Showreels

As I am looking for a new job I have and will be updating my showreels every week. So the up to date showreels for now is as below

Showreel - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMMYjzN7DyE (Rigging)

                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OVM7JlsPDI (Animation)

                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrA_tzeVkLo (Compositing)

                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fFlgiijeBA (Generalist)

Rigging And Perspective Match

After some intense rigging and some blend shapes. I was time to add some facial controllers and start animating and do perspective matching. So i finished the run cycle which was most important for my majority of the shots and then match the perspective.

Live action Shooting and IBL

Started my final project shooting (live action CGI). Firstly had a previs shoot with the help of Rakel (3rd animation DJCAD). It was nice and she helped me to fix the camera angles and shots so I dont cross the line. Later the next week started off the shooting process with the help of my classmate. Stathis and Emiley agreed to play the lead roles in my movie. and also the guys helped me to take the IBL using the fisheye lens camera

The shooting was fully done in the panasonic ag-dvx200 (4k camera) and the quality of the output is really good. 

After finishing the shoot had some rough edit and rough composition. In order to get used to the software and getting into the rhythm of the workflow.

trail comp in nuke

Rough edit (Version 1)

Rigging And Skinning

After setting up the project schedule the work load started off and we decided to split the work between us, like each of us helping each other out. So i decided to help everyone with the rigging and skinning of the models. Had a series of models to be rigged and some had its difficulties and shortcomings.

This was Sheila's character. This was the trickiest of the models to be rigged, as it had some clothes and needed some extra attention as cloth simulation was ruled out of the equation. But it was a good experience.

Granny model of Aimi. Same as the previous one. Needed the extra care for cloth.

Katherine's astronaut. Simple and easy compared to the other. as there was no cloth to be worried. She set the bones n controllers, so I had to just skin it.

Li's Jade dragon. This is were I learnt some new technique for rigging a dragon or snake, using 

spline IK system

Final Project

On finishing the Going Live Project. We had to start working on our final project, so that we will be able to finish it in time for the degree show. So we planned to schedule our separate projects and put them in a single google spread sheet so that we will be knowing about each others work and wont clash during the final stages of rendering.

My Schedule for Final Film

Going Live Axis - Final

After a good team effort by everyone in the class, the going live project was completed with 2 days to spare. Was really hoping to be rendering till the last day. But all us stuck to the plan and kept it simple and finished the project in time. Credit goes to everyone in the team who supported each other and brought the best out of us.

Our project was submitted to Axis and they were pretty much impressed with the out come and the final changes we made in the video. Totally it was a positive reply from the AXIS ANIMATION STUDIO.

Final Stage

After a tiring week of doing the lighting and rendering again, it paid of quite well. The essence and feel for the short film is acheived after we added some depth of field and color correction. Now having done this we are planning to proceed with the sound effects and the editing in the start of next week. And finish the project on time.!

Change in compositing path

We had our feedback session with the Axis for the going live project, where we had the feedback that our renders are pretty much flat and need some more improvement. So we decided to re-render the shots with some new lighting. Also we had a workshop with Matt Cameron about compositing in nuke. It was really a great tutorial session.

We just did a quick comp in nuke & after effect and  we were pretty much pleased with the result in Nuke and planned to proceed with Nuke. Late Matt Cameron showed us some techniques in Nuke that were very much helpful for us in compositing.

Scheduling

With the end of the MSc Animation & Vfx Conference. It was like we took a time out from going live project from a couple of days and we had to regroup and see where we are standing and how to proceed further. So i made a new schedule to go alone from here till the end of the project (going live). We nearly finished the lip sync for all the shots. Next we had to proceed to the animation stage and lighting setup. So we agreed to start the animation with each member assigning a character to them, so the continuity does not get lost. And Stathis agreed to do the lighting test parallely, so that once finished we can get to render the shots and speed up the process

