Nighttime Confessions of Inverted Normals

2011-06-22T11:31:00.005+02:00

We recently finished our graduation film and released the website, facebook page and the awesome intense teaser trailer online! For more information check out the website and watch that brief but awesome trailer!

Trailer:
http://www.vimeo.com/25191091

Website:
http://www.macncheese.nl/

Have fun!

Roy Nieterau

Tum dum dum

2011-01-07T00:10:00.000+01:00

Been a modelin'

VFX project

2010-12-27T16:03:00.001+01:00

VFX project we did for "Foeksia de Miniheks". CG teapot, alls 3d.
End result:

Making of:

Character design

2010-12-27T16:01:00.001+01:00

quickie sculpt and rendertest

Quick sketch blabla

2010-12-16T20:51:00.001+01:00

Possibly for graduation project? The fast one :3

Face evaluation

2010-12-10T14:17:00.003+01:00

Well, the face I was working on seemed to have alot of problems. With the help of the kind people at Zbrushcentral and a pair of fresh eyes I managed to spot, and hopefully fix, quite a few. This isn't final, and I'm not sure if it's at all an improvement :3

Concept art for Graduation project

2010-12-10T14:11:00.004+01:00

Some Concept Character Designs for our graduation film I've sketched in the last few days.
Damn, haven't been drawing for a while! I think the last one's pretty cool, this is based on a sketch by Joscha van Deijk

Started on the torso

2010-12-09T01:04:00.000+01:00

It's supposed to be leather armour... :3

Worked on it some more

2010-12-05T20:13:00.003+01:00

Added some skin detailing and couldn't resist trying out a moustache. Hair is not final of course ;D

Free time sculpting

2010-12-02T20:06:00.003+01:00

Practicing :3 Comments and critique welcome.

And some more...

2010-12-02T18:30:00.001+01:00

There we go.

Making way

2010-12-02T18:28:00.003+01:00

Well, we've all been lured around by schoolprojects... not much to show for unfortunately. I made these in my free time.

FumeFX testing

2010-02-18T16:28:00.002+01:00

I switched to FumeFX to create more realistic results with shorter calculation and rendertimes, here's the first test:

Maya Fluid Testing

2010-02-16T12:54:00.004+01:00

First attempt at creating fire in maya, using the built in fluid system
(realsitic fire is tricky in maya)

Second attempt, more relaxed fire with whispy smoke
(damn long render and calculationtime:S)

Thinking about using FumeFX for better and faster results

Blah

2010-01-10T14:55:00.002+01:00

Some renders of the same bust, still not really finished...

What is here, in this upward direction?

2009-12-23T12:35:00.002+01:00

Soooo. Dead site, I reckon? Just a quick update for some would-be continuity!

We're actually all busy with our internships; Tom and I are busily at work at Rosto A.D. in Amsterdam and René and Roy are slacking off (hurr hurr) at House of Secrets in Hilversum. So no updates as of yet! As we're not allowed to show off or work just yet. Boohoo.

HOWEVER, Consurgo (the short by Tom, René and I) is DONE rendering and compositing! Just a few minor tweaks (and music and sound effects that we're trying to arrange) and the whole thing is finished! HA! Don't know if we can sitll be proud of it, or if we think we can do soooo much better already, but one thing is certain; we have learned A LOT and it was a great experience :) Can't wait to start the next one, actually!

So, I don't know what the other guys are doing in their free time, but I've moved to Amsterdam (for the internship) and I've been travelling! Annecy, Venice, Stockholm, Brussels, whatever! I have tried to do some 3d work in my spare time, but have come up pretty short. Just a quick modeling of my old WoW character (female Orc Warrior) that I would REALLY like to work out sometime. Here it is, anyway, dunno whne I'll get the time to work on it some more. Now, back to rigging!

-Gijs щ(◕‿‿◕щ)

Still Comping

2009-09-22T14:00:00.016+02:00

Rendering has been a real bitch....
We practically re-animated the whole short, so I kinda had to start over again. I don't really have time to composit yet, but here are some previews I made for testing stuff out.
We're now finishing up shot # 28 of 39. We've been rendering for 3 weeks now, on two quad-core machines (not full-time though), but still, it's going pretty fast:D

Busting Some Heads

2009-09-15T14:21:00.006+02:00

Hey there,

As my fellow team members may seem dead, I will show a sign of life again...
This is what I've been doing for the last week. I created a very very basic Bust in Maya,
My goal was to create a realistic male Bust, I've never done this before (as I always tend to lean towards chracatures) So, very exciting! It took me a while to get all the proportions working for me, I tried as much as possible not to use any references.

The topology is realy bad, I'm actually waiting for Zbrush 3.5 (especially the new GoZ feature!!!)
to retopo this guy. I wanted to do some rendering and compositing tests, so I decimated my model from the highest subd, from about 3.000.000 to about 3.000 polys. So i'm not using displacement or even bumpmaps (as my model is nog UVed or detailed yet).

