... 1 To Go

Well the Winter 2014 quarter has ended, and it appears I am getting some decent grades (2 A's and a B), but what is really exciting me is what is to come ahead.
First of all, my graduation.  I will be graduating next quarter, and as such I have to prepare.  I have ordered a cap, gown, stole, tassel, class ring (custom made by my awesome professor, Matthew Maloney) invitations, and a partridge in a pear tree.  Well... no peach tree, this is Georgia.  So if anyone is interested, the graduation will be May 31st, and will be down town Atlanta (you can find details on the SCAD website).
Other than that, I am working on my senior film, Last Light.  It is coming along nicely, but I have a long way to go.  I helped a bunch of friends on different projects last quarter, including an awesome short by Michelle Ionescue called Leaping Place, and a group project short called Nor:  A Cloud Story.  Now it's my turn.  I watched these students go from scratch to a finished film in 10 weeks, while missing almost 2 weeks of class due to unexpected snow storms.  I also watched my friend Nora take her senior film from a a project with no models, no rigs, and no animation, and complete it in the same amount of time WHILE directing Nor.  That is inspiration right there.  If these amazing folks can do it, so can I.  And I probably don't have as far to go with it either.  So I will be spending a lot of time on my film and perfecting everything I can about it.
When I'm not working on my film or my other class, I will be working on a very important project... I like to call it GETTING A JOB.  Or at least an internship or apprenticeship or something.  I have had a lot of awesome opportunities come up, and this coming quarter has a lot of them hitting me all at once.  The career fair in Savannah is soon, followed by several internship opportunities, and then Out2Launch (sort of a reverse career fair where the students set up booths and the employers go around looking at them).  I have a LOT of stuff to do for this including fixing up my portfolio, and I have to do it all as soon as possible.
So I'll be working a lot this break, although I still plan to have a little fun.  I have to meet with some of my friends to go over changes to my film, and get some feedback on my portfolio, and get my iMac fixed, and my printer, and my scanner...  There truly is no rest for the wicked.

Well I better get back to it.  Right now I'm fixing up some of my older works that I really liked, starting with my Diner.  I'm liking this 1950's feel I got going, maybe I'll do more with that theme.
Oh, and then I have to get a hair cut, and shave, and get a picture... and go to the printers... and get my images approved... and submit for my monitor.......

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!

Composition Final (TECH 420), version 1

Hey everyone!

I have 2 finals down, and (and a half) to go.  Why a half?  I have to take one of my projects and do a simple breakdown, but that's for another post.  For now, I have finished my final for my Compositing for Technical Directors class, which has been teaching Nuke, as I mentioned before.  Our final project was to take an existing live-action plate, which is essentially just a video taken of an environment (in this case) with the intent of adding a CG element to it later.  The CG element we could add was our choice, and I decided I wanted to do something a little different.

In the end, I am not satisfied with the level of detail the model is.  While I did a LOT of work to make it look better, including displacement, specular highlight, specular color, and more, which I did in Mudbox, Maya didn't properly import anything, and I had to fight with it to make it look halfway descent.  However, as a result, I spent to much time trying to fix bugs and errors that I had to stop fixing minor problems and get to the point of the project, which was to integrate the object into the scene.

A LOT of work went into this, but too late I ran into a bigger bug that I've seen before and couldn't figure out.  I'm not even sure how to describe it to get help, and I didn't have any time left to try to repair it or even remove it.  If you look at the object in my scene, it has a sort of polygonal look to it, but I assure you this is a smooth model with no polygonal edges on it.  The problem is the displacement I used fell apart.  I've seen this before, where my displacement lost all definition and became a mass of polygons on the surface that no longer even tried to retain it's original shape, but it only shows up on high resolution renders, so none of my smaller test renders caught it.  So I am NOT giving up on addressing this challenge.  I WILL fix this, and then I will post it.

So for now, enjoy my little scene, and again, if you have any feedback on how I can integrate the CG elements into my scene better (and please refrain from mentioning the texture, polygons/displacement on the object, or the clipping yet because I am already addressing those), I would appreciate it.  Ta ta for now...

Soul Front

Hello again everyone!

