Hard Core's Film Updates

Working in Maya

2012-10-14T23:58:00.001-07:00

So I'm working on my first major project in Maya, using Mentalray as my renderer. It's not for a class, because unfortunately I have yet to actually get to the point in my schedule where I am "officially" supposed to know anything about 3D... which is kind of annoying, but that's not stopping me from learning the heck out of Maya before I get there. I've imported the good ol' Pagani Zonda from Blender, and rigged it to be animated. Then I made all of the materials and textures you see here in Maya and MentalRay:

This render uses mia_physicalsky, which I am going to replace because A) I think it is cheap in a way, and B) Unless I am missing some important settings that would let me tweak the colors of the sky, I think that I can get a better sky dome using my camera and Photoshop.

I'm also going to get a higher-res ground texture. And figure out why the shading on the ground Geo isn't set to be smooth. And ditch Maya's crummy shaderGlow post effect for some proper After Effects. And change the red carpaint material to actually look pretty red.

So yeah; pretty much everything in this render is subject to change. I only decided to post this because I really liked how you could see the suspension coming up because of my animation, and figured it was time for a blog post.

Oh yeah, and I never officially linked to The Battle for Axis Mundi on my blog. That's kind of sad, when you consider that I made like 2 years worth of posts about working on the darn thing. And now I'm going to embed it in this post to make myself feel a little less guilty.

The end of my RCT3 career

2012-08-21T23:24:00.001-07:00

This Friday I am moving back into my college dorm, to start a new school year and a new adventure. The Battle for Axis Mundi is on schedule to be completed by then. When it is released I will be done with RCT3 machinima for good. I'd like to thank everyone who's watched my RCT3 videos. You really have been awesome. Thanks for creating this unique community where we got to do awesome, epic stuff in our own little universe.

Yep, just a few more days! :D

Mechanics Vs. Aliens Episode 6

2012-07-16T18:07:00.001-07:00

Today I finished Mechanics Vs. Aliens Episode 6. I'm pretty stoked about that. As of the writing of this blog post, it has not yet finished uploading to YouTube. When it goes up, I will have fulfilled the promise that I made to everyone.

I finished Mechanics Vs. Aliens.

Episode 6 DID come out EVENTUALLY.

Man, I'm so glad to be done with this. And now we will see what I do about The Battle for Axis Mundi. It's now the only thing standing between me and a plate of film projects which are free from the limits of a rendering engine from 2004. Oh yeah, and I actually stayed up all night last night and all day today finishing up this masterpiece (or what I hope you will agree is a masterpiece, haha). So, I think that I will be going to sleep before it finishes uploading. YouTube tells me that when it is finished, it will be viewable here.

I hope to see a bunch of nice comments in the morning! Tell me what you think of the ending! ;D Peace out.

Bull in a China Shop

2012-07-14T14:02:00.001-07:00

So, it's the weekend, and I've got a lot of stuff going on. I'm really close to finishing Mechanics Vs. Aliens, and I'm also working on a 3d Animation for my internship. The company I'm working for is Bullhorn Creative, and the animation that I am working on for them has to do with a bull in a china shop. Here's the animatic that I used to pitch the idea to them:

Short and sweet. So anyways, today I've been working on the lighting and materials for this animation. Check it out:

Frustrated with Indirect Lighting result

Aha! I had to subdivide my walls

Added my own seamless texture

Adding a displacement map... Whoa nelly!!

Set the displacement amount to a sane level, also changed the floor and ceiling to white.

So, the set for my animation is coming along nicely, and it's going to be an awesome portfolio piece when the whole thing is finished. And fact that I am doing this work for a real-world branding firm will strengthen my portfolio even more.

Now that I've worked on that, I'm going to try and finish MVA this weekend.

So close man....

2012-07-11T21:50:00.000-07:00

So I've been hacking away at getting the last scene of Mechanics Vs. Aliens edited whenever I have the chance. Other than that I've been doing stuff for my internship (including making a 3D animation). I really wish I could finish MVA tonight, but I have to get up early to get to a video shoot that will last all day tomorrow. So, like I said, I'm just hacking away whenever I get the chance. I'm really, really, close, though.

