Still working on this in whatever free time we can get...
Nadia's initial basemesh, based on our initial concepts and proportions :
Once that was agreed upon, I started roughing out the basic forms...
..and once that was given a greenlight, more details were added in. Still missing all the tertiary details [skinfolds, wrinkles, scales, webbing, etc.] and the resolution is still too low to hold up to close-up shots, so there's still more work to be done. This render was provided to Nadia & Azman to start doing concepts for the clothing and equipment that he carries around.
More to come, hopefully sooner than later. Looking forward to the texturing and shading phase.
Maybe you're more familiar with it's old name when it wasn't released yet : Project Photofly. Anyways... now it's out... and it's FREE!
123D Catch is an image-based modeler... basically snap your subject matter from different angles, and it is re-created in 3D. Works well with people, environments, objects, and your pets.
Below is the official promo video, followed by some older Photofly videos to show how it works.
Just imagine the possibilities for this... visual archiving of objects from any angle, reconstruction of scenes for matchmoving, accurate reconstruction of historical venues... woah.
This has been out for a few months already... but it's still freaking brilliant. Below is the promo video, followed by an actual demonstration of the thing at work.
A lifesaver for those who hate constantly scanning their doodles? :P
A look at the birth of filmaking and animation with complete videos and links. An amazing read and enjoyable viewing for the discerning artist in us all!
Click on the link above for more extensive look at all the videos that have made history.
Siggraph 2011 just wrapped up recently in Vancouver, and as usual, a whole host of new stuff has been announced. A few of my favourite highlights :
A new version of Maya which integrates Bullet dynamics, making it native to Maya.
An updated version of Mudbox with a new Gigatexel engine [1,200 2K maps in real-time on a gaming laptop? insane.]
ZBrush 4 Release 2 is coming in September with a whole bunch of new features [not all of them have been announced, but from the video we can see new boolean tools, new brush options, 32-bit HDRI lighting, fragmenting implementation, etc.]
Comicon Challenge 2011 is here! Join, if you're interested! Or, just hit the link to read the details and browse the previous winners, some fantastic low-poly work & texturing work here.
Just thought I'd share this with you guys. The winners of the 6th NVidia Art competition was announced earlier this month, here's the link for the gallery of the winning entries. Some really cool ideas, as well as beautiful art.
A series of quick tests done for the main character in Project Fishboy that we're currently working on. Tried out different body proportions using ZSpheres. We finally agreed on a tall, slender figure with a slight hunch and a long-ish protruding neck. I passed a render of it to Azman so he could paint over it for the initial concept art. Looking forward to starting on the costume and prop design.
This is one of Fishboy's first concept development. The aim here is to achieve consistency of style (wet-look, skinny) from head to toe which (so far) is not to my liking. More on this to come. Mini progress of this sketch can be found here.
A quick model, just to test out modeling and shading techniques before having to model the actual final Fishboy later on [the design isn't finalized yet]. Apparently, my most efficient workflow is Sculptris>Re-Topologize>Project the details>Shading & Rigging in Maya.
An extra image with construction details can be found on my blog. Really looking forward to modeling the final stuff now.
Slowly but surely, shots are being tracked for the Fishboy short. Things are going relatively easy, thanks to Nadia's OCD [she recorded all the survey data and compiled it neatly :P]. The above are just 2 examples of tracked sequences.
Some quick head concepts I worked on for the main character of the short we're working on [Nadia's figuring out the body details, Azman's working on hand and feet studies]. We'll try to put together regular updates as more stuff gets done.
Animopus is a treasure trove of information for the discerning animator, filmaker, and fan of the industry. Consisting of video clips, articles, keynote speeches and interviews among other informations, this blog is highly recommended to those interested in animation, visual effects and films.
UK media sector body Skillset has produced a free guide to the skills needed to work in today’s VFX industry.
The handbook is relevant to both students and staff; it is designed to assist universities and colleges to raise the standard of VFX courses available and therefore the new talents that graduate and head out into the industry. The guide functions equally as a ready-made outline for academics planning training courses or a checklist for students, and includes a detailed reading list for each ‘module’.
It makes for a great read, pass it on to your students too. Click the pic to go to the download page [its in PDF format].
The Media Art Living Laboratory (M.A.L.L) and the Animation & Visual Effects program (in short AFX; formerly Film & Animation) proudly bring you an artist talk and performance by Jax Deluca (U.S). The talk was held at AFX’s Beta Studio, Faculty of Creative Multimedia (FCM) while the performance space was provided by M.A.L.L just next door.
Jax prepping up her presentation (top) before taking the floor.
Jax Deluca is an experimental sound and video artist and her works revolve mainly around video, sound, film, painting and performance art. So if you’re talking stuff on video installations, multi-dimensional sound layering (sound sandwich-ing), utilizing analogue & video synthesizer, pure abstract video art and sound experimentations, Jax is the person you're looking for. She is currently the Director of Programming at Squeaky Wheel/Buffalo Media Resources, a non-profit, artist-run media arts center in Buffalo, New York.
