I spent a week and half working on this and rendering it on my laptop during Austin Film Festival week.
It was all done in Blender 2.49b. I've been trying to transition to Maya, but I think Blender 2.55 beta is my next step since it's interface is closer to that of Maya and usually considered a stepping stone from Maya to Blender, but I'll be using it the other way around.
Here is my video for match moving. I love how simple the process is and how great it can look. Now only if there was more time. Hopefully Blender starts picking up something like this soon.
Here is a piece of the video that I was working on. It is done in Blender and had to be done quickly due to time and rendering costs.
In Blender particles are usually points, but can be set to be objects as well. I was able to use three items and set those items to be the particles. One was a subdivided plane with fractal cuts, that were pulled at random spots to give the illusion of crumpled paper. I didn't subsurface this to keep it from looking like cloth.
Then I created a simple 3 cylinder item with 3 plane leaves. All textures here were "wood" textures, and only the colors were changed.
The other item was a elongated cube that had fractal cuts on the last face. Points were chosen at random to give it the splintered look.
Then three particle generators were parented to a vortex wind and tied to each of the objects with random start seeds and random velocity settings. The generation was started at -100 frames and the "hurricane" was moved from the left to the right of the screen.
All the particles were interacting with the hard bodied servers and floor to make sure that nothing would pass through.
So for this project I did two directional lights for the first render, a three-point lighting setup for the second render, and a weird lighting from the inside for the third render.
I went inside the render options and tweaked some settings to produce the highest quality render I could come up with using the terms that I was familiar with. I was afraid on touching too much since there were so many options that I wasn't to sure on.
I liked the three-point setup for a contained scene, but the directional lights would work great in more outdoor, landscape scenes. The light from inside I really liked since it gave the spaceship a different aura to it. I like how Maya seems to be smarter about rendering textures that Blender, but I still like the Modo rendering engine since it comes loaded with great and tweakable presets.
Here is the end result of my primitives that were extruded and duplicated that turned into a model. I then added color to it.
I went on trying different materials and nothing really took. I could find some textures, but for a spaceship I kind of wanted that metallic feel... although it turned into some 1970's children's book metallic feel.
Modo is a great program that seems to have a lot of potential as far as modeling and texturing is concerned, but apparently they still haven't implemented a strong animation portion. I guess I kind of figured Maya was like that. I know Blender isn't. Actually I think Blender may be worse.
I might show up to office hours this Thursday as well for some texturing suggestions if they aren't gone over in class... but I did pick up that project which is due next Friday, so we'll see!
For this project I did a planer version of the Android logo, a revolve of a Coke bottle, a 3D curve pipe thing that I was thinking of turning into a roller coaster on a hill... but perhaps later, and a boat. It was originally going to be an iron, but I am getting frustrated with Maya right now.
I was able to get a $19 keyboard for $10 at Office Depot the other day and ordered the keyboard stickers so I can become proficient at Maya keys, but I still can't seem to shake the Blender interface. I know with programming languages the second is the toughest, and all others are easy, but Maya is really seeming to be a hassle. Hopefully I get over this stump since even Blender's interface changed recently so I might as well learn a higher end, professional 3D program.
So here is my perspective drawing. I had another one ready to go the day of, except after showing it to my coworkers and receiving a not so great review of a 3D box style logo based on something I once saw in the 6th Floor RLM restroom (those guys sometimes have great talent), I decided to try my best at an actual perspective drawing. And it looks like a kid's drawing.
I have the road setup in a direct perspertive angle, with the mountains following, and the clouds had their own, but I forgot to set up the right color temperature changes. I like how the mountains ended up blending in. :)
Funny story: The night I was going to do my 3D logo drawing, I learned a bunch:
Brothers Multi-Function machines don't scan if there is no ink.
Photoshop is a hard program to find when you've forgotten your best "secret" websites.
Gimp != Photoshop.
Neither is GimpShop.
Sandboxie, doesn't sandbox well.
Sun's VirtualBox wants you to do a fresh install from CD to get another OS running.
So here is the sky box with two other textured items. One is a smooth marble ball, and the other is a wooden box. This was originally sent by email since hospitals don't allow "social sites" to be visited... Then I forgot about it.
I'm Joaquin Casares. I should be graduating this December with a BA in Computer Science and a BS in Radio-Television-Film with a Bridging Disciplines Program in Digital Arts and Media.
I have two websites: jCasares.net and DPAnimation.com. Both are under heavy construction. So much to the point that jCasares.net only has a decent working codebase and data structure, but no styling.
I plan on doing legal/forensic animations upon graduation to support my love of digital creations, both physical and virtual.
Beneath this post are the writeups of other projects. Soon I'll separate my work and personal vimeo accounts and reenable them.
