Where Worlds Meet

Hi all, I'm kind of busy right now but I really want to share this short video clip with you all.  I like how they use the "little red dot" as a visual motif throughout this video clip. Who would have thought that Indonesian President B.J. Habibie's remark made so many years ago and greeted with anger at that point in time would become something that Singaporeans use, at first with some defiance, and now with some pride.

Although it seems to me that it isn't popular to express a sense of pride and love for Singapore, I am and always will be proud of this place I call home.  I really like this video in part because it is simply my kind of video. :)  Seriously, the style of this video is something that I really like.  This video also speaks to me and expresses quietly part of what I feel is great about my country.  And lastly, I know several of the people involved in the making of this video and I think they did a great job. :)

While I feel that there are many things wrong with Singapore, it isn't all that democratic and free speech crap the West would like me to feel is wrong with my country.  I lived in the US for many years before I chose to come home and I've come to realize that I don't care what the rest of the world thinks is wrong about my country, it isn't for them to decide.  I think the current government is great and the current political system is great.

What I worry about isn't that we don't have boring US styled democracy which I don't believe in nor do I think is workable in Singapore, what I worry about isn't that we don't have "free speech" (since I really can say virtually anything I want including anti-government stuff when they infuriate me sometimes with some really "baka" policies).  Aside from feeling that Singaporeans take things for granted and complain too much, and aside from feeling that sometimes we need much more of that "go get it" spirit and more backbone rather than wait for a helping hand or direction, perhaps what I am most unhappy about now is the increasing intolerance and bigotry in Singapore.  Hence, perhaps why I like this video... "Where Worlds Meet".  Right, I want this to be a place "Where Worlds Meet" where people can look pass differences in race, religion, social status, birthplace etc.  Anyway, that's the idealist in me speaking.  :)  Anyway, enjoy the clip and the months of hard work put in by all involved in the making of this video. :)

Taste from the past.

Today is a public holiday in Singapore so after we played table tennis, we decided  to have lunch at Bakerzin, one of my favourite hangout places in Singapore.

Bakerzin launched their new menu just a few weeks ago and there were several dishes i wanted to try. One of the new dishes was this thing called the Seafood Puff.

The Seafood Puff consist of a soft pastry with several different types of seafood like squid, mussels, prawns mixed with mushrooms cooked in a rich creamy white sauce.  The dish can be seen in the picture above.   おいしそうね。:)

The dish is quite tasty but it's perhaps too rich for me, now that i'm under doctor's orders to lose weight. :) But what i really like about this dish is how much it reminds me of my mum's cooking.  When i was a child, my mum liked to make this mushroom filled pastry thing every once in a while.  It doesn't look quite as fancy or as large as the Bakerzin's puff but my mum's mushroom puff snack was a firm favourite in the house. I LOVED it and always looked forward to the next time she would make it.  Mum's mushroom puff didn't have all that seafood but the creamy sauce that filled that puff was no less luxurious and no less delicious.

These days, mum no longer makes those puffs. None of us in the house should be eating them anyway.  So it's perfect that Bakerzin has them now because anytime that i need something comforting or whenever i feel nostalgic, i just need to head down to the nearest Bakerzin and order that Seafood Puff. :) 

Modeling - mini cooper cont.

After playing table tennis this morning, i spent the day at des' place working on the model. The going was slow though. Will have to come earlier and work faster next time. Maybe will update with more photos later. :)

Final Project - Breakdown AND other stuff

My internal time clock is totally screwed up.  Crashed out on the couch from approx 830pm and only just woke up an hour ago at approx 230am.  Grrrrrr....  need to work on trying to regain a more normal sleep pattern. :)

Anyway, the above is the breakdown of the Final Project.  I also used this in my demo reel.  I've taken away all the names and phone numbers etc because I don't really feel comfortable with giving out too much information on the internet.

I've been taking a break from doing any meaningful VFX, 3D etc work for about a week as I needed the break away from all homework related stuff.  Now though, I am thinking I should slowly ease back into it this week because I still have things I would like to try to fix and stuff I would like to learn. 

