Results tagged “lighting” from Rendered Speechless

I've been planning to write this entry on this night for a long time. Of course I had no idea what kind of day this would turn out to be.

First the good news. I'm keeping my word; I'm finally going to finish what I started. Dreamworks gave me a phone interview a few weeks ago and it went really well. In fact, it was the most enjoyable interview I've had so far. And yet they decided to offer the two remaining positions to the first two candidates. But the recruiter told me not to worry. "Oh, you're so in it's not even funny," she said. The verdict was that if one of the guys they offered it to turned it down, I was in now. If not, then I was in for the next round. Either way, I was in.

Turns out, one of their candidates "didn't work out." I'm in now. I'M MOVING TO CALIFORNIA. I officially start at Dreamworks as a lighting TA (technical assistant) on August 24.

I've deliberately kept this quiet for a couple of reasons. One was that I didn't want to divulge too much during the interview process, more for professional reasons than superstitious ones. The other, and most important reason, was that there are certain people in my life who deserve to hear this news from me personally, not by reading it on a blog. I wanted to make sure everyone found out the way they deserved to find out before I made it public. Today I had lunch with my friends at BWC who helped me get here by printing multiple rounds of resumes and demo reel labels. I felt I owed it to them to at least tell them in person and maybe buy some food for the poor guy who got stuck doing all the printing. And only then, I decided, would I feel comfortable putting it in the blog.

There is still a group of friends who don't know. If any of my A-Phi sisters are reading this, please keep this under your hat -- the big announcement is scheduled for camp and Heather and I have a plan. You know who you are. Pretend you didn't read this :-)

Once I got over the initial panic of extreme stress and change, I was elated. It felt right for the first time since this process started almost exactly a year ago (in fact, my offer came on Wednesday, June 17, and my last day at BWC was Wednesday, June 18 of last year). I got up this morning knowing that as soon as I told my friends at BWC, I could write the blog entry and finally put it out there. And then I read the news that Farrah Fawcett had died.

Not a surprise of course, and to be honest it wasn't something that affected me all that much. I was pretty young when Charlie's Angels was at its peak; in fact, too young to be interested. But everyone knew who Farrah was, including me. In fact, when I was in the third grade we did a play about dental hygiene, and I was assigned the part of Fred Fluoride. I didn't want to be called Fred for obvious reasons so my teacher told me that if I could come up with a girl's name that started with F, I could use that instead. I thought and I thought. For some reason, names like Felicia and Fran never came to mind. I was blank. And then suddenly it hit me: Farrah Fluoride. A star was born.

My friends and I were discussing her death in the car on the way to lunch. After Ed McMahon's death earlier in the week, and given the rule of threes, it stood to reason that Walter Cronkite would be next. Reports had recently surfaced that he was "gravely ill." It made sense.

As it turns out, we were having that conversation at almost the exact moment when Michael Jackson collapsed from cardiac arrest.

It's truly amazing that I got as much work done today as I did. I haven't watched so much media coverage since 9/11. It seems unfair that Farrah's death was almost immediately overshadowed, and then seemingly ignored for lack of shock value compared to the death of Michael Jackson. I certainly never saw it coming. And at the same time, it was entirely fitting that it took over the airwaves. My parents' generation, the Baby Boomers, had Elvis and John Lennon. My generation, Generation X, had Michael Jackson. His career was at its peak when we were just discovering music for the first time. Anyone who didn't have MTV before Thriller certainly had it afterward. There was never a time in our lives when Michael Jackson wasn't famous. And his death really upsets me. I don't particularly mourn the man he had become in the last ten years or so, but I mourn the man he was when he was at his best. I mourn the loss of the possibility, no matter how slight, that he could regain that kind of popularity and respect, create something brilliant and go out on top. He didn't, and there are no more chances. And no princes awaiting his throne. The pop music monarchy has been replaced by mediocrity, its innovation suffocated by the indifference of mass production. No one will ever touch him; no one will ever forget him.

