ocean surface test

Ive started a pitch for a TVC which ive dubbed UTS - under the sea...
which also involces an out of water shot of the ovean surface and a splash
- so heres a test ive done.

havnt used HOT yet - may possibly get it going in Maya...

pretty happy with this so far though ! :D

some obvious problems -

* some crunchy pixels from a bad slap comp (its past midnight)
* you can see the 'tiling' of my noise 
* reflection of buildings is hacked in
* you can see the seam between the CG ocean and the BG photo....its just a test...
* render settings could be higher...
* i dont  know how or why i animated my hacky DOF  :/

but....shows promise !!

cheap flocking effect with a school of fish

some tests for flocking

panorama lens test

testing the polar panorama lens, the big tree is a render from a normal perspective camera, the little trees stacked on top of each other are the same trees - but as viewed through the polar lens (panoramic) projection.

here's a render with a sphere behind the camera and some objects - Left and Right of the camera. 

This is not a fish eye lens effect - its the opposite.

ABC stout

** final ad now on youtube **

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WK2bh5vIno

A crazy Ad ! in conjuntion with Kanuka Studios and

Emerald City

My role was to develop some Lava Sims to be comped into the Matte Paintings by Emerald City.

I also did some rough modeling, some rigging, some lighting ,

and even some rough animation ! all in Houdini.

From the start we decided to go with FLIP fluids for the lava sims.

Thanks Jeff Lait for your excellent, invaluable MasterClass.

a lava sim - not used in the ad...

mplayer / ffmpeg misc brain dump

to get it looping - use -loop 0

ie
mplayer ../playblast.avi -loop 0

 

image seq to movie

procedural cracking !

heres a procedural cracking test - no DOPS as yet

very simple - a proximity driven morph (from the boulder)

more or less bewteen 2 SOPS.

Cracks generated in 2D by the Voronoi SOP.

what ive been reading....

Still on holiday , so sorry, no serious 3D posts yet...

some VFX from the Black Swan
http://www.vizworld.com/2011/01/black-swan-visual-effects-video-reel/

sony stock footage - new spiderman 2 footage of manhatten
https://www.sonypicturesstockfootage.com

vfx guide have an article on the HP7 animation (the story of the 3  brothers)
http://www.fxguide.com/

do it yourslelf HDRI
http://nccasymposium.bmth.ac.uk/2008/ahsan_zohaib/How.html

CIS Vancouver
http://www.cisvfxgroup.com

why cant i run firefox in ubuntu ?

back up the files in the home directory / mozilla / firefox
then delete them
or just move them to a new folder like 'bak' or something