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.

WIP Sept 24, 2015

So, again sorry for the delay in updating this.  Here is the latest Work In Progress.  I will be doing more soon!

Relaunch

I'd like to apologize to everyone for my hiatus from this blog.  I've been busy but that is no excuse for neglecting my blog and my personal art.  I have been taking a bit of a hiatus, since I got so burned out after SCAD, but I am eager to get back into the swing of things.  I have a few things on my plate, and some new goals, but let me start with a quick overview of life after SCAD before I talk about what's to come.

After I graduated from SCAD, I started preparing for SIGGRAPH, where I volunteered over the summer of 2014.  I had to do whatever I could to make money to save up for the trip but ran into some health problems that got exacerbated while there.  I've been recovering ever since then.  Shortly after, I participated in the Atlanta Underground film festival, where I managed to get my short film, "Lost Light" into the animation category.  I started up a personal art project and began local networking at various events, such as Film Bar Monday, My Animation Life, and others.

Through such networking, I meet a group of people who participated in the 48 hour horror film project, where I acted as the visual effects supervisor and artist, as well as compositor.  I went on to help with another contest, this time for Doritos, where I held a similar role.  Somewhere during this time, I participated in GENERATE, the 24 hour animation and visual effects contest, as well as the 48 hour Global Game Jam shortly after.

I was lucky enough to work with a good friend of mine, Chad Cox, on some freelance projects, making videos for companies.  I mainly did modeling, texturing, lighting, rendering, and compositing for these.  As I struggled to find more freelance work, I took up Lyft and Uber driving to make ends meet.

Life threw a few curveballs my direction during this when we had to spend a few months packing and moving to a new apartment, and then surviving an unexpected flood.  Once we got resettled (and replaced all the damaged items), we took in a roommate to help with rent, and I began more freelance work again.

It became apparent to me that my computer was now no longer up-to-par for the work I was doing, when a scene needed to be rendered overnight took over a day to finish.  I took this opportunity to rebuild my computer, which I only recently finished, and upgrade to Windows 10.  Now that I have worked out most the bugs, I have been struggling to get certain programs back on, such as Renderman.  That is currently where my co outer situation is right now, mostly where it needs to be but still some things to work out.  However it was worth it, my render times went from 27 hours to 3 hours!  Unfortunately, during this, my wife was laid off, forcing me to spend all my time working on making money, and finding a full-time job.  I took up working as an extra for films and television as well.

So that is where I am, looking for work, struggling to continue my own art projects, while "background acting" on the side (which usually takes up an entire day) when I'm not Lyft or Uber driving.  Meanwhile, I've been learning new software, such as 3DS Max.

That brings me to the future.  I have been signing up for interviews and looking for work.  Wi no significant income, I need to spend all my time on finding work, which means my demo reel and personal art projects are once again.put on the back burner.  One potential job would pay me entry level work but doing the things I don't want to do anymore, things I left behind on Virginia when I moved to Atlanta to study animation.  It's work, it pays, it has basic benefits, but I have to decide this week if it is a good fit for me.  I admit I can do everything they need, but I am already depressed thinking about the work, as it reminds me of all the jobs in my past I didn't enjoy doing.  I went to SCAD to get out of that, but it is trying to pull me back in.  And the sad thing is I need the money bad enough I might just have to take it.

I am hoping something else comes my way, so I can get into the industries I'm interested in: Games, Film, or Television.  But as I keep working on getting my computer software installed, and doing whatever I can to make ends meet, I am going to pick up my own art again this week.  I have new goals I would like to set starting today, regardless of my work situation.

For starters, if I find no job, I want to spend 30-40 hours a week working on my own art, or at least figuring out the technical side of it.  If I find a job, I will spend at least 3-4 hours a day during the week working on the same thing.  If I get stuck in another job I don't like, I will spend more time looking for another job as well.  I also plan to join some feedback groups online, such as 10,000 hours, who can give me feedback on my website (any suggestions for sites or groups to join would be great), as well as using CGSociety and others to show the final work.  I will also update this blog daily!  YES, DAILY!

