Demo Reel: Environment

At VFS we spent the first 3 terms learning bits and piece of everything about 3D, and then we spend the last 3 terms for full-time production of our demo reel (final project). And I've been so busy, now I finally got time to post what I've been doing so far on my demo reel.

I am doing a modeling reel and part of it is an environment. I have been working on the environment since the beginning of term 4 and I tried my best to bring it to full competition before I move on to other elements of my project. It is very easy to lose patience when doing 3D and half the battle is sticking to the plan.

I'm proud to say that I have stuck to the plan til the end and fairly satisfied with the results. Still needs more work but it is around 95% complete. I am just going to post several images of the major milestones I have made, so you get an idea how far I have progressed:


Scene would not render. Rendered buildings in 4 passes with default lighting and comped them together for presentation.


Whole scene rendered after scene cleanup and displacement optimization. Had major gamma problems here. Lighting was affected due to the gamma problems. Bummer.


Corrected the gamma. Near-final render settings. Preliminary test of some dirt layers, water, and plants. Tried rendering the whole sequence and found MEGA displacement popping and final gathering flickers. Bummer.


All dirt maps completed. Fixed the displacement popping. Fixed problem with too much light inside buildings. Still have some flickers but close to competition.

Other Stills:

Life Drawings

Some of my better life drawing done while at VFS (terms 2 & 3). I've definitely seen a lot of artistic improvement while at VFS, not just drawing, but as as artist in general.

3D Modeling: caricature

This is the second (and last) modeling assignment for term 3 - to model a caricature of ourselves.

I decided to make my Simpson-Me that I made through Burger King's simpsonizeme.com, because I really did like how it turned out. I think it does feel a lot like me, and its hard to draw a better caricature of myself.

I think the model turned out pretty well, nice and simple and clean.



Orthographic views


Wireframe

3D Animation: Stuff from term 3

Long time no update, I'm just gonna slap on a bunch of stuff from term 3 to 4 that I should have posted earlier.

I wanted to set up a local video player so I don't have to post all this bad stuff on youtube, but I just never had the time. So here goes:


Ball Push


Baseball Pitch & Bat


Lip Sync 1


Lip Sync 2

3D Modeling: Gastown Group Project

The first assignment for modeling in term 3 was a group project -- modeling a scene somewhere in Vancouver with post-apocalyptic robot remains. Our group chose a spot in Gastown, the thin building is called the "Europe Hotel". Texturing was not required.


Ambient Occlusion

3D Texturing: Skin Shader Test on Jack Sparrow

For texturing class, we get to choose our own project and work on something usable or at least beneficial for the development of our demo reel. I really wanted to test out the SSS skin shader before I use it on my demo reel character, since I have never used the shader before. I used the face mesh of my Jack Sparrow model for the assignment. I struggled a bit with the skin shader but also learned a lot from this exercise, as a result I only got around to texturing the skin and nothing else.

Besides the fact that its incomplete, I am quite happy with the result with using only a bump map. I also got a bit of XSI hair on the face to give it a hint of Jack Sparrow.

3D Lighting: Term 3

It's been a while since my last post. Term 3 was hectic, we did a lot yet it feels like I don't have much to show -- simply because we spent most of the energy on developing ideas towards our final short film the "demo reel". At this point the reel ideas are still in its infancy and nothing solid to show yet, so I am just going to do a quick roundup of the very few assignments we did for term 3.

The assignment for lighting class is fairly self-explanatory, we had to light the same room (provided by the instructor) in a daylight setting and a nighttime setting. I did learn quite a few things from this assignment regarding choice of lights and settings, so here they are:


Daylight Scene


Night Time Scene