Back From the Grave!

After a very long break (more than a year) I am back! Not that I was an active blogger before but I am disappointed by the fact that I was not able to keep up with my last years resolution of learning new stuff and sharing it with people. My new job was keeping me busy! :(

Speaking of which, It's been one year and two months since I joined Dreamworks Dedicated Unit in Bangalore!! Shortly after I finished my demo-reel, I moved to Bangalore to work as a Lighter. I've been so busy that I didn't even get to post my finished reel here!

Vimeo Link (Better quality than the tiny one below): http://vimeo.com/14064402

 

In the past one year I got to work on some amazing projects like Puss In Boots, Madagascar 3 (In production) and a couple of TV shows. More on that later.

I'm currently learning Renderman and I am working through Saty Raghavachary's (who also works at Dreamworks!!) Rendering for Beginners: Image Synthesis using Renderman It's an amazing introduction to the renderman specification. I don't have access to Pixar's Renderman but I found a very strong alternative in 3D-elight. I love the fact that it's free! (with few limitations that doesn't bother me.)

I'll post some tests later.

It's Done!

Finally, here it is.

I haven't rendered the frame sequence (which is just a modest 208 frames) yet, so I guess it's time to hit that render button! Working on this was really fun!

It's time to finish my final project!

A Small Update...

Here's a new update. Trying to finish up the texturing work. It's mostly done, except the mid-ground building area. I've also went back to my finished textures and added a few details like the contact dirt between the pipe and the orange building. I've also reduced the intensity of cracks and dirt on the yellow building.

I am using a soft anti aliasing filter, since sharper filters like Mitchell seems to produce flickering in animation.As a result, there is a slight blurring in the image, but I don't think the blurring will be that noticeable when the camera moves.

I'll have to add some random elements onto the platform, since it's looking quite bland right now.

Project work in progress

Hello!

I think I'll break my long silence with some updates on a project that I am working for my texturing reel.

Since I haven't really mentioned this project before, I'll start with some early work in progress pics.

Early stages :

Most recent :

The one on the bottom is an older version.


I will be doing some post work in nuke. Although I haven't really decided if I want to change the colors too much. Here's a quick test :

It's looking a bit too blue...but I kind of like the contrast. The lights have lost it's "glow". I think I might have to mask out certain areas and animate the mask as the camera moves. A friend of mine correctly pointed out that the depth of field was a bit too much. I think he is right. I'll have to add a few props in the foreground to help sell the scale.

I've uploaded a playblast to youtube :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9PQ-H7Uqaw
Thanks for reading! Your comments and critiques are always welcome!

- Ashin

Annoying Windows 7 Bug

I've recently upgraded to windows 7 and there seems to be this terrible bug with windows disappearing behind other windows. There you are, working on something or browsing some folders looking for reference images and the window vanishes! Well, it doesn't really go away, but if you are like me and you usually work with re-sized windows stacked up on top of each other, you are going to have to go through  the trouble of looking for it. Very irritating.

Marco Bucci

Marco Bucci is awesome, and not just because he is a brilliant artist. If you take a look at his blog (link below), you will see why. It's not only filled with art that many people would find inspiring, but he also loves to share his techniques and tips that could benefit both beginner (like me :P) and experienced artists alike.

Take a look for yourself : 
http://marcobucci.blogspot.com/

"The Art of Marco Bucci" which is going to be published soon, is most likely the next thing that I am going to add to my inspirational art collection!

-Ashin

Linux and Cinepaint Woes

Cinepaint is a great program. I've been using it in Fedora 10 for quite a while now. Cinepaint started out as "Film Gimp" which was used in a lot of features like Harry potter, Stuart Little, Planet of the Apes and many more. I am not really sure if Film Gimp was a proprietary software which then turned open source, but from what I know, Rhythm & Hues had a major role in it's development.