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Reflection Semester B


Some of the practices that are forefront on the industry and applied in my projects were Arnold Solid Angle, Dynamesh, Zremesh, Storyboarding, Mari.

Arnold is a render engine developed by Marcos Fajardo and Sony Pictures, he decide to create his own software to render 3d images for feature films and visual effects. One of the great attributes that Arnold has is the ray tracing to illuminate a scene, this technology allow to 3d software environment behaviour as in real life. In the past when a scene was illuminated only an object radiates light, with ray tracing every object on the scene is able to reflect and produce light as real objects. In this semester project I try to apply Arnold to my development, due to last semester was asked to experiment with render software to improve my personal pieces. As result my project has finished looking, with couple of lights I have got a professional result and the render time was pretty faster than previous exercise rendered in “MentalRay” that is the engine for default in Maya.


Dynamesh is a tool in Zbrush, that permit add new pieces to sculpture that is being done. It is a simple process however, the benefits to work flow is huge since Zbrush is able to work with millions of polygons whiteout crashing nevertheless when the model need to attach one or more pieces was the moment when Zbrush had limitations. With Dynamesh the sculpture process is similar to traditional sculpture way with clay, due to this the artist can focus in creative idea rather than technical issues. In my project a use Dynamesh to model the base mesh to my main character in a faster way, and help me to achieve more detailed results.


Zremesh is other tool in Zbrush that help to do an automatic retopology faster and accurate. In last semester I was experimenting with topology that is the process to create a mesh to be animated, this process could be very slow and time consuming. With Zremesh and its settings the retopology is done in seconds, in my last work the retopology took me 3 days in comparison is an advantage to use this new practice making the process more efficient to the artist.

Storyboard is a method to organize every shot in an audio-visual piece, and is very used worldwide to check if the story and the image is working for a public. The idea is simple use very fast sketches with important information such as camera plane, dialogue and sound in order to every member of team could understand what they have to do in every shot.

Texturing is the method used to put colour and materials to 3d models, in past usually this process was done in software like “Photoshop” where the artist used a plane from model to paint it. Regularly, this texture maps were not completely accurate and they have cuts that the artist intelligently hide in parts that were not important. However, nowadays due to “Mari” artists can paint over the 3d model without concern for anything since the algorism that use Mari do not permit any incorrect finish. For my project I use Mari to texturing my main character resulting in better finishing and more smooth details.

Some artists whom inspirited my work were Headless studio, Jonathan Russ, Heidi Smith, Tsutomu Nihei.

Headless Studio is a Spanish animations studio that make productions for television. This studio is particularly interesting in its character designs, they stand up from others for its special aesthetic, the colour palette is varied, bright and each character is unique making Headless studio always on vanguard. It inspire to develop the Thief character for my final project making the aesthetic more cartoon, stylized and different from my past projects.



Jonathan Russ was a student from Hertfordshire University of 3D animation for its final project he made a short animation where the characters interact in a big city. To solve the time versus effort issues in the project he developed a set of model pieces that join together created the environment. For my final major project we have the same issue and we are going to use a similar technique than him to create different pieces of environment with a pattern of model pieces.

Heidi Smith was the design character for Paranorman film, we used as inspiration the Norman character for our project, taking as reference the colour palette and the corporal expressions resulting in “Kid” main character.

Tsutomu Nihei is the writer and creator of Blame comic, is a Japanese comic based in an underground world where the main character has to cross different world levels to get a girl to the top level. I inspire my project in this underground world to give life to my environment.

Finally, some artefacts or pieces of work that have influenced my work and are in the forefront in the industry are Backwater Gospel, Rotar Park, ODD and Between Bears.
Backwater Gospel is a short film form the Animation Workshop; this piece inspired me for its use of shaders that gives the illusion of comic despite of being developed in 3D. Rotar Park is a South Korean series created by Tuba, the history is very crazy and fantastic we used as creative inspiration to start brainstorming of ideas because the animation worlds is limitless. ODD is a teaser of a short animation, it has a simple aesthetic with a strong idea, it inspired us in the creation of a simple and entertainment history.