Super excited

2012-07-10T00:51:00.003-07:00

So, I'm super excited. And I have the right to be. I just spent the last 5 hours filming the final battle in Mechanics Vs. Aliens. I just need to edit it together and probably get a few more shots to help tie everything together. Take a look at how the editing panned out:

There's about 50 nested sequences in there, by the way, so it's even more complicated than what you see there. Also, notice the runtime? Like it? ;)

So yeah. It's happening soon. After 4 years, Mechanics Vs. Aliens is finally coming to an end.

Crazy June

2012-06-30T18:45:00.002-07:00

I've had a pretty crazy month. I started working at Bullhorn on the 1st, and I haven't gotten around to posting until now. I have been working on RCT3 stuff, though. I am working on both The Battle for Axis Mundi and MVA Episode 6. The reason for this is that I do not want to finish Axis Mundi and then still feel really burdened by MVA Episode 6. I just want to be done with RCT3 Machinima, so I'm looking to get all of it off of my chest at once. It's not that it hasn't been a fantastic adventure making movies in Roller Coaster Tycoon 3, but it is really not helpful to my professional career to be stuck making films using such limited technology.

Unfortunately I completely whiffed on making a post when I released A FREAKING TRAILER FOR AXIS MUNDI! You'd think that I would have taken the time to do a blog post for such a momentous occasion, BUT NOOOO........ Anyways, if you haven't seen it, CHECK IT OUT:

Right now I am also making an animation for Bullhorn. So keep an eye out for that, as it will probably be pretty sweet. Also, I have been having a really great time at Bullhorn. I am very grateful to be getting so much experience in an actual creative workplace. I don't have to be at work every day, but I almost always go in anyways. Because of this, there is sometimes a little down time where I don't have anything to do for Bullhorn. However, they encourage me to be creative and come up with wacky-awesome-off-the-wall stuff for their Facebook page. For example, here's a picture that I made the other day. In it you can see the glass intern table where I work most of the time, and also get an idea of the sort of creative stuff I get to do.

And yes, that's me in the picture. And me. And me. And that one's me too. Oop. There I am again.

So far this month

2012-05-11T00:20:00.000-07:00

So I got back from school last weekend. It was an incredible year, and I can't believe it is gone already. A couple points of good news.

First: I got the internship at the marketing firm! Huzzah! So, I will be paid, and get to work alongside professional creatives all summer long! Well, all summer starting in June. Pretty awesome.

Second: I've been hacking away at Axis Mundi pretty much every day since I got back. I've been doing camera animation in RCT3 and editing in Premiere. Today I've also been creating new animation in Blender to import into RCT3 so I can film and edit more.

I think the RCT3 camera shots are really cool, and the Flying Camera paths for them look absolutely crazy. Screenshots for ya:

Cameras. Cameras everywhere.

Keyframe ALL OF THE CAMERAS!

And here's an interesting look into the animation process in Blender. Gotta love them curves.

Bezier curves, to use the proper jargon.

So yeah. I really hope I can steam ahead without losing momentum and knock this thing out. Compared to a few weeks ago I've got all the time in the world, so I ought to be able to do it.

Stuffs

2012-04-30T15:52:00.002-07:00

Well well well, that sucks, doesn't it? An entire month of no progress on my blog or on my film. Well, the good news is that I am almost done with finals, and unless I am the most thick-skulled nincompoop on the face of the planet, I ought to have gotten it through my head that I need to TAKE ADVANTAGE OF MY FREE TIME, and with this in mind I ought to be able to finish Axis Mundi and Mechanics Vs. Aliens this summer.

.....

Nincompoop is a funny word.

Oh, and also my internship prospects are still looking pretty good. Should hear for sure in the next few days if I'm gonna get to do Digital Media stuffs, for monies n' stuffs.

Like an electric eel

2012-03-30T19:29:00.003-07:00

So... I guess we saw how it went over the past few weeks. Not very many posts, I have to admit. That does not mean I have not been working at all, however. I have animated 94 frames of both characters in The Battle for Axis Mundi since my last post on the 11th. Slow progress, unfortunately. I don't have much homework this weekend, though, so I'm hoping to use it for Axis Mundi. I was able to work on it today, so the weekend is off to a good start.

