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

Freighter Update

Well, working on clients' projects has really taken a lot of time away from personal stuff, but it's okay, as I'm eating and that's important. :) 

But I haven't given up on the spaceship stuff.  Doing more texturing.  The texturing and materials are almost done on the freighter.  All that's left is modelling the landing gear and putting in the hatches and ramps.

Dan

Freighter Update

Started texturing phase on the freighter. It's looking a bit worse for wear.

Have to fix the center parts of the hull plating where there are mirror artefacts in the texture mapping, as well as finish the landing gear and the texturing on some parts, like the wings and greeble sections, but otherwise, it's looking pretty far along, now, I think.

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

Too Much Work

Hey all,

So, just a sending out a message to all the friends who follow me on this site.

I haven't updated this page in a while because I have been inundated with work for customers who have requested privacy.  As such, I have not had time to produce any of my own work and so have had no content to put on my website.  I'll try to get some stuff up soon, including another tutorial on CGCookie.com, this time a 3 part series on how to create science fiction interiors quickly in Blender.

Hopefully everyone is doing okay.

Thanks,
Dan

New Tutorial on Blender Cookie

CGCookie asked me to do another tutorial for them.  Here it is.  This one ended up much better, so I'm pleased.

 Modelling Hard Surface Panels on Curved Surfaces

Hopefully it helps everyone.

Thanks,

Dan

Laser Beam Tutorial Released

Hopefully it helps everyone out.

http://cgcookie.com/blender/2014/08/12/create-laser-beam-blender/

Please note: You'll need a paid membership to CG Cookie to download the files.  I didn't know this when I made the tutorial, and so the tutorial reflects that ignorance on my part.  But at least it gives an idea on how to do the effect, and hopefully everyone can get something out of it.

I'll see about releasing the laser cannon mesh on BlendSwap, though.

I guess I must have done something right, though, because they've asked me to do another tutorial for them.  Let's see how this one goes, now that I've learned from the mistakes on this one!

Best regards,
Dan

The Nero's Fire WIP

A few years back, I wrote a movie called Armranath.  It's still the best thing I've ever written, and it's not bad, as movie scripts go.  It'll probably never be made, but I might just put it on Deviant Art one day, just so anyone who cares enough to trudge through a 2 hour script can read it.

Anyway, almost all of the action takes place aboard an aging space freighter captained by a middle aged Thrassi man named Seranno Nero.  Since he owned the ship at the time, he named it the Nero's Fire.

I've had a few iterations of the ship over the years, but nothing I was really satisfied with.  I've been working on this on my free weekend time (which isn't much), and finally, now that I've got my computer up and running again, I've gotten my chance to show how she looks so far.

Nero's Fire WIP

Obviously, still a long ways to go, but I really like her.  She's beautiful in my eyes. :)

Dan