Results tagged “Maya” from Rendered Speechless

This is better. There's a much clearer indication of a window in the room, and the early morning light with the incandescent light in the background makes a nice primary color palette. I got rid of a lot of physically accurate yet unnecessarily distracting shadows too. I may still bring out the hand holding the toothbrush a little more because there's not much contrast over there, but this is definitely enough to start shading. I did this with one diffuse pass that included shadows and then composited an ambient occlusion pass over it. Wish I could get a separate shadow pass that worked, but for one pass this is pretty good.

What's up with Maya's shadow pass anyway? I can't turn off self-shadowing (I set it to "ignore" but it doesn't). I'm ok with that except the rendered image has negative cast shadows and positive self shadows. If it were one way or the other for both kinds, that would be fine, but doing it both ways in the same image makes it completely unusable. How am I supposed to demonstrate compositing when I can't even get a shadow pass? If I had about $900 I'd upgrade to Maya 2008. Don't know if it's any better but it can't hurt. Maybe in a few months.

I thought it was an attainable goal. But considering how much I had to read and learn before I could get anywhere, I still made a lot of progress and I'm glad I took Monday off. I learned about area lights, something I didn't have in Maya 3, and I learned about Maya's shadow pass, which doesn't work very well with mental ray (despite many wasted hours trying to get it to work). I also learned about ambient occlusion passes, which I LOVE. And I did a lot of lighting and a lot more tweaking. And there is even more tweaking to come when I get the shading done but at least the basic lights are in.

My goal for today was to have a finished shot posted on my site, and revise the site design and get my promo materials laid out. I did redesign the home page but since I don't have a finished shot yet, the new home page isn't up. I can actually see the shading and light tweaking taking me the rest of the week just on this shot. That's annoying, but if that's really the case then I'll be doing the night shot in addition to this and leaving it at those two. The night shot has a lot of lighting challenges and if I can pull it off, it will really show off my skills. There's really not much to the shot with the toilet, and the one that has him on the sink is another early morning scene, which I have covered here. I'll save the toilet shot for last in case I have the time but I'm not betting on it at this point.

There's one thing that's annoying me about this shot. He's standing in front of a window. I feel like that should be more apparent, and at the same time, it's very early morning just as the sun is coming up so there's not a lot of light coming in yet anyway. I don't know. I probably need to stop looking at it for a while. Makes me glad I have a job to go to tomorrow.

Despite my three day weekend (which I will make up for over the next few days at work), I still stayed up until 7:30 this morning, then took a 6-hour nap, so it feels like it's too early to go to bed right now (at almost 2:30). But I guess I should. I should be proud of this. I think I am, I've just stared at it so long that all I can see when I close my eyes is a white chalky potato under colored lights.

I created four shots to light and shade before SIGGRAPH, but I'll be focusing on just one this weekend. This shot will be the basis for my promo materials. I'll light him in this scene and then render him without the background, leaving him on a small area of tile (no step) on a white background. That should make a pretty versatile image for print. This and the other three stills will be my focus until SIGGRAPH, and hopefully only for the next week as I would still like to give people something to see before they get on the plane to LA. Beyond that it will be too late, and one week in advance of the show is REALLY cutting it close as it is.

Currently all four shots are lit with Maya's default light and they all use a basic white Lambert shader. Using a white shader makes it easy to set up the key and fills without getting confused by shader complexity and color bleed. Once the basic lights are set up I'll do the shading and then come back to the lighting, making sure everything works together like it should. The next update will still use the white Lambert but the lights should convince you it's an early morning scene. Once I pull that off, the shaders are just gravy.

I consolidated the slide show tonight, taking it down to only six categories. Navigation is a lot easier now. The four shots I set up last night and tonight are included in the new Lighting & Shading category, and I hope to show a progression for each one through lighting, shading, tweaking the lights and then the final render. And all in a week if I'm lucky. And since we're hoping for miracles now, we might as well look for 99c gas and affordable health care while we're at it. And peace in the middle east. Maybe even a presidential candidate to vote for rather than against. But I digress.

