Patrick's VFX Blog

This was a tv commercial that I worked on with a partner, a year or two ago. The commissioning client was Critica TV. This project was done in 3D Studio Max using the VRay renderer. I modelled and lit the environment. This involved creating some textures, like holes and displacements along the wall. I also modelled some internal parts of the mouse, and fine-tuned the materials on the mouse too. The robotic arms were designed and rigged by Kuodo Cheok. He also did resurfacing on the exterior casing of the mouse. Foreground objects like the mouse, table and robot arms were lit by Kuodo as well.

Picture taken from a page by the  National Research Council of Canada A friend is on a project that requires animation that resembles a constellation diagram, with glowing dots joining up and forming a pattern with lines. This has to be done to several geometrical shapes that will only be confirmed in later in the project. Helping him break down and plan the project, I foresee a need to create a workflow where I can take any geometry, create dots and then making lines to join the dots. How can this be done? I will attmept to write a script to procedurally create spheres and tubes on vertices and edges of any geometrical object. The spheres and tubes should follow the edges and vertices of the object as it transforms and deforms.  Also, there should be controls that can influence the thickness and size of the spheres and tubes in order to change their appearances in the render. There should also be a slider that controls the tubes to grow from zero length to the full ...

Tools are underrated. The more efficiently we can automate Repetitive tasks, we can have more time to tweak other aspects of the projects we work on. Before I have that capability in your project, I usually wish vehicle hard that I had this or that tool to help me with a certain task. Then comes the euphoric moment when I actually have it (from creating the tool myself or a tool release from the software vendor). This lasts about 3 minutes. Then it becomes part of my toolset and instantly I take it for granted. I forget about all the hard work it would've taken me if I did not have it. Published with Blogger-droid v2.0.3

Here's something a colleague sent me. For all of us workaholics out there!

Late last week I became aware that Rhythm and Hues Studios is intending to open in Taiwan. I heard it from my colleague and did a bit of reading up online. A few links here:   - LA animation firm comes to Taiwan - Exclusive: VFX studio in Taiwan pact - Rhythm & Hues to launch film investment fund, production facilities Even Taiwanese government is taking an interest to support this up and coming industry. From the scale of funds that the Taiwan government is intending to invest into the industry, it seems that they are quite serious about this, and they are looking to grow the full spectrum of capabilities for the facility there. Exciting times.  R&H Studios is a world-class award winning company involved in feature film visual effects and animation. Currently, it has studios in Los Angeles, Mumbai, Kuala Lumpur, Hyderabad and Vancouver. Check out the films that R&H Studios have worked on here:  http://www.imdb.com/company/co0075252/

Alvin Yap posted this on facebook today :) This is the typical geek cycle when assigned with repetitive tasks. We try to make things faster and hopefully in the end it results in time saved, we feel better about ourselves that we made things work more efficiently, and, we made good use of our brains our problem solving skills. Yey!  Of course there's also the possibility that the script fails miserably, and we end up not being able to automate it, scripting fails, and we have to pick up exactly where we left off, and continue the task the manual way. O_O Skeel commented that we also do need to determine if the task is worth automating because the script also needs to be tested to make sure it works.  There is another of Alvin's friends who also commented that additional time debugging and failing multiple times before succeeding should also be taken into consideration. This is not reflected in the graph.

Happy new year folks! I wish one and all a very blessed new year ahead.  I pray all of you get to move towards your goals and do the things you've always wanted to do.  Thank you all for the 1340 visits since February this year. It has been an amazing journey so far, I hope it will only get better. God bless you all!