Life goes on. In a few days the shock will wear off and the excitement will return, and I'll be at the beginning of my own brand new life. Unless of course Walter Cronkite dies.

I wasn't even this exhausted when I went to SIGGRAPH.

Over Thanksgiving I gave up on painting and went back to photography. No regrets. I made a ton of shots of creepy antique dolls and came out with five good ones, one or two in particular were probably the best shots I've ever done of anything. I also already had three good shots of abandoned building interiors that I made a few years ago with some great light patterns. So that gave me eight photos. But that wasn't enough.

I was limited to moody studio shots against black in my little extra bedroom, so I needed some variety. I had this great idea to go to the CTC Auto Ranch just north of Denton on I-35 and take pictures of their cars. I've seen this place a million times going to and from Oklahoma, and I always wanted to stop. So I called them and asked if they ever let people take pictures and they said sure--a little reluctantly I thought, but maybe I was imagining it. It's $5 a person to walk through the yard and you can bring your camera. The hitch? They're closed on weekends. I had this brilliant idea on a Thursday night with a beautiful weekend coming up and a rainy Monday and Tuesday right after. So finally Wednesday of the next week I went out there and spent the afternoon. I did almost 200 shots, and again picked five of the best. And the people who work there are great. But being the overachiever I am, I still didn't feel like it was enough.

I had studio shots, some old interior shots and now outdoor shots with some really interesting light patterns. What I didn't have was created light, or even light that was taken from a reference but improved through art. So I sailed up 75 one day looking for fireworks stands. The first one I found was a white one with blue stars sitting against a spectacular sunset. This was a great opportunity because I knew that photography would give me either a great exposure on the sunset or a great exposure on the building, but not both at the same time. So I took multiple exposures and did a digital painting using multiple references. That picture is currently on my home page.

So... one more outdoor shot, although a little more creative than the others. I decided I needed two more fireworks stands because I needed it to be a series with different lighting in each. So I found another on a cloudy, cold afternoon and then one on an even cloudier, colder evening with headlights as the sole light source. I did digital paintings from both, again from multiple exposures (except for the afternoon shot, where one exposure was enough). Now I had a series.

In fact, I had four series: cars, fireworks stands, abandoned buildings and dolls. But it still wasn't enough. I had nothing purely conceptual, and no interiors with artificial light, which is pretty common in the world. And time was running out. Pixar had already taken their job posting off CreativeHeads.net, but before I went into a full-blown panic and subsequent severe depression I decided to check the career postings on their own site and see if the job might still be listed there. Not only was it listed, but the date of the listing was just the day before I looked for it. I was good for probably another week. So I went for it, and that's when it really started to get difficult.

I did a drawing in college that I've always been proud of, and I've even done an animation based on part of this drawing (see Bumps in the Night). So I decided to redo this drawing digitally. After finishing my fireworks stands late last Sunday night (I hope I never have to draw grass again), I took the afternoon off this past Monday, thinking I could start and finish the drawing in about 8 hours. I was way off. Luckily I had already taken Tuesday off in the hopes that I could get the reel edited together and sent to Pixar that day, but it turned out that I needed it to sleep, among other things. I worked on that drawing non-stop until 10am Tuesday morning. The weather was icy and the office was closed, so I would have been home anyway; I went to bed hoping I could get up at 2:30 and the roads would be drivable and I still could go to Richardson, get my new printed resumes and samples, and maybe get the reel edited and out the door. But when I woke up that afternoon things had not improved. In fact, everything was white. For a moment I had to wonder just how long I was out. And then I realized I wasn't leaving the house that day whether I liked it or not, so I might as well do one more drawing.

