Happy new 2013

Soon it will be 2013 in my country but it will be just another ordinary day except for the fireworks.

Here's one sketch of my next film.

A carving of a tree. It represent something significant in my story.

Visit the page here

'Normal' film sketches

Nina, one of the character sketches for her. I am going for a Emma Watson look. To have a strong but yet vulnerable look.

Check out more sketches and development in Normal page here :)

Easy cartoon outline in Maya

The short 3d above is made by me and my girlfriend for our school project. The black outline on the characters is rendered with mental ray using a shader called Contour shader simple.  

Contour Shader Simple is a shader that enables the rendering of outlines around or in your object.

First, you plug the shader in your material shading group - custom shaders - contour shader. On the contour shader itself, you can customized the width and color of your lines. If you have multiple objects, just plug this shader in the objects' material SG.

Second, go to the mental ray rendering setting - features - Contours - enable contour rendering.

Below it, there's a Draw by property difference. Tick the ones you need. I ticked the first two which is around the object and the faces.

Last, render it!. If you couldn't get it to work, let me know :)

Human Story

Morgan Freeman said something about having human story in the movie when he was interviewed for The Dark Knight Rises.

What is human story? Something that happened in real life that we can feel connected to? Is human story also means empathy? What brings us to care about the frictional characters?

In South Korean drama, there are a lot of similar plots such as a journey of a weakling that gradually becoming more and more successfully, stronger. They reuse this concept a lot and it works. We have been through the process of being no one to someone, probably this made us relate to the concept of growth.

Christopher Nolan was asked if he studied psychology,  he answered 'no, i only knows my own mind.'

Shadow emitting light

The lights in your scene can cast shadow instead of light. It is useful if you want to cast shadow in certain area of your scene or model etc. the character's inner mouth.

Just a quick test using the sets from my new film  'Normal'.

Basically input your light color RGB as -1. There's no need to switch on your depth shadow or ray traced shadow for this to work.

A story film ' Normal '

The story is about a search for a wish. The wish to make them be normal.

 Visit the 'Normal' facebook page here.

Currently in development stage. Like the page to stay in touch.



 

Free 3D softwares

Free 3d softwares or free softwares that can help in your creating process.

Gimp

Gimp is a free 3d Image Manipulation software. It can said to be similar to photoshop in some ways and it has some useful tools and filters for textures. Personally, i used it to create normal map from texture such as fabric.

Substance Player

Substance player is a free application for creating textures, normal, displacement and exporting them as bitmaps.

DAZ 3D

It is a free software. From what i known, it is used for character customization and animation.

Cookie

Cookie is a lighting technique that breaks up the light.

Notice how there's shadow of branches on the model. That is not caused by actual geometry but a map plug into the color channel of my main light source(direct light). The map is a black and white image of leaves and branches.

Reload textures

In Maya, when you started a new project, the first thing you should do is probably create a project folder using maya project window. In this way, you create the necessary folders for your scenes, images, source images etc.

Well as you imported the project files into a different computer, something strange will happen. Your textures won't load. You set your project from the file menu but still, the textures won't load properly. Then you got to manually reload the texture one by one.

But there's this free maya script' Deo reload texture'. What it does is it will help you to reload all your textures in your scene. Pretty Amazing and time saving. But then, you got to remember to set the project path or else it may not work.

Link

Open EXR

Back in school, I was taught to render with targa which is the best quality for 3d animation. When you render in passes, shadow, specular etc, you're going to have a lot of targe images in your folders which is how it works; a whole lot of images that can be a mess to deal with.

Instead of targa, i am starting to use open EXR instead. The wonders of exr is that all of your passes are put inside this one exr file which is amazing. To extract the passes, you simply make use of exractor from the 3d channel in after effects.

One more cool thing for exr is the z-depth. It allows you to freely adjust the depth in AE. I find it troublesome to get the depth right in maya. I am sure there are other cool stuffs about exr that i haven't know yet.

Higher purpose

Some time ago, i bought the Avatar DVD and i watched it again yesterday. Near the end of James Cameron interview, he said of making movies not for entertainment value for rather, there's a higher purpose for it.

I have the same principle for making films even though all of my previous works are more entertainment related because of the lack of time. But now, it's different. I have more time and no limitation to what i want to create.

I am pretty happy that 'Mayan' has served its' ultimate purpose. Here's a Japanese subtitled version.


