Old and New Projects: Plagarus, Adamant Command Deck, and Jaspera Interspatial Station

Hey all,

Well, it's been a crazy few months, with commissions and stuff.  But it's time to get back to my personal projects that I've been putting off.  I have a mind-shelf full of ideas and I need to get them down in a more-or-less polygonal state before they get stale.

Jaspera

Since I've been a kid, I've had this idea of a space station that is, essentially, a giant mall in orbit of a very affluent planet.  This station, called Jaspera, had inflicted upon it one inept attempt thus far to build it.  I need to do something better this time:

A very old model I built over ten years ago... eww. :(

The scene above is very old.  But it's a general approximation of what I want to do with the space station.  It does capture the mood, as it was described in my original one-page description of the scene I wrote up when I was about 15, sitting in a lobby of a Chinese food restaurant that my father cleaned in Skowhegan, Maine.  (I had finished my job of vacuuming the carpet on the main floor, by the way, so I wasn't being lazy, as I recall...)

I want to build the following sections:

1.) Main Atrium -- This is pictured above.  It's a 20 - 30 story tall inner core with a skylight above pointed at the sun.  There walkways all around the periphery that connect to the various storefronts along the external hull of the station.

2.) Industrial Docking Bay -- The docking bay is at the bottom of the station.  It's where the thousands of space ships that visit the station every day have berths and refuel gantries to resupply the station.  It's a more industrial part of the station and less pretty than the civilian areas.

3.) Passenger Docking Bay -- At the top of the station.  It's a more elegant docking area, where yachts and whatnot dock.

4.) Shops -- I want to build some of the generic shops.  These can be modular in design so that I can make a bunch of 'em if I want.

5.) Ol' Baid's Bar -- A bar in my magnum opus, Armranath (a colossal film project which will never be made), but it would be cool to have the bar.

6.) Hotel Area -- An outer ring of the station is a massive hotel, with windows facing space or the inner core, depending on what you desire.  It'd be cool to see that actually completed.

At any rate, that's the goal.  Probably will take the better part of a year to complete.

Plagarus, Part 3

Plagarus... :\  I'm still working on Part 3.  Got a bit of work done on it this month!  But it's slow going simply because being a one-man animation machine is tough.  I may have recruited a real life friend to help me out on some of the animation, but he's still hammering out school over in Full Sail, so it might take a bit of time, unfortunately. So I apologize that this time around, you'll still probably be dealing with my crappy animation skills.  :(

I'd just like to say that the stills look a lot better than the actual action. :(  I'm dreadful at character animation, and try to avoid full body stuff at all costs.  But, I've chosen to focus on modelling mostly.  Movies are, by far, the most complex art form out there, and it takes more than one person to make one.

At any rate, I'm expecting Plagarus, Part 3 some time this late spring/early summer, depending on how much I get done.

Adamant Command Deck

Also, there is the Command Deck of the SSC Adamant, which I still have to complete.  I'm planning on getting that thing done pretty soon, as I was thinking about incorporating a scene on the Adamant in Plagarus.  We'll see how that goes, though.

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So, there will hopefully be more updates coming on this page now that I'm through the woods and get to start putting attention on my own projects again.  I'll definitely try to put up a link to the Star Wars fan projects I was privileged to assist with for the Star Wars Fan Film Awards that are scheduled to be released in a few months.  Also, huge shout out to Ansel Hsiao who was gracious enough to allow me to use his awesome Star Destroyer model for the space scenes in one of the films.  I finally got to meet a personal inspiration--the guy that got my butt into gear with spaceship modelling in the first place--and it was awesome.




Well, that's about it.  Hopefully everyone is doing awesome and that things are going well.  If not, I hope things get better for you soon!

Dan

Finished Gingerbreed Sample Work

So, continued work on Gingerbreed.  The guys over at HiFI3D sent me some finals yesterday featuring one of the digital sets I built for them.

