As part of my degree, which has just over a week of work left now, I have updated my website and show reel! It's all a bit empty at the moment, but I am thinking it will be one I can build on with more ease than the old one.
Have a look here and I hope you like it!
Thursday, 12 May 2011
Sunday, 1 May 2011
The Making Of Project Dragon - Episode 13
Finishing Touches
All the animations are done. All the simulations are complete. All the renders are finished. The only thing left to do is to bring all the elements together. To do that I worked in Composite, a node based compositing package from Autodesk. It also happens to be very handy with the OpenEXR files.
To give you an idea of how I worked, take a look at the image below (you may want to get the full size image to read the text):
All the animations are done. All the simulations are complete. All the renders are finished. The only thing left to do is to bring all the elements together. To do that I worked in Composite, a node based compositing package from Autodesk. It also happens to be very handy with the OpenEXR files.
To give you an idea of how I worked, take a look at the image below (you may want to get the full size image to read the text):
(Click to embiggen)
Starting with the Beauty in the top left cluster, I piped in the Diffuse to enable me to alter the colour without effecting the shading. The CC Basics node give me access to HSV settings to tweak this look. It is worth noting that if there was a lot wrong with the look of the grass in the beauty, I had all the passes required to alter any desired element within the image of the grass.
I then blended a blurred Specular pass to add a little glow and softeneing to the layer. This was then comped into a Remap Colour node. This node, and the fact that I had rendered in 32 bit images, was a life saver at this point. In the footage, the camera starts behind a hill, without direct sunlight. As the camera goes over the hill and the light increases, the exposure of the shot changes. This meant I had to key the exposure of the grass layer to match the background plate; a feat I could not have accomplished nearly as well with 8 or 16 bit images.
This footage is then piped into a blur node. This is where I added motion blur to layer. The Motion Vector layer doesn't contain an alpha, but an alpha is required to add motion blur effectively, so a Set Alpha was used to pull an alpha from the Beauty to the Motion Vector.
This blurred layer is then piped into the main bulk of the composition. This process was followed for all the C.G. layers within the comp. Below you can see an image of the full network:
(Click to embiggen)
The last final effects I added was a Vignette and a colour grading. I wanted to make the scene a bit hotter, so made the shot redder, as well as tweaking the contrast.
This pretty much brings me to the end of the production of this shot. It has been a slog and slightly torturous, but I am pleased with the final effect. Until next time.
Alex
(Click to embiggen)
Sunday, 24 April 2011
The Making Of Project Dragon - Episode 12
Stop! It's Render Time.
Rendering for this project required learning pass based rendering in greater detail. Within Maya, the first step is to create Pass Contribution Sets. These sets have geometry added to them (ie. dragon, nest, grass) so that different render passes can be added to different pieces of geometry within a single render. For example, the nest had the following passes associated to it:
Diffuse
Specular
Reflection
Ambient
Shadow
ZDepth
Motion Vector
Beauty
These passes would enable me to reconstruct the image of the nest in Composite whilst giving me a vastly higher level of control over the final output. For example, I would be able to take a duplicate of the specular layer and add some blur before adding it on top of the main image, thus creating the illusion of glowing hotspots on the nest.
The motion vector pass enabled me to add a reasonably good motion blur effect within composite without adding any significant time onto the render.
Unfortunately, Mental Ray doesn't offer support for pass based renders for the SSS shader I was using for the dragon skin, and no other shader offered me the result I wanted, so I was forced to only produce a beauty pass for this layer.
The final element of note on the render settings is the file format. I used a 4 channel 32 bit OpenEXR file, which Composite is highly compatible with. This would add a lot of power to me during compositing, as well as giving me much fewer files to deal with.
I calculated that if I had outputted each pass as tiffs, I would have required 28 different file sets with 1300 frames for each set. With Open EXR I had 1 image set.
Rendering for this project required learning pass based rendering in greater detail. Within Maya, the first step is to create Pass Contribution Sets. These sets have geometry added to them (ie. dragon, nest, grass) so that different render passes can be added to different pieces of geometry within a single render. For example, the nest had the following passes associated to it:
Diffuse
Specular
Reflection
Ambient
Shadow
ZDepth
Motion Vector
Beauty
These passes would enable me to reconstruct the image of the nest in Composite whilst giving me a vastly higher level of control over the final output. For example, I would be able to take a duplicate of the specular layer and add some blur before adding it on top of the main image, thus creating the illusion of glowing hotspots on the nest.