I'm not sure what I would start with yet but I don't want to kill myself over it for now because I really need/like to get a lot of non-work related things done like:
1) cleaning my room (it now looks just slightly better than Neo's room in the Matrix). :)
2) I really want to meet up with some friends that I've neglected for months.
3) I would like to complete work on a computer I've been putting together from parts.  If I can figure out which component is causing this computer to keep shuttting down without warning, I will be able to use it is a gaming computer and then I can start playing Civilization on it. :D  I think it's a faulty power supply and I already have a spare supply that I can put in but for some reason... I feel so unmotivated to mess with it right now.
4) Work on my Japanese homework.  In order to work on this Final Project for school, I am way behind on my Japanese homework.  Tomorrow, I will sign up for my Pre-Advance class so I will need to try and finish this homework and revise as much as possible before classes start again in December.
5) Starting to draw or do digital painting again.  I really would like to get better at drawing but admittedly I have more patience with rotoscoping than with drawing. :)  So it's been a start-stop-start-stop process for me.  I did like digital painting quite a bit and there is this one photo I would like to digital paint... so may start doing that next week.
6) Get a haircut.
7) Work on organizing and uploading tons of photos.
8) Play video games.
9) Start swimming again.
10) Read.
11) Watch anime, Japanese dramas and that ATV drama I've been wanting to finish.
12) Work on models - my Mini-Cooper and other unopened or unfinished kits I have lying around my room.

Anyway, there are a couple of things I could do as well that are VFX related:

1) Trying to get that bin to sit in better in my Final Project.  But I must admit... I am a little sick of the Final Project so am not sure if I really want to mess with it immediately.  But I'm in two minds... if I'm going to mess with it some more, I suppose I should do it now while it's still fresh in my mind.

2) Fix two of my previous projects which have some problems.  I'll upload them so that you guys can take a look at it.

a) baby shot



This shot is called the Baby Shot because we only had 2 weeks to complete this shot from pre-production to delivery date.  This was a difficult shot to accomplish because Shatter and Particles in Maya were very taxing on my computer and there were some other issues with some settings in the Shatter effect that I wasn't sure how to key in correctly that caused Shatter to really stumble during rendering etc.
There are several things I would like to work on in this shot:
- The way the particles interact with the objects on the table can definitely be improved.  I should probably create a dummy keyboard, mouse, monitor etc so that the particles can interact with it in a better way.
- I think I may need to re-track this shot if I want to get the particles to interact better with the objects on the table.
- There are also some masking and shadow problems on the wall that will need to be fixed.
- The coke bottle is tracked okay but not perfectly as it is sliding very slightly.  Will need to fix that too.
- Try and get that coke bottle and that 3d arm to look better in the footage, now they still scream out "I am a 3d object" very loudly.
- And I also think the texture of the wall can be improved as well.  The shatter bits and the particles look kind of crappy to me mostly because the texture looks kind of yuckky to me too.

b) hero shot



This is the second shot that I worked on during my 3rd semester and it's called the Hero Shot because the bulk of the semester was spent working on it.  I've not done the breakdown for this shot either.  Basically, the actor and the table were rotoscoped and separated from the original footage.  The walls, floor and chair are all 3D elements.
There are several things that I want to work on in this shot.
- Replace the material of the floor to a non-reflective material.  While I can still recreate the shadow somewhat better than what I did, the reflection is way too difficult and perhaps even virtually impossible.  Hence, the best solution is not to even do it at all.  If I wanted to try it, my lecturer said I could try just having a puddle of water on the floor and then have half the body reflect in the water rather then try and do a full body reflection because that would be very, very difficult to do.
- Move the wall back and change the material of the wall.  Basically, my bump mapping in that wall texture is way too much and kind of ugly.  Also, since the entire environment save for the table is 3D, I don't have to be constrained to simply replacing the wall from the original footage with the 3D wall.  In fact, I could actually create an entirely new environment if I wanted and would like to do more than just simply moving the wall back.  Actually, this was one of my intentions but I could not finish it in time, so even though I did start on making an entirely new environment, I actually stopped so that I could get the shot ready by delivery date.  In the end, I did deliver on time but with quite a few imperfections. :(
- Fix the shadows.  Basically the shadow that I faked for my actor and the shadow under the table are not good enough.  It shifts at points and is just unacceptable.
- Fix the roto.  The roto on the actor isn't bad in my opinion. =)  I really slaved over this roto because the footage quality is really bad as the school camera is pretty crappy so rotoscoping this shot was very trying and time consuming.  Also, the actor's hair was really hard to roto.  In the end, even though I roto-ed for weeks and weeks, I still failed to roto the last section when she sits down well enough, so I will need to fix that.  Also, the roto of the table is not very good at all.  I had a lot of problem with the table too because I think I made a few fundamental roto mistakes in the beginning and I had to rush to try and fix it in time to hand in towards the end.  Also, the quality of this footage is really not very good at all, so rotoscoping that table turned out to be unexpectedly difficult as sometimes the pixels will shift and then I can't tell table from wall.  Given that this was the first time I rotoscoped anything, I'm actually quite pleased with my initial results for the actor but now I feel I do need to clean it up better.