Oh, and sorry if the title shocked you....

Like an electric eel.

A little bit' o progress

2012-03-11T20:38:00.002-07:00

Last night I was able to animate some frames for Axis Mundi. Not that many really, but I need to post cause' it's March Madness. So yeah. Unfortunately I can't work on it right now, cause I've got other things I have to do. Spring break just ended for me, so we'll see how everything goes over the next few weeks.

Finished the Demo Reel

2012-03-08T12:51:00.002-08:00

Hhhhmmm.... I think that I MIGHT be getting just a little bit tired. I stayed up all last night working on my demo reel. Still haven't gotten any rest, though, because I sent the reel in an e-mail to an marketing firm where I would like to intern this summer. Then they replied back (with positive comments about my lighting, I might add!) and so then I replied back again, and... ugh. It's been a long day. Anyways, enough chit chat! Check out my first ever demo reel:

So yeah. Cool ain't it? Yes, I broke down and used someone else's music. It just wasn't worth making my own for this. I think it is funny how both of my December renders are in the front of the reel. You are supposed to put your best work first, and I just felt like the December renders are the most eye catching. I left out animations from The Battle for Axis Mundi, because I don't want to release footage from that until I release the entire film. Hopefully I'll really make progress on that front soon.

Rendering

2012-03-06T18:48:00.002-08:00

Today I have been rendering the 360 degree turnaround animation that I mentioned yesterday. I had to go to the dentist, and do some other stuff too, so it worked out pretty well. But it still isn't done. It looks like it will be done early tomorrow morning, like at 4:00am or so. So I'll continue working on stuff tomorrow when it's done, and my processor isn't being maxed out.

Demo Reel

2012-03-05T23:13:00.004-08:00

So, I've been fairly productive today, but it has not been animating Axis Mundi. I've decided that I'm going to need a demo reel of the best video work I can muster. I need a demo reel for two reasons. One is because I am going to try to get a digital media job for the summer. The other reason is a similar opportunity. Technically it conflicts with the aforementioned job that I'm looking to do. It's an animation internship at a company where I might want to work someday. It could be a bit of a long-shot, but I'm still going to apply and so I'll need a demo reel for that. So that's what I've been doing today. Getting together some of my past creations and putting some extra shine on them to stick them in my demo reel. Mainly I've been working on getting a pristine 360 degree rendered animation of the Pagani Zonda model that I made... more than a year ago? Hard to believe that it has been that long. Anyways, yeah. That's what I've been doing.

The Corresponding Frames

2012-03-05T00:19:00.003-08:00

So today I unfortunately only ended up animating the corresponding 77 frames of animation for the other character. I was hoping to do more. Tomorrow I hope that I will use my time more wisely. I decided that I was simply not going to go to bed tonight until I at least did those frames, and so I stayed up late to finish them. It's not that they took that long to do, it's just that I had not worked all day and it was already late, and so I just stayed up for a little while and made an even later night out of it so that I would not have gone the whole day without animating a single frame. This is how we roll in March Madness. We don't stop till we get the job done!

March Madness 2012

2012-03-03T21:27:00.002-08:00

It's March again. I think this has been one of the fastest years in living memory. Of course, my memory of past years becomes more and more vague all the time, so I probably said the exact same thing last year. But anyways, since it is March again, it's time to make a bunch of posts and a bunch of progress. Today I am doing just that! I'm glad to say that I was able to work on animating The Battle for Axis Mundi today, and I got 77 frames of animation done, for one character. Still have to animate the other character during those 77 frames.

Also today I remembered how many hoops I have had to jump through to finagle this workflow to the point where it is possible. By that I mean that there are a lot of extra steps to go through in order to animate characters and render them in RCT3. It's making me look forward to being able to do a project where I use tools that were designed to do what I will use them do. So, happy March Madness, and I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow!

You know, that thing where...

2012-02-22T19:00:00.004-08:00

Yesterday I did that thing where I start and finish a short video project within one day. This is kind of for a school project. It was basically a proof of concept, showing that I can animate character designs based off of a single still Photoshop file. I basically isolated the parts of the character that I wanted to animate from the Photoshop file, and then mapped them onto identically shaped flat-planes, which I rigged up to be animated with an armature. All of this was done in Blender.