By about 3:45 Wednesday morning I had a digital drawing of my bathroom with the lights on and light coming through the window and hitting the wall (taken from some earlier photographic references). Not completely realistic but still interesting and a good interior study. I took a shower and got to bed at 4:30, thinking I'd take off Wednesday afternoon to finish everything up (go to Richardson, finish the last edits on the reel, put a book together and go to FedEx). I left work at noon and made it to Richardson but didn't make it back home until 3. I had bought an 8"x8" blank board book at Michael's that I could spray mount a cover, my resume, shot list and some samples into. It took two hours to cut the prints and spray mount them into the book. But it looked great when I was done. I put one of those adhesive CD sleeves on the inside cover and put the DVD inside, and then wrapped the whole thing in Christmas lights wrapping paper with a tag that said, "To: Pixar, From: Your Next Lighting TD." I attached a small keychain flashlight to the package and by this time, it was too late to go to FedEx. In fact, after I had spent 3 hours at my neighbors' Christmas party and then came back to perfect the DVD and wrap the package, it was about 2:30 Thursday morning.

I got it to FedEx on Thursday during my lunch hour. It cost me $50 to ship it overnight; since I had one more day in the week before Christmas, I didn't take any chances. So with the exception of going to work and doing my Christmas shopping in a record 30 minutes on Friday afternoon, I've been sleeping ever since. And I've been generally angry at the world, which I think is a reaction to the abrupt end of extreme stress, sleep deprivation and starting to drink Cokes again after I had quit. I'll tackle that last one in the list tomorrow and see if anything improves.

So now I wait, again. ILM has gone dark on me, I've pretty much given up on getting a response from anyone over there. But that just tells me that there's something better waiting in the wings. I'm out of a job at the end of February, and I've taken an $800/month pay cut just to ensure it lasts that long. So whatever is out there for me better show up pretty soon. But if it's always darkest before the dawn, I guess it's only fitting that it happens on the shortest day of the year. Look for the reel on my site to be updated in the next few days. Merry Christmas!

Here's how to make your own photography studio out of an extra bedroom. This room has more light than anywhere in the house, considering it has three windows and a back door with a window. My mom suggested I go buy black felt to cover the windows so I could control the light better for a still life. It beats only working at night, although I tend to do that anyway.

So here's the thing. I blew off photography early on because I couldn't control the light like I could in a real studio, so I decided to paint a few still lifes instead, thinking what I couldn't do in real life with light, I could do with paint. Well, maybe I could control the light in my paintings but I couldn't control the paint in my paintings. I was working too small and too fast to really do my best. So I gave up on painting and decided to play with pretty much every light I have in my house. I had already bought some colored light bulbs for my still lifes, so all I had to do was improvise some bounce cards and a barn door for the key light. The hardest part though was rim lighting. The white card you see at the top is actually a 16x20 canvas board improvised into a bounce card. It failed, but it made a nice snake light holder for a back light. The blank canvas on the easel came in really handy too--whenever I set the timer on the camera I grabbed that canvas and held it over the top of the setup. It provided just enough bounce light to put some volume into the shadows.

I've learned more about lighting in the last 6 hours than I think I've ever learned in my life. I'm saving the photos for the reel because they are just way too cool for the blog. And no, the car's not going in. I finally figured out how to manually set the exposure on my camera so I might just give that one another try. So stay tuned. It's going to get really interesting in the next few days. And Pixar still has that lighting job listed!

I've been wanting to get this shot for a long time. This is the house next door, and the light is coming from their greenhouse. It would make a really cool painting but I don't have time for that right now, so maybe I can put this photo on my reel along with some other photos and the paintings I'll do over Thanksgiving.

I may not have set up the lights myself, but I know good lighting when I see it. Call it a reference shot. There's some great texture in the car too. I particularly like the green glow coming through the car windows--there's a street light in the distance.

So the still life has been put off due to illness. The day after I set it up, I caught a cold. I spent this past weekend making up sick time that I took during the week. I've just gotten over it and now I'm faced with the holidays and a desperate need to clean my house. The good news though is that I'll have Thanksgiving to myself (eating turkey with Dad a week early), which gives me four solid days to crank out some new work. My mom is sending me some creepy dolls she picked up while antiquing in Kansas and that should give me more than four days of painting (and lighting) material. Apparently one is a dummy that looks like Chucky. I also picked up a book last night on lighting for photography, just to refresh myself on the basics and maybe pick up one or two new ideas.