I just wanted to tell you all about a project I've been helping out with for the ITGM (Game Design) guys.  Some of them approached the production club, looking for help with animation.  That's one of the nice things about SCAD is that you always meet students from other disciplines, related or unrelated to yours, and can collaborate to make a better project than what you started with.  For example, photography students will often meet with fashion majors to take pictures of the models wearing the fashions, to not only fulfill requirements they both need, but spread publicity for each other as well.  Well the same is true, maybe even more so, between Animation majors, Visual Effects majors, and Game Design majors.  While the game design guys aren't all in this building as often as animation and Visual Effects are, they do have their own little gaming lab where they test out games, and they have several classes in this building, so they are often around.

So the long and short of it is that a group of game design majors came looking for animators because they knew their animations weren't that great, and didn't have that time to finish the animation with them more important programming and testing they had to do.  That's where I stepped in.  With help from 2 other animators (Raymond and Andrew), we were able to put together new animations for all their characters.  With 4 characters, 7 animations each, plus tweaking and additional animations, we had a lot to do.  We haven't quite finished yet, but the animations are almost done.  Right now all the blocked in motion is there, and some tweaks are needed, but so far we have what we need for them to continue.

The game is called Soul Front, and it is a real-time strategy game where you control 3 characters (out of a choice of 4 archetypes) that you match up against another player (or a computer) with the same set up options as you have.  No out-leveling opponents here.  This is actually designed to be a mobile platform game, to work on the iPad and I believe Android.  Specifically, I coordinated the animations, working with Raymond and Andrew to decide what each character should do.  I then animated throw animations for each character, stunned/dazed animations for all of them, the attack and victory for one of them, and will probably be doing tweaks on many of the animations already finished in the future.  I will give more details about my role in this when the game is closer to a release.

While it is still in the works and might not be available for download yet, you can see their blog at SoulFrontGame.com.  Please check it out and make sure to check their Facebook and Twitter pages too for more updates.  I will also update here when the game is available for download.

Beginnings of a film

Today, I want to briefly talk about what the rest of my time as SCAD is going to be dedicated toward.  While I will still take pictures in Photography, Lighting, and so forth, I have to make a senior film, a project that showcases my work.  As thus, I have started working on a story that allows me to focus on lighting and compositing.  I have been working on some updates this this as well, and hope to have some of them in a new animatic before too long.  I want to add a particle effect to the main character, as well as reworking the story a little for a better flow.
Until I have the time to get these changes in here, this is my current animatic.  As soon as I get the changes in place, I will post a new one, and will probably be posting a new blog dedicated to the film as well later on.  So for now, enjoy this short animatic.  If you have any questions or suggestion, feel free to leave them in the comments.

Mushroom Madness!

Hey everyone,

Big news today!  I applied to be a student volunteer at SIGGRAPH 2013, and they accepted me!  Not only did they accept me, but they  are going to cover my housing!  This is great news, as this is a perfect opportunity for networking with professionals from all the major and influential companies in animation and visual effects.  The conference will be this July, and will last about a week, in Anaheim, California.

In other news...

Today I have a new project for you, and this one moves... sort of.  It animates at least.  The entire project was about using Autodesk Maya to render out Primary and Secondary passes, and then composite and animation them, post-production style, in Nuke.  Sounds like a bunch of fancy words I'm sure.  In short I am telling my 3D software to render out my scene in pieces, and then I put them back together and make changes to them in the composting software.
So this exercise involved taking existing models of mushrooms and applying up to 3 textures to them, and then adding my own background.  I decided to use an existing background I made before for a different class, and manipulated it for the scene.  I then rendered it in passes, brought it into Nuke, and make the colors change.  I also added the camera move and the depth of field as well in post as well.
While this is a "finished" project, it is not actually finished.  I will be reworking this to fix a bug or two and to enhance some of the effects.  Until then...

Enjoy!

Vita Magus

Yet again, another dose of your daily pixel.

Except this time, I don't have a picture to show you.  But I DO have a website to link you to.  It's not just any website, it's another blog.  Why another blog?  Because it is the official blog for a short animation:

Vita Magus.

Vita Magus (pronounce it however you want) is a short animation made in 2013 by 13 students at SCAD Atlanta, as a collaborative project.  This was an official class, but a voluntary one we were all interested in.  I can say I learned a lot about myself, and things I still need to work on.  It was a very challenging quarter for me, but I managed to get through with good grades and a completed film so everything turned out great!