Why daily?  I need the motivation, the feedback, the incentive.  I am spending too much time looking for work, or trying to make ends meet, and not enough on my art.

What's the art you ask?  Specifically, 2 things, each with many parts.  The small projects will be to take photographs of environments with different lighting setups, and recreate them as accurately as possible in 3D.  This involves photography, real-world lighting, photo editing, modeling, texturing, shading, lighting, rendering, compositing, and if I have time, animation.  The second is to make a few short animated films.  I have 2 in production now, but neither are very far along.  This is more collaborative, and requires a group of people to work with.  I have a few people interested, and some online groups that have projects I hope to find time to participate in.

So for that's it for now.  Look forward to the first new entry in my relaunched blog starting today, yes today!  As soon as I can, I will be back home, figuring out Renderman and hopefully getting a leg up on my current Starbucks scene.  I have a lot to do, and I'm afraid my days of sleeping almos full nights are over.

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Computer Stats:

Intel 5820k i7 6core 3Ghz processor

ASROCK X99 extreme4 motherboard

16 GB DDR4 RAM (2400)

500GB SSD + 4TB HDD (plus 500GB Ubuntu boot disk)

CoolerMaster Storm case

ATI Radeon 5770HD (<- needs serious upgrade).

Follow up

So some good news finally, the flood damage has been repaired in the apartment, and our insurance has come through with enough to cover all the lost and damaged items.  Luckily, our table is able to be restored, but we are considering putting a glass panel to help protect the wood, which absorbed a lot of water and ended up cracking and parts of the finish chipped off.  So I am off to repair the wood, the finish, and get glass or Plexiglas to protect it.  I have a lot of cleaning and shopping to do now though, so I am going to be busy for the rest of this week cleaning up after all the workmen and such.
My plan is to finish by this weekend and then get back to animating, modeling, learning, rendering, etc.  Not to mention job hunting.
I'll keep you all posted.

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!

Generate 24 challenge

Since I only just got my computer working again, I haven't had the time to really continue my project.  However, I have managed to install Maya 2015, so I am going to be moving over there to try some of the new features out (like the improved UV mapping), and hope the new Renderman comes out soon.  If not, I will play with another renderer this time.

In the meantime, however, I was lucky enough to get into the SCAD Generate 24 hour challenge.  While I am an alumni, and this is usually for students, they do allow Alumni to participate, so I joined the VFX (VSFX) team this year for a challenge to create 2 scenes, totaling 10 seconds in length, with a live-action element and using Houdini in some way.  I figured this would be great for me to get back into Houdini.  I was considering the animation challenge since I love the concept and the fact that Floyd County was there to judge.  I wanted to do both, but since Floyd does mostly 2D work, I figured I'd do the 3D thing, which was judged by reps from The Mill, and Eric Schmidt of Pixar.

Long story short, we made a short about a paper boat floating in water.  I did the Photography and the Lighting.  Enjoy!

SCAD Atlanta 2014 VFX Generate Challenge from Nha Ca Chau on Vimeo.

Looking up

Good news in many ways today.  No I don't have a job yet (still working on that), but I did manage to get my computer working AND got my film, Lost Light, accepted into the Atlanta Underground Film Festival.  I am really excited, since they said only about 10% of the films submitted were accepted.  My good friend Raymond McCoy-Sanders also got his film in the festival (we worked on each other's films).  So that's 2 SCAD students.  Last week, I represented my other good friend Michelle Ionescu in presenting her film, The Leaping Place, which I was the technical director on.  It's a great film I am very proud of.  So while I am working on a new film, and working on updating my current film (updates won't happen till after the festival, sorry), and working on smaller projects designed to help me build my portfolio and learn some new techniques and tools, as well as looking for work, I am also glad to see the work I've done getting recognized!  :)
Now that I am in this festival, it could be a gateway to more festivals and presentations.  I am also really glad my computer is fixed, all I have to go is ship my old hard drive off.  With that done, I will be able to continue my Starbucks project.  I'm currently trying to learn how to get started with MARI, so give me a little time.  Learning new software isn't always that easy without a guide.