First I'd like you to listen to this music while reading this post. I found it today while slacking (Yeah I search for new cool music as my slack time). I like this remix,and I thought I'd share it with you. 

These images are just to show you what I have. Just a curious render at this stage. I was wondering how it would look like rendered with lights. And I also included AO (Ambient & Occlusion) renders with lights. Why? I don't know. The leafs on the trees are bothering me. I will fix that, but for the time being they will stay as they are (random, fake and ugly). Now the lighting I'll be going after are of the similar type of setting as the first image, sunset setting. I don't want that bright light in my scene. I'll have to get into the lighting as soon as possible as it will help me define the textures better too see if it works or not. So far no ivy has entered the scene, but I will come to that fairly quickly. While I'm working my way to "the other side" (pendulum), I will be making ivy's on my laptop. So I will be multitasking like this guy in the picture below.

At this stage I am texturing, but I have some more modelling to do. I will get back to that as soon as I am done with the texturing with what I have in the scene. Which is not a whole lot. I am not satisfied with how the ornaments on the first and second house turned out. I will have to redo them as soon as I can get the right textures from CG Textures. I really hate that 15mb limit they have! I have also not done anything special with bump maps. Only on the ground and trees. The ground looking flat and ugly. 

I really need to fill this scene with a whole lot of junk. Objects like a ladder, boxes, barrels, wagons, festival flags, shed, more trees beyond the wall, posters, etc. Any objects you'd like me to put into this scene? Any suggestion would be happily accepted. Oh and yeah the ground is still flat and nice, but that will be taken care of tomorrow I think.

To finish up I'd like you to listen to this. A friend of mine linked me this song and wow. Wonder why this is not on his album.  Feed Me is awesome so if you haven't heard his album yet YOU SHOULD CHECK IT OUT!  Enjoy!

I just got this great idea for a shortfilm while listening to Pablo Francisco. The part where he acts like a mexican standup comedian and tells a "bumper sticker" joke. "Next time you want a family portrait do what I do. Take your whole family put em' in back a pickup truck. Run a red light. It takes a picture". I just figured it would be fun to make that into a shortfilm.

So yeah I've been working on my Final Year Project today. It started with a bad start. I lacked the motivation and I felt tired. I finished the street light, trees and flower bed container. I feel like I could say I'll be done with modelling by tomorrow night, but that's just hoping too much.  

Well I'm not entirely done with the trees. They kinda look alike. I might redo the leafs on the trees. They should lay flat, well more than they do in my scene so it's more realistic. Nature wants them to bathe in the sunlight. In my scene they are rotated randomly. I forgot about the brown box at the end of the trees.

I'd also like to add that I made myself a LinkedIn profile. So if you want to add me there do what Nike wants you to do.

I put my Final Year Project on hold yesterday and decided to install After Effects on my computer. So I started to play a little with my AVE project by keying out the green. This is only a little test to see how it will look like in the end. But as things are looking now I might say myself done with shot 3. I just need to add the right background and do a little tweaking with the lights and colors and I'm done with it. 

This is the kind of scene I will be having in my final film. With a different angle and colors.

This was just to see how the characters react to a different background. To see if the keying is in place. 

I kinda got a Sin City feel from this. Now all I need to add is blood splat and a comic book effect with a nice text to follow.
Later I will start tracking the other shots and start keying them out. A lot of work is in order. 

Untill next time!

This is just an update to show were I am at. I am at last finished with the buildings to a somewhat degree. Still missing doors, but that's easy. For now I just want to add proxy model of the things I know I need to fill the scene with. Like streetlights, trees, boxes, barrels, wagons, festival flags, hedges, etc... I am this close to start texturing and I can't wait to play with photoshop.  

Simple models are placed so that I can start animating the camera through the scene. This will help me to decide which models should get high quality texture so I don't waste more time on each and every object. I will look more into the placement of the objects and add more just to fill in the scene some more. And of course make the ground uneven. I will hopefully start animating the camera tomorrow. Deadline is closing in fast!

Since Friday I haven't been able to do any work on any of my projects. So today on this beautiful Sunday I finally got it going again. 
On Friday I got the news that I just became Uncle to a baby boy! Now I know I shouldn't have gone out that day, but I couldn't help but celebrate the newborn prince! 

So this is what I have done today. I made a hedge out of PArray with the help of a plane leaf and a box. Quite a simple hedge, but the 3ds max on my laptop kept on crashing on the three first tries. Perhaps due to the amount of "leafs" I made it render. Anyways this was made with the help of a tutorial I found on the web. Check it out http://3darchviz.blogspot.com/2008/09/many-people-ask-about-this-so-i-decided.html . It's quite easy to make as there are not that many steps to follow. I will definitely use it for my Final Year Project. 

This is the same type of effect I would like to have in my final project, but I am afraid I don't have the time to book the greenscreen, key the green out, track it, place it in the scene as close as possible. And altogether be done with the scene with texture, lights, render it all out and post-production. I just hope I will be done in time for the deadline. Such a harsh word, "deadline". 

Anyways cool example right? 

Ok this is just one of the coolest things I've ever seen. I can't believe I forgot about this shortfilm. Thanks to a friend of mine, Kenn, who reminded me of this. My project kinda looks similar by the looks of it. Which is hard to avoid. You know, buildings? 

I even got a great idea for my shortfilm yesterday. I started thinking about adding some kind of "life" to the scene. At first I thought of just adding mannequins in all kinds of different poses standing still while the camera travels through the scene from A to B. And then I figured why not real people? Go to the greenscreen studio and film a bunch of people standing still while the camera goes past them. Time slice I believe it is called. I will add an example to this as I know there are some out there that portrays what I would like to have in my shortfilm.  

I feel inspired these days and I am writing this blog entry so that one day when I have some time I will make something out of it.
So I wanted to model one of my favourite characters, Asterix! He's such a cool character. Ever since I was a chibi I have been watching Asterix and Obelix cartoons. Also reading the comics. The story in their adventures really catches me. So one day (soon) I will make a 3d model of Asterix. 

Just a quick render of the ivy with the daylight system. Now imagine this scene with texture!

I've just found the perfect plugin for 3ds max. Namely the Guruware Ivy Generator. This simple and easy to use plugin will be used by me for my final year project. Saving me a lot of time modelling and placing the ivy. Still there are some drawbacks to this plugin. Like the generator making a whole lot polygons to the branches, but that's acceptable by me! 

 

I'm still a bit fussed about the texture as I've not touched that part yet. I'm still just testing this awesome plugin while I'm modelling the rest of the scene. Testing is key! If you would like to test out this plug in you just click on this link and follow the instructions on how to add it to your 3ds max version. http://www.guruware.at/main/index.html Thanks to the Guruware team and the original creator, Thomas Luft.

Await more updates of my final year project. I'm planning to be done with the modelling in about two weeks time or sooner. And I'll have to start with the texturing. Maybe camera animation before that.