The motion vector pass enabled me to add a reasonably good motion blur effect within composite without adding any significant time onto the render.
Unfortunately, Mental Ray doesn't offer support for pass based renders for the SSS shader I was using for the dragon skin, and no other shader offered me the result I wanted, so I was forced to only produce a beauty pass for this layer.
The final element of note on the render settings is the file format. I used a 4 channel 32 bit OpenEXR file, which Composite is highly compatible with. This would add a lot of power to me during compositing, as well as giving me much fewer files to deal with.
I calculated that if I had outputted each pass as tiffs, I would have required 28 different file sets with 1300 frames for each set. With Open EXR I had 1 image set.
Saturday, 16 April 2011
The Making Of Project Dragon - Episode 11
Fire...It's Hot Stuff
One of the major elements I have been working on over the last year is Fluid Effects fire. Fluid Effects is a voxel based particle system that uses Navier-Stokes equations to recreate the movement of gaseous phenomenon. The system calculates the movement of Desnity, Fuel and Temperature between voxels, the density of these voxels being the 3D resolution of the effect.
The above image shows some of my early research into the effect of temperature on the final effect.
When creating a Fluid Effect, you must first create a fluid container. The effects is only calculated within this container. For this project, I also needed to add a volume axis field to add movement to the fluid. This can be seen in the image below.
One of the major elements I have been working on over the last year is Fluid Effects fire. Fluid Effects is a voxel based particle system that uses Navier-Stokes equations to recreate the movement of gaseous phenomenon. The system calculates the movement of Desnity, Fuel and Temperature between voxels, the density of these voxels being the 3D resolution of the effect.
(Click to embiggen)
The above image shows some of my early research into the effect of temperature on the final effect.
When creating a Fluid Effect, you must first create a fluid container. The effects is only calculated within this container. For this project, I also needed to add a volume axis field to add movement to the fluid. This can be seen in the image below.
(Click to embiggen)
The rest of the work was spent tuning the movement and look of the simulation. I had to set the nest and eggs to collide with the fluid so the fire appeared to billow around them. I also spent a large amount of time tweaking the colour and opacity of the effect to get the right end look.
If you want to know more about how I developed the fluid effects for this project, you can read my full research document here.
Sunday, 10 April 2011
The Making Of Project Dragon - Episode 10
Its Alive...Its ALIVE!
Today you get to hear about the joy of bringing a dragon to life. As you read earlier, I had planned to add Maya muscle to the dragon rig. However, due to time constraints and technical issues, I decided to drop this feature from the production.
One of the features of the dragon is that it uses a cloth simulation to drive the animation of the skin membranes in the wings. To accomplish this means that a few processes had to be followed in setting up the dragon. First the model of the dragon was broken up to separate the individual wing membranes from the main model of the dragon. This was so the cloth could be applied to just the membranes and not the whole dragon.
This also gave a dragon model which could be animated without the membranes. Once the animation was complete, the membranes then had to be attached to the main model again using dynamic constraints and the cloth properties modified so it acted like stretchy skin and not like hanging cloth.
As this model had been broken apart and stuck back together, it would no longer function with displacement maps as one single mesh, so a duplicate of the original mesh was brought into the scene, and a wrap modifier was added, which makes the seamless mesh of the duplicate skin follow the cut up mesh of the input skin.
The result is a single model with elastic wing membranes driven by a cloth simulation.
Today you get to hear about the joy of bringing a dragon to life. As you read earlier, I had planned to add Maya muscle to the dragon rig. However, due to time constraints and technical issues, I decided to drop this feature from the production.
One of the features of the dragon is that it uses a cloth simulation to drive the animation of the skin membranes in the wings. To accomplish this means that a few processes had to be followed in setting up the dragon. First the model of the dragon was broken up to separate the individual wing membranes from the main model of the dragon. This was so the cloth could be applied to just the membranes and not the whole dragon.
