Strange High House in the Mist

Prometheus 1st trailer

2011-12-22T22:13:00.001+01:00

The 1st official trailer for Prometheus, the movie I am working on, has been released. Watch it big and with sound!:

I am enjoying tremendously working on this film. I had never been this excited on any of the projects I have worked on previously. And this is not to belittle those projects, but rather to show how strongly I feel for Prometheus. I had the great chance to work in a Ridley Scott movie before, on Robin Hood, so I feel incredibly fortunate and happy to have that chance a second time, and this time in such a special film.

Can't wait to see this one in the cinema!

fxpodcast: Greg Butler on Harry Potter 7 Part 2

2011-07-31T19:43:00.000+02:00

In this fxpodcast, Greg Butler, MPC VFX Supervisor, discusses the work we did on the last Harry Potter movie:

More specifically, in minutes 5:30 to 14:00, he talks about the FX work done by my team: creating the river of fire and fire creatures in the Room of Requirements sequence.

New FX Reel 2010

2011-07-24T23:11:00.000+02:00

My new FX Reel, updated with work done during 2010 for:

- Ridley Scott's "Robin Hood"
- "Chronicles of Narnia 3: Voyage of the Dawntreader"

FX Reel 2010 - Mayec Rancel from Mayec Rancel on Vimeo.

John Carter trailer

2011-07-14T21:40:00.000+02:00

What I am working on these days:

The Vestigial Diskette

2011-06-11T19:26:00.000+02:00

Nowadays, most applications that have a button for the "save" function, use a floppy disk (or diskette) for its icon. Even in some cases, like the shareware program Total Commander, the iconic diskette represents the whole application.

I find it interesting that we will soon reach a situation where most, and eventually all, the people using those applications will have never seen a physical diskette or know its purpose (already, many of the actual younger users would be clueless if you asked them). The diskette icon will become an abstract representation with no meaningful connection to the "save" or "load" functions that it represents, a shadow of an obscure and primitive technology whose nature and purpose was lost in the mists of aeons past...

I wonder: Will the diskette icon remain for many years to come as a vestige of the primordial age of computers, or will some new standard representative icon eventually replace it?

What do you think? Should it stay? Should it go? What would you propose as a good alternative and timeless iconical representation for "save" and "load"? Do you remember the "Age of the Diskette" with nostalgia or with a sense of liberation? Or maybe you don't know what a diskette is, what it was for, and what I am rambling about... go ahead and share your thoughts in the coments.

Python: Hamiltonian Cycles in a graph

2011-05-02T13:34:00.002+02:00

This is a follow-up to this other post , where I presented a python program to find Eulerian paths in a graph (more specifically, the iconic "Bridges of Königsberg" one, although the program could easily be adapted to any other arbitrary graph).

A few weeks ago, I made a variation on that, and wrote a program to explore all possible paths in a graph, to try to find any existing Hamiltonian cycles. The purpose of this was to solve a mathematical challenge by spanish newspaper "El País".

This is the graph presented for the challenge, and solved by this program:

In a graph (a series of vertices connected by edges), the basic difference between an Eulerian path and a Hamiltonian one, is that the Eulerian path is one that walks through every edge exactly once, whereas the Hamiltonian walks through every vertex exactly once. Also, the difference between a path and a cycle is simply that the cycle ends at the same place where it started, whereas the path can start and end in two different features of the graph. So, although the problems are different, the apparent similarity is what made the adaptation of the code fairly easy. The main difference was considering the additional condition of seeing the path end where it started, for a positive result.

The solution, by the way is... that there is no solution. There are no possible Hamiltonian cycles in that graph, although there are several Hamiltonian paths (not starting/ending in the same vertex).

If anyone is interested, you can find the python code here:

hamiltonianCycle.py

This could easily be adapted for any other graph, by modifying all the "Zones" and "Bridges" declarations at the beginning of the code.

Can you think of any interesting other uses/variations for this program?

new trailer: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows pt.2

2011-05-01T17:37:00.000+02:00

This new trailer came out last Wednesday, showing some more of the work we have been doing for this last episode in the series. Congratulations to all the friends and colleagues, in all facilities, who are now giving their sweat and blood to finish this one off with full on awesomeness! I'm dying to see this one on the big screen...

making of: The Right Hand of Doom

2011-02-03T23:45:00.000+01:00

I made this step-by-step making of my digital painting The Right Hand of Doom.

(click image to enlarge)

Python: brute-force solution to Bridges of Königsberg

2011-01-17T00:02:00.001+01:00

Yesterday I read about the mathematical problem of the Seven Bridges of Königsberg. Since Leonard Euler already solved the problem a while ago (or rather, assured us that there is no possible solution to it), through elegant and brilliant thinking and analysis (and by the same, initiating the discipline of Graph Theory, what a man!), I set myself a much more insignificant challenge: My obsessive pastime of the afternoon has been writing a python program which would find all possible paths of the Bridges of Königsberg problem, using only one recursive function. I know, I am such a geek! Get over it. I have.

My goals with this were simply:

To have an excuse to shake the dust off my programming/scripting (haven't written any code in a while).
To get some practice with recursivity, as this seemed like a perfect case to apply it.