So I've covered the suffering part. What does the silence refer to? ILM, that's what. And frankly it also refers to some of the suffering. I'm not even hearing crickets from them right now. I sent two messages last week and no response to either. I really hope if I'm no longer in the running that they'll just say so. Until they say anything, however, they will continue to hear from me.

On another note, apparently I'm not completely unemployable... I was offered a job by Sony last week. I ended up turning it down. And it wasn't because I was confident I'd get an offer from ILM; quite the contrary. Given how I felt about my interview performance, and the deafening silence from them since, I have yet to be confident about that. It was mainly because they only hire for the length of the production and I just can't see selling 2/3 of my stuff and moving all the way out there to be out of a low-paying job in a year. Now chances are I could successfully campaign to get on the next production, but who wants that kind of stress? I would much rather spend my energy doing my job to the best of my abilities rather than worrying about how long I'll be able to keep it.

I used the situation to nudge ILM to at least let me know if I was still in the running. Not a word. I wrote them again after I turned down the job, and explained that I am also in a better position to wait for the ideal job now because my contract at Collin County will likely be extended another couple of months (true--I found out the day after I got the offer). Still no response. I really hope they're just busy and that they're not the type of people to hold your future in their hands, make a decision to drop it and then just walk away without a word. I've dealt with that before. It's extremely disrespectful. And it goes against every fiber of my being to not communicate, to not even say, "I got your message, I'm really busy but I'll get back to you soon." I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt for now though. If they're really recruiting like crazy, then they're busy like crazy. I'll send them a nice Happy Thanksgiving message on Monday and hope for the best, at least until I find out that all hope is lost.

Seriously, I'm a big girl. I can take "no" for an answer. What I can't take is no answer for an answer.

It's my first weird still life. I've been wondering what to do with that phone for a long time.

Pixar has a Lighting TD position open. The listing asks for personal work in addition to cg. I know what they're looking for--the ability to light. 3 point studio lighting, creative lighting, lighting for mood--paintings, digital photos, you name it. Now I wouldn't send this photo in a million years, but I just might paint it. I can have a lot more control over lights in a painting than I can in the back bedroom with a few standard bulbs and some bounce off the semi-gloss. And a flashlight. I highlighted the doll's face with a flashlight. It comes out too hot in the photo.

Currently, all my paintings have pretty flat lighting or else are done from old photos, most of which are lit with a flash. So this is my chance to really do something creative with light. I'll have to improvise colors, because I don't have anything colorful I can place over my bulbs that won't catch on fire. What's really going to suck is painting in the dark. If I turn on the regular lights in this room, this gets washed out. So I'll be doing this pretty much in the dark. At least Daylight Savings Time is over, so it's dark when I get home at night. I don't have to fight the sun coming in three windows and the back door.

The possibility of doing this the way it needs to be done, getting it on my reel and getting it to Pixar in time is a long shot, but I'd feel a lot worse if I didn't try at all.

This is as far as it goes. I'll be spending the rest of the week getting my site together and polishing my old compositing projects to put up there with this shot. This was a good lighting and shading project but not so good for compositing, so by the end of the week I should have a good range of work to show off once I fix some problems on the old stuff. I have the files, only one won't open but I don't think it's a disaster yet. I'll know for sure soon enough. I guess I won't be sleeping until tomorrow night. Or I guess that's tonight, it's just 4am now and the two hours ahead of me aren't going to help much. But I'll take what I can get. I think lunch tomorrow (today) will be nap time.

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.

