CGI | Sci-fi Art

Hey all,

Just wanted to share this.  I made a spaceship for a guy a few years back and he's released the movie just recently.  Seth was super cool to work with, and this ended up sending me on a secular career I really enjoy.  He made a V-Log to talk about the film, Dust, which was a sort of sci-fi drama.  I didn't do much on the film.  Seth's already a really amazing digital artist--whether he's aware of it or not--and so all I did was use Blender to build out and render a spaceship for him.  It's very rudimentary by today's standards, and I've learned a lot since then, but I suppose it was nice to see my work in there.  I hope my work didn't take down the otherwise pretty slick work he did on it!



Thanks,
Dan

Still plugging away on the ol' project.  Not sure if I'll ever finish, given other, more important responsibilities, but, alas, I'm not giving up! :)


Got a lot of animation still to do.  But it's considerably easier, now, with the updated armatures for the two main characters.  Now, to update the rest of the characters before I've got to use them...should be fun.


Design for Padoen's hover bike:


Still to do:

1.) Loads of stuff.  Most notably, finishing a short fight sequence (ugh...), remodeling the exterior desert landscape, which is in bad need of repair.  It stood up fine in the 720p renders of Parts One and Two, but in 1080p resolution, the desert landscapes just don't stand a chance.  Every imperfection shows up terribly.

Hopefully it'll be good.  It's showing promise, but a lot of work to do.  Just wanted to show I'm still plugging away on this thing. :)

Dan

Dan

I decided to take a day just to give the old baby some love.

Environment creation began for the two areas in this part.  One is the exterior establishing shot telling everyone it's night time, now, but that we're where we left off--Padoen Titus's apartment complex.  Astute astronomers may wonder why a spiral barred galaxy appears so close in the sky.  That is the Milky Way.  All of the action in Plagarus (and, indeed, every movie I make in my personal universe) happens in a globular cluster in the galactic halo of our home galaxy.


And, of course, Padoen's apartment itself.  This set is available online, but it's far more generic than this fully furnished and decorated version.  I may update the online version with the textures, at least.  We'll see.


Updated Padoen Titus' and Lethgoshis' meshes, textures, materials, and skeletons, as both characters were looking pretty dated due to huge advancements in Blender and the Cycles Render Engine.


The guide track for the dialogue has already been completed.  This track is comprised of the unfiltered original recordings (well, except for equalizing and compression, thanks to my sound buddy Danny), and is used strictly for animation purposes.


Another reason that Plagarus took a back seat is rather personal.  My good friend Dale, who helped me work on it suddenly died late last year. He was only 28. He provided the inspiration for Ackla, the snake alien in Part 2.  He did the initial voice recording on my old set-up.  I then copied his performance in the recording that is in the actual movie.


With a lot of work, the main character's alien species being called "Isus" (a name which could be controversial, given the events in Iraq last year), and Dale's untimely departure, an impenetrable wall of resistance was created which I'm still struggling to get through.  Here's hoping I can get Part 3 out anyway.

Hope everyone is doing well.

Thanks,
Dan

After this bit, it's probably posting time.  It's not perfect, mind you, but what can you do on a shoestring budget?

Danny had some problems with other projects and was unfortunately too tied up to really help out with the score for Part II.  Fortunately, I do own a selection of royalty free music I purchased about a year ago, which is fairly good.  Using Sonic Fire Pro, I'm able to time the music appropriately.

It's a pretty good program.  Only a few crashes once in a very great while for me, and it's useful for what I need it to do.  So I'm happy, more or less.  Of course, we could always use John Williams to score a little here and there pro bono, but, you know, we could all dream, right?


Looking at about 2 or 3 more days, depending on work and whatnot.  Working two jobs is murder, I'll tell you that...

Hope you're all doing better than I am!

Regards,
Dan

More work on the indie film Nem Gate.  This has been an extremely challenging set.  It needs to fit inside an existing building, and it has a large number of components.  It is seen both from the perspective of a small control room (previously modelled) and from outside, as well and must connect to the outside of the building for a couple of shots.

Add to all this the usual challenges of designing the aesthetics of the concept, and you get an interesting challenge, that's for sure.  We're finally getting somewhere, but it is still very much in a messy work-in-progress state, I'm afraid.  So please keep that in mind.

It's unlikely that the exterior will be so brightly lit, but I figured I'd load in some detail just in case we've got some close-up shots here and there that'll need something in the background.

From the perspective of the control room built earlier

Hope you're all having a good day.

