Bunker Graphic Design / Blog

Growth

noreply@blogger.com (Bunker Graphic Design) — Mon, 11 May 2009 11:15:00 +0000

Some new images of my 3rd term project named "growth", on my flickr
A small video is also on youtube here

RED5

noreply@blogger.com (Bunker Graphic Design) — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 13:50:00 +0000

Here is a quick sneak preview of the group project I am doing at the moment. It's called RED5 and we are 5 : Me, Gonzo, Iva, Naveen, James. I am doing the project management as well as the shading, rigging, effects and all the pipeline/TD job too. All in Houdini on Linux. It's should be up in 3-4 weeks. I'll be posting some screenshots on my flickr account too :)

In the meantime, you can have a look at some completed underwater projects from the MA Digital FX on youtube

Term 1 - underwater project

noreply@blogger.com (Bunker Graphic Design) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 20:46:00 +0000

Yes ! I just finished my first term at the NCCA. Here is the completed underwater project that I was working on since I started at Bournemouth Uni. The making-of is here as well.

Houdini IFD render ( sequence and individual frames )

noreply@blogger.com (Bunker Graphic Design) — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 02:04:00 +0000

Here is a little Linux bash script to render IFD files locally ( I'm still working on the padding )

#######################
## ##
## MANTRA IFD RENDER ##
## ##
#######################
#
# by : Julien Depredurand (2009)
#
#################################################################
## 1 - Render an IFD file sequence ( no padding )
#################################################################

# >>> parameters
# ------------------------------------------
filename="my_ifd_file_name"
startframe=366
endframe=501
# ------------------------------------------

i=$startframe
clear
echo ""
echo "-------------------------------"
while [ $i -lt $endframe ]; do
echo mantra -f ${filename}.$i.ifd
#mantra -f ${filename}.$i.ifd
let i++
done
echo "-------------------------------"
echo " JOB DONE ! "
echo ""

#################################################################
## 2 -Render individual IFD files ( no padding )
#################################################################

# >>> parameters
# ------------------------------------------
filename="my_ifd_file_name"
framearray=(001 010 099 100 205 500 )
# ------------------------------------------

len=${#framearray[*]}
i=0
clear
echo ""
echo "-------------------------------"
while [ $i -lt $len ]; do
echo mantra -f ${filename}.${framearray[$i]}.ifd
mantra -f ${filename}.${framearray[$i]}.ifd
let i++
done
echo "-------------------------------"
echo " JOB DONE ! "
echo ""

Houdini and other cool stuff from Japan

noreply@blogger.com (Bunker Graphic Design) — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 11:30:00 +0000

A very nice site full of experiments in Houdini, Maya, Renderman, ...

Parallel Tracking

noreply@blogger.com (Bunker Graphic Design) — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 21:18:00 +0000

Some really cool real time 3D tracking technology

NCCA Digital Effects - Underwater project

noreply@blogger.com (Bunker Graphic Design) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 00:21:00 +0000

My first Digital Effects Project is underwater and I decided to re-create a deep sea submarine loosely based on some really cool reference pictures. I just started the modeling, mainly NURBS based, in Houdini 9.5 - all of course, procedurally adjustable. I also started to build a really simple interface to control the propellers speed, number of particles created and submarine speed. Not finished and I haven't written any shader yet, but here it is anyway. More very soon...

Cool Architecture

noreply@blogger.com (Bunker Graphic Design) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 22:04:00 +0000

Very cool futuristic architecture going on there : emergentarchitecture

British Heart Foundation

noreply@blogger.com (Bunker Graphic Design) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:57:00 +0000

Another brilliant website from Sennep for the British Heart Foundation. Definitely the sexiest annual report ever. Check it out here.

Evenly distributed points of sphere

noreply@blogger.com (Bunker Graphic Design) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 11:36:00 +0000

Placing a set number of points evenly on a sphere isn't exactly a walk in the park. But it is possible to get approximated coordinates, using various methods. Here is a link to an excellent Java applet that uses Electrostatic repulsion to find ( and display! ) the 3D coordinates of the points - impressive.

BBH is live

noreply@blogger.com (Bunker Graphic Design) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 13:45:00 +0000

After a few intense months from everyone at Sennep, BBH website is finally live !
I had some fun with the globe and sheep animations, especially with the R&D part.
Technically, pretty much everyone I knew was invited: Maya, Houdini, After Effects, MEL, Illustrator Javascript, Flash, JSFL, Python, Lightwave, Blender.

Some clever mix of 3D and video was used for the sheep animations.
For the globe, I did some 3D modeling in Lightwave for the main buildings, mixed with procedurally painted cities in Houdini - a total of 100,000 buildings, enough detail to do some moving image work with - as well as some fluids and particles R&D for the animated blobs.

I also started the development of a vector rendering engine written in MEL, which writes layered Postscript files directly from Maya. The features so far are animation ( frames exported as layers ), and backface culling. I'm still working on the Z-sorting.