Maya gave me a lot of issues, so I thought I'd go back to my old friend 3DS Max, and used Vray for the passes, here you can see the composit sheet, very basic. I made this setup, so I can re-use it later with my finalized model.

Well, here's the final:

I also used the basemesh bust to create these characters. Just a Quick study with some stereotype features, planning to create more.

I hope you liked this,

Tom

Rendering away

2009-07-04T14:59:00.004+02:00

Here is an image I rendered a few days ago. I saw this amazing WIP post on zbrush central by Ryan Kingslien. He used zbrushes new decimation master to export his high-poly mesh to maya. and photographed it with mentalray, an amazing result.

Here's my attempt:

Skin shading Exercises

2009-07-04T14:56:00.005+02:00

I've been testing out mentalrays SSS system, pretty hard to tweak everyting realistically...
Here are my best results:

Compositing My Ass off

2009-05-26T23:13:00.004+02:00

Animation was finally catching up, so I got to start rendering... After a lot of issues, we finally got it to work!
These are previews of shot 2 till 10... The background is a still images, as we use a fixed camera. The characters were rendered with shadows and AO, to be composited onto the still image backround.
I used maya 2009's passes system, it gave me both a lot of trouble and a lot of control and freedom. I used beauty/diffuse/indirect/specular and ambient occlusion passes to create this final look. A lot of post-work was done as well, using solids and textures with blendmodes.
We still have a few moths left now, finishing everything up...
This is our final look, hope you like!

Showreel Craze!

2009-05-26T22:44:00.008+02:00

Hey Guys,

As my classmates are showing off their skills in these awesome reels, I want to show my work too.. Took me a hell lot of work, but it's finally finished!!!
Check it out!

The BIG one, Sorenson 3 codec, 256 mb
Smaller version, H264 codec, 91.5 mb
Small Ugly version, H264 LQ codec, 42 mb

Showreel Insanity

2009-05-20T17:09:00.007+02:00

And here's mine, as promised!

Download Quicktime versions:

Sorenson codec:
Showreel Gijs van Kooten 2009 (96.5 mb) (.mov)

H.264 codec:
Showreel Gijs van Kooten 2009 (97 mb) (.mov)

Streaming:
Showreel Gijs van Kooten 2009 (youtube)
Showreel Gijs van Kooten 2009 (vimeo)

Showreel Madness

2009-05-14T12:58:00.002+02:00

Hey Guys!

I've finally finished my showreel. It took some time, but I had to finish it as soon as possible because I'll have to start looking for an internship. Finally next year we can do an internship, something I've been waiting for a long time, and I'm still looking around and trying to find the right place to go. Meanwhile, why don't you just check out my website and my showreel again. In return I'll try to keep you all posted!

Download Quicktime Versions:

Sorenson Codec:
Showreel Roy Nieterau 2009 (108 mb) (.mov)
Showreel Roy Nieterau 2009 (108 mb) MIRROR (.mov)

H264 Codec:
Showreel Roy Nieterau 2009 (48 mb) (.mov)
Showreel Roy Nieterau 2009 (48 mb) MIRROR (.mov)

Alternative Streaming link:
Showreel Roy Nieterau 2009 (Youtube) - Don't forget to click on the HD button.

Check it out!
- Roy

Is that a head?

2009-05-13T01:53:00.004+02:00

Yes it is. It damn well is. It's actually the robot's head! Which I modelled! Tom did the texturing, as always. This is just a turntable I rendere dout for my demo reel. I WOULD TOTALLY POST MY DEMO REEL, but I still have TWO unrendered shots in it due to a multitude of problems. I'm actually rendering out one of them right now using a plug in that allows you to batch render straight from your renderview in maya. Mayabatch.exe has forsaken me once more!

So, hopefully I can show you tomorrow or the day after my full resolution demo reel that also features this shot AND a rendered walk cycle of the total robot! Fancy.

-Gijs щ(◕‿‿◕щ)

CAN YOU FEEL THE BASS?

2009-05-13T01:48:00.002+02:00

I sure can't! Hence we have Tim de Man!

Yes yes, a very old friend of mine from elementary school. While I was painting funky pictures on my computer screen, he went ahead and became a musician! Isn't that neat? Since he's interested in making music for film, and we're interested in making films with music in them, it seemed like a very logical choice! Although logic, to me, is a weird thing. As 1+1=2, is classified as being logical. So, if 1+1 would equal 3... Then you'd have more logic...?

Regardless, Tim does alot of funky stuff which you check out here and here. He even made a few samples that he thought would go nice with our mood and story. We picked one, but I won't post it yet. Hur hur. He's gonna match it to our film as soon as we have a final final final editing. Which should be in two weeks. Hopefully sooner.

It's gonna be awesome =3

-Gijs щ(◕‿‿◕щ)

An end of things!