With only 13 people on the project, we all had to wear many hats.  We had 2 directors, an art director, a technical director, a production manager, a lighting director, and several leads.  All of us worked in multiple roles, some of us in multiple leadership positions.  I would like to thank Karen and Andy who were our directors and did a great job, Leo who got us through a lot of sticky situations, Jeff who kept us all organized and on time, our professor, Becky, for helping us realize our potential and allowing us the chance to make this film on our own, and to everyone in the crew!  Without everyone's individual work, we never would have finished on time.  Great job everyone!

Vita Magus is a story about an aging street magician who looses sight of what's important in life.  It takes a little girl to remind her of the little things that matter.  We all loved working on this film, I just wish I could have dedicated more time to it, but 3 studio classes tend to eat up what little time I have.

So please make sure you visit the official blog and learn a little more about the film.  Right now the film is not available for public viewing, but I will be sure to announce when it is and link to it.

One more thing, I now have an official Facebook page for Pixel of the Day, which you can get to by visiting www.facebook.com/pixeldaily.

Till next time, Keep Animated!

Houdini -- It's magical!

So I'm a few minutes late, big deal.  I'm still awake, so it's still Wednesday to me. :P

Today I will briefly talk about Houdini, a program made by a company called SideFX.  "But David, what is Houdini" you ask?  To put it simply, it is a 3D package (program) that uses nodes and a nearly non-destructive workflow.  This means you can create a complicated scene with a variety of complex objects, and still go back to the very first shape you made and change it, without messing up anything else, and all the changes you make go down the line and affect the final outcome.  It is nearly non-destructive, because you can go back and mess with your work at any point in the history of making that object, except certain things you do WILL break your setup.  Regardless, it is a wonderful program, and it is mainly used in visual effects for things like particle effects and dynamics and the like.  It can be really complicated, and I haven't gone into all of that yet, although I have touched on particles and dynamics.
So this scene here is one I created last quarter.  It is a still life of an image I shot myself which uses a single light source.  I wanted to copy the image as closely as I could, but I feel it is still a work in progress.  Hopefully I will have an update to show everyone before too long.  So for now, enjoy my still life.

Story telling through light

So another close call, but Day 4 is here.

This time I will show you 6 images, 3 drawn and 3 rendered in Maya, which depict a story through lighting.  The drawn images are the initial concepts, while the 3D renders are the final results.  I did not model or texture this character (Morpheus, and Blake), nor did I model the church (but it needed HEAVY editing), but I did model and file texture the alleyway and gun.  Enjoy!

Welcome to Pixel of the Day!

Hello world, and welcome to my blog!

Pixel of the Day is my newest blog, dedicated to showcasing my work and my exploration of the world of 3D animation and Technical Direction.  In short a pixel is a single block of colored light that is combined together to constitute an image, and on this blog a Pixel will be a piece of art, a thought or observation, or something I learned, which will constitute my body of work.  This blog will be used to share my work, my art, and my life as an animator and digital artist.  Sometimes the artwork will be new, sometimes it will be old.  Some posts will be long, other times it will be a sentence or two.  However it is my goal to upload at least something every day (with few exceptions).

So I welcome you to my journey in digital art.

Perhaps you'd like to know more about me.  My name is David Hixon, and I am currently a student at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), where I am majoring with an MFA in Animation and a minor in Technical Direction.  I am also the owner of Weakly Animated, a blog that was dedicated to strengthening my skills in animation.  It has now served its purpose, and will either be closed down or re-purposed.

So for today I will start with a single element of a greater image I have been working on.  This is a coke bottle I modeled and textured.  To be precise, I used an image reference of a coke bottle and used a NURBs curve to model the bottle, created a label geometry to fit it, took an existing Coca-Cola logo and adjusted it to better match the classic coke label, added noise to the label highlight to create the "feel" of the texture of the label, created a glass texture using a Fresnel Effect, and fine tuned the transparency, reflection, refraction  diffuse, and color.  The grid in the back is just to help see the refraction and reflection.

So for those that don't understand everything I said, I took a lot of care in making the bottle look like real glass.  If anyone has any advice, feedback, or comments, I welcome your input.  Enjoy and Welcome!