Maya batch render log file filter

noreply@blogger.com (Bunker Graphic Design) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 11:36:00 +0000

Maya batch rendering log files are very long, specially when you turn the verbosity level to 4 ( -v 4 ) to display the rendering times. Sometimes, all you want to know is the filename and time per frame of what you are rendering. Here is a little Python script I wrote to filter out just that. You end up with a file that contains only 2 lines per frame rendered, just like this:

Result: c:/my_project/my_file.mb

RC 0.2 info : wallclock 0:00:01.14 for rendering

Here is the Python :

# open source file
f = open('render1.txt', 'r')

# open output file ( if the file doesn't exist, create file )
o = open("out.txt", 'w')

# create an array to store all the lines for the output file
outList = []

# loop through each line
for line in f:
# split the line using the space character
split1 = line.split(" ")
# split the line using the colon character
split2 = line.split(":")
# test the number of words in the line ( if > 5 )
if len(split1) > 5:
# if line starts by "RC"
if split1[0] =="RC":
# if "wallclock" is found
if split1[7] =="wallclock":
# add to the output file Array
outList.append(line)

if split2[0] =="Result":
# add to the output file Array
outList.append(line)

# write the ouput file
o.write(''.join(outList))

# close both files
f.close
o.close

Houdini 9.5 beta

noreply@blogger.com (Bunker Graphic Design) — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 22:05:00 +0000

Hell, they never stop working! Toronto's mighty Side Effects just released Houdini 9.5 public beta. It's now available for the Mac platform as well, and it's fully 64bits, unlike Maya. I will be very soon starting a new blog entirely dedicated to my studies at Bournemouth NCCA. I will be including some tips, files, and comments on my research on Houdini, Shake, Nuke, PFTrack as well as some Ubuntu stuff...

Nuke 5 review

noreply@blogger.com (Bunker Graphic Design) — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 13:17:00 +0000

An interesting review on Nuke5 from Highend3D.

JSFL

noreply@blogger.com (Bunker Graphic Design) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 01:22:00 +0000

Not new at all, but still, not enough people talk about, and use JSFL ( Javascript for Flash ) which can save you hours if you're a bit old school and need to put thousand of images in the Library.
3 very handy Scripts for Flash

Checkland plagiarism

noreply@blogger.com (Bunker Graphic Design) — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 15:05:00 +0000

Not as good as Checkland Kindleysides but still very funny indeed, eve images is a group of freelancers from Norway. They do some 3D architecture visualisation, but unfortunately, they are not too innovative in term of web design :)

Gelato Pro for free

noreply@blogger.com (Bunker Graphic Design) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 10:10:00 +0000

Nvidia's Gelato Pro GPU-Powered Rendering Software is now available to download for free. So you can install it now on a 64 Os ( the previous free release was only available for 32Bits systems ). Quick ambient occlusion for everyone ! well, as long as you have a Quadro FX card :) Some nice hardware accelerated renders in the gallery. Stay tuned for some review on Gelato...

Bournemouth NCCA - MA Digital Effects

noreply@blogger.com (Bunker Graphic Design) — Tue, 27 May 2008 11:33:00 +0000

I'll be very busy for 12 months doing an MA in Digital Effects at Bournemouth NCCA ( starting this October ). That course involve intense use of Houdini and Nuke . You can see the showreel I submitted with my application - that involved the creation of a digital self portrait - that's why my 3D face is in it - oh dear ! :)

Lidell live - Genius stroke freak

noreply@blogger.com (Bunker Graphic Design) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 00:39:00 +0000

Youtube is shit, but thanks to Jamie Lidell it's worth watching. Amazing performance live

noreply@blogger.com (Bunker Graphic Design) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 13:56:00 +0000

I am applying for an MA in Digital Effects / 3D Animation at Bournemouth University, so my showreel should be online very soon. Stay tuned ...

Seymour Powell

noreply@blogger.com (Bunker Graphic Design) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 08:34:00 +0000

Just finished that not too long ago at Sennep, Seymour Powell is a UK based product design agency. Sleek design by Lorenzo and flash build by Oli, and fullscreen 3D intro by myself. A bit of Global Illumination and Final Gathering in MentalRay going on there, and big resolution too: 1850 pixels wide.

PIXIE - Renderman compliant renderer

noreply@blogger.com (Bunker Graphic Design) — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 13:05:00 +0000

PIXIE is an open source Renderman® compliant renderer. It's free and there to be downloaded. Have fun with it :) and don't forget to give some feedback to the developers !

Nvidia acquires MentalRay

noreply@blogger.com (Bunker Graphic Design) — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 21:26:00 +0000

Nvidia just bought MentalRay ( available for Maya, Houdini, XSI, 3DSMax ) which is probably a good thing considering that any descent 3D workstations uses Nvidia's mighty Quadro FX GPUs. Also that could mean a serious improvement of the future releases of Nvidia's Gelato, the GPU accelerated rendering engine, which already support Ambient Occlusion, Global Illumination, Caustics, Motion Blur, Depth of Field, and many more features. Nvidia seems to have some serious plans with the release of Plex and Tesla multi-GPU units.

This is also extremely interesting considering that Nvidia just released the Triple-SLI for the GeForce 8800 GTX. Let's hope they will do the same with Professional Card. Also, don't miss amazing bargains on Quadro FX cards HERE ( international delivery available )

SideFX Houdini Aprendice HD

noreply@blogger.com (Bunker Graphic Design) — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 14:30:00 +0000

Well done SideFX ! The new Houdini Apprentice HD is now available for $99. You can also download a free Learning edition ! Very nice !

Realtime 3D textured plane rendering in Flash using Maya animation

noreply@blogger.com (Bunker Graphic Design) — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 19:13:00 +0000

I am working on a flash website that involves animating a pile of cards using Rigid Body Dynamics in Maya. Considering the amount of the animation and the number of cards, rendering as PNG sequences wasn't a viable option.

To save a lot of file size and painful frame by frame hand animations, I combined a MEL script that project a 3D point into a 2D space and a image distortion class found in the Sandy engine.
The result is a simple text file generated from Maya and then read into flash. The images on each cards are rendered in realtime using 4 points distortion (the faces are actually made out of 8 triangles for better display ).

I have also been working on a very simple OBJ file importer in Processing which is a lot more simple than the one done by Tatsuya SAITO . I will post the sources of these two very soon.