the only one who had significant experience in Nuke, so I was given the challenge of compositing the project with literally minutes till the deadline.  I had a TON of fun, and we managed to finish a rather complex scene in JUST under the wire.

While I would love to say more, for now I will leave you with a single still image of one of our two shots.  I know it isn't perfect yet, but with a little more work (and a LOT more sleep), it will look amazing!  Enjoy!