This also gave a dragon model which could be animated without the membranes. Once the animation was complete, the membranes then had to be attached to the main model again using dynamic constraints and the cloth properties modified so it acted like stretchy skin and not like hanging cloth.
(Click to embiggen)
As this model had been broken apart and stuck back together, it would no longer function with displacement maps as one single mesh, so a duplicate of the original mesh was brought into the scene, and a wrap modifier was added, which makes the seamless mesh of the duplicate skin follow the cut up mesh of the input skin.
The result is a single model with elastic wing membranes driven by a cloth simulation.
(Click to embiggen)
Sunday, 3 April 2011
The Making Of Project Dragon - Episode 9
The Grass Is Always Greener
One major issue that wasn't noted until after the shoot, is that in my shot the dragon is revealed as I come over a grassy hill to see it sitting on its nest. I hadn't considered it at the time, but this would be a relatively large issue during post production. In order for the dragon to appear from behind the hill, I would have to create a layer of the hill in front of the dragon...including all the grass on the hill.
The best solution to this would have been to have shot with a blue screen behind the hill so I could key out the foreground layer. As I hadn't done this and re-shooting wasn't an option, I had to explore other avenues.
The most obvious solution would be to rotoscope out the foreground hill and grass. However, this is a very tedious and time consuming job, and with a 1300 frame shot, would have taken far too long.
The solution I came up with was to recreate the foreground hill as a C.G. model and add some virtual grass to the top. The model of the hill would work perfectly with the match move to mask the dragon and nest as I come over the hill, and the virtual grass would help to break up the harsh C.G. edge of the hill.
The first method I explored to produce C.G. grass was to use Maya fur. This quickly produced a good initial result, though I had some issues as time went on.
One major issue that wasn't noted until after the shoot, is that in my shot the dragon is revealed as I come over a grassy hill to see it sitting on its nest. I hadn't considered it at the time, but this would be a relatively large issue during post production. In order for the dragon to appear from behind the hill, I would have to create a layer of the hill in front of the dragon...including all the grass on the hill.
The best solution to this would have been to have shot with a blue screen behind the hill so I could key out the foreground layer. As I hadn't done this and re-shooting wasn't an option, I had to explore other avenues.
The most obvious solution would be to rotoscope out the foreground hill and grass. However, this is a very tedious and time consuming job, and with a 1300 frame shot, would have taken far too long.
The solution I came up with was to recreate the foreground hill as a C.G. model and add some virtual grass to the top. The model of the hill would work perfectly with the match move to mask the dragon and nest as I come over the hill, and the virtual grass would help to break up the harsh C.G. edge of the hill.
The first method I explored to produce C.G. grass was to use Maya fur. This quickly produced a good initial result, though I had some issues as time went on.
(Click to embiggen)
Above is the hill with hair based grass and some stand in geometry in the background. While this result is not bad, I was having difficulty colour matching with the grass in the plate, and controlling the shape of the grass was also somewhat cumbersome.
I therefore decided to use Paint effects. This generates procedural geometry and has a preset for grass. I was able to use this and tweak the settings until I had the desired result. This method uses standard polygons and shading methods within Maya, so it was much easier to match the grass in the background plate.
(Click to embiggen)
Though this early test obviously has some issues, I was very happy with the result. I could produce more natural looking grass with far greater control.
Friday, 25 March 2011
The Making Of Project Dragon - Episode 8
Get Set...
It was decided that some set augmentation was going to be required for this shot. There were no rock formations large enough for a dragon, and it was decided it would be best to simply add a C.G. rock nest. This was a relatively simple modelling job. Basic geometry was created in Maya, then transferred to ZBrush for a high detail sculpt and texturing. The textures were created from reference images taken on the day of the shoot.
The models were than transferred back to Maya with textures and normal maps. The normal maps enable models to appear to have high levels of detail, without having a large effect on render times.
Above you can see a test render of the nest with some dragon eggs. You can see I added a black colour around the eggs where the dragon breath has left some carbon deposits with its fire breath.
The standing stones around the main body of the nest are there to mask out the top of the hump that the nest in the background plate. This reduces the need for additional set replacement or compositing at later stages.
