I made fire!!!!

I have been trying for the last week (in between texturing and lighting my demo), to get the torch fire working right. The instant fire button in dynamics is so quick and dirty, plus its awesome results! My problem was my scene was sooooo small. So when I shrunk my emitter object down the fire sputtered out and looked terrible. So I decide to take my whole scene and scale it up. And eureka! The spheres I used to make the torch fire turned out great, fit perfectly into the torch columns I made and it looks not too bad. Had to crank up the density and lower the fire scale, but they're a pretty good start. With some tweaking and more lighting it would look awesome. Unfortunately I just spent the last half an hour reposition all my camera keys because of the scale up. So very happy with my demo and how its coming along. My task in the next week is to take a look at my character. I did a pretty good uv on him today, so we should be able to get into texturing him and the Anubis statues out front. Here's some sample renders of the fire and tomb in progress:

EA tour day

Today we got to go check out the amazing huge complex at EA. Jade and I got a bit lost finding the main entrance but two guys on their coffee break directed us in the right way. Walked in and there was our teacher, Rupert. The lobby was by far the largest and smanciest of all the studios I've been to date. Large TVs with game trailers playing. A 360 TV in the middle.

Around 2 we met our guide from HR, Sarah. She gave us our name tags and took us into a theater for a presentation by one of their programmers. Gave us a great talk about all the different types of positions they have and some of the various projects they do. Also a clip of the rick Mercer report where he came to EA and got a tour and did some motion capture. That was hilarious.

The tour afterwards was awesome. Such a huge complex. Soccer field, full gym, theaters, four "themed " levels. Pixels on one floor, waves for motion on another, and wide open windows on the top for light. So many cool things. Dry cleaning and a barber. They really want you to enjoy your trip.

SIGGRAPH The Last Day

Today wraps up a great week @ SIGGRAPH. Went to lots of great production sessions. Of course the great swag!

Started today off with standing in line before the exhibition opened to finally get my Pixar posters. It was a mad rush at 9:30. I got two posters and Mai got three.
After that we went around the exhibition for a slough of pins and other bling. Afterwards we went to Starbucks for a quick coffee before the ILM talk at 10:45.

The ILM talk was about Cowboys and Aliens, Pirates on stranger tides, and Transformers 3. What was cool about the work they did on Cowboys was the molten gold effects, especially when it melted the aliens. With Pirates it was the extensive back and forth between ILM and the director over the design for the mermaids. ILM wanted to go more creature and scary. Which the director liked buy wanted to keep more of the beauty of the actresses. And finally the shear volumn of detail done in the assets for transformers was amazing. Colossus alone was approximately 30 million polys. Millions more than any other transformer made before.

The Line to get into the Exhibition at 9:30

The Line to get into the Exhibition at 9:30

The Line to get into the Exhibition at 9:30 and the mad rush to Pixar Posters

Models made with plastic, special sculpting machines take 3D models and make them

Coral plastic scuplture

Artist constructed a whole helmet to make a Batman costume

more plastic sculptures

more plastic sculptures

so cool!

awesomesauce!

another company that uses the machines to make sculptures from 3D models out of almost any material

Artist designed the outfit and the company made

Zbrush talk

Autodesk Booth

Autodesk Lectures

AMD

Todays loot!

Worth the wait!

 

Following that talk we went to line up for teapots again from Pixar. This time the line did about a full circle around the exhibition hall. Ranim met up with us to get a teapot too. Waited for about an hour. But this company from Ontario was doing a contest with buttons. They gave you 6 of one color and you had to get one of each color from people around the exhibition. It was lots of fun. I made a run up the line to get all 6. Met some people in the process. Of course my badge was already covered in tonnes of pins, so I had people asking me where I got them all, which was super fun. So I got my six and got to enter to win a blackberry Playbook. Hope I win!
After getting our tea pots, we took Ranim over to the job fair. She talked to a couple people and gave her reel to one company. So excited for her, hope she gets work. She has a great reel. Soon I'll be in the same boat trying to market my reel and get work.

