VIST 305 - 'GEO-LUSIONS' Post-Mortem

Making-of Video:




Watch GEO-LUSIONS:

VIST 305 - 'Geo-Lusions' Final Render

Te presentamos: GEO-LUSIONS, a projection mapping animated magic show.

This footage was mapped onto a flat screen with a 3D geometric shape. The projected image had to be mapped to compensate for the projector's height and angle.

The maddest of props to Stephen Swirsky for his awesome comp work -  he had the very meticulous job of transitioning each illusion (rendered in Maya, Blender, and After Effects) into one seamless whole. At times the work required him matching two shots pixel-by-pixel so they would blend well.

Besides general motivation and morale-boosting comic relief, I did rigging, animation, lighting, and surfacing for all the sequences done in Autodesk Maya: the shape opening up, flying around in space, then closing. I did lighting and surfacing on the finale with the black hole and the Tron-like geometric environment.

Not-So-Happy Accidents: Renders From my Maya "tmp" Archive

The following are a handful of animation blunders - not exactly those golden "happy accidents" we look out for - from the past year's school projects. It's amazing what kind of forgotten mutants you'll find haunting your "tmp" folder in the Maya images directory. For each image, I've tried to give something of an explanation for how those results came to be so that you don't find yourself in the same bewildering situation.





This bizarre apparition was part of a group project last semester. We were in a jam because we needed to pose this creature for a still frame but we didn't have time to do any rigging. So, using soft select on the model's geometry, I successfully fudged a decent pose, but not without learning of the bizarre horrors that arise from jacking up the soft select threshold and attempting a slight rotation.

So I'm animating on a short film directed by a TAMU VIZ grad student; we were ready to transfer the data from the proxy models' control nodes to the final (kind of) models. At least that the theory behind it. The new control nodes went a little crazy, body parts ended up flung all over the place and my character ended up looking FAAABULOOOUUUUUSSSSS in his red scarf.

It's nothing a few adjustments can't fix. In all seriousness, our riggers have done a wonderful job.

This is a test render from a shot where a character undergoes a hideous Mr. Hyde - type transformation. I had fun messing with the ever - versatile Eleven Rig and ended up with some truly terrifying results.

Corrupted links to shader files are to blame for this guy's rabid look.

 Oh yay, everyone loves blackface. Freakin Mental Ray.

A couple of keys got switched around and my char got a little pissed. "I'm going to my trailer!"

This one actually was kind of a happy accident. I was experimenting with a lattice deformer on this hallway environment and the results were pretty disturbing. Not very practical because of how twisted together everything became down the hall but it made for an alright set piece.

I always thought layout was a little creepy - black and white environments with creepy faceless proxy models just standing there.

I accidentally deleted something important while poking around this rig's node hierarchy and my char's face melted off. Enjoy the nightmares.

VIST 305 - GEOLUSIONS Animatic

VIST 305 - Render Shot Progression

These renders are part of the opening sequence of GEOLUSIONS.

It's the top view of a roughly hexahedral polygon shape. I rigged the six polygon faces to open up towards the camera. They reveal a single face that is set with a glowing, incandescent Maya surface material. The faces fold back and the viewer will see the 3D set shape (codename: Crunchwrap Supreme). The Crunchwrap will slowly morph into a sphere for the next part of the animation.

VIST 305 - Finished Storyboard

VIST 305 - Storyboard Progress