Here are some original OpenGL versions of the Colony set as it was being built:

Since this set was to be different from the rest of the sets built previously, I started with a single panel to get an okay from Jon and Szymon

The set was to be heavily damaged and distressed, but I started from a pristine state to get an idea what the location looked like before its demise

Jon and Szymon would give me helpful feedback on the project.  Since the scene was to include live action shots already completed, certain geometry had to be placed correctly to accommodate the paths of objects as they moved through the digital environment.  Some of these changes may stay, others may be removed at virtually any time in the production

The central core of the set was left for last.  Again, due to shooting constraints, the over all floor plan had to be followed closely

I model in Blender, because I find the modelling suite there to be easier and faster to work with.  But the film uses Maya, so the sets have to be exported to Maya scenes and set up in a certain hierarchy to facilitate lighting, texturing and shooting.

From there, Jon and Szymon take the modelled scene, light and texture it and then render it out for backgrounds for the action.  The results look like this:

So, that's what I do for a living. :)

Hope everyone enjoyed this little foray into the world of a digital environment modeller!

Dan

More Gingerbreed Work

More work done for the awesome guys over at HiFi3d.

No shading this time, unfortunately, but just geometry.  A beleaguered space colony.

Dan

Plagarus Part 3 Work

Still plugging away on the ol' project.  Not sure if I'll ever finish, given other, more important responsibilities, but, alas, I'm not giving up! :)

Got a lot of animation still to do.  But it's considerably easier, now, with the updated armatures for the two main characters.  Now, to update the rest of the characters before I've got to use them...should be fun.

Design for Padoen's hover bike:

Still to do:

1.) Loads of stuff.  Most notably, finishing a short fight sequence (ugh...), remodeling the exterior desert landscape, which is in bad need of repair.  It stood up fine in the 720p renders of Parts One and Two, but in 1080p resolution, the desert landscapes just don't stand a chance.  Every imperfection shows up terribly.

Hopefully it'll be good.  It's showing promise, but a lot of work to do.  Just wanted to show I'm still plugging away on this thing. :)

Dan

Dan

Commission Project: WIP, and New Workstation

Finally, a commission I can actually share WIPs on.  Here's a set I've been working on, and is nearing completion.

This is a digital set for an indie film currently in production.  The challenge lies in the fact that there are several parts of the set which must be interacted with by live action actors.  Two actors will be placed in this scene using green screen.  Both are interacting with consoles which are very specifically placed.

In addition to the actors, there will also be three monitors which will be present on the practical set.  This requires close coordination with the client to make sure our camera angles and placement of the practical (real life) assets coordinates seamlessly with the location of place holders on the digital set.

Thankfully, there are no moving shots in this scene.  All shots are from a stationary camera.  There are four vantage points.  Camera information must be shared between the digital artist and the director so that he knows how to shoot the live action parts in a way that seamlessly mesh with the digital elements.  The information involves exact coordinates of the camera, rotation in degrees, lens angle, focal length, even what brand of camera was used.

Without this careful sharing of information between digital artist and director, it could lead to discrepancies between the digital and live action aspects of the finished shot, even the slightest of which having the distinct probability of destroying the credibility of the shot.

To conserve system resources, only what is absolutely necessary is actually modeled.  The set itself is simply this:

High resolution videos are used as the textures for some of the screens.  These are 600 frames long and are looping.  A render at full resolution for background plates will take about a day to complete.

And now, the new workstation I built.  It was time for a serious upgrade.  Ever since my other current client had to order me a new workstation from Boxx (which, by the way, I highly recommend that company), because the previous machine was no longer making it, I've been wanting to upgrade.  This was my chance.

New Workstation Stats:

Intel Core i7 4790k 4.0 GHZ quad-core processor
Nvidia GTX 980 ACX 2.0 4GB GDDR5
ASUS Z97-A motherboard
16 GB DDR3 dual-channel RAM
240 GB SSD
Antec P-100 Case

Some nifty unboxing/construction pics:

Everything arrived apparently undamaged

The CPU - Intel Core i7 4790k 4-core CPU 4.0 GHZ

CPU seated on motherboard.  Yes,  I accidentally touched the surface of the CPU and had to clean it using 91% alcohol

CPU cooling and RAM banks added

Motherboard, with power supply and graphics card installed in case.  Ready for wiring

Fully wired up...scarey moment of first power up approaching...