MSc Animation & Vfx Conference

The second semester has come to an end with the completion of the MSc Animation & Vfx Conference 2016. It has to be a presentation of what we have researched so far and what we will be doing in the future about my final project. My final project is about Realism. How to get realistic movements of 3D characters in Live Environment. We had a mock presentation before the final conference in which I wasnt up to the mark, lacking some content and not utilizing the whole time (15 mins) giving to me. After the mock presentation I had an individual tutorial with Jeanette with helped me a lot and gave me more confidence and it reflected pretty much noticeable for me in the final conference. I did my presentation with lot of confidence and had more content in my presentation and it went on much better than my mock presentation

Experimenting And Optimization

As the work for the going live project is getting intense, we were introduced to a new problem. How to put hair for the TROLL DOLL. Several techniques were used for the hair  like fibre mesh in Zbrush and maya fur & hair. The only problem that was constant is the time taken for the rendering the hair in maya(37 seconds for a single frame). So I experimented and tried to minimise the time taken for the render. Like rendering the hair in 3ds max, using scanline render and rendering the rest of the object in maya. But initial experimentation in the morning didnt workout really well. After the lunch it was a success. Yes.! the hair was rendered in 3ds max ( 19 seconds for a single frame, half the time in maya) and it could be easily composited in After effects with the other render of the model in maya.!

 Maya Render

3ds Max Render

AE Composition

Stan Winsent School Of Set Modelling

While browsing through many CG Forums and websites, I was always amused by the set modelling and character arts done in many movies and Tv shows. I made a good research about it and found that  Stan Winston School Of Set Modelling was the top in the buisness.

And in the past week many articles about the online tutorial in the Stan Winston School made me to subscribe for the online course and i have started doing the course in the part time.

Going Live

And so the modelling for the going live is almost 99% done and it had some short comings. I took the sylvanian rabbit to model. The model sheet was done by Katherine and while modelling it there were some issues which had to be encountered. Katherine helped me in sculpting the head of the rabbit in mudbox on which I later did retopology and cleaned up the model and did the UV for it. There were problems(sculpting) faced by me while doing it. But with help of my team it came on quite well.

And along side the modelling we are parallely finishing the texture work and also doing the pre vis for the project, which we had no idea of how to go ahead, when Brendon gave us a helping hand in starting the pre vis. Due to which we are doing it in a good speed to finish it.

Animation And Going Live

And the lesson for the week was the basics of learning the curve editor and the fundamental of animation using the bounce ball. The curve editor is the major and important essence for the animation and the class covered it fully and it went on well.

Along with the learning curve is the working of going live for the axis studio. Along with some team meeting and scheduling stuffs the production for the project has been started from this weekend.

Animating More

After the tutorial for the walk cycle. The making of a run cycle and a lip sync for a 3D character ended up quite well. There was pretty much no big challenges faced while trying it

Lip Sync Trail

Run Cycle Trail

The end result were good but still have to refine the facial animation for the lip sync to make it realistic.

Run Cycle

Lip Sync

Live CGI

As my final project and research question has took a turn and the major inspiration for the action to happen is due to the CGMeetUp page in Facebook It is a page where tutorials, behind the scenes, forum with questions and jobs are mentioned. And the recent release of Behind the scenes and making of Iron Man 3.

Iron Man 3

And also most fascinated by the making of the chemical brothers wide open. The reason for why I like this breakdown is because of the effort of the actor, level of composition and match moving. And majorly the camera trips and the camera track done the crew.

making of the chemical brothers wide open

Animation Work - Walk Cycle

With the resuming of the classes in the second semester, and the going live project, the first try in the maya lab was the basic human walk cycle. It was pretty much exciting and simple. We tried the walk cycle along with Sang in the class and later I worked on with a free rigged character from CG Meet Up and tried a walk cycle.

The preview playblast was taken and the end result was pretty much good.

Walk Cycle

The Winter Break

After coming from the winter break, and having watched many movies inspired me to shift my focus on the final project to a different direction. One of the important influence which made me to shift direction was the class with Sang for lighting and rendering. The technique which we learned was IMAGE BASED LIGHTING (IBL). I loved the way 3D objects gets merged in the live environment and so I started working on a story for my final project, which includes live CGI. I came up with a story line and the script was done and also the character design with the help of my friend.

The Script for the story is shown in the given link
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_PT3eQlyKQ8Si16UFNLQjVzdmc/view?usp=sharing