thesis

Title sequence tests: Pushing particles with fluids and shatterPlus

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Updates to this website have been long overdue. I haven’t added any new files here for a long time…a bit lazy I suppose, but on the other hand, I’ve been enormously busy with my final thesis project. It’s due next week so I will be updating the site will all new content I’ve done over the last year, including renderman, particles, and fluids work. I wanted to make a nice intro title sequence for my vfx short film called Orthia. Here are some quick tests I’ve done last night.

I’m emitting a ton of particles from a texture emission and then they are being pushed up by a 3d fluid as a field source.

Particle pushing with fluids seems to be the new thing these days. Check out this awesome Audi Filter commercial where they used 50 million particles – not sure how they managed to render that exactly. They used Ice in Softimage XSI to achieve this effect. Check out the Making of Audi Filter video also.

Here’s another animation I made. I used a free shatter plugin for Maya called ShatterPlus. So far, its the best shatter tool I’ve used, but only works with a 32-bit version of Maya. It takes a while to fragment the peices since its a manual process, the but the results are definitely worth it. This tool is a blessing if you’ve ever tried using the built in solid shatter tool in Maya. After breaking up the chucks, I wrote a small python script that randomly transforms the pieces in 3D space.  It then sets the keyframes over time.  Check it out:

Fall Semester 2008

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It’s amazing how quickly the summer went by. Classes officially begin today at the Academy of Art University. I have a full schedule with 3 classes (believe it or not). They are:

  1. Pre-Production for VFX
  2. Collaborative Texture and Lighting
  3. Production Lighting Principles (VFX 1)

The pre-production class here at the academy is where you develop your masters thesis ideas, along with the story, storyboards, concept art, animatics, etc.

The collaborative Texture and Lighting class is essentially a production class where we colloborate as a class to work on outside projects. We actually had to sign a non disclosure agreement on the first day. I wish I could give more details, but you’ll just have to wait until my reel gets updated after the semester.

The last class is Visual Effects 1 consisting of five projects, some group, some individual, beginning with character replacement in a film. This is probably going to be a ton of work, but I’m not too worried about that right now.

Luckily, my classes are all on either Tuesday or Thursday so technically school starts on the 9th for me. It should be another exciting semester. I’ll update the site with project work as I chug along.