Turbosquid trees, spotlights and an image plane

Hypershade in Maya, to create a quick image plane of winter trees

Lighting tests using an image plane, two spot lights and a couple of Turbosquid obj tree files...

Dr Strange - Critical Review

Dr Strange...

Well this wasn't what I expected at all!

Very entertaining, high paced, humourous and brilliantly executed film....

The editing is fast, the storyline compact the VFX and CGI, whilst very prevalent are fairly 'invisible' within that world and the story is well told...and there is a clear spiritual message contained within the structure...
Definitely comedic and dramatic, with a theme of chaos to order and belonging...

My summary
Grasshopper training, for an arrogant ignorant 'X-Man' , set in the Far East and the ER!

Borrowed Time - Pixar. Critical Review

Great animated short 'Borrowed Time' from Pixar - exploring grief with an ending, that's also a beginning.

With little dialogue and sunlight representing a bright spark of hope, this is a simple tale of trauma, loss and ultimately acceptance and hope...
I particularly like the fluid movement of the fabric, the sound of the wind and the character's hair blowing in the breeze...and these elements really add a sense of time passing and this film is a poetic exploration and depiction of grief, guilt and trauma

Mark Grindle suggested that I include the sound of thawing ice, right at the front end of my film...this will give a subtle message of hope from the get go....
I could see how this idea played out from the start in this short - particularly with the sunlight glinting on the gitfed pocketwatch....

Zbrush Retopolising for export into Maya

Zbrush Retopology Class - creating a low poly head using ZRemesher

Duplicated low poly head below; orange/black dotted lines indicate the 'ZRemesher Guides Brush'.

Using symmetry mode 'X' I drew on the guides (around the eyes, mouth, nose and neck)

Setting the Target Polycount to 2 - Quad count was around 7000

Setting the Target Polycount to 1 - Quad count was around 3000

Generating 'dummy' head geometry for retopologising

Duplicate the highpoly head - rename to 'Decimated_head' > Zplugin>Decimation Master>Pre-process current (NOT ALL!)> set percentage of decimation (e.g 10%) > press Decimation Current.

Export Decimated_head subtool as an obj file

Save!!!

Preparation for retopologising in Maya

Quad Draw tool does not support the 'X' symmetry function, so we have to delete half the head, work on that and then duplicate, mirror and merge

Using the quad draw tool, to draw live 'magnetic' quads onto the head.

We deleted most of the quads around the eyes, mouth and nose, as these areas are the ones that are likely to have most deformation when it comes to animation.

Quad draw and 'CTRL' then allow for multi-cuts and additions of edge loops to create good details

Zbrush - self portrait practice

Zbrush practice yesterday...Sean is right. "Dynamesh is your friend"

Starting with a 3D sphere this rough model of my head took about 4 hours....

A new learning curve and understanding of a new interface....

The top image shows a photo inserted as a map into the model space - from this I can snap the view to side or front and sculpt the clay to match the image

I practiced with 'brush' size - 100 seemed to be pretty good for quick application and subtraction of clay and 25 and below for more detailed work...

So far I've used Clay Build Up, Move and Dam_Standard brushes

Water bubble tests in Maya

MAYA material tests

Storyboard water bubble - Photoshop

First quick test experimenting with a rough image plane of frozen branches and a 3D sphere with
Mia_material_x3 applied in Maya

And then further tests, using a variety of images linked to the bubble and adjusting the Mia_materials
I prefer the first one directly under this text....and I think the poppy in the landscape may look better if it's applied in Nuke - rather than as a material in Maya

Atomos Ninja Assassin - Timelapse

Malcolm Finnie has suggested that the Atomos Ninja Assassin (what a great name!) will be a great way to go when creating timelapse....
Looks very cool and user friendly in this link https://vimeo.com/126891372

And I found this youtube video of the results....looks brilliant!
How great is this...DJCAD have the kit and Scotland has the landscape!