In this semester I improve the efficiency of my process through applying new practices as Dynamesh, Zremesh, texturing in Mari and finally using Arnold; improving in that way the relation time versus effort. Also I improve my planning process using storyboarding which helped me as a guide in production development. My personal goal was improve my character design proposals, I achieved looking more reference and inspirations from different artist to enrich my personal idea.   
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Zremesher Zbrush


Zremesh is a resent and improved tool of Zbrush to do a automatic topology, based to high model sculped in zbrush. 
http://docs.pixologic.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/4R6-19.jpg

The proccess was firstly sculp the model in high quality with big detail, however this model does not have a practical use beyond  to a concept purpose. This fact after the model was exported to different software like Maya and did a Retopology, thanks to Zremesh this could be automatic, it is not complete accurante but help to do the production faster.

 

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"Backwater Gospel"

This short film was created by The Animation WorkShop, the aesthetic is an influence to my final project. Specially the textures and ilumination is the result that my group is looking for.




     

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ODD Beautiful Short film that has to 

much to say


This short film has a simple story, impeccable aesthetics and it is nice to see. 


This is the final look of the piece. an som detail of production.


beautiful concept.

This is link:
https://vimeo.com/124304622

The important of this piece is some time less is more and when the idea is clear and stronge the project argues for itself in order to entertain. It is a great example of something concrete with good aesthetic sense.



Film Credits
Producer: Anna Széles
Account manager: Andi Grósz
Director: Árpád Hermán
Art director: Roland Budai
CG supervisor: Igor Bóka
Modeling: Zoltán Bogdán
Lighting / Shading: Miklós Polgár
3D animation: Bea Ujj
Sound design: Studio H
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Kid


THis character was special, because I had a clear idea how he will look. Main influence was the future film "Praranorman" (2012) specialy Norman character.

Due that I had an idea what I want, the exploration was not so extensive incompare with the Thief. This was the proccess.
 And my finnal result.
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Thief


This is my design process of main character to my final project.




The idea como from a stylized character, simple that could work as main character as a general caracter. That way I can save time during production. This was the finnal result.
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Storyboard

Storyboard is a graphic tool that help to organize every shot of a film or audiovisual piece, using illustrations or image with the purpose to set up the stage iluminations, camera movementes and check if the story is working visually.



These are 6 tips that (fastcodesign.com) give to do a storyboard is for interactive and softweare design but the ideas is similar.

1. Choose part of the problem
     First day do a diagram of scenes  which help to organize every shot before to start to draw.

2.Take notes
In this moment take notes of every coment or doubt in each shot.

3. Use a mind map
THis method help to give sense to every idea that is in your maind.

4. Crazy egth
Using a piece of paper draw 8 shots in 40 minuts, you have 5 minuts per shot and check if the idea is clear or not.

5. Critiques
Is important have a team that talk about what they like or dislike about the project

6. vote
Is moment to decide every shot in grup.


My personal work the use of storyboard helped me realize how many pieces had to modeling texturing and so stipulate the time it would take to do my work.




http://www.fastcodesign.com/1672917/the-8-steps-to-creating-a-great-storyboard (The 8 Steps To Creating A Great Storyboard
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 Inspiration

Due to the lessons learned in past projects, I decided to inspire my work on a work to help me with the creative process.

Blame! is a japanese comic written by Tsutomu Nihei 

the story take place in a tower inside the earth and each level is like a complete city and rules. This part I take to give form to my assisment.


This stage  helped me give it a ration to be my work, but not so dark and saturated as the comic.

in my work it is essential to give the feeling of a giant space, however still claustrophobic , this is the fact that the quice rescue works Tsutomu Nihei.
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DyneMesh


       Is a Zbrush tool that allow combine objets to the model and making it one. 

This proccess is more similar to traditional clay model, the artist add matirial and do not affect the rest of the model, using this technique I have improved my zbrush models, making them more detailed, more ambitious and improving my production time. 



The proccess is simple, I have my a object and use different brushes to give it the form. If i need to add more imformation use an INSERT BRUSH. 

In this case use a sphere to model the hands, them using DynaMesh

both objects becoming in one and i can complet my model rapidly.
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Rotarypark?