2009-05-13T01:37:00.003+02:00

Soooo, long time no see from me. So here a PERSONAL update! The reason for the lack of updates has been because of a lot of things. Render issues, me not working for like two weeks because I've been skateboarding like all Hell (broke up with my girlfriend of 2,5 years, so I gotta do something, right?), production being kind of slooooooooooow. But, the deadline is in two weeks! And we're never gonna make it!

The deal is this: in two weeks, we will have the entire short animated, and 1/3 of it rendered. This will be enough to get our grades in school, and we'll complete the film after that. AS FOR THIS FINAL EFFORT: the entirety of the Steamteam (hopefully!) will come to my house once more next week, AND BY GOD, WE WILL ANIMATE! WE WILL KEY THOSE FRAMES, AND COMP THOSE SEQUENCES! WE WILL SMASH KEYBOARDS, CONTROL Z OBSESSIVELY, INCREMENTAL SAVE FEVERISHLY, AND MOST OF ALL,

WE WILL FINISH THIS SHORT AND NOT SLEEP.

In fact, even Roy might come along to discuss some MOVIE stuff I can't talk about yet. Well, I can, but it's not certain that we're gonna do it. But if we will. Oh boy. Big screen coming up, babies. Dutch big screen. But still. Big screen.

Rawr.

-Gijs щ(◕‿‿◕щ)

Character Design WIP4

2009-05-05T18:45:00.002+02:00

Here's a shot small turntable of my character...
This is just his face though. I didn't use displacement or normal mapping, this is a very High Poly model...

And here's another turntable.
I used normal mapping for all the details on this low-poly model.
added some particle rain and Ncloth wind

Wallpaper update

2009-05-04T23:18:00.003+02:00

I wanted to put the poster in my reel, so I cut out all the charaters and made a 3d cam move in AE.
Did lose a lot of the image though, because of the 16:9 comp for my reel...:S
I used the clone brush to fix the background an used PS' vanishing point on in, to create a 3d environment. Positioned the characters back in place and used Twitches for distortion....

Character Design WIP3

2009-05-04T19:34:00.003+02:00

As I'm currently working on my showreel, I wanted to put this caracter in there too.. I'm now busy creating a nice turntable for my reel.. Here's a preview!
I'll update soon!
Tom

Character Design WIP2

2009-05-04T19:29:00.004+02:00

I used UV-layout to UV this guy,
and created normal maps for the details as shown right here:

2 more ss renders, i finally decided to use a Blinn instead of subsurface scattering, just with a diffuse and specular map...
Just a I did for all the characters in our short.

Character Design WIP1

2009-05-04T19:20:00.003+02:00

We had a character design/modeling/sculpting seminar a few moths ago... i thought I'd post soem of my WIP.
In this image you'll see the modelling progress in maya and Zbrush.

I wanted to create a nice big dude, to apply my anatomical knowledge to its fullest. I tried not to use any references, but some muscle groups are just to complex..

I eventually ended up texturing this guy in Zbrush too, eventhough their polypainting tools aren't as good as they should be..:S

I foud a very efficient way to paint realistic skin, layers, layers layers..:D a lot of fun!

Here you can see some SSS rendertests from maya.

Rendering............^o)

2009-05-04T18:45:00.002+02:00

So, here you can see some render and compositing tests i've been doing over the last few days.
We've had even more problems with the girl, just unexplanible.
Renders that used to take 44 sec (wihtout the hair) took almost 10 min (with the hair) just insane. I'm gonna make a separate layer for the hair and jsut render is very simple in maya software renderer.

Anyhow, here you can see her final look... (just imagine the hair in some images)

Finally some of the animation is done, so I can start rendering tonight.... yeah!

Some quick Updates

2009-04-26T23:58:00.004+02:00

Hey hey,
We're superrrr busy right now, mostly problem solving. Maya's just been a bitch the last few weeks, been driving me insane....
Here's just a short summary of these frustrating weeks:
Ok, a problem with normal maps is, that they do'nt generate ambient occlusion:( So i imported our highpoly Zbrush meshes and baked the AO, and placed these maps on surface shaders in an extra renderlayer, here's the result:
This all worked out very nice....
I won't go into detail of our problem solving, there's just been too much crap going on....
Shader, rig and render issues, all generated by maya...ARGH!:@

After a few very very frustrating days, I created these turntables: I animated my father character, rene animated his girl and gijs created a walkcycle for his bot.
I lightend, did the camerawork, renderd and composited....

Quick Previzzz of the girl
Ok, after a lot of problems with the girls file, I was finaly able to render. Eventhough I drove poor Rene crazy....
I composited in AE using fairly simple but cool techniques to create a nice ambiance. A lot of sparks and steam are done in post too.
The characters are now presented, posing as actors...

The Father

The Girl

And the bot (not finished, needs 2 more shots) also, this isn't so much a turntable, but just some cool shots to put in our reels;)

Hand Close Up

Foot Close Up

Body Medium Close

Hope U like!