Later we headed up stairs to show Ranim the art gallery but it closed down. But we did run into one of Mai's friends who did this reel about sheep. I always liked it and it was cool to meet him. We talked for a bit about the teachers we had in common from Vanarts. But then he had to go to a session that was starting. I decided to call it a day and left Mai and Ranim to their own devices.

Well that about wrapped up my final day at SIGGRAPH 2011. It was a fantastic week. Went to some awesome production sessions on some of the best movies of the year. Got some inspiration and something to strive for in my own work. That week went super fast but I had so much fun! Hope I get a chance to go to another one in the future.

SIGGRAPH Day 3. Swag day!

My third day at SIGGRAPH got off to a rushed start. Was going to go early to get a poster from Pixar but I got my schedule mixed up. Turns out the Rango talk was at 9. Ack! So I was running late for that talk and ended up missing out on my first swag item.

The Rango talk was awesome. Especially for the shear volume of work they did on all the character designs. They really didn't want to make another "cute " animated film. So designing more, for lack of a better word, ugly characters and really dirtying them up, was more to their liking. The research on Western films was extensive and on how sand is affected by movement to create extensive dust in the atmospheres. They really worked hard to get that same atmospheric feeling. Also the problems that Cowboy hats posed for lighting in CG. The shadows that hats cast can be quite difficult. In live action the hat causes a dark shadow and light reflecting off the ground below creates a fill light to light up the characters face. But recreating that in the computer doesn't quite work in the same way. They actually found that changing the angle of the key light, so that the main shadow from the hat, puts a strike diagonal line across the characters faces worked best.

Getting to the goodies! Pics and videos: 

Walking Tea Pot Toy from Pixar! The only studio that lines formed for!

Swag covered my bed

Double Negative

Bungie worked on HALO

ILM

LucusFilm markers, they had a board where you could draw your signature

Intel Stress Balls

My Bling (courtesy of Autodesk)

More Bling from Autodesk, Animation Mentor, and Disney

Pixar Sticker

Pixar Recruitment Info

Animation Mentor T-Shirt and Info Packets

Animation Mentor rub on Tattoos

Blender

Free 3D Head Scans, They're e-mailing it to me in 1 week, I'll upload it when I get it.

3D Mouse! It was so cool as a navigation tool in Maya.

Disney Swag. The Middle book is actually a sketch book.

Huge free T-shirt from Framestore

free bag!

T-Pot Box

Each Teapot has a unique number!

 

 Tea pot in Action!

 After Swag mania, Mai and I went for lunch before the Smurfs talk at 2. Sony Imageworks talk extensively about the character designs and the difficulties they had in taking 2D characters into 3D, and no just into the computer but to bring them into the real world and making them look like they were apart of the real world. First off, was a huge back and forth between them and the client when it came to the color of Smurfs. The client wanted the original smurf blue to come into the movie. Unfortunately, that blue was just not workable in a real life environment. Mainly because it wouldn't react well with changing light. As lights changed the blue needed to change with it to make it believable. So there was a lot of back and forth between Sony and the clients. 

One thing that was so interesting was the lighting pipeline they designed. Combining 5 different technologies and programs to create this awesome film. Without delving too deep into the specifics, I'll just talk about one cool thing that they did do, that has changed how HDRIs are utilized. A new technology from Spheron, is a full HDRI camera. Instead of picking an angle, taking your shots, turning to another angle, taking the shots, and so on. You plunk down this new camera, start it up, and it spins around taking all the shots you need for a full 360 view of a set. And the best part is it composites it too, you don't need to edited in post. Basically just file extraction and go. What the guys at Sony were able to do with this new system, in conjunction with their other systems, was to use the HDRIs to create CG lights in the exact same position as they are in the HDRIs. Because the HDRI camera is so accurate, triangulating the position for these CG cameras is easy sauce. That just amazes me how quickly technologies evolve. After being in my program for over a year, some of the stuff I've already learn has become obsolete! Exciting, but scary at the same time.

Well that about wraps up Day 3. Tomorrow is the last day :(. SAD FACE! I had so much fun, but it'll be good to get back to my demo reel. I have felt a bit guilty in taking this week off :(.