Lorraine's Thesis

Almost There

2010-04-18T21:22:00.003-04:00

Suzy's Room from Lorraine Robinson on Vimeo.

I have a huge checklist of what's wrong with this including floating geo, a lack of glow pass on the window, a gaping hole outside the door, shadows being too dark, etc. But it's getting close :)

I have gotten the rights to the music and I just need to replace the temp version with the real deal.
Music:
Track Title: Ice Cream
License Type: Standard License
Composer: Ori Vidislavski (ACUM (IPI#: 00244606772))
Publisher: Lynne Publishing (PRS - CAE#: 541626758)
Courtesy of Shockwave-Sound.com

Demo Reel

2010-04-12T02:12:00.002-04:00

20 Days Left - so much to do

2010-04-07T20:36:00.002-04:00

Render Farm Test

2010-04-04T13:32:00.003-04:00

I tried converting my file to a 2009 file and running the job on the render farm. It worked great except for a 2 of the ambient occlusion frames (you will notice the flicker). Other than that it did all the render layers that I needed and it ran rather quickly.

2010-03-27T12:17:00.001-04:00

Cute Cats

2010-03-21T14:58:00.003-04:00

These cats make me happy, I'm hoping I have time to put something similar in my thesis.

Update: Updated

2010-03-20T16:42:00.001-04:00

Ignore the lighting, I have one spotlight in there.

Closet

2010-03-08T22:30:00.001-05:00

I'm still working on the textures here, but I tried a texture map of a painted wall in my house on the closet.
Lighting is not so great, but it will be better once I put it into the other scene.

Curtains

2010-03-06T12:39:00.002-05:00

I made these curtains with polygons. That was the only way I could figure out how to get the holes in the top for where the hooks go. I used the Sculpt Geometry Tool in order to get the wrinkly-ness. At first I messed with animation deformers to try to get the same effect, but it was coming out very rigid and I couldn't get it to effect the curtains the whole way down. The deformer seemed to only have an effect on the area in which it was placed on the curtain. This made a spot of wrinkles instead of a nice flow.

What to do when your renders look like they just puked up a hot pink mess:

2010-03-04T12:49:00.006-05:00

The other night I was doing my homework for Lighting and Rendering. Everything seemed to be going ok. I was doing render previews and they were looking halfway decent. Then I decided it was time to do a real render and move on to my ambient occlusion pass. That is where the trouble began. I did a render and it came out looking like the image below:

I was sure I had made some sort of error with my Maya Area lights since I am new to using them. I turned off every light and inserted a new ambient light just to see and the result was almost exactly the same. I had been rendering out tiffs so I tried rendering out targas. No luck. I tried everything and nothing changed. I even changed all the shaders to a lambert and it still came out the same.
When I got to class I showed Boaz my file and he showed me my problem. Apparently I had been rendering out compressed tifs instead of uncompressed tifs (targas will have the same problem as compressed tifs). This would not have been an issue at all had I not SOMEHOW set my framebuffer settings to RGBE.

The RGBE setting is kind of cool because it gives you a lot more information, but you have to export your render to an OpenExr in order to see something that’s not completely crazy looking. Anyway, once I changed my setting back to RGBA my problems were solved and my render started to make more sense.

I’m blaming this one on the mouse scroll.

Lighting Continued

2010-03-03T22:57:00.001-05:00

So I think this is too bright by I'm learning. Coming soon, information on why your file might look like it's been chewed up and vomited back out. Stay tuned.

Amazing New Inspiration

2010-03-03T22:53:00.003-05:00

Found on Motionographer:

Stop-motion Set (CG) from karry on Vimeo.

Sam sent me this link: Bounds

David Halbstein showed me this link today: http://www.paulwiley.com/illo3.html

Lighting

2010-02-25T13:46:00.002-05:00

I'm starting to Light my scene in my Lighting and Rendering class. This currently looks pretty bad, but you get the idea of what the models look like. They still need a TON of work on textures.

UV set craziness

2010-02-21T15:43:00.003-05:00

I tend not to do alot of writing on this blog, but I thought this might interest and help some people having the same problem as me.

I was having major issues this morning. I had created a few UV sets for my dresser, one for the drawers, the legs, the dresser itself, and the knobs. Everything seemed to be working fine until I tried linking an image to the drawers. I would go into the UV Texture editor, choose the drawers set, and select all the faces from there and attach the textures that I wanted, which already or would soon have the image that I wanted linked to it’s color. The result was very strange. I would get a distinctly different shader than the one I had already on there, so I knew something was changing, the shader was being applied, but it would not show the picture. At times (only in Mental Ray render), it would look like the same color as the image I was applying, but none of the lines or pictures would show up. I tried deleting my prefs, deleting history, importing the dresser into a new scene, etc. None of those things worked. I was still getting the same reaction. Eventually I decided to open the set editor and take a look at my UV set and Textures. This proved to be the solution. (Of course two minutes later I realized that I have the Advanced Texturing and Lighting book with a whole section on this (p281).) The result was that I had to link the file to the UV set I wanted to use. The image below illustrates the solution. I know there are some details I still need to work out, but this is a huge step ahead towards actually working on my textures.