The little girl…

2009-04-17T22:36:00.011+02:00

While I’m busy animating for

the steamteamproject I can tell you a little story.

There once was a little sad polygon,

who suddenly changed in the mesh of a little girl.

She had hair made with paintfx who were later

on converted to polygons.

The girl was happy. But everything looked so grey.

It was really necessary that she needed some more

color in her life. She was UV-ed in UVLayout.

Textures were created with photoshop and Zbrush.

The girl was happy with the colors.

Some blendshapes created a nice little smile on her face.

Her wish was to become a fully animated character.

But to fly you first need to learn to stand and walk.

So she got herself an efficient rig on her body.

She also got moving eyelids while the eyes were moving.

No dynamics were used for the skirt and the hair.

The hair was aimcontrained to a controller and the

skirt had driven keys so it would move properly when

the legs were moving. The skirts’ animation could be

adjusted later on using rigged boxes on it.

To give the girl more expressions the face was rigged also.

Little boxes on her face could adjust the facial expression

after using an expression from the attributes.

With this technique every facial move can be unique and
adjusted in any way.

The girl was happy and was animated happily ever after....

paintItNow - a fast Color Overriding script

2009-04-07T09:35:00.010+02:00

Hey Guys!

I haven't been posting here much since I've been working on my team project, besides that I've been away from my computer for a couple of days coming back to rest and peace with myself. I think it's just what I needed.

Well, ok. So what is paintItNow?
When you are rigging it's nice and cool if you color every controller curve so you as an animator can easily see which side did you select, and it just makes your rig way more easier to observe, see and use it. So, but what colors where? Well there's a standard, like left-hand side is blue, right-hand side is red. But I always somehow managed to 'forget' this. I myself than use yellow for center body parts and green for facial features. Which gives you an organized overall feeling of the rig.

So how can you color your curves, well that's possible with the color override (or by putting them in layers, but that has other disadvantages). But the problem with the color override is, you can't color override a whole selection. It's always just one at a time, which can take up some of your precious time. So checking the override checkbox, than assigning the color. Which is actually quite lame. THAT plus the fact that you always forget what to put where made me create this easy script with an interface which made you do this overrides on a selection as big as you wish.

The interface is as small as it can get and consists of the 4 colors as a button, and a grey button that you can use for easily removing any previously assigned color overrides.

Download the script here:
RN_paintItNow

Save the mel script, put it in your scripts folder. Rerun maya or just source the script and run it by running -> RN_paintItNow; <- as a command. And if you make it a shelf button it's even easier to use.

Hope somebody can use this.

Your sincere writer,
- Roy

What's the matter with them ROBOTICZ?

2009-04-02T19:38:00.004+02:00

Hey guys, little updates lately! There's a reason for this! We just had our MID-PRODUCTION ASSESSMENT, which means our first 8 (almost 9 now!) weeks are spent, and we have just 8 (well, more like 7 almost...) weeks left!

But of course we have other classes in school too that needed adressing, so we all had a very, very hectic week and are now trying to get back up to working full speed again! TO RECAP:

-The father and daughter are completely finished.
-René is animating the first shots!
-The set is completely done, and Tom is THIS |<---->| close to figuring out all the render issues
-The money shot matte painting that will be our opening shot is NEIGH COMPLETION
-The robot is nearly finished!
-We should really make a thread on CGsociety?

Anyway, here's what I'm gonna do right now! And what will finish the robot, even!

Script all the machinery
Finish rigging the two remaining arms (why do we have FOUR?!)
Make some DRIVEN KEYS for the lens on his face
Make the needle system which you don't know about yet =3
Figure out how to implant Tom's wonderful image sequences
Fix the scale on the Global Controller I've made (damned parent constrains :D)
Look for them horrible weightpaint errors that are bound to be hiding somewhere
Send it to classmates for CRASH TESTAN!

Well, I hope to have most of this done by tonight (upto point 5) and the rest by tomorrow. Expect more then!

-Gijs щ(◕‿‿◕щ)

Shading

2009-03-26T02:52:00.004+01:00

Here you can see a quick render example, I've been meaning to create nice metal and skin shaders for the robot for a while now. It's working out pretty good so far, fixing everyting in compositing... The next thing I'll be checking out is baking the AO cavities on the body, mentalray doesn't render this detail due to the use of normal maps (which ofcourse only deflect light instead of creating surfaces, like the use of displacement maps do).
I'll probably try it in maya first, using the "transfer maps tool" and use the normal maps as a source. If this doesn't work out, I'll reopen Zbrush and use Zmapper to create the cavities.

The plan is, to detatch everything with normal maps from the other geometry in the AO layer, and throw the cavitymap in the "lighter color Node".

You'll find out very soon if it worked out for me!

