Final Project - WIP 5

 

Hello, here is yet another test composite render.  Looks like I still need to work on the animation as some of the newspapers are still clashing. :( I'm actually not that happy with the 2nd shot's animation too because I kind of want it to slow down more as he is pretending to read the papers but am running out of time so I may have to just leave it for now so that I can work on the final shot.

I think I need to work on the continuity from Shot 1 to Shot 2 as well.  It's definitely off, not just the newspapers but also the character.  I probably should cut out of Shot 1 a little later... need to remember to check on that, as well as the newspapers later today.

I still need to work on the animation and the rotoscoping of Shot 3 which will definitely take time.  Then will have to do the lighting and render layers.  So still lots and lots to do because I haven't even lit and rendered layers for Shot 1 and 2 yet.

Anyway, I am relatively happy with how most of it looks for now.  I keep learning more and more the more I work on this project and that alone makes me happy. :)

Okie dokes.... gotta go and try and catch some sleep.  Am pretty tired today with working on the final project, running maintaneance software on my old and dying laptop and trying to remember Transitive and Intransitive Verbs in Japanese... my brain is fried and I still have to get up to play table tennis tomorrow.

That's it for now... cheers.

Final Project - WIP 4

This is yet another draft render.  This time this is a render of the first shot of the project.  The 3d models are rendered out in as an iff sequence in draft quality so they don't look that good.  Also, I haven't set up the render layers yet, nor have I done the lighting, so the whole thing still looks very rough.

I need to fix some of the animating, some of the pieces of paper are crashing into each other and there is a small fix that I will need to do for the masking in AE.

Will need to check the rotoscoping when I don't feel so tired.  For now, it looks okay to me.  So now, I have finished rotoscoping Shot 1 and Shot 2.  I haven't started on the animation or the rotoscoping for Shot 3.  Yikes... must work faster.

Also, will need to remember to fiddle some more with the Mental Ray Depth of Field for the cameras.  I still think that I have too much DOP.

I brought home my school computer two days ago.  So part of tomorrow will have to be devoted to clearing the room and making space for the second workstation.  I'm hoping this will help speed things up later down the road.  This way, I can start to render out layers on one computer, while I work on the other.

Okay, that's all for now... I need to sleep real bad.  Need to wake up tomorrow morning to play table tennis too... so will sleep immediately after this post.

cheers
p.s. hmmmm... the quality of this Blogger streaming video doesn't seem to be that good... I think I'll return to using youtube next time.

Final Project - WIP 3

Here is a very short update of my Final Project.  I'm still in the middle of animating it but I did take a break from animating to do some rotoscoping.

This is a screen capture of a test composite of the newspaper surrounding the character.

The final composite won't look like that.  This is just a draft render of the newspapers and a rough composite so that I can test somethings out.

This was a rather useful exercise because I learnt that with the previous way I was animating, compositing will be quite a bit of pain and will require a lot of masking to make it work. So after this test, I decided to change the way I was animating to make it easier and more organised.

Because of the test I have to go back to change the animation for the second shot. :-(  Sigh... and I may need to fix some of the animation in the first shot.  Still... I'm glad I did the test because it's better to change it at this stage.

Okay... that's it for now.  Good night. :-)

Marina Bay Sands

Marina Bay Sand with the Helix Bridge in the foreground.
(MM -default camera)

I'm a little bored of animating moving pieces of "paper" right now, so I thought I would just post up a couple of pictures of the Marina Bay Sands.  The Marina Bay Sands is one of two recently opened integrated resorts in Singapore.  By the way, even though the wiki article on the "integrated resorts" made some mention that "the opposition took the opportunity to state that he (Lee Hsien Loong) had overruled consensus", I actually remember it being more split right now the middle than "consensus" against the resorts. 

My personal opinion is that if people want to gamble, and people do gamble a lot in Singapore, they don't need the resorts at all.  Tens of thousands travel to Genting, Macau, take the cruises to nowhere, go to the turf club etc etc everyday before the resorts were built and I really don't think that people who did not gamble previously will suddenly want to gamble now because the resorts were built.


(MM - Vignette camera software)

 Whatever your view is of the integrated resorts is, one can't deny that the Marina Bay Sands does look pretty cool.  And I really really really want to swim in that pool up in that boat looking thing because from the advertisements, it really does seem like it'll feel like you're swimming in the sky.

Today, my family made a short trip to check out the walk across the Helix Bridge and check out the Sands.  The Helix Bridge is kind of cool although on a hot day, it could get kind of uncomfortable for those who don't really like the sun.  You also get a great view of Singapore's city skyline from the bridge.  Previously, to get a similar view like that one would have to be on the Benjamin Sheares Bridge or on a bumboat on the river.