This weekend was an experiment in time management. Friday night, I thought I had the whole weekend to complete this model. I was really looking forward to it. But then I tried to start my car. Bad idea. Dead battery. After an hour of fighting an intermittent car alarm that suddenly couldn't be disabled--apparently the one thing the battery still had enough juice to run--I finally disconnected the horn and gave up, knowing my Saturday morning was gone before it started. On Saturday I got up and with the help of a neighbor, pushed the car out of the driveway enough for him to try to jump start it. Didn't work. So we pushed it back and waited for the tow truck. By 2pm, after a new battery, state inspection, replaced tail light and a new drive belt (it's never just one thing), I was finally back home, broke and pissed. So I took my newly healthy car for a run to Princeton to take some modeling reference shots of the car wash.

I spent the rest of Saturday trying to get as many lighting reference shots as I could. I only have about three left, and those are tough ones. A sunset should be easy, but my entire neighborhood is in shadow. I'll have to find another place to set up the gazing ball and just deal with the crazy looks I guess. The foggy morning is going to be tough. You don't get many of those in June. A cloudy day might be doable in the middle of next week if I can get back from Austin in time, and that's only if the weather forecast is correct. I had a cloudy day for the first half of Saturday, but by the time I got back from the Toyota dealership, there wasn't a cloud in the sky. It seems I can never spend less than three hours there at a time anymore.

So that left today to do some actual modeling. I have the walls, baseboards and most of the window finished. It's gotten a lot easier, it's just tedious. So many small parts everywhere. And I'm a stickler for beveled edges, as there are no hard CG corners anywhere in real life. I have to have edges that catch the light.

I'm taking two trips out of town this week, but I hope to still get all the modeling and texturing done by next Sunday night. It might happen.

More progress. This morning at 6:20 I took some shots of the bathroom with a cloudy sky outside. (And then went back to bed.) Tonight I did the night shots, some with the lights on, some with candles and some with just a nightlight. I downloaded a ton of stock photography for sky backgrounds and lighting references. I did a little more modeling on the claw foot for the tub. All the reference shots I took have been added to the bathroom page, and more will appear as I get them. None have been color corrected, especially since I'm going to do my own interpretation anyway. I have three out of six scenarios shot already--five environment scenarios plus one for the snowman scene. I need a clear morning shot but I might not get it tomorrow because it's meeting day and I have to get out of the house over an hour earlier than usual. But it's not hard to find a clear morning in June. It is hard to find a cloudy day, and I'm going to need that one pretty soon too. Today would have been great if I hadn't been at work. I guess I say that a lot.

Come to think of it, I'm taking my mental ray book with me tomorrow. Things are winding down and you just never know.

I added two more movies to the inspiration page: Wall-e and Horton Hears a Who. It was interesting to see the uniform lighting throughout Horton compared to the different colors and temperatures in Cars and other Pixar work. I'm going to stop collecting references for now though. It's done me a lot of good to collect all that work and put it together for comparison and analysis, and it's given me a lot of ideas. But now it's time to get back to the task at hand.

Since I wasn't able to get started tonight until 9:00, I decided this would be a good time to redo my schedule and finally decide on a character. I did both. The schedule is aggressive but I have little choice at this point. I was able to simplify it to five lighting scenarios per environment and five for the character, which is going to be a snowman. I'm very happy with my choice. It's a relatively simple model and I was able to come up with five really cute ideas for lighting without too much trouble. And I like the fact that one uses the bathroom environment and one uses the car wash. I really hope I don't run out of time because I want to pull this off and do a really good job. I'm a little scared of the amount of time I have left, but I can't get discouraged. I just have to keep going and not stop for anything. Maybe not even for the fourth of July. Or my camping trip in a couple of weeks. But I'll play it by ear.

If I can get ahead on just one thing, I'll feel better. If I can finally finish modeling the bathroom I'll feel a lot better. I've given myself until the end of this coming weekend and that's it. I have to be done.

I'm a few days late in writing this but it's probably for the best. It's been a stressful, even emotional week and as I sit here in bed with my laptop I finally feel like I have enough of a grip on everything to finally put down the whole story. So here goes the Rendered Speechless Prequel, the post that explains it all.