Final Look

2009-03-24T17:31:00.007+01:00

Hi,
We want to have a good image that reperesents the final look we are going for in this animation. We we decided to create a Wallpaper, Gijs posed his robot and Rene posed both mine and his.
I've been trying out some rendering and compositing stuff for a lil while now, and it all came down to this...
I rendered the scene with the default set lighting, so no additional lighting for the characters.
Here you can see 2 ugly "beauty"layers painted toghether, using the ambiant occlusion, reflection, speculars an the luminance depth I created the final image.. This just to illustrate how much work I plan to do in compositing. I still gotta figure some things out, but I hope it'll turn out awesome!
Here's the final Wallpaper!

Some burshan' updates

2009-03-20T02:28:00.006+01:00

Soooo, I've been working on the organics of the robot. I just finished off the modeling for the body that will be textured tomorrow by Tom (which will involve the final layer of detail). Tom has been doing quite the job with the face I modeled earlier. So please ignore these (in comparison) quite shoddy Maya screengrabs, but hereeee it is! I also modeled the robotic parts for the head you can see, but not yet for the body.

Check HERE for a turntable of the finished head, and HERE of the organic part of the body and how it all fits together. Tom will probably post tomorrow with a textured version of it and it won't be long then until this whole thing is finished.

ALSO, AS OF NOW RENÉ IS ANIMATING THE FIRST SHOTS. HOPEFULLY WE CAN SHOW SOMETHING SOON.

-Gijs щ(◕‿‿◕щ)

Skinning Blah

2009-03-19T17:58:00.002+01:00

I've been enjoying working on Gijs' Kickass Zbrush model:D
As I textured the girls and fathers skin, I'm working on this guy's skin too... It's been a lot of fun, damn it. Here you can check out my texture painting, Gijs will update very very soon, to show the maya progress, yess!

Sleeping is giving in.

2009-03-19T03:12:00.007+01:00

So, late night update here. Tom and René went to their own homes for the night, so I've got the kingdom to myself. And by kingdom I mean a bad-ass quad-core rig with a 24 inch monitor. And by that, I mean TWO of them.

That's right, bitches.

Anyway, I continued working on the robot's face and this is where I'm at now. I really can't stop being amazed at Maya's high-quality rendering in the viewport, this really is just a screengrab pasted in paint!

Anyway, here's a turntable of it, hope to show you the final model tomorrow, and I'll be texturing it (with Tom's helping hands!) either Friday or Saturday!

GOOD NIGHT!

-Gijs щ(◕‿‿◕щ)

Did you say, RABAHT?

2009-03-18T01:23:00.004+01:00

Hey guys, we's all workin' real hard he'e to deliver sum'o'dem UPDAYTZ.

AND, AS DAWN APPROACHES, I HAVE BEEN WORKING ON THE ORGANIX OF THE ROBOT. Here a quick preview of it, far from finished! I EVEN INCLUDE A SMALL TABLE OF TURNS.

-Gijs щ(◕‿‿◕щ)

Steaman'

2009-03-18T01:17:00.008+01:00

Steamteam has partially relocated to Gijs' house for the week! It's our ONE, FREE week before the mid-production assessment of the film. Because Gijs' house is naught but a broken-down cottage, we had to be creative since the lights don't work. Hence our newly-made GHETTO LIGHT SETUP.

RAWWWWWR.

-Gijs щ(◕‿‿◕щ)

Another Robo Update

2009-03-17T10:22:00.003+01:00

Hey hey...

As we're staying wihtin the steampunk theme, we ofcourse need some way to incorporate steam in our animation. I found a quick and easy way to do this. We're going to plant some planes throughout our Robot, these planes are going to be aim constrained along the Y-axis to the general camera in the scene. This so that the planes constantly face the camera.
I've created a few image seqeunces (Check out on the right) , these sequences will be projected onto the planes. I trust in Gijs' scripting skills to create a cool way to turn the IS's on or off, and a control to randomly play one of the 9 image sequences....

Compositing this will be quite easy too, I'll throw a black surface shader on everything but the smoke and the smokePlanes will have their own surface shaders with an alphamap to prevent ugly overlapping and stuff... eventually ofcourse, I'll just screen the smoke layer on top of everything else.... This will probably be the easyest way, I could also try to get it right in the masterlayer.

TurnTable

More robotics

2009-03-12T13:21:00.016+01:00

Hey guys, update as promised! Got some robot stuff going on! The geometry is coming together nicely, and I already started rigging some, otherwise I'm just gonna lose track of everything. So, this is what I have geometry wise, clicky for a small turn around.

Please note that the leg is alot less stupid-looking with its normal maps showing (yes for high quality preview). The normal map is probably too low resolution still, and the leg needs more detailing anyway. But I'll have a look at it next week. Point is, that most of what's on display here is already rigged and good to go! Even though there's still so much to be done, being; the organic upper body, one robotic arm at his pelvis, one organic arm at his pelvis, and likewise for his torso. And, of course, his head.