Did that sound pessimistic? Actually this is the most optimistic I've been in a while. I'm sure I can do one shot this weekend and do it well. I always want to do more and I always want it to be perfect, but like I said a few posts ago, quality is more important than quantity. I'll be writing that on a few hundred post-its and putting them around the house soon.

The rig is almost done. I still need to add some influence objects in his fingers and shoulders to help them retain their shape when the joints bend. I also want to do a blend shape that turns his mustache up or down according to mood. I've hidden the extra parts here and put him in xray mode so you can see the skeleton and controls better. Did you know a potato has knees?

I got desperate this weekend trying to get the rig to work and decided that one way or another I was going to get those Maya 3 files open. So I tracked down my old Maya CD (I really do keep everything) and installed it on my Dell laptop running XP. I wasn't sure if it was going to work considering I used to run it under NT, but it did work and I was in business. I grabbed the files I got off backup a few days ago and tried to open one... error. And that told me it wasn't a Maya version problem, it was a file corruption problem. I would have given up at that point except that when I was digging for the Maya CD I also found all my animation files on CD. So I had another copy of them backed up directly to CD from Windows. Those files worked in both versions. Within minutes I was looking at the rig I had been needing all along.

You know what? That rig wasn't that great. But it gave me a place to start and now I have a working rig for the potato. Note to self: Don't back up Windows files using Mac OS9. Not that OS9 is an option anymore, but lesson learned. (When in doubt, zip your files first.)

So I have less than three weeks left and ideally I need to have something on my site in about one week, so as much as I hate it I've had to make a hard decision. Considering what I want to do in this field is lighting, animation is not my priority. I like following the logical order of production but in this case I need rendered images and I need them fast. So I will set the bar a little lower and hope I can fly over it. I'm going to use the rig to pose the potato in three key static poses (one from each scene), and then texture and light the hell out of them. Worst case, I'll have three really good rendered images on my site before SIGGRAPH. Best case, I'll get that done in a week and go ahead and animate it as the last step. I'm not expecting that to happen though (at least not to my high standards) so I'm going to put the bulk of my remaining energy into texturing and lighting. And I'm going to try not to be mad about it.

I used to know how to do this. In fact, I save everything; I even have my Maya files from my animation class back in 2001. So I dug them up, hoping to remind myself of how I rigged my characters. You know what? Maya 8.5 won't open a Maya 3 file. So much for that.

So I read the chapter on character rigging in my Maya book and found a couple of tutorials on the Internet. It wasn't the in-depth training I was hoping for but it was enough to get me started. And it's interesting, once I started organizing my models for different scenes, little things started to come back to me. For instance, I was in the middle of creating different facial and clothing setups for different scenes, and it suddenly occurred to me that I could add an attribute to my character and write an expression that turns different setups on and off according to that attribute. So I created an attribute called "Setup," which can be set to "normal," "morning," "day" or "night." Then I wrote an expression to turn on or off the different setup groups depending on how that attribute was set. The pic below shows "normal" next to "morning." And instead of showing and hiding things manually, all I had to do was use a drop menu.


Of course any seasoned Maya veteran probably thinks that's pretty basic knowledge, but I'm accessing parts of my brain that haven't been used in over six years. I'm just glad something's still there.

Speaking of buried knowledge, I got my animation project web site files off backup as well. Going through that site was beyond enlightening. I found a story synopsis I wrote but never developed. It was really smart, I'm going to have to put that on the future project list for sure. I'd also like to redo the project I did develop; I've considered that for years because it was a really good concept. I wish I had posted more information on the project I did develop but what I did post brought back a few things about modeling that I wish I had thought of earlier. The biggest find though was a presentation I did on advanced lighting techniques. It may even be a miracle I found it because I think I was about to embark on a pretty inefficient approach. Now I remember what I need to do, and finding that information even prompted a revision to the schedule. Lighting before texturing, not the other way around. It's starting to make sense again.

And you know what? I did some pretty good work back then, considering there was no such thing as an ambient occlusion pass. Can't wait to see what I can do now.