It was a decent crowd of 30 plus with majority of the audience were students from the AFX program and we managed to spot a few from the Media Arts program. This talk itself was part of a Film Studies class conducted by FCM’s Kok Siew Wai,who is also a good friend of Jax.
"July 5th 2010", one of Jax's showcased works.
Jax (and her loyal orange) shortly before the M.A.L.L performance.
Jax arrived in Malaysia mid-May and it was her first visit here. When asked of her brief stay and the warm weather, the energetic presenter swiftly replied "Oh, I LOVE it!".
Jax was one of the performers at KLPac along with a group of other local independent artists the previous Friday. When she arrived at FCM, it was her last few days in Malaysia (before her long flight back home to New York) so it was somewhat a fitting farewell that she was given the opportunity to inspire a group of students and enthusiasts through a showcase of selected works followed by an impromptu but equally impressive performance.
Crowd filling up the M.A.L.L.
Jax showcased six of her works which include the dark, disturbing interpretation of one’s self-esteem “Kill Your Lovers”, and the psychedelic flowing pastel colors of “Solus Quale” before ending it with “July 5th 2010” that left the audience dumbstruck with awe. Other selected works include “Young Swan at a Party”, “Power Struggle” and “Waterwind”.
Jax performing “July 5th 2010”
It was 4.00 pm when the event took us to the M.A.L.L.: a small but comfortable presentation/performance space owned by the Media Arts program and the Aesthetic Media Special Interest Group. Here, Jax set up a simple rig of her equipments with several other musical equipments all lined up. With “July 5th 2010” playing on the projector, she combined looping (and distorted) sound(s) of vocals, guitar, saxophone and small percussions. The combination of hand-painted patterns and the resulting audio is quite an out-of-this-world experience for any first-timer. For the enthusiasts, it's definitely one to appreciate and to talk about.
Awesome show!
Overall, it has been a very casual, relaxed session and quite a way to kickstart your semester. The audience loved Jax’s easygoing and happy-go-lucky attitude. The animated presenter even managed to casually improvise her performance as she exclaimed, "I had to replay that video all over again (mid-way through) cause it's the wrong version (of “July 5th 2010")”.
The event closed with a group photograph of everyone followed by a short networking session. From us over here in FCM and Malaysia: Jax Deluca, we look forward to your next visit. It has been an eye-opening experience and it was truly exciting to have you here. Cheerio!
It has been an exciting and resourceful (not to mention, entertaining) first two days of the Film & Animation Career Week 2011 and the event has finally come to its final day. Four companies were featured and one of them is two-time Academy Award winner Rhythm & Hues, well-known for their visual effects on The Chronicles of Narnia, The Golden Compass and Hulk.
But first, Vernon Fernandez from MDeC talked about careers after graduation, prospects and potentials of being an entrepreneur in the creative industry as well as promoting the upcoming IPCC 2011 challenge.
Anas Abdul Aziz (Creative Director; right) and Yong Pin (Operations Director) talked about Animonsta’s company profile, showreel and job prospects.
Hussin Khan, representing Adobe User Group talked about freelancing in the creative field.
Hasnul Hadi talked about Rhythm & Hues profile and the company’s showreel.
That concludes the mini report for FACW2011. The event received great receptions from students, practitioners and enthusiasts. The organizing committees extended their deepest thanks and appreciation to the sponsors, participating companies and the audience for making FACW2011 an awesome event. FA and CGX will look forward to their next collaborations for upcoming events and exhibitions.
Day 02 of FACW2011. Five more exciting companies on the line-up. Amongst them is two-time BAFTA award winner Codemasters, one of the industry’s leading games developer, and Silver Ant who made their presence felt in the 2010 Kre8tif Industry Award with five wins including Best Production and Best Animation Director for their debut animated feature Seefood.
Chris (Assistant Animation Director; right) and Raymond (Production Manager) of Silver Ant highlighting the company’s profile and showreel as well as tips for students on job hunting.
Project Leaders Syafiq (right) and Fuad talked about Les’ Copaque’s achievements and company profile.
Managing Director of Chain FX, Fasya talked about the company’s showreel as well as their current work-in-progress.
Faiz a.k.a Arab, Producer of Chain FX, stressed on making a good impression during interview sessions with companies.
Attentive and engrossed audience.
Ken Foong (Director and Chief Creative Officer) showcased Lemon Sky’s showreel and the company’s short film.
Ivon Smith of Codemasters on their training programmes and company showcase.
The annual Film & Animation Career Week (FACW2011) returns with its three-day bumper schedule. This is an initiative organized by the Film & Animation programme and CGX Special Interest Group. The event runs from May 10th till May 12th 2011 at the final year studio, Faculty of Creative Multimedia (Multimedia University, Cyberjaya). A line-up of fourteen companies; with different areas of expertise; were invited for the event to share their thoughts and experience with students, practitioners, and enthusiasts alike.