So, what are some interesting features? Well, last week I showed you how I control them cogs. Tom even made a fancy render test with it. Anyway, there's lots more cogs in now, so that rotation speed controller had its attributes doubled. I also made some stuff that moves according to how the rest of the body moves. It's kind of hard to see, but in this quick test you can see a machine on the right side of its pelvis moving according to the rotation of his backjoints. It's not easy to see because of the sucky quality, the fact you can't see his body, and the fact that it's shoddy animation, but still!

Occlusion render of some of the geometry. As you can see it still has alot of loose ends :)

This brings me to the trash on his back, this is animated by a controller on the ground. I found it necessary to avoid dynamics again, so I initially aim constrained all the 'scrap'-objects on his back to said controller. It worked fine, but everything moved so uniformally, and that I didn't like. So now, instead, you just animate the large bag of cogs, flip a switch on the controller, and bang, all the stuff moves around, each with a different delay and rotational offset!

Well, anyway, that's it for now, I gotta get to working on this thing again. When it's all finished and complete, I will write a detailed post explaining the rig and its scripts (which already takes up 5 whole pages on letter size 12!).

So, see ya :D

-Gijs щ(◕‿‿◕щ)

Daddy's got a brand new rig

2009-03-11T01:23:00.010+01:00

Well, Tom's father character reached a nice endpoint when he came to me for the rigging. I truly enjoy rigging, but time's pressing in this project. Since the father doesn't do much (sorry for the spoiler!) we would go for a pretty limited rig. Kudoes to Tom for creating such a solid model, I had no problems with it, not even with weightpainting!

So, it's just your basic rig, got a reversed footlock, pole vector constrains at the knees and elbows (no FK-, IKswitch, isn't necessary for this one), we got ye olde blendshapes, and ehh, a soft eyelid movement thingy!

We didn't need a complete facial rig for the father, hence we decided to go for just blendshapes. The girl rig does have a complete curve rigged face as she plays a bigger part. We hope that this will do just fine for him, though. And yes, 'father' in Dutch is actually 'vader'.

For the hand we wanted the ease of just having two attributes for 'fist' and 'grab'. But we also wanted the control to change finger positioning slightly for the extra feel, and so that we don't get stuck with our damned predefined stuff. So I just rigged up controls for all the fingers and used driven keys for them two attributes, easy stuff. I reckon that's where all the 'blendWeighted' nodes come from. I need to do some research on that one...

One thing I hadn't done before though, was the soft eyelid movement. Initially, when I heard of it, I tried scripting it. Just duplicating the eyejoint and have it take over the original joint's rotational values *0.1 (or /10, whatever you find more pleasing in your script). But, my axis seemed all a mess. I tried recreating the joint and freeze transforming, deleting history, bla bla bla. Didn't work, at one point, the newly created eyeLidJoint would just totally flip and go from 0 to -360 and shit like that. I think I spent a few hours trying to fix it with no luck. So, I just did it a little less inconspicuous. I just put another join after the original eyeJoint, and just slightly weightpainted it on the eyelids. Works wonders!

Like I said, the rig itself is quite limited. The character doesn't do an awful lot of stunts, we don't have much time for this project, and what we're planning on having with it in the scene is quite heavy already. Hence we didn't go for corrective blendshapes either. His arms and legs are both thin, so it work out well enough, without using blendshapes or influence objects. For the end of the coat, I tried some dynamics. I had worked with nCloth before on my motion capture short, so I knew my way around it and I had it quickly set up. But still, we wanted to avoid dynamics as it is just another production pass that's just waiting to fuck us over time-wise. Although the nCloth test was a relative success, I had a shot at just weightpainting it, and it's working great for what we need. Proof of concept, bitches.

Overall, a well-done model, and the rig was fun and relatively easy to build, since there weren't too many new gizmos. The robot is a completely different story, I'm working hard on it already, but it's not going as fast as I would like it to go (durr!). BUT THERE WILL BE A ROBOT UPDATE TOMORROW.

-Gijs щ(◕‿‿◕щ)

Some Other stuff involving our short....

2009-03-09T02:17:00.004+01:00

Some of the shading tests I was working on.

And a thing I've been trying to figure out....
I found a cool way to use DOF in a more abstract an creative way instead of using the lensblur filter. I use the median noise, the only problem is... i only know how to use my zdepth pass as lumamatte, so i get this ugly dissolve. I've been trying to use the luma value as the radius for the median (just like the lensblur filder does) but i just can't figure it out!
I've ised PS,AE,fusion and Nuke... Only masking seems to work in al these diffirent programs:S

Some more Set Work

2009-03-09T01:54:00.005+01:00

Ehm... basically I created this set with Gijs... lots of props were modeled bij Job too.
A few of the things I did:
Testing out a cool way I thought of to create DOF bij using the median nosie filter instead of the standard lensblur filter. To create a more artistic and original look. Also it was necessary to make the 3d geometry blend nicely with the mattepaintings with a somewhat impressionistic touch.

Here I've modeled and textured some of the props, Gijs did the houses and put the set together as seen here.

