Early Commission Work

Hey all,

Just wanted to share this.  I made a spaceship for a guy a few years back and he's released the movie just recently.  Seth was super cool to work with, and this ended up sending me on a secular career I really enjoy.  He made a V-Log to talk about the film, Dust, which was a sort of sci-fi drama.  I didn't do much on the film.  Seth's already a really amazing digital artist--whether he's aware of it or not--and so all I did was use Blender to build out and render a spaceship for him.  It's very rudimentary by today's standards, and I've learned a lot since then, but I suppose it was nice to see my work in there.  I hope my work didn't take down the otherwise pretty slick work he did on it!

Thanks,
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

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

Padoen's Apartment 3

Nearing completion of the public version of the apartment.  Into the detailing phase, which involves fixing up loose ends here and there and dropping props into it.  Once done with that, I'm going to start fleshing out the personal details for the Plagarus version.

Hopefully everyone is doing awesome.

Dan

Plagarus Part Two Released

Hope everyone enjoys it.  Watch in 720p full screen for best results.  It has English closed captioning as well.  This represents several months' worth of work all squeezed into just 2 and a half minutes.  Film making is tedious, slow and hard to do.  But if at least a few people enjoy it, then it was worth it as far as I'm concerned.

So, I hope someone out there likes it.

Thanks to Danny Rivera for helping me out on recording the voice overs and then doing the voice effects afterwards.  Thanks to the Blender community for their help, and thanks to the Blender Institute for making Blender.  I wish there was more one could do to promote such a great piece of software, but I guess the best way to do it is to produce as good art as we can with it so people can see it for what it is.

Hopefully, we get Part 3 out a little sooner this time.

Thanks,
Dan

Plagarus Part II Scoring Nearly Done

After this bit, it's probably posting time.  It's not perfect, mind you, but what can you do on a shoestring budget?

Danny had some problems with other projects and was unfortunately too tied up to really help out with the score for Part II.  Fortunately, I do own a selection of royalty free music I purchased about a year ago, which is fairly good.  Using Sonic Fire Pro, I'm able to time the music appropriately.

It's a pretty good program.  Only a few crashes once in a very great while for me, and it's useful for what I need it to do.  So I'm happy, more or less.  Of course, we could always use John Williams to score a little here and there pro bono, but, you know, we could all dream, right?

Looking at about 2 or 3 more days, depending on work and whatnot.  Working two jobs is murder, I'll tell you that...

Hope you're all doing better than I am!

Regards,
Dan

Nem Gate Work

More work on the indie film Nem Gate.  This has been an extremely challenging set.  It needs to fit inside an existing building, and it has a large number of components.  It is seen both from the perspective of a small control room (previously modelled) and from outside, as well and must connect to the outside of the building for a couple of shots.

Add to all this the usual challenges of designing the aesthetics of the concept, and you get an interesting challenge, that's for sure.  We're finally getting somewhere, but it is still very much in a messy work-in-progress state, I'm afraid.  So please keep that in mind.

It's unlikely that the exterior will be so brightly lit, but I figured I'd load in some detail just in case we've got some close-up shots here and there that'll need something in the background.

From the perspective of the control room built earlier

And this the control room set built earlier that connects to this hangar.

Hope you're all having a good day.

Dan

Nem Gate Sets Dressed and Painted

I just got some images back from my client, Tom, of one of the Nem Gate sets I made for him textured and prepared for appearance in the movie.  Interesting to see how different the lounge set looks like from what it appeared as without materials.

Still a WIP, of course, but it's getting there.  I did not render these out, or do the materials.  I only modelled the room geometry.

Dan

Part II Scene I

Work continuing.  Animation is going along about at the anticipated speed.  Shot construction and completion is about half of that of Part I, mostly because of the complexity of the second part.  Several sets, this time, and about five characters to animate.

As I did in Part I, I'm using noise modifiers in certain bones on the character rigs to give the illusion of random movement.  Struggling with keeping the characters out of uncanny valley.  The problem will be greatly exacerbated by the very human-like characters in Part III.  Danny and I are starting to look around for a more talented character animator, and I'm looking into re-rigging the character models for the next part.  The current rig isn't sufficient (it's very old, now) for what I'm looking for in performance in the next few parts of the movie.

 Raw Render:

Color Corrected Render:

Sent off the raw cut of Scene I of Part II to Danny this morning, so he can start mixing the sound.  Looking forward to seeing what he's got up his sleeve.

Dan