I quit my job last Wednesday. I have accepted a 6-month contract position with Collin County to work on their HUGE web site. Sound crazy? Well, it might be, and then again it might be the best decision I've made in a long time. I started looking a few months ago for a full time job because I felt like I was in over my head at my current job. I was perfect for that position two years ago when our projects were brochure sites, but now we're getting requests for content management systems and other technical requirements that I personally don't understand very well and don't have the time to figure out, at least not there. So having taken my web team as far as I could, I decided it was probably time I moved on, and hopefully into a position that would teach me more about web development than I had been able to learn so far. The Collin County job appeared on my radar months ago thanks to a friend of mine, but I immediately dismissed it because it was a contract position. I need stability and I need that health insurance. So thanks, but back to the drawing board.

Weeks turned into months and I couldn't find anything that fit. Design, development, you name it, it didn't feel right, I was underqualified, I was overqualified. I applied, I sent out resumes, I got no response. I saw jobs I had applied for disappear off the boards without so much as an email of rejection. I was frustrated and trapped. And the frustration of knowing my team needed a more skilled leader started to show through in my attitude at work and my stress level. Something had to give, but I was running out of options.

One day in February I got an email invitation to a Wednesday night showing of some animated shorts at UTD. Sounded like it was up my alley but I know how lazy I can be and it was a last minute decision to actually show up there. But I did, and I was inspired. Something that had been asleep inside me for a long time started to open its eyes and look around. I walked out thinking, "I need to be doing this again."

And that was the last I thought about it. At least until March, when I applied for yet another job and saw the posting disappear seemingly right before my eyes. It was a position a mile from my house in McKinney, and getting rid of my commute to Richardson was looking really, really good. The job itself wasn't the most exciting but I knew I could do it and probably quite well, and getting home at 5 would be a welcome change. I built a killer application, I got my hopes up. And then, poof. Gone.

So that night at about 11:30, having nothing left to lose except sleep, I looked at the ReelFX web site, which was as far as I was concerned the Portal of the Unattainable Dream. I explored, I looked at their job postings. I saw one I liked: Lighter/Compositor. It was my passion at the Viz Lab; I knew I could do it but it's been a long, long time. I filled out the form and applied anyway. What could it hurt? I knew I wouldn't hear back, but at least I would have finally applied for something I really wanted. I would have responded to disappointment by taking action.

And then something strange happened. As I sat there contemplating what I had just done, thinking of how much laughter my work would get if someone at ReelFX actually looked at my site, I started to wonder, why not build a new reel? I've already applied so I won't be rushed to come up with something brilliant before the posting is gone, instead I can take my time while I wait for the next one to go up. And by then perhaps they will recognize my name. You never know. But it was a big job. Could I do it? Could I tackle something that huge in my free time and see it through?

And then reality hit. What free time? I feel like when I'm not working, I'm in my car either going to work or coming from work. My life was about work and whatever it took to get there, leave there, or just plain keep the job itself. If I were to take this on, something had to change.

But that's where it got complicated. I already needed a new job, but I couldn't just get another full time job and quit in 3 to 6 months when I got my reel done and got the job I really wanted (optimism). "Sorry, didn't really want this job, had something better in mind..." Uh, no. That wouldn't be fair. What I needed was a CONTRACT job, something that would pay the rent and be closer to home. Something that had a beginning and an end, so there would be no surprises when I left.

Gee, didn't I hear something about a contract web developer job at Collin County?

Sure enough, the posting was still up. So I applied and here I am, ready to start on June 23. And as if I haven't given enough reasons why this is a good idea already, here's the biggest one of all. I'm going to learn a TON here. I'm going to learn what I couldn't learn at BWC because I didn't have time and didn't know where to start. So no matter what happens, in 6 months I'll be more marketable as a web developer than I ever was before. There's even a chance I could replace my boss when he leaves to go into politics. If I need to stay in this industry, I can. But I'm hoping I won't.

