WFIU Public Radio posted a video of Matt and Taylor’s Super Magic Fun Show that took place on April 5th, 2012.
Photo Credit: Peter Stevenson
The projection mapping Matt Starr and I created for the Sample Gates at Indiana University for Arts Week was a great turn out. With over a thousand people in attendance, we were able to show off our animation skills to a large audience. I’m in the process of putting together a video documenting the event.
Projecting mapping using inflatables. The sculpture was modeled in Cinema4d then had textures and scaled models attached on to them. The documentation lacks a consistency in the mapping, but the general concept is there.
Quick test render for a character animation.
Quick promo made for Ari Kaplan’s smash hit “Officer Dinosaur”
Starting to get together all the assets for my reel. This is the potential look for the intro.
Aside from assisting in instruction for D418 this semester, I also created personal studies as well. The work that I produced consisted of two characters and a video.
The characters that I created will serve their purpose in my BFA thesis show this spring. Because I wanted to create a fairly complex rig for the character in the orange dress, I needed to have extremely clean topology. After battling with the face for several days I decided to try creating some morphers to how well my modeling was going. The morphers acted appropriately and allowed me to continue on with creating some procedural textures as well as bring it into body paint.
The videos that I created focused mainly on animating procedural materials. After running through a range of built-in noise that cinema offers, I was able to get the look I had been trying to achieve. After creating the materials my next challenge was being able to render it in 2k in a fashionable time. Optimizing the render settings while still keeping the desired look proved to be one of the more difficult tasks. Adjustments made to the lights and material settings allowed me to eliminate the need for global illumination and ambient occlusion (two classic render hogs).
Throughout the semester I was able to assist students in class with Maya, a 3d package that I’m not as well accustomed to, but my general knowledge of 3d cg let me give them plenty of advice and help. The most difficult aspect of teaching software that I don’t use on a day-to-day basis was the navigation and terminology that is used. Although Maya and Cinema4d have a lot of similarities; my workflow relies heavily on a lot of tools that are exclusive to Cinema4d. Finding ways to make things work in Maya was fun at sometimes and extremely frustrating at others. Having the knowledge to know how to create the exact same movement or look using similar software then trying to relearn it a completely different technique was one of the more difficult things for me to cope with.
Because I did not have access to Cinema4d within the confines of the classroom and I was instructing I did almost of all of my personal work outside of class time. Although my workload was increased because of this I really enjoyed the time spent helping students with their projects and observing the different ways that they created their models, textures, and animations.
Each student had a different approach to 3d. Working with each student on an individual basis gave me an opportunity to give them tips to speed up their workflow and remove a lot of unnecessary tedium that they were preparing themselves for. Each student always had a unique problem that I was approached with. I believe troubleshooting benefited both the student and me. Each question that I was asked was a reminder of a past technique I had used or something to avoid in the future. There’s a seemingly endless combination of ways to configure something in 3D, and by working with others who have a different mindset coming into a project I’m able to develop workflow form them.
Overall this opportunity to work closely with students this semester gave a learning experience that I would not be able to receive on my own. There are countless hours of online tutorials, videos, and reference images for me to gawk at, but the hands on experience and interaction has given me an edge over others who are attempting to master different 3d techniques.