It worked despite the extremely unprofessional, untidy construction environment!

I apologize for the extremely unprofessional photography...as well as my equally unprofessional temporary testing set-up in my parents' living room.

And testing:

Nova Bench Score.  It was really hurt by the small size of the SSD partition which I have Windows installed on

Windows Experience Rating

BMW27 Benchmark test.  Time: 1:31.24 (GPU). (Benchmark Download Here)

So, not too shabby, I guess.  It's a good upgrade and should last a good while.

Hope everyone is doing great.

Dan

Plagarus Part 3 Update

I decided to take a day just to give the old baby some love.

Environment creation began for the two areas in this part.  One is the exterior establishing shot telling everyone it's night time, now, but that we're where we left off--Padoen Titus's apartment complex.  Astute astronomers may wonder why a spiral barred galaxy appears so close in the sky.  That is the Milky Way.  All of the action in Plagarus (and, indeed, every movie I make in my personal universe) happens in a globular cluster in the galactic halo of our home galaxy.

And, of course, Padoen's apartment itself.  This set is available online, but it's far more generic than this fully furnished and decorated version.  I may update the online version with the textures, at least.  We'll see.

Updated Padoen Titus' and Lethgoshis' meshes, textures, materials, and skeletons, as both characters were looking pretty dated due to huge advancements in Blender and the Cycles Render Engine.

The guide track for the dialogue has already been completed.  This track is comprised of the unfiltered original recordings (well, except for equalizing and compression, thanks to my sound buddy Danny), and is used strictly for animation purposes.

Another reason that Plagarus took a back seat is rather personal.  My good friend Dale, who helped me work on it suddenly died late last year. He was only 28. He provided the inspiration for Ackla, the snake alien in Part 2.  He did the initial voice recording on my old set-up.  I then copied his performance in the recording that is in the actual movie.

With a lot of work, the main character's alien species being called "Isus" (a name which could be controversial, given the events in Iraq last year), and Dale's untimely departure, an impenetrable wall of resistance was created which I'm still struggling to get through.  Here's hoping I can get Part 3 out anyway.

Hope everyone is doing well.

Thanks,
Dan

Vocal Recording Session

So, this is a behind-the-scenes video of the vocal session which happened on Saturday afternoon.  The equipment and engineering expertise came from my friend Danny from EarShock.com.  Many thanks for your help, Danny.

The video is not professionally done, but at least it gives an idea what the sessions are like for recording the dialogue for these things, and how we do it.  Sometimes it does get silly, and it almost always feels weird doing these characters and acting like this, especially when playing a scene where the characters are supposed to be in horribly perilous situations and you're standing in your bedroom.

Hope everyone is doing awesome.

Dan

Worst Storyboard Ever

This is the kind of storyboard I use.  Perhaps I may have a future as a doctor... or some kind of cryptologist somewhere forging secrets... if the only person you need to unlock said secrets is myself, I suppose.

The little sticky note on my monitor should be an indication why this is so rushed.  With four concurrent projects, all getting behind, it is unlikely I'll have a lot of time to work on this animation project.  But I'd really like to try my hand at effects and explosions and stuff instead of just static spaceship designs, so I decided to start with the first 3 shots of the animation and storyboard them out (roughly, obviously).  Perhaps something will get done.

Hope everyone is doing awesome.

Dan

New Personal Project

With work for one client almost finished, I might have some time to work on something I've had in mind for a few weeks, now.  An attempt at doing a massive effects piece, 1 minute long.

Requirements: Better computer.  I'm hoping I'll be able to do a modest upgrade to my personal workstation shortly.  Also, I will need to build the following items: the bridge of the Retreat.  The drone mentioned.  The interior room of the unnamed crew member, and the observatory.

The drone and the interior room will be easy for the most part.  The observatory and the bridge will be difficult.  The most challenging aspects will be the character animation and the simulations, which will involve a lot of bullet physics for the debris and smoke simulation for the explosions.

It'd be grand if I could do it, though.  We'll see.

Dan