3) Also, I would like to improve my AE skills so I would like to work through some of the Video CoPilot tutorials that are available online.

4) Work though some video tutorials especially ones on Lighting, compositing, rotoscoping and effects in Maya.  As well as watch some video tutorials on drawing and digital painting.  And although I am unlikely to have time, I would also like to go through some tutorials on 3d modeling.

5) And finally, I would like to learn how to use a node based compositing software.  I think Nuke is the one I would like to learn right now.  So may try and learn some of the basics of how to use Nuke as well.

Okie dokes... end of my very long post which is probably riddled with grammatical and spelling errors, all of which I'm too lazy to fix right now and will most likely never get around to fixing. :)  Of course the chances of me finishing everything I would like to accomplish are completely zero but still, I wanted to write it all down so that I can remind myself of the things I would like to work on.  Also, writing this long post has made me kind of tired, so now I can go and try and sleep again and work on getting my internal time clock back to a more normal one. :)

Good night ya all. :)

Mini Cooper - Modeling

It's been a topsy turvey week for me and I'm kind of tired so I did not feel like blogging much.  However, I really want to put these photos of a modelling project I've been working on. 

Several years ago I took up a course on how to make Gundam models at the M Workshop at Sunshine Plaza.  I really enjoyed sanding and air-brushing etc and almost bought an air brush and compressor back then.  However, work got in the way and I have yet to make another cool air brushed Gundam like I did back then. =(

However, I always retained a great deal of interest in modelling and always intended to go back to it one day.  This year, one of the projects we had to do for the diploma I was studying for was to create a 3d car in Maya.  The car that I picked to model was the Mini Cooper 1967 Rally Version.

Aside from researching for reference photos on the internet, I also went and bought this 1/24 scale model of the actual car.  I used the instructions on how to build the model to model my 3D car in Maya.  And I have to say that this is one of the projects that I'm proudest of. =)

 I spent about 10 weeks modeling this.  Technically, this isn't my first 3D Maya car but my first one was pretty disastrous.  I did that several years ago when I took a crash course in Maya and we were just instructed to model a car and it didn't matter how realistic it looked.  This, however, is my first 3D photo realistic car and this car is truly a labour of love. =)  I spent several nights in school just to complete this car as well as some other ZBrush models.  If I didn't love VFX more and if I liked concept art more, I think I might have liked doing modelling as my specialization. =)

Anyway, since this post isn't about my 3D model, I'll not post up the other pictures of my 3D Mini Cooper just yet.  I'll leave that for another post.  This post is about the actual 1/24 model.  Since I got the model and since I like working with my hands and since my friend Des has the tools to do these kinds of models at home and offered very kindly to help me with the model, I decided to actually build the scale model of the mini cooper.

I hope that I will be able to complete this scale model of the Mini Cooper.  This is really my first glued together and air-brush scale model.  The only other air-brushed model I ever made was the Gundam which was a snap together.  Des is petty good with these kinds of models and has all the tools and the air brush and compressor as well.  And Des also was kind enough to guide me in the making of this model.  If you read this Des... thanks man. =)



After air brushing a coat of green. 
Oh and I know I should have
sanded that pipe thing better. :)



So anyway, here is what we accomplished about 2 weeks ago.  Since then, I have been busy with the Final Project and the reel and other stuff so we haven't progressed much since then.  Hopefully will get back to working on this model next week. =)



 

This is part of the engine after the
glue has set and before air-brushing.

It doesn't look like much does it. =) But it was a few hours worth of work. Maybe next time, we'll work on the model for an entire day. =)

  



Salisbury Steak with sides, all home made
and very awesome tasting. :)


Oh and Des' mum cooked us dinner that night and it was super awesome. Very delicious. =)

Next up, I think I'll post the break down of my Final Project.  It's what I used in my reel without my name, number and email. =)

Alrighty, I'm off to rest... I'm still kinda tired and not feeling super duper cheery happy today... so I think I'll call it an early night and sleep it off. =) cheers.

Final Project - finished [I think =) ]

Hi guys, I think I'm pretty much done with the final project. =)  I was thinking of cutting out to a wide shot but I think I'll just end it on the CU for now.

Finally, it is done.  I'll be working on the breakdown after this.  So will keep this post very short.

Hope you guys enjoyed it. =)