Dan

Work continuing.  Animation is going along about at the anticipated speed.  Shot construction and completion is about half of that of Part I, mostly because of the complexity of the second part.  Several sets, this time, and about five characters to animate.

As I did in Part I, I'm using noise modifiers in certain bones on the character rigs to give the illusion of random movement.  Struggling with keeping the characters out of uncanny valley.  The problem will be greatly exacerbated by the very human-like characters in Part III.  Danny and I are starting to look around for a more talented character animator, and I'm looking into re-rigging the character models for the next part.  The current rig isn't sufficient (it's very old, now) for what I'm looking for in performance in the next few parts of the movie.


 Raw Render:


Color Corrected Render:


Sent off the raw cut of Scene I of Part II to Danny this morning, so he can start mixing the sound.  Looking forward to seeing what he's got up his sleeve.

Dan

By far the most complicated part of making Plagarus is the character animation process.  Creating shots and ideas is extremely time-consuming and difficult.

The first step is always writing out the script.  The second part is recording the dialogue.  Both of those steps have been done for Part II.  Now we're onto the process of actually animating each scene one shot at a time.  This is the most complicated and difficult part.  It requires absolute quiet in the house and absolute concentration.  This is rare when you've got a family.  Patience is a must.  Frustration is your enemy.  Tempers can flare.  Feelings can get hurt.

Typically, the process involves listening to the recorded dialogue and laying it out in Blender's non-linear video editor.  Then I take the sound, and start blocking out shots and camera angles as I think they'd appear.  Character animation involves taking key-frames and refining them down, adding more and more frames until the final product is able to be animated.  See the 11 Second Club blog site for a good trainer on character animation.

Then comes the final render, and inevitably, a few re-rendered shots to correct any problems, such as fireflies and whatnot in the final render.

This could take days, or weeks.  The more time you spend on it, the better it looks, to an extent.

Dan

Dan

A good evening spent with friends also produced much more amazing results than I ever anticipated.  The quality of the vocals (there is a comparison between the original Part I dialogue and the new, unedited, Part I recording at the bottom of this post), was far more superior than I ever imagined possible.  This was despite the fact that the environment we were recording in was still less than ideal.

Thanks go to #1 Dan for his enormous help and expertise.  It's great to have someone around who knows what they're doing.

What voice actors stare at for hours on end

Danny's a Mac guy. We shall call him Mac Danny from now on

Mac Danny.  The hat picture is the only picture we've got

The nameless voice actor, of questionable taste in hats.  The sign next to his head may indicate what's usually on his mind

We decided to use a Blue Baby Bottle microphone.  I admit, I was incredulous at first when I saw it, but it turned out to capture the voice much, much better than my own microphone, which was used to record Part I.

We got all but three lines done on the written script (the last part still needs to be written out). We're aiming for this Sunday to pick up the last few lines. There are a few issues here and there, but overall, the recording was surprisingly rich and clean.  We averaged about three takes per line of dialogue, with four characters, all aliens, being represented.  The quality is a vast improvement over the previous Part I recording.  Take a listen.


Hope you're all having a great time.

Dan

Been looking around for some material ideas, still.






Dan

Doing some material testing on a set for Plagarus, Part II.  Trying metallic materials.




Selecting materials is hard, considering this paint scheme has to work in two different rooms with different lighting schemes, and two very different characters with a wide variation of skin tones, yet still look cool.

New modelling work I've been doing for the film Nem Gate.

 
Modular corridor sets.  Client specifically asked if the corridor could be kept as modular as possible so that it can be possibly reused or set up differently, depending on the scene's requirements.


Conceptualizing some technical control consoles.  Modelling has gotten quick enough that I can concept out work in complex 3D in much shorter periods of time than it used to require.  Usually is good if you can give the client some choice in the matter.  Whichever isn't chosen, I will store in my own library so I can easily incorporate it into my own work.


Work still very much in progress on the scanning machine.  Notice the lack of supports for the scanner bars and the lack of symmetry on some parts.  Still work to be done.

Items which require interaction with real life people are extremely touchy and need to be done pretty much according to how the original plates were filmed.  This can be one of the most time consuming aspects of the process.

Dan

I guess the ol' project isn't quite as dead as I thought.  I recently received a phone call from an old client of mine, Seth Deming.  During the course of our discussion, he unknowingly (I think) gave me some encouragement to keep going on Plagarus, and I guess I took it to heart.  So, here is some extra work I've done.