We've already been to Resorts World Sentosa which I kind of like, except for the casino part since I didn't enter the casino and don't particularly like casinos.  I want to one day go to Universal Singapore and if I'm lucky, a friend of mine who said he maybe able to score us some free tickets may really be able to get them for us, and that would be way cool.  Resorts World Sentosa kind of reminds me of US strip malls and I like it.

MBS - inside the mall
(MM - Vignette camera software)

Both the Sands and RWS aren't fully opened yet.  Both IRs are staggering the opening of various attractions and shops.  Right now, a good proportion of the shops at the Sands aren't open.  When I went to RWS 2-3 months ago, maybe 1/3 of the shops weren't opened yet and Universal Studios still has at least one ride, I think, that isn't currently open too.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the photos of Marina Bay Sands.  They were shot on the Motorola Milestone using the default camera, Retro Camera software, FX camera software and Vignette camera software.  I have few shots in the Sony Ericsson phone which I might put up later along with shots of Resorts World Sentosa.  This is suppose to be a relatively quick post to break the monotony of doing my homework so I don't really want to spend too much time on the post. :-)

Here are the rest of the photos:

Mooncakes

The mid-autumn festival is fast approaching again.  That means it's mooncake madness again. Yay! :)  I love mooncakes and I have a particular fondness for the snowskin versions.  I love going to Takeshimaya during this time of the year because a lot of the hotels and bakeries will set up stall there and I get to sample tons of stuff and check out all the funky new flavours.

There are quite a few funky new flavours this year and I wanted to buy so many of them.  In the end though, common sense prevailed and I settled for Peony Jade's durian, chempadek and soursop snowskin mooncakes.  They use real fruit and the samples I tried tasted super good.  I kind of regret not getting the Yuzu flavour as well as one of the traditional Teochew mooncakes.  The chefs who used to make the famous traditional Teochew mooncakes at the Crown Prince Hotel when it was still open have moved to Peony Jade so the traditional Teochew mooncakes should be super good too.

Technically though, I didn't pay for this year's mooncakes, my parents did. :) So I guess I can still afford to buy these mooncakes if I wanted to.  This year, I am saving for my trip to japan, so no green tea snowskins from East Ocean and Cranberry snowskins from Royal China. :(  Maybe next year. :)

Portrait 7

Am on the bus now as i make my school.  Since i have a little time on my hands, i thought i would just put up another portrait.  This is another portrait of another japanese celebrity.  Say, sunsetrose, can you figure out who she is?

I rushed this one cuz the end of the term was approaching and i was swamped with homework and had barely enough time to sleep.  Th shading definitely needs more work.  Still... i was quite happy with this portrait.

K, gotta go soon.  My stop is approaching. Later. :)

Final Project - WIP 2

The above is a test render of what I've been working on. This took me a lot longer than I anticipated because I didn't count on having to texture so many separate polygons when I planned my schedule initially. Also, I made one very crucial error which made me panic and took me a few days to solve. So for all you Maya users... TEXTURE your models before you deform and animate because if you don't, you may get swimming UVs which was what I faced.

Luckily for me after a lot of searching, I found a solution on someone's blog and it seems to work for now. Hopefully this solution doesn't lead to more problems. I found it on this guy's blog, if anyone is interested. http://animbiz.blogspot.com/ Read his post titled "Transferring UVs AFTER rigging...."

Anyway, ignore the blue block in the middle of the video. That's just a stand-in polygon so that I kind of have an idea where the polygons are flying infront or behind the actor. I will need to rotoscope the actor out in AE later on. For now, I'm just concentrating on the Maya portion of things.

Also, here is a pix of what the textured recycle bin looks like. I think I should add bump mapping to it too... but I don't feel like messing with that yet since I think I want to tweak the textures a bit.

I still have quite a lot more to animate... so I need to work faster so that I can start spitting out layers and get to the rotoscoping which would be quite a bit of work.

Anyway, that's it from me for now... I need to sleep. Gotta go to school tomorrow so can't sleep in.

Good night. :)

Portraits 6

I've been feeling unwell and kinda glum lately, hence the scarcity of updates to the blog. ごめんなさい.

Anyways, am feeling well enough to post another entry, which is good news i supppose. :)  Sadly, i will need to keep it somewhat short as i have a ton of things to do for my final project.

Here it is, the portrait drawing i am most proud of.  Of course there is room for improvement but i really managed to nail the resemblance quite well on this portrait.  I really don't know who this Japanese celebrity is.  I just picked him out of the stack of black and white prints my lecturer had on the desk.  All i remember is that someone told me he is a japanese singer, so here you go, hope you enjoy this portrait.  This time i used a one cm by one cm grid to plot the outline.

If i have time later, i'll post an update to track my progress on my final project.  Later. :)