It was decided that some set augmentation was going to be required for this shot. There were no rock formations large enough for a dragon, and it was decided it would be best to simply add a C.G. rock nest. This was a relatively simple modelling job. Basic geometry was created in Maya, then transferred to ZBrush for a high detail sculpt and texturing. The textures were created from reference images taken on the day of the shoot.
The models were than transferred back to Maya with textures and normal maps. The normal maps enable models to appear to have high levels of detail, without having a large effect on render times.
(Click to embiggen image)
Above you can see a test render of the nest with some dragon eggs. You can see I added a black colour around the eggs where the dragon breath has left some carbon deposits with its fire breath.
The standing stones around the main body of the nest are there to mask out the top of the hump that the nest in the background plate. This reduces the need for additional set replacement or compositing at later stages.
Tuesday, 15 March 2011
The Making Of Project Dragon - Episode 7
Just A Little Background
Now this project is planned to be C.G. elements composited onto live action plates. This means that we need to have background plates that we can use during production.
For this project, the background plates were shot on Marsten Moor, a location selected for is distinct visual look. However, the landscape of the location is mostly hilly grassland, largely lacking in distinct features. This could have posed a problem with match moving; the process where the virtual C.G. camera has its movements matched to the practical camera used on set.
This problem had been foreseen, however. To remedy the problem, a series of tracking plates were created. These are white wooden boards with distinct black markers which were placed around the scene. This added a great deal in information for the match move, and helped eliminate any issues that might have occurred.
Now this project is planned to be C.G. elements composited onto live action plates. This means that we need to have background plates that we can use during production.
For this project, the background plates were shot on Marsten Moor, a location selected for is distinct visual look. However, the landscape of the location is mostly hilly grassland, largely lacking in distinct features. This could have posed a problem with match moving; the process where the virtual C.G. camera has its movements matched to the practical camera used on set.
This problem had been foreseen, however. To remedy the problem, a series of tracking plates were created. These are white wooden boards with distinct black markers which were placed around the scene. This added a great deal in information for the match move, and helped eliminate any issues that might have occurred.
(Click to embiggen image)
With these tracking markers, the background plates could now be tracked with relative ease, but the addition of them to the shot has created a different problem; the markers are now in the shot and don't look very good.
The solution, therefore, is to digitally remove them. This wasn't as easy as it is for some shots, as the camera has a lot of movement in, but I did now have a solid match move of the scene. With this data, I was able to bring a 3D camera and tracking data into after effects. This allowed me to create 3D clones of the shot which could be masked and placed over the markers in the background plate, thus removing the markers.
With this done, the background plate is now ready for production.
Thursday, 10 March 2011
The Making Of Project Dragon - Episode 6
Using A Little Muscle
Today I want to show you something that I hadn't planned to add into the project originally, but as I am ahead of schedule, I decided that it was worth the extra effort. What I am doing as adding a muscle system to help rig and animate the dragon.
As you can see in the video below, I have slightly developed the bones I showed in an earlier blog, and have attatched a set of muscles to them. The add a surface for the mesh to slide over, and also add jiggle to specific areas of the model.
Testing of this particular set of muscles shows that I may have gone a bit overboard with the level of detail on the muscles. While they are anatomically realistic, the information doesn't transfer onto the model as there are not enough vertices to take the data. This, paired with the amount of time it takes to set up each muscle with onto the rig and working with the model, means that I will most likely re-rig the muscles, using larger and more simplified muscle groups.
Until later,
Alex
Today I want to show you something that I hadn't planned to add into the project originally, but as I am ahead of schedule, I decided that it was worth the extra effort. What I am doing as adding a muscle system to help rig and animate the dragon.
As you can see in the video below, I have slightly developed the bones I showed in an earlier blog, and have attatched a set of muscles to them. The add a surface for the mesh to slide over, and also add jiggle to specific areas of the model.
Testing of this particular set of muscles shows that I may have gone a bit overboard with the level of detail on the muscles. While they are anatomically realistic, the information doesn't transfer onto the model as there are not enough vertices to take the data. This, paired with the amount of time it takes to set up each muscle with onto the rig and working with the model, means that I will most likely re-rig the muscles, using larger and more simplified muscle groups.
