Fun with compositing

Below is a clip from the as yet unfinished next Detective Bleak webisode highlighting a composited shot I'm pretty happy with. The two people you see in the shot are, in fact, the same person - videotaped a few minutes apart and composited together to form one shot. I was a bit sloppy so if you look carefully, you'll notice a plane disappear in the background - whoops - but overall, not too shabby.

Rough Cut

Working on a short Noir webisode thang. The CG intro is a rough pre-viz - the final pass will look MUCH better, but that's at least weeks away.

A Beautiful Goodbye

A line of 25 police cars led Ralph's body to its final resting place, first passing borough hall, his home, and the park named after him. At each location stood several police officers who saluted the caravan as it drove by, paying respect and honoring a great, but humble man. Below is just a small portion of the funeral service.

Ralph

To the majority of people in my hometown, he was the mayor. To me, he was simply Ralph, my stepfather. On Wednesday, January 14th, Ralph passed away at the age of 87 due to complications resulting from pancreatitis. Ralph was also in the early stages of Alzheimer's. My last visit over the holiday was especially difficult, as Ralph seemed a ghost of the man he was six months before. I drove him to the hospital, where the combination of pain medication and pancreatitis quickly robbed him of the rest of his mind, leaving a vacant look in his eyes. However, there were brief moments of clarity during his last days. My mother held Ralph's hand, told him she loved him, and he smiled. Ten minutes later, Ralph died. My aunt put it best: "Ralph let everyone off the hook." It was true, no matter your faults or mistakes, Ralph had pockets full of forgiveness. He was deeply religious without being preachy. It was a personal choice - he felt no need to convert others. I am agnostic, but if there is a Heaven, I'd like to think that Ralph has just been given the best seat in the house. I'm headed home in a few hours with the video below to be shown at the service, set to the tune of Ralph's favorite song. I'll miss him.

Be seeing you

Where am I?
In the village.
What do you want?
Information.
Whose side are you on?
That would be telling. We want information.
You won't get it.
By hook or by crook, we will.
Who are you?
The new Number 2.
Who is Number 1?
You are Number 6.
I am not a number, I am a free man!

Just finished watching the final (17th) episode of The Prisoner. And yes, stop reading if you don't want the big reveal spoiled. I hadn't seen the series since I was a kid, but Rover has always been an idelible image in my mind. Number 6 wants only his freedom - and when he eventually recovers it, the door to his London apartment opens on its own, just as it had in The Village. Unfortunately, what has happened before, will happen again... and again... history repeats itself, and spins 'round and 'round like the wheel of progress - or the symbol of the Village, the penny-farthing. This defeatist cyclical message is also present in Pink Floyd's The Wall. The Wall (of the prison?) is torn down, only to be rebuilt and brought down again ad infinitum. It is progress that series creator and star (and sometimes writer/director) Patrick McGoohan believes is moving too quickly - and that mankind, as a result, is doomed.

The identity of his captor, Number 1, is revealed in the series finale "Fall Out" (in 52 frames or so) to be Number 6, himself - an interesting argument that we are all prisoners to ourselves. Great series - a desert island-- or should I say Village-- DVD set if ever there was one.

Charity art auction

I was more than happy to participate in tonight's auction - it was a great opportunity to challenge myself, learn something new, and in the spirit of the giving season, the proceeds are going to the Children's Miracle Network. Below is my submission, the starship Enterprise NCC-1701 which I modeled in Maya. I created two cameras for a custom stereoscopic image which is viewable through anaglyphic glasses - the kind that bully in "Back to the Future" wore. Unfortunately, the print version is inferior to this - I suspect because this is RGB as opposed to CMYK. I'm going to test this theory - as well as adjust the convergence to give the saucer section more clarity and prominence. This being my first attempt at anything stereoscopic, I'm pleased. But grab a pair of 3D glasses and judge for yourself!

Car Paint

The 1958 Corvette I'll be modeling (hopefully soon) will be predominantly yellow (there's chrome, too, but that's a whole other challenge.) Below is a test to create photorealistic car paint. A few things of note: The sphere uses a Blinn shader and a Sampler Info utility (specfically, its Facing Ratio attribute) and a ramp (its color connected to the Blinn's specularity, and its alpha connected to the Blinn's reflectivity.) This is image based lighting - not with an HDRI as it should be, but with a single raw 2K image of the moon. This sequence was rendered in Mental Ray with Raytracing/Final Gather. As this is just a test, I didn't feel the need to go to all the trouble of creating an HDRI. While this is by no means a stellar result, it is a promising one; I'm considering lighting my car this way. Of course, there are so many ways to skin a cat and I guess 9 tries to get it right. You heard me, cat... Better run.

PaintFX trees and headlights test

This is a test of the PaintFX trees - they don't look photoreal, but for this nighttime sequence they may look real enough. I've got an area light overhead casting a blue light to mimic the moon. The headlights are two spot lights parented to a cube that will eventually be a Corvette. This is just a roughing out and getting a sense of how it will look. Eventually I'll be adding clouds, stars, a moon, a textured road, ground texture, rocks, (possibly some fog) etc.

A work in progress...

Below is a quick test clip - I'm building an existing house (interior as well as exterior) in 3D and compositing the CG footage I render with actual Super8mm footage of the same house. The trick is to match the camera attributes such as focal length of the real world camera with which the original footage was shot in 1966 for some hopefully seamless transitions. This clip is entirely CG to which I added some noise/grain in post. Just a work-in-progress in the embryonic stage - obviously there are a lot more things to model and texture, but I'm pretty excited about how this is turning out so far.

Space chase

Just having some more fun in Maya. Here are three "beauty passes" edited together...