27
Jul
Elmts buildup of some of the elements I did for an rnd test at the very beginning of the project … (h264 crushed the blacks and colors a bit as usual):
I’ve always been a huuuuge fan of Asian martial arts movies.
So of course I was more than stoked to get the call to work on a quick stint for Jet Li’s upcoming movie Feng Shen Bang or League of Gods as it will be called in the “Western” world.
No idea what they ended up doing with the grading of the trailer … Anyway, I got to do all the CG fires and smoke sims (and renders) as well as all the embers
Having used Terragen exclusively for these sorta things I wanted to see if I could replicate some scenarios in Houdini and sure enough it wasn’t all that hard.
So, I thought I’d be putting H15 through it’s passes a little too look at performance improvements … In my experience, reusing “old” workflows – that have proven to be able to create great results many times over – often yields fun surprises, so I went back to the old POP-Solver (NonDOPs) and had a play.
WOW!!!! I stopped at 4.24BILLION particles taking around 5gb RAM!!! Coulda done a multitude of that on my laptop easily) Nice one SideFX!
Quick one to setup workflows and pipeline for VR projects…
Potential client needed some tests done for a pitch for a tv series of Grimm like creatures. Brief was a creature disolving into a bad power dust kinda thing.
Another quick turnaround job for 360 security’s TVC staring Khloe K. Symbolizing a big burden virusses – represented by actors – where meant to be magically pulled off the shoulders of the main male actor and explode into gravel and dust. I was responsible for all those disintegration fx, which included a buncha particles, RBD and fluid sims. Not much time at hand as a one man army, so a quick n easy setup had to be build and implemented into shots. Good fun 😉
Quick font to particle disintegration playpen … heaps to improve …. just a quick motion test done for grandpa’s birthday video on an old laptop … masking with the real font to be done in comp and not included here … a few million particles each.
Had a chance to quickly play around with a H12 beta at work today and did a quick pyro shader test … quick n dirty, but not too bad
Ready for a white Christmas I will be spending the time from December 2010 to March 2011 up in the Northern Hemisphere in Vancouver, Canada working on THOR. Whistler here I come … happy times.
My main responsibities consisted of:
for the Ashes series this year KFC flew in the Colonel for a bunch of TVC’s. We filmed at the Sydney Cricket Grounds, which was amazing to see without it being filled with the usual events’ circus. Seeing areas you wouldn’t usually get to see. Also I hadn’t been on set that many times before and that is always exciting.
Later on we added some firework fx with all the volumetric lighting, smoke and stuff in Houdini.
During my time on Green Lantern we contemplated creating the backdrops of Death Valley in 3D instead of matt paintings for the dog fight scenes. I suggested NASA DEM’s and Terragen as a fast way and was asked to do a quick proof of concept – including showing volumetrics in TG2. I ended up spending one evening after work on this (as one can tell ;P). We were all pretty happy with it, but rendertimes, the lack of a linux version and our linux based farm meant the end of it in the end. Hope Planetside eventually releases Linux versions of TG. It’s a GREAT package and I would love to be able to use it more at work.
Over the last year or so I’ve been mainly doing character fx and even some animation finalling work for and at Animal Logic on the movie Legends of the Guardians: The owls of Ga’Houle.
@ Cutting Edge Sydney we were doing a few commercials for LUX to be shown in more than 8 countries (China, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Thailand, … ) around the world.
For 2009’s Nickelodeon Kid’s Choice Awards we needed a variety of fluid effects closely mimicking what had been done for the same show prior in the US. I was the only one doing all the fluid
Sam and I did a bunch of shots for what was meant to be a NationalGeographics Docu about the last leg of a bunch of expeditions to complete the 7 summits (reaching the highest point of each continent). This last peak is situated in Antarctica in the Elseworth Mountain range and areal footage is hard to come by or very very expensive. We ended up using NASA data to recreate a physically accurate representation of the area (down to a detail of 1m), chucked some ice and snow on there and created several shots flying a camera through the terrain to show the travel route of the expedition. Unfortunately upon completio NatGeo decided Antarctica expeditions were too cool now and went on producing vulcano docus instead … Still … learned a lot and had a good time.
A quick test of custom forces to attract a fluid sim into a certain shape …. loadsa work to do still
Whilst I was enjoying my time, surfing and diving deeper in the FX end of Houdini, Realflow, Terragen and Mudbox in one of the best parts in this world my old boss at Animal Logic asked me if I could help out wrangling renders again. An awesome resource of knowledge, great people and getting paid at the same time?!?! Hells yeah
another one with my good mate Sam . Fairfax needed an opener for their show “Top Line Living” so … well … we created one.
Wow, what a gig!!! No idea how Dewars managed to get us the permit to do this crazy gig in the center of Kuala Lumpur. For about a month we were running a 90min multimedia show twice a day including a 12mx3m interactive video projection achieved with a total of 6 projectors. Seamless moving images were created with a 25% overlay and interacted with a Scottish ambassador, who taught everything possible about Scotch Whisky.
For this years Franchize Awards we decided to go with a nature theme, with the panels for the projection areas spinning and leaving water movement behind. Fun gig.
SAE / Middlesex needed a represntative guest invite for the final presentations of the year’s bachelor projects … they came to me asking if I could help. Not my best work, but I guess ok whilst trying to finalize my own final research and paper …
Had a couple hours to spend in the office while waiting for sims and was dreaming of the coming snowboard trip to the Southern Alps in NZ. Why not use a DEM from NASA and create my vision in 3D?!? Done.
Guess having 24cores leaves some room for a quick timelpase too :P.
financing my time, surfing and smaaaaall festivities during university I got meself
One hung over morning – literally got woken up by the phone – I got a call,
“Mohawks – The Rise & Fall”
I’ve always been amazed by sculpting. Especially showing the process involved to create something beautiful/meaningful out of “nothing”
… financing my time, surfing and some smaaaaaaall festivities during time at university I got meself a live changing job at Animal Logic as Render Wrangler – learned bucklet loads and met AMAZING people. I really couldn’t have asked for more. Life’s good.
financing my time, surfing and parties during university I got meself a live changing job at Animal Logic as Render Wrangler – learned bucklet loads and met AMAZING people. Couldn’t have asked for more.