I have to say... I wish that I could find it in me to work as hard and as fast on The Battle for Axis Mundi as I did on this. I really just got down to business... even though it took, literally, all night. I finished rendering out the final animation at 7:55am, just in time to leave and go learn about Photoshop. Hahaha. When I describe it like that, I realize how much I love being in college and studying Digital Media.

A YouTube Milestone

2012-02-19T23:26:00.004-08:00

So, I just realized today that I am now the owner of a YouTube video that has been viewed over 100,000 times. That's right, it's taken more than 4 years, but "Hugest RCT3 Crash on Youtube" has finally broken the hundred thousand barrier.

Unfortunately, I haven't got much to report on Axis Mundi. Just keep your hopes up, and I'll try to do the same. I'm going to finish it somehow.

What's new?

2012-02-06T08:22:00.000-08:00

So, January was a horribly slow month. What's new? That's what it is like every single year. I have worked some this February, though. A few frames here, a few frames there. I guess it is coming along.

Don't you like them super-short posts?

It's goin'

2012-01-20T17:37:00.000-08:00

When people ask me how it's going, I like to reply with: It's goin'

Just thought I'd throw that out there. When I come up with an equally witty response to the query: "What's up," then I will let you know.

In Axis Mundi news, It's time for an update on the total length. The film so far is 5 minutes and 20 seconds long. A nice update to go along with this is that every scene in that 5:20 mins has music to go along with it. Music that I actually like and I think fits it pretty well. A couple days ago I had a really nice spurt of musical inspiration, and got that done.

So like I said, the film is 5:20 right now. At this very frame, serious stuff is going down. Blows are being thrown, and blocked, and parried. Awesome stuff like that. The RCT3 engine is taking it all in it's stride. I have not had any problems with the animation functionality of the game. Since the film is building up to it's zenith, soon the final length of the will be determined. I'm going to try and make the craziest, most awesome action scene that I can, until my creative strength gives out and I have to say enough is enough. When that happens I'll wrap the film up.

Oh, and I recently showed what I have so far to another Digital Media professor here at my college. He's a pretty frank guy. I've seen him critique a lot of other people's work, and he doesn't hesitate to tell you if he doesn't like something. He was silent as he skipped through my video. (If he watches an entire 5 minute film, then it's either a huge compliment, or he's just being uncharacteristically patient) and right after it ended he said: "So, I take it you like Dragonball Z." He was right. I do like Dragonball Z. He also told me that the animation was good and smooth, which made me very happy. So yeah. Being a Digital Media student and having access to professionals who can give you critiques is amazing.

First post of 2012

2012-01-15T20:19:00.000-08:00

I made some pretty good progress on Axis Mundi today. A little animation, a little filming, and a little compositing. I realize that this is a pretty tame start of the month (even though the month is pretty much halfway over already), but as always, I'd like to remember that a productive streak could be just around the corner.

Oh, and Happy New Year!

Progress... sort of.

2011-12-31T20:44:00.000-08:00

Ok so technically I have animated 12 seconds of animation since my last post, which is a good amount. The bad thing about this is that 11 of those seconds were animated pretty much right after I made the last post, and I've not made much progress since then. If I worked as hard as I did that day, I might have been able to do a few seconds of animation per day. As it is, I've only added about 1 second, for a grand total of 12 since my last post.

Besides the disappointing amount of work that I just described, I did get a ton of awesome hardware for Christmas. I got a 24 inch, 16x9 1080p monitor (now I can view my editing projects in fullscreen as I work on them!), a pair of pretty awesome speakers for said monitor, as well as a wireless, solar-powered keyboard. When I am not using both screens, I set up my huge monitor in front of my laptop, and along with the separate keyboard and speakers, I feel like I am on an entirely new system. It's pretty darn cool.

I still have a solid week left to try my best to be productive with Axis Mundi, so I hope and pray that I will be able to force myself to get some work done. It's not that I haven't sat down to do some serious animating... It's just that when I do I sit there watching what I have play over and over again, and I hardly ever add any new keyframes. If I ever do add any new keyframes, it only takes me about a minute, but then I WATCH IT ALL OVER AND OVER AGAIN INSTEAD OF TAKING THE NEXT MINUTE AND ADDING MORE KEYFRAMES. SERIOUSLY WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH ME?!?!?!