Somehow I still have to work in some serious web site revisions this weekend (and some serious sleep). Given the lack of official recruiting at SIGGRAPH by companies I was hoping to see, I'm going to have to get my name out there ASAP in case I can meet with anyone on the side. At least I have some friends in high places.

This is my latest weeknight yet. I'm sure glad it's Friday.

I still have to model the towel, shower cap, newspaper and step stool. The shower cap is the only one I'm worried about, but then I was worried about the mustache and I ended up doing that in 3.5 hours. It took the weekend though to do the teeth and the shoes, and that's because I decided to learn about displacement mapping at the same time, although I didn't use it very much in the end. So here's an account of the last few days of modeling the details.

The mustache and teeth are each single modeled surfaces. I used displacement mapping to do the lace holes on the shoes and the pattern on the hat. The shoes, like the hat, are modeled from multiple surfaces. I had to do an actual render instead of a screen capture this time because the displacement maps won't show up in a screen capture, but there are no lights or shaders as of yet. Therefore, there are also no colors or cast shadows. The lighting is weird but you get the point. He's a happy potato.

I'm glad I took the time to learn how displacement mapping works, especially with mental ray. It's does a terrific job, better than Maya alone. I also tried Maya's Sculpt Geometry tool along the way but hated the lack of control and the crazy amount of tesselation needed to make it look smooth. I even looked into ZBrush, which I LOVE, but can't afford right now. And they don't have a free trial for the Mac so that's on hold for now. But although I ended up modeling almost everything, I learned a ton and I found another toy for later on. So what if I'm a day behind. (Yikes.)

Models will go into the slide show tomorrow. I need sleep. Funny how that keeps coming up.

I decided after I finished the toilet model using subdivision surfaces that I would go back and redo the sink. It took about 10 hours to do that basin. It was still hard but I think it might be a slightly simpler surface now and it has some really nice round edges. So then I decided I'd redo the bathtub too. That was the easiest thing I've done so far. I simplified the poly model and then converted it to subdivision surfaces. It didn't need much tweaking after that. It was done in an hour. I like all the models a lot better now, especially since I don't have to worry about facets anymore. And despite the marathon session that took me into the early morning hours today (as in 6am when the sun was coming up) I'm going to keep at it until I drop. Yes I did get some sleep. Not much though. I'm on a roll.

All the new models are posted on the bathroom page with their polygonal counterparts (which no longer exist in my Maya file). I need a nap.

The main part of the bathtub is done! I learned (or re-learned) a lot about modeling this week just getting that one object finished. I'm wishing I had taken the week to go through the Maya tutorials instead, maybe I would have worked more efficiently. I'm impatient though. But the more I think about it, the better off I'll probably be if I do just that. It's better than starting a bunch of bad habits and getting stuck with them. Maybe I'll tackle some of those tutorials after dinner.

The tub is in the slide show on the bathroom page. I'll keep adding objects as I get them.

I'm working in Maya again! And I'm not as lost as I expected to be. However, I've tried to model the bathtub four different ways now. At least I feel like the fourth one is the charm. I just have a sliver of a tub but I think I finally have the right approach. Hopefully I can finish it tomorrow night and get going on the rest of the room. I had a feeling my first deadline wouldn't be realistic, but I'm still hopeful that I can have the room modeled by the end of the weekend. I might not be able to rest on Friday night though.

Major client presentation tomorrow, must sleep now. How annoying.

Well, I made a schedule. I doubt it's realistic but it keeps me moving. In fact, I took an example from the day job and signed up for a free account with Basecamp. It's an online project management system that lets me track to do lists and milestones for my project, and it emails me 48 hours before a milestone is due. Pretty cool huh. I set up all my to do lists and milestones today and now that it's all written down somewhere and saved, I feel like I have a better handle on it. Even if it's crazy. For example, I'm trying to get this all done by the end of May, despite the fact that I'm lucky if I have 3 hours in an evening to work. I'm putting a lot of pressure on my weekends and I'm even trying to take Friday nights off, but I have a feeling I'll be playing catch up on those nights. At least I probably will in the beginning when I'm trying to get the hang of Maya again. But I had to schedule a night where I could pay bills and do dishes and clean the litter box. Otherwise none of this matters. The cat and the creditors will come after me.

