Photography

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Hello everybody!

It has been two and a half years since I began my journey through is course.
I’ve tried many different forms of art, most of which was digital art, though I still love to paint and colour with poster and colour pencils.

There is a new medium I never attempted before – photography.

Recently, I’ve been really into 3D shading and lighting. I know photography will benefit me in terms of composition, tonal, depth and lighting, and it is also a quick medium to achieve nice results.

Quick as it is, I feel that it really takes effort to learn to do it right. As to how long it takes to learn photography, I guess it’s up to talent.

Currently, I have no idea what photography is all about. Therefore in these last 6 months of my course of study in Digital Media Design, I’m taking the digital photography module by my lecturer, James Lee. Really eager to learn a lot of photography stuff.

The first excercise is to take 3 photos of different aperture, take 3 photos of different shutter speed, take 3 photos of different ISO.. to show the use of each function. It’s due on Wednesday and I’ve got none of them done.. Hmm.. How should I go about doing this?

Anyways, I’ll be keeping a log of my photography journey here. A new catergory!
To begin with, I’ll start with a photo I took. I chose to pick this as the first because James said it was not too bad of my amateur photos~ Hahaha!

Okay, here goes!

Mini Cooper S 2007 Work In Progress 4

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I can’t get the machines in school to render over the weekend, hence I only have 10 frames of the turntable that friday evening…
But I do have every render pass for those frames so I composited them just now..

Next up, I’ll have to optimise the final gather points desity and interpolation because I’ll be using rebuild off like Mr Frety and mrbond from CGTalk suggested and there’s fg flickering using the current settings..

After which, I think I’ll lower the reflection in the ground slightly and blur it a little more.. and cover up some visible holes in the car! :P

Model the interior? Hmm.. shall see :)

CG Contest 3 Work In Progress 4

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Final Submission for CG Contest 3!

Fixed all previously mentioned flaws.
Further improvements will be to add moving hold to the body at the beginning :D

CG Contest 3 Work In Progress 3

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Some changes to make :D
Poster falling off when he bangs the counter.
Overlap his turn when he says “we don’t need no badges”.
Overlap in eyebrow to not make him so rigid in the last flare.

CG Contest 3 Animation organised by my lecturer, Mr Frety.

Updates from Work In Progress 2:
Refined lip sync.
Added facial animation.
Changed background to avoid misunderstanding.
Added in the overlaps for most of the actions.

My Story:
Most wanted fugitive trying to get pass the customs with a bad police disguise. The custom officers asks him for the police badges.

Transcript
Badges?
We ain’t got no badges.
We don’t need no badges.
I don’t have to show you any stinking badges!

CG Contest 3 Work In Progress 2

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It’s my first time doing a dialogue of any sort, so I had to keep refering to notes taken at Mr Kyle Balda’s classes and at Gobelins! :P

CG Contest 3 Animation organised by my lecturer, Mr Frety.

Updates from Work In Progress 1:
Moved on from blocking.
Started on lip sync.

My Story:
Most wanted fugitive trying to get pass the customs with a bad police disguise. The custom

officers asks him for the police badges.

Transcript
Badges?
We ain’t got no badges.
We don’t need no badges.
I don’t have to show you any stinking badges!

CG Contest 3 Work In Progress 1

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CG Contest 3 Work In Progress 1

CG Contest 3 Animation organised by my lecturer, Mr Frety.

My Story:
Most wanted fugitive trying to get pass the customs with a bad police disguise. The custom officers asks him for the police badges.

Transcript
Badges?
We ain’t got no badges.
We don’t need no badges.
I don’t have to show you any stinking badges!

Demo Reel 2007 [with sound]

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Mixed the audio not long ago using Soundtrack Pro.
Will be working on Demo Reel 2008 soon.
Yep, I know soon is a bad word… but soon~ :D

Mini Cooper S 2007 Work In Progress 3

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In this composition, following Mr Frety’s advice, I added the radial specular to separate the car from the background. And it works!
But! I did this in post which is not what I intended.
I will do it in 3D next. Hee hee!

I switched to the mental ray car paint shader instead of the layered shader. It really works better too!

Added falloff the the light and reflection planes and the reflection looks like what I wanted to achieve already! Yay!

Rigging and Animation Research

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Well, I have plans to rig and animate the MINI Cooper S I’m working on now.
Mr Frety kindly introduced me to the mental ray car paint phen shader for my MINI instead of the layered shader I’m using now.
I will try that out tomorrow :)

Meanwhile, I looked up on some videos of the MINI C S in action to observe the movement.

Single Leg Rig and Animation Test

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Quickly modelled, rigged and animated this leg.
The objective of this exercise was to research on how to rig a animator-friendly leg.
I was inspired by the character setups Mr Kyle Balda used for some of his animation demonstration in class. :)