First Light (Image Based Lighting Test)

Original Sculpted Maquette

3D Render A/B Composite (no textures)

So I had some time off work and decided to dust off the old film again. This time I did some RND on the Lighting Pipeline. I am using Mental Ray's hidden Production Shader Collection. These shaders are awesome. So far they do everything I need them to do and are fairly quick to render too! It's nice to know that this result can still be acheived with out proprietry tools like the ones I use at work.

This clip has obvious issues with the shadows and depth of field. These problems should go away, once I am able to render into separate passes.

There are still a few tests I need to do such as outputting render passes for comp and how to control specular with the mia materials. But I'm feeling pretty good about it. Once I am confident with the lighting pipeline, I will balance the textures ready for the final renders. Soon I will be able to see more than just grey characters slapped on top of the background footage. Yay!

More stuff from the First Light Vault

Digging around my old Hard Drive I found these pics.

An unfinished Solem Model.

A model sheet of Solem and RB7

First Light Robot Designs

These were the initial sketches I did when trying to come up with some characters for the film.

First Light Context Cut v010

This is the latest Context Cut for my short film First Light. It's still got a long way to go but it's getting there. This is an assembly of the first 2/3rds of the film.

The miniatures were built at 1:10 scale. The format was HD 1280 x 720. Shot on a Panasonic Varicam using a Genufelx Mark II Motion Control Rig. Lots of Toys!

First Light Previs

This was the previs for my yet to be completed short film school project. The previs was used to pre plot all of the motion control camera setups on the miniature shoot.

This was the only way I could justify 60 odd camera setups using miniature sets on a 3 day shoot. Ahh film school... I was so naive. Amazingly we pulled it off though. The real challenge lay ahead in post production. 60 full blown VFX shots in HD with one Artist on it for a few months. NO CHANCE!

So the film was put on the shelf. Occasionally I will dust it off and do a bit more on it every now and then... Sigh..

Playing with the Mental Ray physical sky shader

This is a lot of fun if you have maya 2009's IPR and an 8 proc machine. I will try some more ambitious environment stuff soon.

Solem And RB7 Turntable

Here's two Characters I Designed, Modelled, Textured and Rigged for a short film I am working on called First Light.




Below are the Maquettes that we used as reference while shooting the miniature sets which would later serve as background plates for the final compostie. I sculpted these myself at 1:10 scale out of super sculpey.

The Bottom character, RB7 was made from a robot toy that I re-proportioned to match the CG character. The head, calves and chest piece were the only parts made from super sculpey. A friend from film school helped me out with his head due to time constraints.

Solem, Work In Progress

Ok, so this is just a render I did Sunday evening when I had a bit of free time. The checkered parts don't have textures yet. Some parts have bump maps. I estimate he's about 70% done. Gonna start spending a bit more time over the next few weekends to get him ready for rendering. Spent most of my time getting the light to look right for this render. I'm pretty happy with it now and I think the effect will animate well from the few tests I did. Still I think the glow is a bit too intense. Might look at this next weekend.

more soon...

The Making Of FirstLight (Documentary)

This is a "Behind The Scenes" Doco of a short film I am still working on. How ironic. It turns out the the shoot was so interesting that we were able to make a small doco out of it. I am still working on all of the 70 visual effects shots that are needed to complete the film.

Talk about biting off more than one can chew. Oh well, we've all come a long way since then. I will post a cut of the film when it is closer to final cut. Enjoy.

First Light Opening Shot Test Render

This shot was composed and rendered in Vue 6 Infinite. It is the first time I have used this software. I was surprised with the results. Though I think I will render the sky separately in Vue and the foreground in Maya using Mental Ray. Faster and more options if I do it this way. The shot will track right to reveal the exterior of an abandoned warehouse.... or is it?

RB7 Colour Swatch

Initial Colour swatch for RB7.

Exit Door

A photoshop mock up of one of the end shots.

First Light Renders

A work in Progress render of Solem with his most of his textures. Some parts are just a flat colour for testing but will be replaced with gritty textures soon.


A test render of RB7. Just to show off some of the details.