マヤのMayan from choo bin yong on Vimeo.

Mayan Featured on Dailymotion

'Mayan' an 3D short film that i have done for my school project. It has won several awards this year.

Now, today, it is featured on Dailymotion!

The Mayans by renderyardchannel

So far, the views are around 8000. Pretty cool.

UV Unwrapping

UV unwrapping is a tedious process. It's a well known fact. When i was working a few months ago, i was responsible for unwrapping the uvs for props and i have to spend almost an entire day to unwrap a net shaped object using Maya. That is just utter crazy to do.

I found zbrush's UV Master to be..all right in unwrapping. It is messy at certain times but it's just a click of a button.

Afterwards, I learn of a software known as headus UVLayout. This changed my perception of unwrapping things. It has became fun actually. There are certain keys to learn but overall, it is fairly easy to get use to and you got to unwrap in 3d space. When you press that button to unfold, it is as if you're watching a live octopus spreading its' legs and fully awakes. 

 

Pixey, Lighting

Above is a screenshot of a Animated Film "Pixey".

In maya, there are many ways to light your scene. In the past, I use spotlights with high penumbra angle and dropoff, it has a soft light feel to your scene or character.

Then i discover Area light. It gives a soft feel too but somehow it is more useful than spotlights. Just set the decay to linear and placed it on 4 sides of the wall. It will achieve a soft gradient on the walls.

The lighting setup in 'Pixey' is created using multiple area lights. The rendering time is fairly all right, 1920x1080 at 10 minutes per frame.

Recently i have my fun with Vray. The dome lighting with Hdri images produce realistic lighting. It has its' own area light and other lights such as a sphere light which is just a ball emitting light, useful for lamps, sun etc.

Creative Crash

Today i am going to talk about this amazing website, www.creativecrash.com.

What is it? It's like a resources market where you can buy or download free models & plugins for 3d software. I am a Maya user, and it has a ton of free useful plugins that can make life easier for me.

I am going to introduce one amazing plugin known as the Batch Script Generator.

http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/applications/render-managers/c/batch-script-generator

This allows you to render multiple maya files into seperate folders without even opening Maya. I used to create one whole list of maya files that i want to render using this plugin, then i leave it to render by itself before i went to bed. The next day, all the files are rendered finish without the need to check it. Just a note, the render settings are done inside your maya files.

Sometimes the rendering might not start due to your naming of the camera shape. If your camera name is persp1 and under the attribute, the camera shape name should be named as persp1shape. If not, it will fail rendering.

Character Making

Just recently i came across a method to creating 3d characters. I feel that it is the best method for creating ANY characters you want and on top of that, good topology.

Well it requires a sculpting software, either mudbox or zbrush will do fine but in my case, i am using zbrush because of the re-topology tools and Dynamesh. And then your main 3d software.

Personally, this is my way. There are many ways to sculpting, modeling and re-topology. Mine is one.

Step 1
Personally i drew the character - front and side, zero details, just the general proportion. Then i import the images into Maya to make a simple 3d character. The topology doesn't matter

Step 2
Bring the model into Zbrush. This is the step of you creating the final character. Just SCULPT your way through to what your final character will look regardless of topology. It will be the final design of your character.

Step 3
Re-topology using Zsphere method. This is where your knowledge of topology applies. Know your N pole and E pole.

Step 4
It is done. You import the re-topology character into 3d software.

Next will be Texturing or UV mapping. A big pain in the ass if you don't know the method for unwrapping. But luckily, there's one easy way...

Case Study on Diablo 3

I make up my mind, deciding to share some of the stuffs that can help others in the process of making their own cg creations. And hoping to improve my writing.




I saw this on gametrailers, they were speaking on the creation of Diablo 3 CG trailer. It features realistic characters and settings, non cartoony. On my final year project, i make a small case study base on it. They do show about the creation of SSS(sub surface scattering) human skin etc, materials & various stuffs.



Found this new one that i haven't watch yet.

Even though Diablo 3 has a unbelievable lousy story and characters, the creation process is quite interesting.

N#2

For my 'N', few sketches and concepts of the characters and settings were done but the art direction isn't clear yet.

For most of the time, i am focusing on the story, it is the soul of the creation. So far, i got the basic idea on the plot and around 40% of the screenplay is done. Probably i need to rewrite it further to enhance it. It can be anywhere from 10 minutes to 15 minutes. I am not limiting myself to anything.