In 2008 we had an opportunity to work on a interesting project with the creator of the Moonjoos line of vodka jellos.
Aidan wanted to create an experience site where the legend of the brand could be developed. So working with our friends Digitalus we set to and devised a world on the dark side of the moon where men were tempted by beautiful maidens on earth, kidnapped and then set to work as slaves of the Moonjoos Corporation, mining, distilling and packaging the famous Moonjoos brand of vodka jellies.
The process of 3D Animation is magical and obscure to the general public and often even some of our clients. This humorous video is an entertaining watch and goes a long to help explain the process.
The problem with 3D animation appearing so bewitching and almost anything being possible, is that people don’t understand certain 3D workflows can be extremely linear, and therefore certain things cannot be adjusted after the fact, without losing a great amount of work(this video is highly simplified, but it presents a few of these issues clearly). Read the rest of this entry »
For the past 18 months we’ve worked with the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology to help them create a large number of interactive animations for their Aeronautical Engineering courses. We’ve posted stills of a few of our favourite models below so that you can appreciate the quality and attention to detail in each animation.
Students enjoy being able to interact directly with each model and are able to visualise the functions in a step by step and hands on approach. They can switch individual groups of lights on and off in aircraft, watch an animated character demonstrate airtraffic signals or see how heat affects different metals by lighting their own virtual bunsen burner.
Beautifully filmed by Scottie Mckinnon of Stoney River Studios with graphics by Phonam Gatela-Garcia. Scottie used an EX3 with a Letus and Nikon 35mm film lenses including tilt shift to recreate the colour and energy of the now legendary WOMAD festivals held annually in the TSB Bowl of Brooklands.
Interactive learning tools are a very effective way to present complex ideas, in a directed but interactive manner. The user can instantly repeat or play a particular segment, and interact with the training at any time or place of their choice. Interactive Learning tools can be seen as another tool to enrich knowledge taught in more traditional methods, or even as a complete learning methodology.
Note: If above 3D module does not load please download Acrobat here, or download the file, by right clicking here and choose save to disk, then open it in Acrobat. On the Mac platform the latest Firefox version can have issues, so use Safari instead.
Which brings me to a discovery I have made recently, a workflow which enables 3D models to be presented in an alluring, accessible and interactive way. The PDF platform has a massive following, due to becoming the default way to distribute e-books and a multitude of documents. Modern PDF files allow hyper-linking, interactive buttons, video, embedded flash content, vector and raster graphics, 3D content, advanced security, interactive field data, and much more.
Far Cry was a technical marvel five years ago, coming from Crytek a fresh start-up company in Germany, the game stood out for its tropical island setting, breaking stereotypical industrial complexes, and hard surfaces present in most other first-person-shooting games. The player could see many kilometres (PC version especially, lack of RAM on consoles), the water was very realistic, and the player could use various vehicles, such as speed boats, hand gliders, trucks, etc. This mix proved hugely successful, and Far Cry become one of the top selling games of that year. The game run on the CryEngine (1.0), which was extremely fast at rendering indoor and outdoor environments, with realistic lighting. Let’s take a look at the evolution of the CryEngine up to the current version.
Oh and off topic, check out the much anticipated Avatar trailer here (get the full HD one!). Also check out Embassy’s work (Modelling,UV’s) with Luxology Modo on District 9 here at CGSociety, or a more general overview at VFXWorld.
With Siggraph 2009 only a matter of days away (August 3rd - August 7th, US Time) many digital artists will be salivating at the tasty thought of what developers have added to their favourite applications (well at least I am).
I’ve been asked for two years to join this so called 48hours film making. But I never got the chance to be part of it as I’ve scheduled my annual leave come April or May to escape New Zealand winter. However this year, I finally got to stay in NZ for this gig. Together with some fabulous Naki peeps I got to take on this 48hours thing (actually it was just 6 hours for me, but hey who’s counting?)
Anyway, our team’s genre was educational, the mandatory element was a rock and the character is Alex Puddle the exaggerator. Our team came up with the idea of a how-to video for everyone aspiring to a great career in undertaking hosted by Alex Puddle.
We made it thru the Hamilton city finals, we walked away with Best Cinematography for the Hamilton heat but didn’t get lucky to get into the Nationals. Boo!
But hey we loved the experience and we’re proud of our film and WE ROCK! (pun intended)
Even if you find the story absurd, devoid of character development, or find the acting laughable, nobody can deny the sheer mastery and quantity of visual effect in Tranformers 2. Personally I think they did a great job, remember this was a cartoon in the 80’s and its target audience was young kids. For some mind boggling facts regarding the production of Transformers 2, check out this page at Geek Tyrant. I have listed some of my favorite quotes below. After absorbing that crazy info, and if you have an interest in visual effects check out these links. CgSociety have got a good article covering Alice, the robot woman, and Reed Man, the super thin praying mantis robot. VFX World have also got a longer article, which covers the effects in a broader spectrum. Favourite Snippets from Geek Tyrant below.
If you rendered the entire movie on a modern home PC, you would have had to start the renders 16,000 years ago (when cave paintings like the Hall of Bulls were being made) to finish for this year’s premiere!
If you had all the gold ever mined in the history of man, you could build a little more than half of Devastator.
TF1 took 20 Terabytes of disk space. Trans2 took 145 Terabytes. Seven times bigger!
The pyramid destruction simulation was 8 times bigger than the old rigid simulation all-time record holder at ILM.
If all the texture maps on the show were printed on 1 square yard sheets, they would cover 13 football fields.
IMAX frame render times: As high as 72 hours per frame!
Can’t wait to see how crazy Transformers 3 will be, by that time who knows it might be fully in stereo (3D), then the IMAX render times would be 144 hours per visible frame. With stereo you need two slightly different camera views rendered and overlayed.
Software doesn’t grow like a weed, it grows like human thoughts, because software is human thoughts. Humans aren’t always thinking what they are suppose to be thinking of though, they get side tracked or lose focus on the task at hand. That is why we as artists, the people who use software, must make sure the developers are in touch with all of their audience (not a small pool of beta developers). Otherwise after many years of development, your favourite piece of software could become an overgrown weed, ready to be pulled out by its roots.
