CG Diary of Siosi

After some tweaking here and there, I was finally able to setup lighting for my scene. I was having trouble with the texturing - I still can’t figure out Maya’s way of texturing, but I’ll get there - so I moved onto composition and lighting. I was going to go for highly realistic forest scene, but I seem to actually like this little table-top model look. It looks like the model, is modeling itself in a professional studio. Also, initially, I was headed towards a room composition, but this looks better as a still-life composition. I actually like how it looks at the moment, but I think if I had various textures here and there, I’ll be able to get something even more interesting. 

Here some workspace and output renders. I have the base model setup, and am currently working on texturing and lighting. The shot will be inside the fale (since the assignments is of a room or still life), but for now, I have rendered a zoomed out view of the structure.

1. Show mathematical visualizations of Chaos Theory
2. Show pictures of Tuvalu
3. TEXT: How are these two related?
4. Show busy and turbulent, industrialized Western city
5. Show calm and peaceful Tuvaluan village
6. Show mathematical visualizations of Chaos Theory, transform into butterfly sitting on a flower
7. Flower sways in the wind
8. Loud noise creeps into scene (from trucks)
9. Zoom out of scene to show trucks bulldozing its way through a field
10. Show butterfly being crushed under wheels of truck
11. A piece of the butterfly’s wings flies away
12. Zoom out and show structures being built at a rapid rate
13. Zoom in on butterfly’s broken wing as it joins the smog from polluting factories, and mixes with the clouds
14. Show clouds move across multiple (scenes of) countries, until it reaches the Pacific Ocean
15. Show the sun burning hotter and harder
16. Show ice caps moving and melting
17. Show village boy on island (silhouette)
18. Show water rising
19. Show ocean, and then waves forming into a large tsunami
20. TEXT: Tuvalu in n years
21. Show tsunami engulf the island and village boy 
22. Black silhouette takes over scene, and chaos theory visualizations appear once again 
23. TEXT: Think your actions don’t affect others?
24. TEXT: Think again.
25. TEXT: Please help save Tuvalu.

For Concept Development, we are required  to make a digital 1-2 mins. long, which explores notions of the city. 

Here are the initial sketches for the Face Modeling assignment. I decided to sketch a character, using my face as reference, instead of using an actual photo of me. Why? Because I thought it’d be cool to render a 3D version of me - stylized!

[img src=”http://images.siosism.multiply.com/image/2/photos/29/500×500/5/front%20%26%20side.jpg” alt=”Sketch 1″]

Over the past couple of years, I’ve devoted a lot of time to narrowing down my career choices. The choices evolved in this order:

[i]Computers > Information Technology > Computer Engineer > Programmer > Designer > Animator & Visual FX Artist[/i]

I am very certain on placing myself in the Animation & Visual FX industry, but I discovered that there is a lot of different positions to fill in this industry. I thought about specializing straight out of High School, but my father told me to do a broader degree (such as the one I am taking at the moment, Bachelor of Design (Multimedia Systems)) - just in case. As reluctant as I was at the time, I decided to listen to his advice. It turned out to be a good choice, because the fad of the industry (back then) leaned towards heavily specialized workers. A couple of years later, the industry realized that they needed people who were disciplined in a wider range of skills. However, it should be noted that the industry still favors workers who are a bit more solid in one specific type of work (i.e. modeling, rigging, animating, lighting, etc.).

Although I’m appreciative of what has been taught in my degree, I feel that students who are pursuing animation & visual FX, may be let down in terms of the options available during the “specialized” third year. I’m currently doing my second semester, as a 3rd year student, but feel as though I have not learned enough to create a comfortable/satisfying demo-reel. I have taken on two 3D classes this semester (3D Character & Advanced Imaging & Animation), to hopefully make up for that.

As of today, I have decided to narrow in on the art of character modeling and animation. I will be refining this idea over the next couple of weeks, but for my initial demo-reel idea, I plan on including 2 or 3 character models and small clips of each character animated. So, by the end of this semester, I will have something ready to entice myself and of course, prospective employers.

From what I recall, fale is the name for traditionally-built homes in Samoa and Tonga. For my Still-Life assignment, I’ve decided to re-create this structure in 3D. Here are some images I found during research:

Season 3 is finally here!

Before I begin modeling this assignment, I thought I’d post up a model I did earlier on in the year. This model is high-res and a bit more detailed, but it was made using a different technique - starting out with a NURBS sphere, instead of the low-poly box technique we’re using at the moment, which is required. Therefore, I’ll just use my previous face model as further reference.