just a quick reminder

I've just done a massive uploading spree on my portfolio site which you can see here...

www.askins.co.uk

which now has a most of my second year projects uploaded for you to see. Just to make it clear, I will mainly be using this blog for works in progress, and then using my main site for posting final animations and art.

I said in an earlier post that I would upload some concept from my upcoming collaborative project, Nimby. Well, here's a sneak peak...
























It's subject to change, but this should give a small indication of the look and feel of the piece. More to come in the near future...

nuts and blots rerender

I've been working on and off on the nuts and bolts rerender for a week or two, and I've finally managed to render out the sequence to a near finished standard. Because the original video was so dark (it appears brighter when I open it in quicktime) Above are some of the original images to compare...

Why it's suddenly so light I have no idea, but you get the idea that the original render was a very bland experience. In comparison here is the newly rendered alternative...


Trapped from Philip Askins on Vimeo.

As well as the added textures and details such as the collection of tools and nails dotted around the toolbox, the lighting really contributes to the mood of the piece now. It's now clearer that the light is seeping in through the top of the toolbox, and the character animation is made clearer through use of silhouettes, which means that no matter how dark the character appears to be (especially when monitor differences come into play), it is still understandable what is going on. There are still problems with the piece; there is some dodgy flickering with the bump map on the leg in the last shot, as well as the hand as he puts it up to his face, so I may end up rendering another version. The walk over to the nut is also quite floaty so if I have the time I may start over with that particular section. Overall, however, I feel it is a VAST improvement to what I had before, and it enhances the mood of the piece a great deal.

I may be putting up some concept up for the next project I'm working on for my final year at Teesside in the coming weeks. It's a collaboration between my girlfriend and I, so I'm keen to see the quality of work that we manage to pull off...

Phil

After quite a while...

My notorious ability of neglecting websites and updates has been running rather strongly over the past few months, hence the lack of content.

HOWEVER, that time is over! Since I have some time over the summer for things like this I figure I might as well post some works in progress...
I managed to finish my projects in time for University, but I've been going over some of them over the last few days to try and spice them up a bit.

In particular, I've been concentrating on snazzying up my 3D character assignment for potential use on my showreel. It's been a great exercise in lighting, so I'll share some examples with you...




This was my original handin, and as you can probably see, it's a bit on the bland side of things. The lighting on the whole is too dark (and it doesn't help that blogspot makes it tonnes darker), yet at the time this was what I settled for since we were being marked solely on character animation. The environment is empty, with the original idea being that it would be a toolbox filled with hammers and nails and all kinds of stuff to make it feel atmospheric. Again, this got shoved aside due to time resctrictions. Even the character animation is, at times, pretty shoddy, even though it gets the message across.

So I've been trying to make it feel like it is in a dark place, yet still be able to register what's going on. Inn this particular post I will be concentrating mainly on the lighting, since it has been fascinating me as of late. I've been using this as a chance to explore final gather and ambient occlusion a bit more, and compositing them afterward. Now, I've kind of unconsciously been avoiding compositing over the years, porbably because I like everything to look just right when I hit the render button and leave it at that. Or maybe it's all those extra images that need to get rendered out... But I've been testing in Photoshop and here's the difference



This is the render as it is normally. I'd be quite pleased with this as a final render, but there's the sense that the character just isn't sitting right into the environment it's in.
















This is the occlusion pass on its own, and I've made sure to tune it down for the actual character so that it stands out.















With the occlusion pass layered on top, you can see that it adds darkened areas to the points where objects meet, meaning that the character really looks like he's sitting in that corner now, and it also brings a nice strong shadow where the spanner is.I also decreased the saturation so that the colours are a tad less vibrant. Another reason why compositing, alas, will always be an efficient way of making alterations...
















In the next image, too, I've tried to make the character into a silhouette to make him stand out against the background, which is far more effective than in the original.















That's it for now, I'll make sure to post more images when I have them, and share a few pointers on the way...