This issue was incredibly frustrating. A lot of the issue was I wasn’t sure how to describe it in order to google it. I really am seeing the advantage of going beyond the hypershade to do my work. What I think is linked may not actually be linked.

Suzy in the Scene

2010-02-20T16:54:00.001-05:00

Patricia suggested that I put Suzy in the scene in different places to check the scale, my dresser was looking a little small before.
I've also updated the chairs that go with the play table.

Feb 11 Progress Update

2010-02-11T17:59:00.001-05:00

I've modeled the dresser, the shelves and worked on the table and chairs... I'm starting to think the textures are going to have a huge effect here so I want to get started on those asap. Anyway here is where it's at now.

dresser - in progress

2010-02-08T22:13:00.001-05:00

new bed

2010-02-03T19:32:00.000-05:00

Jan 31 Animatic

2010-01-31T20:09:00.003-05:00

New Animatic

2010-01-24T20:10:00.003-05:00

This needs some work in timing, etc. But I hope you can see where I'm going.

Pictures of a Little Kid's Room

2010-01-20T14:16:00.006-05:00

Canopy Bed in Progress

2010-01-06T23:46:00.000-05:00

Production Begins

2010-01-05T21:01:00.003-05:00

Though I am still not sure about the fate of Suzy, I have begun production on her room. I know that even if the piece is not animated, it will still be a pan around a little girl's room. With that in mind, I have started building the furniture. Below is a playblast of the canopy bed. It is going to be way more funky and distorted and FUN than you see, but this is the very basic, humble beginning of it. Everything in the room will need a solid, somewhat realistic foundation before it turns into the Tim Burton-esq vision that I have in mind. Otherwise I feel that the piece could turn into a bunch of aimless doodles.
Comments welcome :)

Suzy

2009-12-15T01:39:00.003-05:00

New Suzy

2009-12-05T19:20:00.003-05:00

Animatic 11-30-09

2009-11-29T20:12:00.002-05:00

New Inspiration

2009-11-21T00:56:00.004-05:00

Picasso:

Magritte:

great reference

2009-11-18T22:51:00.001-05:00

Franz Palomares sent me a link to Family Dog, which provides this great reference for my character:

Suzy

2009-11-10T12:57:00.001-05:00

I am working on Suzy in my CG class. This is what she looks like so far.

Animatic with a Little 3D

2009-11-09T10:33:00.001-05:00

Animatic with Sound

2009-11-06T15:04:00.002-05:00

The first few scenes represent a pan around the room. After some discussion, I have decided I need to make the entrance of the bug more noticeable. This will be done in my next animatic, coming soon :)

How did I miss this?

2009-10-23T00:23:00.001-04:00

This kid is a perfect inspiration for my character. I love his blind enthusiasm. it's just so clear that he's excited and almost not self aware. I think he's going to be a great reference for Suzy.

My Character in Clay

2009-10-16T23:55:00.002-04:00

I am working on my character in CG Production Design. Tonight I decided to sculpt her in clay and really see her in 3D. The result is below:

And here's a more stylized version:

Toy Story 3

2009-10-12T20:23:00.001-04:00

I just watched the trailer for the new Toy Story movie and this little girl caught my eye. I love the crazed look in her eyes.

Girl Scout Reference

2009-10-05T23:27:00.004-04:00

Spunk Inspiration

2009-10-05T23:24:00.004-04:00

I like the feel of these characters, not exactly the way they look, but their personalities.

Head Shape Inspiration

2009-10-05T23:22:00.004-04:00

Concept Boards

2009-10-04T23:29:00.004-04:00

Color Ideas

2009-09-24T18:00:00.006-04:00

I just quickly pulled some color palettes for inspiration from: Colour Lovers.

Color by COLOURlovers

Color by COLOURlovers

Color by COLOURlovers

Color by COLOURlovers

Color by COLOURlovers

Precious Moments Images

2009-09-24T15:08:00.001-04:00

These are really inspirational for my character design. They are simple, yet sweet and cute.

x

Inspirational References (video)

2009-09-24T14:28:00.002-04:00

I like Ray's room and the way she's so obsessed with things being clean and neat.

I was not able to embed this video: Horton Hears a Who
It is Katie from Horton Hears a Who. I love how she's cute, but obviously odd.

Inspirational References (images)

2009-09-24T14:08:00.004-04:00

Character Reference:

Shoes:

Room Reference:

Lorraine's Thesis

Almost There

Demo Reel

20 Days Left - so much to do

Render Farm Test

Cute Cats

Update: Updated

Closet

Curtains

What to do when your renders look like they just puked up a hot pink mess:

Lighting Continued

Amazing New Inspiration

Lighting

UV set craziness

Suzy in the Scene

Feb 11 Progress Update

dresser - in progress

new bed

Jan 31 Animatic

New Animatic

Pictures of a Little Kid's Room

Canopy Bed in Progress

Production Begins

Suzy

New Suzy

Animatic 11-30-09

New Inspiration

great reference

Suzy

Animatic with a Little 3D

Animatic with Sound

How did I miss this?

My Character in Clay

Toy Story 3

More Video Inspiration

Girl Scout Reference

Spunk Inspiration

Head Shape Inspiration

Concept Boards

Color Ideas

Precious Moments Images

Inspirational References (video)

Inspirational References (images)