Filming by the book

2011-12-19T18:56:00.000-08:00

Today I have been animating and filming according to my animatic. Here's me comparing my shot in RCT3 to my animatic, in order to make adjustments:

So yeah, that pretty much explains what I've been doing and will be doing until I get to the end of my animatic. Then I'll just make it up from my head as I animate and film.

In other news, I've received grades for the art and digital media assignments that I posted earlier. The art project (The December Render) got a 97.5%, and the animatic got a 113%. Although, I didn't really get credit for the extra 13%, because that's not the way that the school's grading system works. The professor just happened to have a grading scheme that can go over 100%, because extra credit is built into it. Obviously I didn't really need extra credit, though.

December Render

2011-12-12T18:38:00.000-08:00

I can't believe that it's been more than a year since I started working on the model of the Pagani Zonda. But here we are, almost a year removed, and I have yet another "December Render" to share. Hhhmmm. March Madness and December Renders. I really enjoy all of these little traditions that I am slowly instituting here at Hard Core's Film Updates.

So, without further ado, here is the second official "December Render!!!"

Yes! It's all snowy and icy and watery! And stuff! I kind of half did this for fun, and half did it because I needed to make something for my 2D Design final. I printed it out on the super-nice printers at the Digital Media Center where I go to college at ETSU. The image is 4800 by 2700 pixels, which is exactly the right resolution to be printed on a 16 inch by 9 inch piece of paper at 300dpi. So that's what I did. The critique for my class's final pieces will be tomorrow, so I might add to this post or make a new one once it has been critiqued.*

Oh, and in case you weren't bored by the technical details mentioned earlier, here are some more to ensure that you get a healthy amount of bore-induced snoring today: The image was rendered in Blender using the Cycles rendering engine, using my GPU (A GTX 485m). It took about 12 hours of rendering to get this quality, which is actually very fast when you consider that there is virtually no noise in it. A similar image would never have cleared up this much in 12 hours if I rendered it with, say, Luxrender. So far Cycles is proving its self to be really, really valuable.

*I had the critique today. Nothing special, really. It went pretty well but people weren't drooling over it or anything. The class wasn't geared towards digital art, so I'm not surprised that not many people really "got" the image.

A scene from The Battle for Axis Mundi

2011-12-08T19:04:00.000-08:00

So... I decided that I would upload something kind of out of the ordinary for me. It is a preview of a scene from The Battle for Axis Mundi. I don't generally like to upload "previews" of my stuff before it is done, but I felt like I should make an exception in this case. Firstly, because this preview is not using footage from the actual film. Secondly, because it has been so darn long since I started this thing, I feel like people should get to see some indication of what is in the works. The animatic takes place about 4 minutes and 30 seconds into the film. That's how long it is right now. So basically over the next few weeks I will be working on making the very scene that you see in this video. But in RCT3 with fully animated 3D characters. So go ahead and take a look at what I am talking about, and then I'll give you some more tidbits:

So yeah. Kinda basic, but you get the idea of stuff happening. You also may recognize my slightly Derpy drawings as the Warrior of Light. You also may see a creepy spiky dude that you have never seen or heard of before. I guess I am kind of revealing him here. Oh well. I don't think that it matters that much that it stay a secret. Since I have shown you a 3D model of the Warrior of Light, I might as well show you a picture of what this bad guy, who's name happens to be "Evil," looks like in the game:

Now you are officially kinda-half spoiled. But not really. Because the point of this film is the animation. And I haven't made anything close to these animations before. So hopefully you don't feel too spoiled. Given that this is the biggest update for Axis Mundi so far, I kind of feel a little let down. I was expecting to be like OOHHHH YEAAAHHHH CHECK IT OUT ITS AN ACTUAL VIDEO ABOUT THE BATTLE FOR AXIS MUNDI WOOP WOOP!!!1!!1!!

Maybe I'll feel a little more excited once you guys start talking about it. Wink wink nudge nudge.