You can check out some of the rendertests I did... this all to figure out which settings to use, for literally everything

Some other Render tests of the set I completet with more props and lighting;D

Some set work

2009-03-09T00:02:00.021+01:00

Well, the chores were easily divided when we started on this project. I would do the robobt (who would only show up from about halfway into the film), René would be making the girl, Tom the father, and Job would be doing all matte paintings. Which is all very great, until someone had to stand up and make the damned set; a steampunk-esque street. Hmm. Since the robot didn't have top-priority, I rose to the challenge! I figured there wouldn't be time to build alot of unique houses, but that was alright, we wanted the set to be impersonal anyway. So I figured like this; I would take a cube, 10 by 10 by 10, use stanard UVs, make a dozen different textures that tile on all sides, and voilà, we have building blocks to build a street with!

The interesting part to note here was the fact that it was figuring out HOW to do this, took more time than actually doing it. Which has never happened before with us. But hey, you gotta learn, right?

Once I had made some textures, I made a few stepped gables (yes, we're very Dutch) that would fit onto them, UVed in a way so they could use the same textures and still fit. This would allow me to duplicate some blocks, put one of the gables on it, scale and move it around, and be done with it! INSTA HOMES. I made the entire street like this, meanwhile Tom had made some cool windows, doors and sidewalk-thingies, and I put them all over the place quickly filling the street.

render by Tom

Tom took over from here, working out the lighting and further placement of the props modeled by Job. Tom was by far the guy for this as his understanding of shading, rendering and compositing greatly exceeds ours. Keep an eye out on his future posts to see what he made of the final set :)

-Gijs щ(◕‿‿◕щ)

WIP2 Dad

2009-03-08T19:43:00.005+01:00

Some testrendering of the father character, this image is rendered with our dad in our set... just to check out how everything correlates with one another... the lighting textures, and also to check out rendertimes.

This image renderd quickly, with normal maps... This is what the final father character looks like

WIP Girl

2009-03-08T19:27:00.005+01:00

Here's what I've been doing for the other charatcer, The Daughter, wich is Rene's creation. After he finished modeling I used the same techniques as I used on the father to texture the head. This was completely diffirent, as a young girl's face is smooth and round. Here's a preview of the texture WIP in Zbrush... (She may look a lil alieny, but that'll turn out better then it looks now)

In maya, we added the eyes (also used on the dad) to see where this was going... I created bump and spec maps in PS and
finally I rendered out a nice image of her face (just a blinn). Note, the face has no expression yet, no eyelashes, eyebrows or hair... so she still may look a lil creepy..
Check out rene's posts to see how she's progressing...
Thnx 4 looking1

WIP Father

2009-03-08T18:07:00.015+01:00

Here's what I've been working on the last few weeks.
For our Short I'm designing the father character, with this design at an early stage we put down the style of the whole package. We're going for a semi-realistic look. Lots of fine detail, with some realsitic touches... combined with harsh plastic and charicaturistic shapes.

On the right you can see a preview of one of the first stages of basemodeling in maya.
The face contains some sharp and strong edges wich difine our choise of style. We had to have a character that was both tough an poor at the same time. He needs to be a loving, strong father and a role model for the audience to sympathise with.
In the images you'll see my progress in Zbrush...
Here you can see what I've done to create a believable face. I painted my textures in Zbrush to create some realism. To make the face more personal I added the eyes...so that I could reshape the face again to make everything fit perfectly....

I found a very cool way to sculpt hands, using the 'claytube' tool in Zbrush.

This is what the final Topology looks like, also you can see a turntable of the full body and a preview of the tangent space normals in Maya. We decided not to use the hat....

Hope you like:D

RoboRenders

2009-03-08T17:54:00.008+01:00

Hey hey,

Gijs' robot needs texturing too ofcourse, here's what I've been working on.
The idea is to make all the lil parts consist of diffirent types of metal, mainly copper/brass for our steamteam theme. In the render on the right you can check out what we have so far.... I'm working on creating diffirent maps and materials, this image just has 1 color/bump/spec map.
TurnTable!!!

Commence robotic breakdancing!

2009-03-08T14:43:00.007+01:00

So, another update on the Steamteam department, showing what I am currently working on; THE ROBOT.

So, you've seen the designs (obviously!) and here's what I've got in 3d. I have a little more than this right now, but that'll be for later, I'm still working on alot and hope to have all the machinery ready by tomorrow (so expect another update then). The best part thusfar is that it all MOVES (<< CLICK THIS!). This is all scripted by yours truly and can be controlled by a controller that has (upto now) 4 keyable attributes, being;

-Speed Noise
-Pelvis Offset
-Middle Offset
-Back Offset

The speed noise attribute is the overall speed of all the cogs, it's called 'speed noise' because all the cog movement there is, by us, considered to be noise. We'd turn it off when animating the character and turn it on for 'animation noise' once all character animation is complete. We're not very experienced in character animation so any extra cheap detail will hopefully make it easier for us to get away with it :) The offset attributes control the speed of the cogs in different parts of the body relative to the overall speed. While the Speed Noise attribute ranges from -25 to 25 (in the playblast it being 15), the offset attributes range from -2 to 2, allowing us to change the rotation speeds for different parts from twice as fast in the opposing direction, to twice as fast in the regular direction.