So that's it. It was just a few days after I made the decision to get back into animation that I got the invitation to the Short Guys portfolio review, and the rest is history (see the "How to be a lighter/compositor" post from last March). I took that as I sign that I was on the right track, probably for the first time since I decided to go back to school. It's been just over 3 months since I decided to go back into CG and look how far I've come. Not only that, but they've already hired my replacement at BWC, someone I recommended. That's right, in only 2 days they've hired one of my former students to take over my position, and she's someone who was not only in between jobs at just the right time, but who can really take that web team where it needs to go. Things seem to be working out all the way around.

So I have one more week at BWC, a short trip to Austin and then Lake Bridgeport, and then I'll be getting off at 5 every day, just a mile from home. It's getting very close to SIGGRAPH already, and I plan to have a reel to show at the job fair. My evenings are about to get very busy. But at least it won't be because of traffic anymore. Stay tuned!

One last happy thought: I saw Kung Fu Panda last night. Awesome! It inspired me (so to speak) to make an inspiration page. It contains screen shots of all the CG scenes I could get my hands on that showed interesting or just plain beautiful lighting. I may also add paintings and photos and any other examples I can find of creative lighting. Right now it's mostly comprised of Pixar's work but hey, might as well start at the top.

It's nice to have a passion again.

This pages contains images showing different CG lighting scenarios. Most of these are from Pixar, mainly because they were the easiest to find but also because Pixar's work is the highest quality. There is much more to lighting than reality; to create truly beautiful work you have to go beyond realism and into fine art. All the photos and gazing balls in the world won't get you here. So, this collection will continue to grow as an artistic reference library.

I won't go so far as to call this a wasted weekend but I didn't get done what I had hoped. Saturday was worthless. I had no energy at all, couldn't sleep enough. I guess three weeks of sleep deprivation finally caught up with me. So I wrote that day off hoping Sunday would be more productive. And it was, for chores like laundry and cleaning the branches out of the yard, but suddenly it was too dark to go back to the car wash and get new pictures, and a run through the Deep Ellum Arts Festival took too much out of me to start on my bathroom sketches when I finally had time to do it. It occurs to me though that if I don't create some structure soon, the chores will always win. So I'm going to make a schedule for myself. We had to do it in 617 and it was a great exercise. Tomorrow I'm going to try to figure out a realistic deadline for these projects and maybe some realistic hours to work on them. And hopefully I can keep enough flexibility on the weekends to at least do the dishes and get out of the house a little.

One cool thing happened though... I was driving home at 4am Sunday morning (don't ask) through Princeton and I noticed the car wash had two street lights shining on it, one orange and one white. I decided then and there that I definitely want to set up a night scene with street lights. I had the camera and the gazing ball with me (because you just never know) but I couldn't see getting out there at 4am by myself shooting pictures. But this will happen. Something to remember when I set up my schedule tomorrow.

By the way, if you're wondering what the deal with the gazing ball is, it will all become clear when I start doing some lighting. So stay tuned.

This is the idea I came up with last night. The cool thing about living in an 80-year-old house is that there are some really neat interiors and objects to work with. I can do all kinds of things with this room... daylight (it has a window), night with candles or a nightlight (maybe one of each), artificial light, etc. I'm dying to model that claw foot tub anyway.


Actually I think I'm going to start with this one. I can accomplish quite a bit with this one environment.

Oh yeah, I did what I said I would and updated the motion page today. It's now separated into "Lighting & Compositing" and "Experimental & Video." Someday maybe I can take all that other graphic design work down and just focus the entire site on this. What a nice day that will be. It's good to have a goal.

