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!

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..

Frankenegger Stopmotion Test

A lip sync animation test for a character called Frankenegger from back in my film school days.

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.

Let's Make Robots!

Lets Make Robots is a site I've been visiting a lot lately. As a kid I tried to make a robot of my own but never got around to finishing it (surprise surprise :) . This site is a great intro to basic robotics and programming micro processors.

I hope to buy a starter kit one day and make one of my own. This interests me because it's a great chance for me to take what I've learned about rigging and programming in 3D into the real world!

Here's a clip of one of my favorite Robots on this site.

The Adventures of Egg Cup Boy

Egg Cup Boy was a the result of a collaboration between Craig Bunker, Andrew McLean and myself, Daniel Thompson. The year was 1999 and this short was part of our studies at M.A.P.S. (Media Arts Productions Skills) at Hamilton College in South Australia.

We had no Idea what we were doing or how we would do it. All we had was a few Cardboard boxes and some Modelling Clay and Free Reign of Andrew's Parent's basement.

The film took around 3 months to shoot, and many late nights of cutting together royalty free sound samples for the score and sound design.

Bang Bang Making Of Documentary

This is a little Doco I made to record the process of a mock up commercial we made for the sports drink Powerade. This was part of our course work at film school. We wanted a gothic western theme. An I wanted to experiment with mixing miniatures and a full scale set piece using a motion control rig.

This was the first time Kuper Tools was used in production which made the opeing camera move possible.

I will try to get my hands on the finished commercial and post it soon.

Exit Door

A photoshop mock up of one of the end shots.