Posts

Showing posts from 2011

Snow v001

Image
First test on snow element . No dynamics, all movements is just noisy jiggles.

Aurora v004

Image
Test on composition of a bunch of lines. Half satisfied with it and I reckon I rest this until I got the proper scene to work on. Here's the comp , and here's the input animation .

Tree concept

Image
My friend and former college Simon Gustafsson has made this lovely still of the tree structure. I needed a more trained eye to nail design and composition as starting point for my 3d model. It's a lesson from previous project- I need to outsource vital decisions to specialists. You might say I need to understand my weeknesses rather then to try to become the complete generalist. Would love to get back to work on this project right away but that short film got a deadline in February.

Aurora v003

Image
Test one. Test two. Same animation, different settings on apperance. Changed to a more man made animation method to match reference videos. Will now draw up a more complex composition of animated lines. Btw- visited the shoot yesterday and pictures looks great so I left with new inspiration.

Aurora v002

Image
Progress. Think I got this fairly under control now. Compression takes away a lot of details but it's there. Need to work on the large scale anim now.

Aurora particles v001

Image
Comped particles from yesterdays anim.

Short film and Aurora B look dev

Currently working on a short film project, two effects needs to be lookdev'ed- "snow" and "northern lights". Been working on the latter, here's the animation pass . I believe I get enough niceness from this approach of simulating realistically rather then some kind of motion graphic trick solution which would be cheaper but not as fluid in it's movements. It's interesting that I haven't seen anywhere where they succeed with this thing. Maby because all cool script writer lives too far from where the auroras is happening.

shed 220 v001

Image
Liquid expansion overview (missing 30 frames). Feel I want to change a few things here, a clearer light coming from the energy blob outside top screen, the speed may be too fast and the liquid comes out from nowhere (which is fine but that 'nowhere' is in frame). I may also need to establish that the colour of the energy inside changes during these shots but I think I'll get them in decent shape and look at them together before making that call. So I'll probably just go to the next one.

Previz seq 1 version 3

Previz. Goo grows outwards and sips down underground, last frame is a cut through of the underground. I reckon I can throw out the overground shots fairly quickly but should move carefully to reach a nice underground look. I vision some kind of tunnel system where you see the light spread and bounce around as the goo moves down. At the same time the liquid becomes less frantic and the overexposed colours cools down to more saturated colours. Finally it comes out on the other side in and starts to build the crystal. I might need to start move the camera at some point as I think that from the camera and forward I got a free camera to emphasize all the space we got as we're now outside.

Stills goo shots

Image
Two shots with the new goo element.

floor goo v001

Image
After a standstill on the liquid to solid development I decided to go back a step and work on the liquid. Maby if I get a clearer view of how this should look I will get some hints to how the crystal formation should happen. The sample is the liquid with the floor and some sparkling particles visible in the refractions. Next up is to mix it into the blob.

dynamic wire creation

Image
Dynamically creating wires . Next step is to make them join to each other as they're getting close. Later on their trail will create meshes that is the inside of the crystal. Update: did a quick mesh test, a lot of intersections but I feel that there is some niceness in there. Might wait implementing the join function until I see this animated and with a more continuos surface.

sRGB

Image
Now working in correct colorspace. Will now render a few different crystals from different angles so my friend Simon Gustafsson can start working on a concept for the tree.

more crystals with details

Image
Made two new crystals and sculpted in details to the underlying surface. Next up is a lot of extra work to get this to look the same in a correct color space, bah!

crystal shader dev irradescence improvement

Image
The shader didn't look so good in all angles so I did some worke on the irradescence effect. (Note, these pics are too brightly lit).

crystal growth veins lines

Image
This vein structure is an intermediate step to forming the crystal.

crystal shader dev 03

Image
Added some details to the rocky surface. Not sure what to move onto next, will probably render this with a moving camera and then maby do some animation tests.

crystal shader dev 02

Image
Crystal now glass coated. Next up is to hand model details to the rocky surface.

crystal shader dev

Image
Took back the sculpted model into shading to see how it worked. Fairly happy with the results. Need to go back to sculpting to get a more fluid pattern then add a glass material that covers this rocky surface. Later on I will also add something glowy inside. I'll hope to paint some textures to control all this as I think manual work is needed to create the details I'm after. You can also hint some spots of saturation, this is my take on a iridescence effect. I'll start introduce some colour here as I'm thinking of making the next phase to look like something the Hubble telescope could have captured.

zbrush crystal first test

Image
Started to fiddle around with making the topology more interesting on the crystal, the idea is so far that these details will be visible underneath a more glassy surface.

first 1/2 min, version 1

Pretty far gone now. 80MB but worth it... Will leave this now, then come back to it when I got a more complete film. Edit: changed link to new version

shed 180 v001

Image
Minor tweaks from final version. Missing particles and the black blobs goes in the wrong direction but it works.

shed 100 v001

Image
Animation here . Even though the black fluid profile has a nice feel to it I was planning to have the shape more chaotic at this stage so I may play it down.

Tweaked update

Image
Same as last post but longer and small changes.

field fully developed

Image
It should be three times as long but it works as a preview to get comments on. Might need to add some "fluidness" to the bottom as it will "leak out" shortly after this but pretty close to the final thing now.

Previz seq 1 version 2

New previz here .

sequence 1 overview

Image
Render every 4 seconds of the development in the first sequence. Fairly close to what I want but will need to work on the bottom in the section covered by the last 3 pictures.

sequence 1 lookdev

Image
Developed the expanding object. Getting fairly close to final here. Holding back rendering out shots until I got some feedback on the previz.

field shell test sim

Image
This will most likely be the fringe of the growing black field element. The pictures portray roughly the same shape but one is made out of dots and the other with noisy lines.

sequence 1 previz

Previz of section one . Will need to borrow someones trained eyes too work on the camera layout. Big file, will only keep temporarily.

crystal growth new test

Image
Thinking of scraping the growth aproach from last post and simply construct an interesting crystalshape and then make it appear in an organic fashion rather then the otherway around as it might prove to not be worth the effort. Here's a render of a volume constructed from a serious of boxes scattered on a sphere. Edit-second version adding pyramids instead of boxes.

crystal growth algorithm 01

Image
Been working on a growth algorithm foe the crystals. It may be the summer heat or this is a freekin frustrating task, everythin affects everything. The picture shows how at least some of the shapes has grown without colliding with it's neighbours.

crystal structure 02

Image
More intricate method to build up tree structured segments. One of the pictures shows how I build a line modell and then swaps out every line segment to an L-system. The Lsystem sproach was needed to certify connectivity (no hovering pieces). I hope to find a way to make holes in the branches, a nice detail to brake up the stright feel they currently have.

crystal structure 01

Image
Back from vacation, now doing this fulltime. Got some sketches and ideas in my backpack that's need to be implemented. Here's a first step of creating a crystal structure for the growth part.

first story board and close up concept

Image
Currently mapping out the whole project to sketch out the "story" and to be able to break it down into subtask. To the left, photos of the first story board, last image is a test for one of the frames in the first storyboard pictures. More shots will be added to this story board but I'm trying to find what's needed to show to create a flow in the storytelling. Through this I also found that I will probably ask some of my talented friends to help out on some corners, especially some design jobs of the more important shots. What happens in the story- field expands, builds up mass and fluid behaviour, leeks through floor cracks, fluid comes out in strings and creates vein like structures, expands through organic growth behaviour, growth builds up shells, expands seemlessly ontop the surrounding topology, pullout shows a larger similar structure, expansion builds up chambers, white energy channels out to chambers spawning a new growth cycle , pullout shows larger branch s