This animated serie is in its first episodie the story is not clear, if you feel lost and do not have a way you can get in Rotary park where everything is pretty rare.


This is a example that the animation world has not limits.







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Arnold history and Film productions



Arnold is a ray tracing renderer created to supply feature-length animation and visual effects needs. It was originally co-developed with Sony Pictures Imageworks and actually its principal renderer, some of the studios using Arnold include ILM, Framestore, MPC and over 300 studios globally (SolidAngle). Arnold was started by Marcos Fajardo a Spaniard while living in the united stated, some of the key facts of the renderer and the production involved are (Seymour,2012):

  • 1997: Fajardo at the age of 24 decide to create its own Renderer, the framework was initiated wih a visit of Fajardo to Siggraph where meets Carl Ludwing co-founder of Blue Sky's renderer, which was the first studio in using ray tracing in all renders, specially Fajardo admired Bunny production.

  • 1999: The renderer was called Arnold, due a Fajardo's personal experience, while he was working for Station X Studios in LA. some friends and him went to an Arnold Schwarzenegger film, End of Days, they joked around the distinctive voice of the actor and laughingly suggested calling the renderer Arnold taking since then the name.



  • 2001: Arnold rendered movie 50 percent Gray was nominated to the Oscars, showign the remarkable results in Globla Illumination with a small CPU budget.
  • 2003-2004: In 2001 Fajardo add to the renderer sub-surface scattering technique, the first film in using it was Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs, at that time Fajardo arrived to Sony Pictures Imageworks, influencing so much the company to only use Arnold as the main renderer.



  • 2012: Arnold is run by 16 people as Solid Angle Company from Madrid, also with employees in London and Utah, searching fir talent worldwide. Some of the films which used Arnold were: Mission impossible 4, Thor, Captain America, The Avengers, X-men first class,Alice in Wonderland and Mass effect 3.





  • 2014: Arnold used covers studios as Sony Pictures Imageworks, Framestor, Whiskytree, Luma Pictures, Digital Domain and ILM. Recently Arnold was used in the film Gravity taking up the challenge of creating ultra realistic scenes, the movie took 3 years in production process, 400 people and 15000 cores working in rendering (Solid Angle)




  • Seymour (2012). The Art of Rendering. FxGuide [Online] Available: http://www.fxguide.com/featured/the-art-of-rendering/ [Accessed 17 April 2015] 
    Solid Angle. Set to be this year's SciFi blockbuster, we talked to Martin Preston from Framestore about the challenges they encountered with Gravity Available: https://www.solidangle.com/news/gravity/ [Accessed 17 April 2015] 


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    Logo Design

    The logo in my final project, has a special importance for me since, going to be used extensively during the short film to strengthen brand recall and give added value to the animation.

    This was the proccess and final result.





    The idea was use the light bulb as icono recognized an idea, the mos importan was that as the short film as the Logo speak same lenguage.




    This is the result of the exploration.
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    Headless Studio

    is a studio located in Barcelona Spain.

    It has its own style and and is very different from the standards proposed commercial animation imposed by Disney.

    Its project strange oaks given me very curious as they explored CG technology and their particular aesthetic  and the result is charming with great force.


    Link: https://vimeo.com/61818863

    Reference:
    http://www.headless.es/?port=strange-oaks
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    City development




    My final project is very ambitious in environment terms, for this reason we need to be creative to creat a lively city. 

    One student from University of Hertfordshire had an idea to creat building in blocks, with differents tipes of ground floors, roofs and top building. He could give variety to their street in a project. 

    This is an example of his work







    Jonathan Russ




    This is our proposal








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    Texturing in Mari


    Mari is a softweare created for The Foundry the same compani of Nuke and Modo.

     Mari is focusing in texturing, thanks to this powerful softwear the difficul proccess to painting a texture is now easier since you can paint directly over model in 3d.

    In past you had to use programs like Photoshop to painting over UV coordinates, this technic usually left cut on texture and it was evident that there was done perfectly. Nowadays, "Mari" permit to Texture Artis focus in how the model look without other concern.

    This is my first exploration with Mari



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