Here is the run-down, nitty-gritty:

I was never pleased with the opening of Part 2 as it stood.  This was the main reason I never got around to posting it.  It was dreadful.  The audio quality (something persistently pointed out by the viewers for Part 1) was about as bad as it could be, yes, even worse than Part 1.  The voice acting was rushed and didn't have enough nuance and the scene involving the protagonist and the snake robot repair salesman, Ackla, was just not what I wanted it to be.  In fact, I consistently cringed in horror as I watched it and often skipped it because I couldn't bring myself to endure the spectre of its very existence.  I could never bring myself to the inevitable embarrassment of having to upload such a piece in its current state.

So I've decided to bite the bullet and redesign the set and completely redo the entire opening scene of Part 2.

Here is some progress on Ackla's apartment set, about a day's work so far:




The challenge with designing sets for this particular movie is that the protagonist, Lethgoshis, is almost 8 feet tall, whereas the rest of the characters are about average human height. This presents challenges in designing the sets, as many of the doorways have to be big enough to accommodate the height of Lethgoshis while at the same time make sense stylistically.  Also, camera angles have to be carefully contrived whenever Lethgoshis appears in a shot with another, shorter character.  (I call this challenge of putting two characters of greatly varied height in the same shot "Chewbacca-Yoda Syndrome".)

In this case, this apartment complex services a number of alien races, and so, I imagine that the building designers probably tried to accommodate as many species as they could. I can get away with the ultra tall door here, but elsewhere, it may present a problem.

And here is a refined flip/jump that I'm trying to get a rather ungainly Lethgoshis to accomplish.


I'm completely redoing most of the work I've done so far on Part 2, simply because my skills have improved as well as the tools in Blender have gotten more sophisticated, allowing new techniques to be used. Therefore, Part 2 will hopefully be a great improvement over the original version, as well as slightly longer. I'll be rerecording the dialogue as well, once I get a useful microphone.  This will be the most expensive thing I could do in the movie.

Dan

I'm a second generation small business owner.  My father owned a cleaning business back in Maine.  One of the things he taught me was professional pride is a healthy thing and that if someone doesn't take pride in their work, its quality will suffer.

My previous job as a house painter here in Florida a few years ago helped drive this lesson home for me.  The owners of the company weren't afraid to absorb cost if it meant that it would save their company reputation or add to it in some way.  They say that they lived by an old Hebrew proverb, and I believe them. 



I finally learned this lesson first-hand with my own business.  And especially in the laboratory set I recently built for Nem Gate. Lesson learned: Don't be afraid to absorb cost for a customer if it means getting the job done to your satisfaction.

As it was, the client did not indicate he was happy with the completed set, but was unable to spend any more time or money on getting it to spec.  This left me with a conundrum: do I want to go the business-first route and put out a product neither the customer or I was happy with, and potentially could lead to embarrassment if it was released to the public? Or do I go the artist-integrity route and absorb a chunk of money and make sure the final product is up to snuff?

I chose the artistic-integrity route, I guess.  I can only hope it pays off in the end.  If not, I will have to be content with the fact that the client was happy, and I'm more satisfied with the results, though there's always room for improvement.





Make the day of death better than the day of birth.  When you're dead, you can't enjoy the money.  But if you leave a good reputation and people speak and think well of you after you're gone, well, then I guess it's all well and good.  I'm never completely satisfied with any of my work, anyway.

Dan

Well, normally I can't show my commercial work that I've done with the public, as typically I'm under a non-disclosure clause.  But I've received some leeway in this to show that while I'm not updating this site, I'm indeed working.

These shots are from my interior modelling I've done for an independent film called Nem Gate. 

I'm just a modeller on this, so I'm showing my work only (without final materials).

The third model, the large lobby, was a model I received partially built, but I changed it enough that it barely resembles what it used to look like.  The only things that remain from the original model are the pillars, part of the exterior wall and the floating sculpture in the center of the room.

Please bear in mind that all of this is definitely work in progress, as the textures and materials haven't been added in these images.  Also, additional changes to the geometry may be made sometime in the future to some of these models as the director changes his mind or needs some object moved for continuity's sake.


Additionally, I've got some work being hung in Museum Victoria in Melbourne, Australia.  My work ended up being featured in an exhibit they're putting up about the future of space flight.  The exhibit isn't up, yet, I don't think.  It should be up sometime next year, they tell me.

Always thought an artist had to die before his work was put up in a museum. I don't know if I'll ever be able to make it there to see it in person, but if anyone ever is in Melbourne, please stop by the museum and take a picture of the exhibit for me, if you can.  I'd really appreciate it!

There is also more work than this, but I've spent a lot of time on this post already, so I'll let you all go.  Happy Blending!

Dan