Thesis

Animatic 4

2010-12-09T10:44:00.000-08:00

After multiple comments regarding the animatic, I went ahead and removed all the turning cameras. I have now replaced the dizzying scene with a more direct approach.

Animatic 3

2010-12-07T22:34:00.000-08:00

An updated version of the animatic. The beginning animation is done by Daniel Brigido.

brief walk cycle

2010-11-17T16:38:00.001-08:00

Hi everyone,
here is a clip of a walk cycle with dynamics. Some hiccups here and there, but it's moving along.
Thanks Dan Brigido for the animation. More to come!

new basic animatic

2010-09-30T13:17:00.001-07:00

Here is a basic animatic. The other concept was too complicated and needed to be simplified. Let me know what you think!

Pose1

2010-06-23T13:10:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,
Here is my character with new hair and posed!

nCloth dynamics

2010-06-14T19:29:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

I've been working on my thesis dynamics. The characters have cloth, and it's been tricky figuring out the right combination to make t-shirts look like t-shirts and denim look like denim. It still needs some tweaking, but it's look a lot better.

I wish I had a render of the cloth explosion I've seen!

Next, dynamic hair!

Comments always appreciated.
Ciao!
Monica

Main Character

2010-06-08T15:02:00.000-07:00

Here is the main character.

She is suppose to be rather plain, compared to the other characters on the carousel.

CC always welcome!

one render

2010-03-15T12:59:00.001-07:00

Here is a test render with minimal lighting. I used mental ray, so that's why the character does not have hair. Her hair will have to be comped later.

comments welcomed!

Super Model

2010-03-04T18:48:00.001-08:00

The super model is complete!
I still want to play with her hair color and give her some shoes. Her sash needs a little attention too.

Comments appreciated!

Business Woman

2010-02-21T20:41:00.001-08:00

The Business Woman

She represents women trying to break through the glass roof. Did you know women who wear pants with their suits are considered casual? A formal business outfit has to be a skirt.

Skirts, are they a symbol to women that no matter how much work and qualifications you have, you are always a woman.

On a designer note, I'm not too convince with her hair. I might update it later.

Critiques welcome!

Cleaning Lady

2010-02-21T13:26:00.000-08:00

A new woman for the carousel has been completed.
She represents the women's role of keep a house clean and tidy. Almost all commercials of cleaning products portray women cleaning. If men are involved, they usually burn the shirts they were ironing and make men look like imbeciles.

Comments always appreciated.

Pregnant Elizabeth

2009-12-15T19:10:00.001-08:00

One of the characters in my thesis is Pregnant Elizabeth. She symbolizes the typical reproductive duty of women.

As you can see, she is missing some shoes. Therefore, the saying "barefoot and pregnant" fits.

This is a basic mental ray render with camera light. That is why the hair doesn't have any shadows!

Animatic v2

2009-10-24T12:50:00.000-07:00

I've uploaded a new animatic for your review.

It is dramatically different from the first, but I feel the first was much too complicated. This is a simple animatic (just over a minute!), and the basic message is still there.

What do you think? Does it make sense? What is your opinion? I would love to hear it.

Animatic v1

2009-06-16T09:15:00.000-07:00

Below you will find the first draft of the animatic for my thesis. This is to give you an example of what the story is going to be. It is a work in progress.

Things to note:
1) The eyes didn't render, so I painted them in.
2) These are screen captures. I plan to paint the color pallet on them.
3) Every frame is 3 seconds so timing is not accurate.
4) I created this to see if people understood what was going on.

My next step is to create a 3d animatic, with transitions in mind.
Any suggestions/ideas/comments, are always appreciated!

Hair Dynamics - test

2009-05-15T18:17:00.000-07:00

One of the tricky parts about hair is the way it moves. Maya dynamics is great, but sometimes it can act a little finicky.

After some tests, I decided to add 2 hair elements. In the example below, you can see two different color hairs reacting differently. I wanted to test and see if changing attributes made the hair more dynamic and realistic.

The example also shows hair that is in a bun, and then falls, which is part of my thesis animation.

Comments always appreciated.

Composite: Bride

2009-04-08T14:12:00.001-07:00

Here is a composite of the bride. The renders are in 3 render layers: beauty, hair, shadow. Still needs some tweaks but the idea is there.
Comments always appreciated!

Hair

2009-04-03T14:25:00.000-07:00

Hair is an essential part of a 3D model. It can tell you so much of the character's personality, wealth, culture, so on. This is also a very tricky and I know very little about creating hair in Maya.

This is the final with some tweaking still needed, but the essential color/form is demonstrated.

In this blog I will demonstrate my errors and success in creating hair.

This render is an example of polygon hair. I played with it for a while, and realized that it was going to hurt my piece more than help it.

Therefore I did research on Maya Hair, did some tutorials, and voila. Much more convincing hair, though it looks very much like 3D instead of beautiful hair.

I added more hair to give the character a lot more volume. This is for the bride. I didn't want her hair to be blonde and I don't like straight hair, since it just looks too perfect.

I finally tweaked the hair parameters, and received this effect, which I am pleased with.

The next hurtle will be Dynamics, as well as tweaking the shadows.

wedding dress DONE

2009-04-01T15:57:00.001-07:00

The wedding dress is finally complete. I used a phong with the 90* spec to produce a lovely shimmer to the wedding dress.

Next: Hair!

water test 1

2009-04-01T13:06:00.000-07:00

Part of my thesis involves particle simulation. This will be used to create the blood that will flow on the character.

I am using the program RealFlow. I created this scene as practice.

I see a lot of issues! One is render time. This scene took about 30 minutes to render in RealFlow. It is only 40 frames.
Also, the poly count is very large. (this small amount of liquid has over 5000 polys).
Furthermore, I am not sure how a moving character will import in RealFlow, so more research in involved.

