Returned from SIGGRAPH 2014

In order to keep everyone up-to-date, SIGGRAPH 2014 was a BLAST!  Vancouver is an amazing and beautiful city, and I must say dealing with Canadian airline security and customs was easier than dealing with USA security and customs.  (Also Canadian money is so pretty and colorful.)

Behold my fellow SVs!

While I was at SIGGRAPH, I helped out a lot with Studio, which is where cutting-edge applicable technology is showed off.  This is stuff like 3D printers, auto-stereoscopic (3D without glasses) displays, and various other technologies.  They had some really cool stuff this year, including a printer than could essentially print a relief on a 3D object.  Imagine printing a texture, like a snake skin or pattern, on the back of your phone cover, with a full color image.  That was the station I worked at, where the Roland printers could print on just about anything.  I ended up staying with them for several days helping them print on phone covers and more, and I even managed to get my own business card holder printed on with a texture.  It looks (and feels) great!

Definitely a technology I can see hitting it big in the near future.

When I wasn't helping out at SIGGRAPH, I managed to do a little site-seeing, and I've got to say Vancouver is one of the most beautiful cities around.  I loved the view with the shore line, the water with the planes and cruise ships, the ocean liners in the distance, the beach and city beyond that, and the cloud-covered mountains in the back.  Not to mention the local sights, like the Steam Clock and Chinatown.  It was a blast.

Steam clock in the middle of Steamtown.

The one draw back to the week was an old foot injury started to act up, so if anyone saw a Student Volunteer walking around with a crutch, that was me.  Luckily it cleared up and I was able to walk, crutch-free, for the last 2 days.  I even managed to go on a studio crawl where I got to check out the actual studios for Sony Imageworks, Motion Picture Company (MPC), United Front Games, and East Side Games.  It was a great experience, and I got to talk to a lot of talented people.  I just wish it could have gone on longer.

Inside the convention center, the world was waiting.

Because of my injury, I didn't have the time to post more on this site, and I also noticed some of the posts I did make accidentally were posted on a different blog I run.  So I will re-post those, and apologize that I wasn't able to keep up with more posts during the week.

Every day was like this!

Luckily for me, the powers that be at SIGGRAPH have been working on ways people like me who have graduated and no longer able to be student volunteers will be able to continue to volunteer in the future.  I have to look into this and see what how it works, and I'll post anything I find out, but it is one of those things that only a select few will even be eligible for.  We'll see how it turns out.  Next year in L.A.!

Sweet Dream roomie...

I was also fortunate enough to be able to have several portfolio reviews with amazingly talented people from Dreamworks, Disney, and Blue Sky.  These guys were great, and I got some top-notch feedback for my portfolio.  I want to thank Josh Staub, Eldar Cholich, and Frankie Liu again for all the work they did to help us volunteers, and all of those who dedicated time, money, and talent (and anything else).

And on that note, I am currently working on a new series of projects.  These are going to be photographs (and possibly paintings) brought to life in 3D.  I am going to try to create everything from scratch, with a focus on the texturing and lighting.  I really want to push myself and learn some new stuff, and if I can, I hope to add some camera animation and possibly some particles and/or fluids for fun.  I will be starting this tomorrow, and I will be attempting to keep a DAILY BLOG on here (at least 4 times a week if not more) posting all my Work in Progress (WIP).  I will be starting this ASAP, and I want to push myself to see how fast and how detailed I can make these things.  I will really need to build an audience here as well to force myself to keep up with the work, as a way to help me with motivation.  I am eager to get started, and can't wait!  In the meantime, I have also been working on a new short film, called "H2O No!", but production is still early and slow, so I need these shorter faster projects to help me out now while we get the ball rolling on H2O No!.  I will also be posting work on my portfolio site, HixonArt, as well as other sites like CGSociety.

So stay tuned and tell your friends!  Let's get dangerous!

... 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!

Fall 2013, SCAD

Well I took a bit of an hiatus during the summer, but I'm back, and ready to go!  The first day of classes started this week, and it is going to be an intense quarter.

First, I have actually been doing some work over the summer, collaborating with others and planning things out.  I did manage to finish one book, and start another (look at the Dresden Files), finished a slew of games, volunteered at SIGGRAPH 2013 as a Student Volunteer, visited Downtown Disney in Anaheim, and helped my brother move into a new house many states away.  I am currently working on putting together a collaborative short animation to do for fun, but the majority of the work will start next summer, since I now have a huge animation project to continue.

This quarter at SCAD, I am taking a Models and Shaders programming class, which teaches Pixar's Renderman, and i am super excited!  I also have a Photography class; always a good way to expand your horizons and get a different view of lighting and composition.  Finally, I am taking Senior I, which is actually the second out of 4 classes dedicated to working on the senior film at SCAD.  The first class was Concept development, followed by 2 quarters of production (Senior I and II), and finally finishing with Post-Production.  I am also helping a few others with their projects, trying to get more lighting and texturing/shading behind my belt.

Since we are starting actual production now, and I already have some people interested in helping with my project, I am using a free online tool called Trello to keep organized.  It works on any web browser, plus it has apps for my iPad and iPhone!  If you are ever working on a project, especially a collaborative one, check it out!  It even connects to Google Docs and Dropbox.  I am also creating a new blog to chronicle the development and production of the short.  I have added a new tab to my blog, but you can also check it out at LastLightFilm.blogspot.com.

So for now I will leave you with a picture of a lantern I've been working on for another senior project by Michelle Ionescu.  I'll post a link when I get one from her.  I mainly focused on the glass, getting a bumpy frosted glass feel.  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!