What is also scripted is, that, the faster a cog turns, the 'harder' the noise is on the other axis. This means that when the speed turns up, the cogs start wobbling, randomly.

So, that's it for the robot for now, I will probably write an extensive post on the entire script once it's finished, explaining how exactly I've done all this. Mind you, this is my first time using SCRIPTS in a big project (mostly thanks to Roy's knowledge!) so don't expect INGENIOUS ways of optimizing everything if you already know some scripting. Hopefully, however, it turns out to be interesting to some folk :)

So, see ya soon!

-Gijs щ(◕‿‿◕щ)

Logo

2009-03-06T18:04:00.009+01:00

First of all: Our Group Logo. Steamteam, just a stupid name Rene came up with...... But Its funny

Let's start to unleash!

2009-03-06T15:33:00.010+01:00

Hey!
Nice to be on this blog!
Everything is already introduced I see, thanks for that.

Well, my first start will be to add some more conceptart of the

Steamteamproject. For the development of a good storyline

a storyboard was needed. As already said by Tom, we won't reveal

the story, but I'll show some loose storyboarddrawings just to give you

an impression.

Another projects concept art!

2009-03-06T14:44:00.012+01:00

Well, you can't miss the Steamteam artwork that's being dumped all over the place here. But because the teams were created by the teachers I didn't get into the group with the Steamteam but with another team. This team was a 5 man team, but now only 4 remain. TeamRoys members are Roy Nieterau, Jeroen Ritsema, Niels Medemblik en Rik Schutte (lost guy is Dimitar Kralev). All hardworking creative students.

This project contains a girl, a dog, a house.. and some other stuff. I've been sketching away for the girl and the dog before we even knew where we were off to. No Art Director assigned yet, just the first sketches for a project to come was the way we were working. So I did.

Also don't forget to check out the work of Steamteam that will most likely for time that is coming up will be surrounding my posts. Hehe.

Here are my sketches guys!

Your writer,
Roy Nieterau

More of it!

2009-03-06T13:35:00.019+01:00

Well, Tom just introduced our 'Steamteam' project (check it!), so let me continue! I've never been good at drawing so at first I made some sketches in Zbrush for both the robot and the father to see what kind of form would be cool.

I also tried my hand at drawing, but like I said, I was never really good at it (though I hope to be improving through practice soon =3). We've done quite some work on the final set, father, girl and robot already and will post it soon once René showed his concept artwork here :)

-Gijs щ(◕‿‿◕щ)

Concept Art

2009-03-06T12:54:00.011+01:00

Hey...
As promissed, some concept sketches I made for our short.
We won't reveal our story, but we will be showing our WIP on this blog through huge amounts of imagery:D

I'm gonna be creating the male character, the father in our story, but I did some overall Mood-drawings... Check it out!
Rene (Check His Artwork out) will be the lead designer for the little Girl, as Gijs (Checkt His Conceptart out) is for the Robot.

Let's get in oooon

2009-03-06T12:39:00.004+01:00

Hi....

Thnx a lot dudes, for the intro (nice expression btw)
I will be posting some of the artwork involving our short Gijs was writing about.
We'll probably post our own stuff under our own labels and link it all together, to get the whole picture straight.

Let's get this started, indeed!

2009-03-06T01:45:00.020+01:00

Hello!

Thanks for the wonderful introduction, ROY. Tomorrow we will hopefully begin a major update here starting with our current project. See, René, Tom and I are currently working on a 4 minute short due this may. We're working on it with another classmate (Job van Linden van den Heuvell) and will keep this blog updated on its progress. So, hopefully, tomorrow we can post how far we already are (IMAGES IMAGES IMAGES) which is handy for all kinds of reasons.

HOWEVER I COULD NOT LET THIS BLOG COMMENCE SO EAGERLY BEFORE IT HAD GOTTEN MY BLESSINGS.

So, yeah. Let's do this.

-Gijs щ(◕‿‿◕щ)

Starting with NCIN blog

2009-03-05T14:38:00.007+01:00

Hey!

Welcome to this blog. This blog is for 4 guys that go to the same school together, the Utrecht School of Arts where they still study together. They study 3D Computer Animation and Visual Effects.

Roy Nieterau ( http://www.royn.nl/ )
Gijs van Kooten ( http://www.gijs3d.com/ )
Tom Hankins ( http://hankins.deviantart.com/ )
René Hoekstra

We will all keep everyone posted on this blog with our recent findings, projects and we'll be adding more and more as time progresses.

The first post, is done.

Your writer,
Roy