Nonetheless, RealFlow is a powerful program and I look forward to working on it further.

Wedding Dress Con't

2009-03-26T11:05:00.000-07:00

I am continuing to work on the wedding dress, and due to some happy accidents, I've discovered how to create lace. I worked on it through color, bump, spec to no avail. Finally I removed all color and just used Bump, which gave the render the subtle details lace creates.
(please click on image for a larger render)

The dress isn't done yet! I still need to make the specularity more interesting.

I added strong spec on the flowery parts of dress, to bring them out more, and make the dress more interesting.

In this render I was using phong as spec to try to get the 90* effect it has. Didn't work quite as well. I need to continue working on it.

I added the spec to the glow, and got some crazy results. This effect doesn't work on my project, but it is an interesting 'angelic' look. Maybe for something else.

That's it so far! Next more spec and after that, the hair!

Wedding Dress Con't

2009-03-10T18:58:00.000-07:00

This blog will update the reader on the progress of the wedding dress.

I have UVed the dress and is now texturable. I am working on tutorials in BodyPaint. My goal is to learn the program, create 'brushes' that I can use to draw details on the dress, and render it. There were some bumps in the way such as BodyPaint takes some practice to get use to, especially the results of BodyPaint differ greatly from Maya renders.

The bump is excessive in these renders. I had to continue tweaking the shader for better results.

In these renders, the lace is finally starting to look more like lace. The dress still feels like a blinn, so I will continue to work on that as well as more details on the dress.

Any comments will be greatly appreciated! Thank you.

To nCloth or not to nCLoth, that is the question

2009-03-06T16:58:00.001-08:00

One of the current hurtles I have to solve, is my character's clothes. There are several outfits in my thesis short, and this post will focus on the wedding dress.

I am using nCloth for the wedding dress. I have studied several tutorials to figure out the best way to create an nCloth dress that has materialistic properties of a wedding dress; in this case chiffon, corset and veil.

My first idea was to create just the dress and texture the character's torso. After trying several trials and errors, the same problem occurred. The geometry would a) float around her waist or b) weld on her verticies, but have problems with interlacing geometry. An example render is below.

Therefore the next solution was to create the whole dress herself. Since wedding dresses are usually drapped on, (and I know this due to my costume design background experience) I also drapped the new dress. I took the geo from the character, duplicated it to make a tight fitting bodice, smoothed it out, and added the dress. Below is an example of the dress.

The next step is to UV maps it, texture it, and nCloth test it.

Any comments always appreciated. Thanks!

Lighting/Color Test

2008-10-27T12:50:00.001-07:00

Hi everyone!

Since the theater is now done, I started to work on the lighting. The scene is not a happy one, so dark almost rusty colors are used. This is a color test. Let me know what you think!

Edit: I just saw the quality, and its terrible. it's also too dark. Hopefully I'll find a better quality player so you can see the details.

Face Expressions

2008-10-13T08:03:00.000-07:00

Matt Vogan is currently working on the face expressions of my thesis character. Below you will find a quick movie of the expressions so far. There still needs to have some tweaking (like adding teeth), but its really coming along. Thanks Matt!!

Progress in Carousel

2008-10-12T17:03:00.000-07:00

Jesse Weglein has been doing a stunning job in the making of the carousel. He is also a lighter, so you can see how beautiful the render is. He is still tweaking some things here and there.

Final Theater!

2008-10-07T11:29:00.001-07:00

Josh 'the man' Markham, finished the theater is super duper speed! There are no words to describe my appreciation as well as my feelings of awe as I look upon the theater.

Voila! Admire the mastery!

ooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhh........

aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!

Theater - update

2008-09-29T16:49:00.001-07:00

Josh had some technical problems with the model/textures, but now he is on a roll again creating some fantastic textures for the theater!

What I really like is the details of the gold. I can't wait to light this!

The complete picture. Just stunning.

Thanks Josh!

The Carousel - Progress

2008-09-23T13:03:00.000-07:00

The Carousel was originally modeled by Josh Markham and is currently being tweak-modeled and textured by Jesse Weglein. Can't wait to see the final!

Look at those light bulbs!

The Theater - Process

2008-09-23T10:56:00.001-07:00

The Theater's Process.
X-treme Modeler/Texture Josh Markham has taken up arms to fight the massive project of building and texturing a theater, inspired by the Lucas Theater in Savannah.

The Beginning:
The chairs... there are about 745 chairs.

The placement of the chairs gave the theater a lot of personality.

The physical theater is coming together.

Lights are being added. Josh is a modeling machine!

The textures are started to be placed.

Nice floor, Josh!

The Character - Elizabeth

2008-09-23T10:19:00.001-07:00

Elizabeth is the main character of my thesis. There are currently two completed versions: Clean and Bloody.

Needs to be completed: She is currently rigged, but her paint weights need to be fixed. Rose Ibiama is currently singed up to give her Maya Hair. Matt Vogan is singed up to do her expressions.

Elizabeth: Clean
This is the super model of the carousel. The bathing suit was inspired by Ms. Universe 2004.

Look at her beautiful freckles and great make up! I would like to thank Cheri Fojtik for her talents in texturing my thesis character.

Elizabeth: Bloody
This is Elizabeth the Zombie/Bloody version. Once again I would like to thank Cheri Fojtik for her talented hands and mind!

Below you will find gruesome close ups.

eeewwww....

Welcome!

2008-09-12T10:13:00.000-07:00

Hello! Ciao! Hola! Shalom! Konichiwa!

This blog is dedicated to my thesis project for the Savannah College of Art and Design. I will continue to post updates of the project's process: from pre-production, production to post-production. Keep an eye out!

Please feel free to leave comments. Both good and bad are always appreciated.

Thank you!