Until later,
Alex
Tuesday, 8 March 2011
The Making Of Project Dragon - Episode 5
Issues Of Light
One of the key elements that helps blend a CG element into a live action plate is the lighting, and how that lighting interacts with the surface of the model in question. To get an idea of how comlex this can become, take a look at your hand, and see how the light interacts with it. See how there are subtle shadows around creases, tendons and between the fingers. Look at how the light from the computer monitor is reflected off the skin. Think about what would happen if you shine a bright torch against your finger, and how a red glow would shine through.
All these elements need to be replecated in order to produce a realistically lit subject in CG. One solution to these problems is something called image based lighting. Basically, when on location, I took a series of photos of a shiny silver ball from three different angles, then through a series of computer processes, these are unwrapped and stuck together to produce a single image which shows the whole environment.
One of the key elements that helps blend a CG element into a live action plate is the lighting, and how that lighting interacts with the surface of the model in question. To get an idea of how comlex this can become, take a look at your hand, and see how the light interacts with it. See how there are subtle shadows around creases, tendons and between the fingers. Look at how the light from the computer monitor is reflected off the skin. Think about what would happen if you shine a bright torch against your finger, and how a red glow would shine through.
All these elements need to be replecated in order to produce a realistically lit subject in CG. One solution to these problems is something called image based lighting. Basically, when on location, I took a series of photos of a shiny silver ball from three different angles, then through a series of computer processes, these are unwrapped and stuck together to produce a single image which shows the whole environment.
(Click to see full size image)
(If you look, you can see three images of me taking the photos in the above image.)
Now, this image is then taken into maya and used as an image based light, which is a sphere with this texture on the inside. The image used differs to the above version in that it contains a lot mor information about the brightness in the environment, and it is used to project light of the correct colour and intensity inwards, providing very subtle and realistic lighting. It also gets used to add reflection to the seen, so when used on the dragon, it will reflect the location on the skin and in the eyes.
On the subject of skin, I have kept working on the surface of the skin. I have added an effect called sub-surface scattering, which replecates how light interacts with translucent objects such as skin.
(Click to see full size image)
Now this dragon will probably look quite similar to that in previous posts, with the exception to some changes in the shinyness of the skin. The real difference can been seen when the model is lit with a strong back light.
(Click to seefull size image)
Now you can see the light shining through the thin membrane of the skin, revealing the network of blood vessels within.
This close interaction between the light and the surface is maybe on of the biggest elements that need to be right in order to sell an effect shot like the ones I have planned, so I am hoping that this blends in well when we get further towards our end product.
As a final treat, here is a close up shot of the dragon as it stands at the moment.
As a final treat, here is a close up shot of the dragon as it stands at the moment.
(Click to see full size image)
Until next time,
Alex
Monday, 7 March 2011
The Making Of Project Dragon - Episode 4
Bones Of The Beast
Today I will go into the process of adding joints and bones to the dragon model to make it possible to animate at a later date.
The first step is to add joints. These are chains of virtual pivut points that the model translates around. These joints need to be laid out to replecate the anatomy of the model, in this case the dragon.
Here you can see the rig with most of the bones added in. Some of the more important bones are the shoulder blades, the hips and the ribs, as these can often be seen moving under the skin in real life animals. There doesn't need to be a high level of detail in these bones, as they will never be seen. They merely need to have volume and a suface to drive the skin mesh. The next stage is to add the muscles, and that will be revealed in next weeks post.
Until then,
Alex
Today I will go into the process of adding joints and bones to the dragon model to make it possible to animate at a later date.
The first step is to add joints. These are chains of virtual pivut points that the model translates around. These joints need to be laid out to replecate the anatomy of the model, in this case the dragon.
The image above shows the joint layout in the default pose. In this instance the joints have been coloured, which is a result of the skinning process within Maya. Maya supports two main forms of skinning: smooth skinning and rigid skinning. Rigid skinning means that each individual vertex can only be moved by one bone. It takes little computational power to calculate, and is the technique used for many game engines.
In smooth skinning, each vertex can recieve influence from many bones, resulting in a more natural deformation of the mesh at the cost of a heavier calculation.
The rigging process does not end here, however. I am setting up this character with a system called Maya Muscle. In this system, you create bones that have a physical surface, and then add muscles to these structures. This results in the effect of skin sliding over bones and muscle, and can also add the subtle effect of the mass jiggling when it moves.