What an incredible day I had. I made this decision to get back into 3D only a couple of weeks ago, and on Wednesday I got an email from A Bunch of Short Guys. I've been on their mailing list for a few months now but haven't made any of the meetings yet. This one sounded intriguing: a portfolio workshop with a panel consisting of two guys from the animation industry and two from games. What timing, right when I'm trying to think of a good project that will help me ramp back up. I thought, my work is six years old but maybe it still has some value, maybe I can learn something. I would really like to know what's changed in the industry in the last six years. Who cares if I'll likely be the oldest one there with old-looking work compared to what the students are doing now. So I decided to go. And I decided to put everything into it. I spent Wednesday, Thursday and Friday after work designing and printing resumes, shot lists, business cards and making DVDs. I branded everything just like the web site, created a complete package. I even did title screens on the DVD in the same style. I put just the three projects that showed my lighting and compositing skills (Cold Front, the bug ship, the hippo) on the DVD and hoped for the best, fully expecting to tell them my little story, how since my work is old I'm wondering what kind of work gets their attention these days, what software should I look at, etc. It was great, I got to talk to Tim Lannon from ReelFX and Ludo Michaud from Janimation. And here's what I learned.

First, if I were trying to get a job, I would need to be very clear about what I wanted to do. I had a nicely branded package but nowhere on there did it say "lighter/compositor." They need to know that up front so they're not wasting time guessing at what you want to do for them. Along those same lines, I decided I should probably reorganize my motion page on the web site into "lighting and compositing" and "experimental and videography." I plan on doing that tomorrow, including taking off the broadcast reel. Seriously, who needs that? I'm probably infringing on too many copyrights with that one anyway.

Second, cut the reel time in half. It's 4 minutes now, bring it down to 2. (The hippo takes up two minutes all by itself.)

Third, to really work up my lighting skills, I need to be lighting characters and environments. Different times of day, different moods. Effects-based lighting is also useful.

Fourth, Shake is on the way out. I guess that explains the relatively low price. Ludo says it will probably be integrated into Final Cut Pro before it's all over and then it will disappear. They use Nuke and Fusion these days... I looked them both up, and Nuke was developed by Digital Domain, and the price is crazy. Fusion doesn't give a price on their web site, they want you to contact them. You know what that means. Besides, it's Windows-only, and Nuke works on the Mac. So I'm looking at Nuke and my plan so far is to get the 30-day free trial when I'm ready to do some compositing, then use the hell out of it for 30 days. Who knows, I might just love it and be able to work something out later. After Effects isn't bad, but it's not node-based and I absolutely hate having to physically click a stopwatch on the left side of the screen to set a keyframe.

Fifth, to show compositing skills, you can show different render passes. One of the game guys actually told me this when the whole room was watching my reel (intimidating)... he said the bug was "really impressive" and it was a great example of where I could render out a specular pass, diffuse pass, ambient occlusion, shadow pass, etc and then the final composite. Very cool.

Now here's the coolest thing of all. I had brought two DVDs with me and one was waiting in line to be shown to the room while the other was with my resumes. When I sat down to talk to Tim and Ludo, one of them got the DVD I had with me at the time but I didn't notice which one (I kept turning around to hear J talk). When I had finished showing the other one to the group, I walked back to my seat with the disc in my hand, and Ludo said, "Can I steal that from you?" HELL YEAH!!! He also said I should put the hippo first. J said the hippo was too long and I agree with him... I remember my projects that first year or so, I produced animations the same way I write: long and eventually to the point, if you're lucky...

Last night when I was testing the DVDs on my player, I noticed two things that I hadn't noticed before. One, the shadow under the hippo was a little too dark. The second one was that the shadow under the bug ship was a little too blue. Ludo said the exact same things to me today and that just freaked me out. Actually it was great because it told me that I still have a good eye and that I can trust it.

So I'm totally pumped now. I needed a good shot in the arm and I got such good feedback today that I feel like I can do anything now. I didn't get ridiculed, I didn't get "your stuff looks really old," what I got was validation and some really good advice. So I'm going to start with environments, and I have the perfect idea. But I'll save that for the next entry.

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.