More reports will come in pretty soon. In the mean time, enjoy the Day 01 snapshots.
Crowd filling in thick and fast.
Andrew Ooi of Inspidea kickstarted the day with some interesting insight on 2D animation pipeline aside from sharing the company’s showreel.
Founder and Director Moon Kien Chan (second from right) on the evolution of MFX adapting to the market trends and demands over the years.
Glue Studios Managing Director, Tariq Md Noh on opportunities and challenges the industry has in store for emerging young companies.
Director of Firecrackers, Hanan stressed out on finding the right balance between Quality, Cost, and Time.
Arguably the most entertaining presenter of the day, Ah Long of Animasia sharing the company's showreel and upcoming project.
This is just too cool to be left out. Next month, Rockstar Games [the makers of the controversial yet ridiculously fun Grand Theft Auto series] are releasing their newest game : L.A. Noire. The facial animation of the characters in this game has to be seen to be believed.
First official trailer :
A few videos explaining the gameplay a bit more :
..and a look behind the scenes on how the facial animations were created :
This is definitely a big step forward for actor/story-driven games. For more info on the game, here's the link.
Last month, we organized the 3rd Adobe User Group Meeting right here in FCM. Pretty interesting stuff, with discussions about Maya/AE integration, using Blender as an open source alternative, and camera tracking in AE among other things [Nicky, maybe you can post a few pics/do a short review on the session?]
We're in the middle of organizing the annual Animation Career Week [which should be held early next month]. It's open to everybody, completely free, and will take place over the course of 3 full days. There will be speakers from animation/FX houses, post-production companies, game studios, and probably some talks from government & financial representatives to give advice on career opportunities and management. Stay tuned.
Aside from that, Research Creation Exhibition #3 2011 has been announced! It's taking place late this year, and most of us are already scrambling to get our projects together. More updates on that will come, as the projects get more fleshed out.
This year's annual GDC just wrapped up last month, and as expected, all the big guns brought out their... well, their big guns to the show. New games were announced, new trends and techniques were discussed and, as they do every year, new tech was showcased.
There's a ton of videos out there for you to find on what went on at GDC, but here are a few of my personal favourites, involving new technology/software :
Autodesk! Showing off their 2012 lineup.
Nvidia's APEX integrated into the 2012 versions of Max & Maya [PhysX/hardware accelerated solvers for dynamic simulations such as cloth, rigid body collisions, particles, destruction effects and even foliage]. There's a lot more videos of these on youtube. About time this showed up, it's been in development for years.
Maya 2012 has a whole bunch of new features [editable motion trails, enhancements to the viewport, new render pass management and the list goes on and on] but here are a few features which really stood out for me.
Digital Molecular Matter [DMM] for realistic shattering finally comes to Maya -
More variety and new applications for procedurally generated textures -
Editable motion trails in the viewport [byebye graph editor?] -
Max 2012 also comes with a lot of enhancements - here's an interesting video from Grant Warwick comparing its performance with previous versions [he also has a full review video of Max 2012 if you want to look it up].
Mudbox 2012 also has significant upgrades, with improved performance, transparency support, new blending layers, new painting options, support for texels and so much more.
As for realtime rendering, Epic also released demo vids for the latest iteration of their mind-blowing Unreal 3 Engine, sporting a whole bunch of DX11 features -
...and Crytek refused to be outdone, showcasing the features available in their new CryEngine 3 techdemo -
There are so many more videos out there on what went down at GDC 2011, so if you're interested, hunt them down. One thing's for sure, there's a lot of exciting stuff coming our way very, very soon.
The Kinect gaming peripheral has been out for the Xbox 360 since late last year - however, it seems the most interesting things that people have been using it for are largely non-game related.
One of the uses hackers have discovered for it? Using the Kinect as a motion capture device! The motion data can even be saved in Autodesk's Motionbuilder, making it possible to port the animation over to Maya, Max and XSI.
There's a ton of videos on youtube regarding this, but here's a few to get you started. It's apparent that there are some issues with depth accuracy, occlusion and jiggles in the capture - but I'm fairly certain those things will be sorted out soon.
This was something I worked on last week to test out ZBrush4's new 'Spotlight' feature. More images can be seen here.
Modeled entirely in Sculptris [which is FREEEEE] and textured using Z4 Spotlight. So now there are quite a few ways to go about texturing in Zbrush - Projection Master, Polypainting, ZappLink, etc.
Cool thing about Spotlight is that it combines the best of all of those together into a single tool
there's no longer a need to keep switching between apps
reference images can be loaded directly into ZBrush
free viewing of the model without the need to project from a single angle
hue, saturation, opacity, contrast, etc. ->all can be done on the fly
texture generation is so easy -> tiled UV layouts have no seam problems
..and so on and so on. There's just so many things about Spotlight which takes the stress out of texturing work. Check it out when you can.