Here you can see the rig with most of the bones added in. Some of the more important bones are the shoulder blades, the hips and the ribs, as these can often be seen moving under the skin in real life animals. There doesn't need to be a high level of detail in these bones, as they will never be seen. They merely need to have volume and a suface to drive the skin mesh. The next stage is to add the muscles, and that will be revealed in next weeks post.
Until then,
Alex
Sunday, 27 February 2011
The Making Of Project Dragon - Episode 3
Creating A Dragon
As you read before, I knew what I wanted my dragon to look like, now I just needed to make it. Now, there are a million and one articles out there that will tell anyone willing to look how to make a 3D model. I wont bore you by adding another, but I will quickly show you some of the steps I have been through.
First a create a quick box model, with an approximation of the proportions and anatomy of the dragon. I took this into ZBrush to sculpt a more natural looking shape, with muscle groups and some skin wrinkles and stuff.
Now what is worth noting hear is that while this looks pretty nice, I couldn't use this for the final model. For one thing, the dragon doesn't really have a mouth. It is one solid piece of geometry. So what I did was use this model like a scaffold to help me rebuild a model with the correct topology to function whilst retaining the shape I created. I then took this new model back into ZBrush to start adding more detail.
This dragon now has all the features I need. Fine detail on the skin, a working mouth and the correct shapes and muscles. I could then move onto the job of getting this high detailed model into Maya so the character could be animated. This required texturing and exporting normal maps to create the illusion of high detail on a low detail model.
The project I made this model for required a maximum quad poly count of 6000. Here you can see what I produced.
Now this looks pretty good, and would be ready to go into a game engine for use, and was more than good enough for my module requirements. However, I am not producing a game, I am producing a film. I needed more detail. I threrfore added a displacement map to the model to push up the details, and below you can see something that is almost the finished product.
As you read before, I knew what I wanted my dragon to look like, now I just needed to make it. Now, there are a million and one articles out there that will tell anyone willing to look how to make a 3D model. I wont bore you by adding another, but I will quickly show you some of the steps I have been through.
First a create a quick box model, with an approximation of the proportions and anatomy of the dragon. I took this into ZBrush to sculpt a more natural looking shape, with muscle groups and some skin wrinkles and stuff.
Now what is worth noting hear is that while this looks pretty nice, I couldn't use this for the final model. For one thing, the dragon doesn't really have a mouth. It is one solid piece of geometry. So what I did was use this model like a scaffold to help me rebuild a model with the correct topology to function whilst retaining the shape I created. I then took this new model back into ZBrush to start adding more detail.
This dragon now has all the features I need. Fine detail on the skin, a working mouth and the correct shapes and muscles. I could then move onto the job of getting this high detailed model into Maya so the character could be animated. This required texturing and exporting normal maps to create the illusion of high detail on a low detail model.
The project I made this model for required a maximum quad poly count of 6000. Here you can see what I produced.
Now this looks pretty good, and would be ready to go into a game engine for use, and was more than good enough for my module requirements. However, I am not producing a game, I am producing a film. I needed more detail. I threrfore added a displacement map to the model to push up the details, and below you can see something that is almost the finished product.
As the weeks go on, I am going to put more work into improving the look of the surface and ensuring it is as good as I can make it, but I hope this little post has given you some idea how I got from a drawing to a high detail model.
Until later,
Alex
The Making Of Project Dragon - Episode 2
Designing a Dragon
Now the big showpiece of my project is the dragon. I think lots of people want to do a dragon when they come into the world of C.G. Its just one of those things that draws you.
When designing my dragon, I had a few things I wanted to stick to. It needed to look like a lizard. I have seen a lot of dragons that look like a cross between some crazy eel and a lion, and in my head dragons are reptiles, so I wanted to keep it lizard like. I also wanted it to have four legs and two wings. People have gone on about the anatomical impossiblity of this, and there have been a lot of dragons done with bat like anatomy, but I just want it to be a little bit more like the traditional fantasy dragon. Finally, I wanted the dragon to be red.
