All posts in VFX

18Feb

League of Gods || Feng Shen Bang

Houdini FX TD

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

Read more →

03Feb

Hou Fire tests

Houdini FX TD

ran a couple fire tests today … nothing fancy and all low res still … more to come – if I get the time.

DragonFire_02 DragonFire_04 DragonFire_03 DragonFire_01

 

*dragon models not created by me. They are freely distributed here and here

16Dec

Houdini DEM based Terrain modelling

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.  Read more →

27Nov

4.24 BILLION Particles – H15 Pops Test

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! Read more →

28Oct

Eye-C-u

Houdini-Mudbox-SubstanceDesigner-Unity

Quick one to setup workflows and pipeline for VR projects…  Read more →

08Sep

HexenTest

Houdini FX TD

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.Read more →

07May

360 Security TVC w/ Khloe Kardashian

Houdini FX TD

360Security (7) 360Security (1) 360Security (3) 360Security (2)  360Security (4) 360Security (5) 360Security (6)

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 😉

Font disintegration from Ron The Don on Vimeo.

heaps to improve .... just a quick motion test done for grandpa's birthday video on an old laptop ... masking to be done in comp and not included here, so aren't shadows and self shadowing ... a few million particles each.

02Aug

Font Disintegration

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.

28Nov

Houdini 12 Pyro Shader Test

Houdini FX

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

11Nov

Happy Feet Two

Houdini FX TD

Aaaaand back to Sydney for Happy Feet TWO Read more →

18Mar

Thor

Houdini FX TD

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:Read more →

02Nov

KFC

Houdini FX TD, onSet VFX assistant

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.

14Oct

Green Lantern – Quick Terragen Environment Test

Terragen 2 test creation of flythrough Death Valley NOT USED in MOVIE

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.

27Aug

Legend of the Guardians: The owls of Ga’houle

Digital Artist FX (CharacterFX)

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.Read more →

14Jun

Lux

Houdini FX TD

@ 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.  Read more →

10Nov

Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards

Houdini FX TD

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 Read more →

Distant Peaks Build Up And First Fly through from Ron The Don on Vimeo.

making of Terragen 2 setup for Distant Peaks

13Aug

Distant Peaks

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.

11Apr

Fluid Attraction Test

Houdini FX

A quick test of custom forces to attract a fluid sim into a certain shape …. loadsa work to do still

02Apr

The Knowing

Render Wrangler

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

02Jul

Fairfax – Top Line Living

Houdini FX TD, Compositor

another one with my good mate Sam .  Fairfax needed an opener for their show “Top Line Living” so … well … we created one.

23Dec

Dewars

Life show programmer, operator, projection mapper

ClassRoom

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. Read more →

06Nov

Franchize Awards

Art Director

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.

02Jun

SAE || MIDDLESEX

Art Director

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 …

13Apr

Pyro Skull Test

Houdini FX

Just playing around with a new beast in my life called Houdini …

 

04Mar

Alpsee Terragen Test

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.

03Mar

Car Crash

Houdini FX TD

CarRace_CrashNoTex CarRace_Hero

CarCrash_GhostCars

01Mar

RealFlow Car

Realflow FX TD

CarRace_SplashPassing  CarRace_SplashPassed

 

15Feb

300

Render Wrangler

financing my time, surfing and smaaaaall festivities during university I got meself Read more →

02Dec

WaterDragon Fight

Art Director

RonBuddha RonSnakeFight

One hung over morning – literally got woken up by the phone – I got a call, Read more →

02Dec

Mohawk Rising

Art Director

Mohawk_Blooming Mohawk_Rising Mohawk_Vanishing

“Mohawks – The Rise & Fall”
I’ve always been amazed by sculpting.  Especially showing the process involved to create something beautiful/meaningful out of “nothing” Read more →

04Oct

Happy Feet

Render Wrangler

… 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.

23Jul

World Trade Center

Render Wrangler

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.

right click is on unpaid leave ...