So now that I have an idea of how ridiculously hard I have to work to make my end of May deadline, I made some actual progress tonight. I sat in various painful positions on my bathroom floor drawing sketches I can use to start modeling in Maya. I didn't do details like lights or faucets but I have three pages of the larger objects, which is enough to get me started. They're posted in the slide show on the bathroom page.

Tomorrow I actually start using some software. Actually, that would be today. Yikes.

Glenn and I drove around a lot today looking for interesting outdoor environments I can model and light. The guys I talked to yesterday said I could just use someone else's environment (giving them credit of course) and light it, but since I really want to get back into Maya, I decided I'd spend the extra time and effort creating something from scratch. We finally found this abandoned car wash on 380 in Princeton. Not too complicated a model, and it has some nice qualities, allowing light to pass through and providing a good amount of shadows. Today was pretty cloudy, which is one of the lighting scenarios I want to explore. We did some shots with my gazing ball but they didn't come out very well, so I may go back out there next weekend and try again. This is a good start though.

Welcome to my project blog. I'm starting this so I can track my progress on some CG projects I want to complete in the next few weeks (optimistic). Web-based project blogging is a habit I developed at the Viz Lab and can't seem to shake. Not a bad thing though -- the process is often as interesting as the result, which is probably why I'm addicted to it. I've named this blog Rendered Speechless because of the tie to CG (rendering) and the unapologetic irony of naming a blog "speechless," which is something I rarely am, especially to those who know me. I just have to be careful to follow the rules though, because rules are there to keep everyone safe... no talking about work (that's going to be hard because I have a lot to say) and no talking about anything else that might get me in trouble (and I have things to say there too). No, nothing illegal... but if these projects serve their purpose, you'll find out what I'm talking about anyway, when the time is right.

So about me. I graduated from the Viz Lab in 2002. Yes, that was six years ago (see my Viz work here). And yes, I actually graduated, with a degree and everything. It was a blast. I found that I most enjoyed -- and excelled at -- lighting and compositing, and frankly, I miss it. Disney even tried to recruit me based on my lighting/compositing work in my second year, but I didn't bite (really wanted to finish that thesis). I miss the whole deal, even the stuff I wasn't so good at. So why didn't I immediately go out and get a job doing what I loved? Many reasons. First, I graduated right after 9/11. Creative jobs were scarce and the few that were left were contract jobs. I needed money to move, I had to start paying off loans, I hadn't had health insurance in three years... you get the point. Second, I saw many of my friends going to California and working 80 hours a week for tiny apartments they still couldn't afford and I just couldn't see myself doing that. I already had three bedrooms worth of crap and I was old enough to want a life after work, something it seemed my friends weren't getting. Sticking close to home seemed the thing to do. So I went to the software side, flight simulation programming. Lucrative, but dull as a doorknob. Nevertheless, I did it for four years, until I thought I would lose my mind if I didn't get back into creative in some way.

So I got back into creative by joining a design firm. I'm still there. That's all I'll say about that for now.

I miss CG. It's what I dreamed of doing, what I studied my brains out for, what they even gave me a fellowship to learn. I've been out of it for six years and I'm dying to get back in. But I know I have a tough road ahead of me. I've tinkered around with Maya a few times since I got out of school, the most recent attempt being the most discouraging. I was very upset at how much I had forgotten. But I've decided to stop being upset and just jump in and learn it all again, whatever it takes. I have Maya 8.5 for Mac, and while I can still use After Effects, I'd rather save some money and buy Shake so I can learn a node-based compositing package. Maybe by the time I have something to composite I can afford to add that one to my arsenal. After all, I don't just want my old skills back, I want new skills. I want it all. I can do this. I AM NOT AFRAID.

Now, all I need is an idea... and see? Speechless IS ironic.