As you can see, the design of the dragon matches my desires. Now I will be the first to admit that I am no great shakes when it comes to drawing and could pick out half a dozen things wrong with this picture, but it works as a starting point. Some things you might see are that the head it very reptilian, based on a monitor lizard. The legs, however, are aranged and jointed like a mammalian quadraped, like a dog or a horse. This is to give the dragon more speed on the run and more power to jump into the air.
Once I had this completed I could then move onto thre process of turning this 2D dragon into a 3D reality.
More of that later,
Alex
Now the big showpiece of my project is the dragon. I think lots of people want to do a dragon when they come into the world of C.G. Its just one of those things that draws you.
When designing my dragon, I had a few things I wanted to stick to. It needed to look like a lizard. I have seen a lot of dragons that look like a cross between some crazy eel and a lion, and in my head dragons are reptiles, so I wanted to keep it lizard like. I also wanted it to have four legs and two wings. People have gone on about the anatomical impossiblity of this, and there have been a lot of dragons done with bat like anatomy, but I just want it to be a little bit more like the traditional fantasy dragon. Finally, I wanted the dragon to be red.
Once I had this completed I could then move onto thre process of turning this 2D dragon into a 3D reality.
More of that later,
Alex
The Making Of Project Dragon - Episode 1
What Is Project Dragon
Project Dragon is a short film featuring a C.G. dragon composited into live action footage. The purpose of the piece is to showcase a broad range of skills excecuted to a high standard to enable me to hit the industry at a bit of a run.
I am focussing all my available resources and time on this project, and have been doing so since early in the year. If you imagine that my uni year is split into two halves, and that each half is split into four modules, I used three of the four modules in the start of the year as preproduction for this project.
For one module I designed and created a dragon. For the second module I rigged and animated the dragon, testing out its limitations and little quirks. For the third module I researched into the area of simulating fire, because everyone knows dragons breath fire.
Now I have come into the second half of my year, and this is divided into a group project module, and an individual module. A review of my assignment briefs shows that these two modules are well suited to support each other, and thus what I create individually and what I create in my group can come together at the end in a single piece of film with a reasonable amount of impact.
What these Making Of blogs will describe in the coming weeks will mostly be focusing on the work I am doing individually, but where I have to manage the overlap of the projects, no doubt I will write a bit about that too.
I hope that has given you an idea as to what I am planning. Next week's entry will be going into the details of how I designed and created my dragon.
Until then,
Alex
Project Dragon is a short film featuring a C.G. dragon composited into live action footage. The purpose of the piece is to showcase a broad range of skills excecuted to a high standard to enable me to hit the industry at a bit of a run.
I am focussing all my available resources and time on this project, and have been doing so since early in the year. If you imagine that my uni year is split into two halves, and that each half is split into four modules, I used three of the four modules in the start of the year as preproduction for this project.
For one module I designed and created a dragon. For the second module I rigged and animated the dragon, testing out its limitations and little quirks. For the third module I researched into the area of simulating fire, because everyone knows dragons breath fire.
Now I have come into the second half of my year, and this is divided into a group project module, and an individual module. A review of my assignment briefs shows that these two modules are well suited to support each other, and thus what I create individually and what I create in my group can come together at the end in a single piece of film with a reasonable amount of impact.
What these Making Of blogs will describe in the coming weeks will mostly be focusing on the work I am doing individually, but where I have to manage the overlap of the projects, no doubt I will write a bit about that too.
I hope that has given you an idea as to what I am planning. Next week's entry will be going into the details of how I designed and created my dragon.
Until then,
Alex
Monday, 7 February 2011
Advanced Animation & Special Effects
Here begins the blog for advanced animation and special effects. For those not in the know, this is a two module, 14 week block of work.
Today I pitch my ideas and get the green light on whether or not I can make my planned shot. At this point I see no reason why I should get the go ahead. I have done a lot of work preparing myself for the start of these modules. The first half of my year has been spent creating a dragon and researching digital fire. These two elements will be key for my final video.
Anyway, I must crack on, so fare thee well!
Alex
Today I pitch my ideas and get the green light on whether or not I can make my planned shot. At this point I see no reason why I should get the go ahead. I have done a lot of work preparing myself for the start of these modules. The first half of my year has been spent creating a dragon and researching digital fire. These two elements will be key for my final video.
Anyway, I must crack on, so fare thee well!
Alex
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