Accidentally, along the way, I have learned some bits about things like Game Theory, Graph Theory and Decision Trees.

An interesting information that came out of this is that my brute-force approach says there are 372 different legal paths. Much less than I expected, which explains why it solves so fast. I would be interested in hearing if anyone reading this knows a way to calculate this number.

I haven't seen any examples of a similar code online (probably because it's pretty useless), so I thought I'd share it, in case anyone is interested:

konigsbergBridges.py

And here is a diagram of the naming convention that my program uses for land zones & bridges:

It would be very easy to adapt this code to any other similar problem, with an arbitrary number of land zones and bridges connecting them, by changing the initial variable declarations. But with a high number of bridges, I am sure the program would hit some technical limits like the recursion limit, or would need to run for a long time.

The Right hand of Doom (Digital Painting)

2010-11-09T00:17:00.000+01:00

I will state the obvious: despite the title, this has nothing to do with Hellboy.

Why that title, then? This image was inspired by the short story of the same title, which Robert E. Howard wrote many decades before Mignola was even born.

This is my first attempt at a real, finished illustration in... well... ever? So I know it is poor and lacking in many respects. But hopefully, it will be the first step in a long road of improvement and learning. And your comments and constructive criticism will help a lot with that.

new Maya script: DynamiXer v1.0

2010-10-26T23:27:00.001+02:00

I published a new script tool on my website. This one is for Maya, and mostly targeted for FX work (which is my daily bread).

This thing, called DynamiXer, centralizes a few easy controls to toggle visibility and simulation of all dynamics nodes (for now, that's particles and fluids) in your scene. Rather simple, really, but it can save you quite a bit of time and parameter-searching when you are thrashing about with complex scenes with several particles and/or fluids.

DynamiXer is available for download in the scripts section of my website.

Right now, the tool only connects with two types of nodes (particles and fluids), but I made it very easy to add other node types (I can think of nParticles or nCloth, for example). So, if you have a need for these, let me know and it should be a quick addition.

Besides its usefulness in my daily work, I had two goals with this little project:

To create my first real tool script in Maya with Python (rather than MEL).
To find out and learn how to create a dynamic Maya UI with Python.

By "dynamic UI" I mean that the UI changes depending on the nodes you have in the scene. For example, one challenge was to only use one procedure for each type of button functionality (for example, all "activate visibility" buttons call the same procedure), but create variations for each button (to unhide a specific node, or all nodes of a specific type). My solution for this was to use the functools.partial command.

As always, if you find any errors or bugs or have any ideas and suggestions for improvements, your comments/emails will be very welcome.

trailer: Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows

2010-06-30T00:11:00.000+02:00

I worked on the FX of the three shots of the final Harry vs Voldemort duel, around 2:00. Not too happy about how the shot of Voldemort was finished, as I had much better looking fluid simulations, but it's just a trailer...

trailer: Narnia - Voyage of the Dawntreader

2010-06-28T09:13:00.000+02:00

This is one of the movies I am working on lately. I worked on the Sea of Lilies, which appears in a couple of shots at the end of the trailer.

concept art - Mortui

2010-05-30T14:23:00.001+02:00

I just added this concept art to my website gallery:

It's a concept digital painting I did, for a VFX test which a friend and I started as R&D for a short film. We shot video of myself walking, with a shaky camera, and the test (still WIP) consists in digitally replacing parts of my head to make me look like a zombie, with damage that could not be done through traditional FX make-up techniques.

I made this image more than a year ago, but only now realized I had not uploaded it to my website, even though it was in my deviantArt gallery.

fxguide - Robin Hood at MPC

2010-05-19T23:03:00.003+02:00

In this article, fxguide interviews Richard Stammers, VFX Supervisor on Ridley Scott's Robin Hood, about the work we did for the movie at MPC:

fxguide - Robin Hood at MPC

It was really nice working with Richard, and I look forward to doing it again. It's also nice to read about the specifics of our work in this film, since in this case we take pride in having made invisible VFX that go completely undetected. As reported by a colleague, some media are saying that the final battle did not have a single CG element in it, and was fully practical. Isn't it nice... many of us have been payed during 6 months for doing nothing at all. :)

A couple of quotes about the work I was directly involved with:

"Finally there was also a lot of work creating the interaction of the horses' hooves with mud, grass and augmenting everything with live action dust elements."

There, Richard talks about the shot shown in the above image, where, besides creating some of the water elements of the disembarking army, I also created several particle elements of the mud and grass being kicked up by the CG horses in the front.

"Our effects team was responsible for creating all the wakes and splashes for the French armada. So we had 200 boats creating splashes, then landing craft with doors opening into the water and troops coming out into the water. They had to generate the footfall splashes for every single horse and soldier in the water as they got off the landing craft. Our crowd animation coming out of ALICE had to be matched up with these splashes in Maya and we had to write some custom additions to our pipeline, by pre-simulating lots of splash elements using Flowline. Those pre-cached simulations were placed at the feet positions of the ALICE crowd agents, so at render time we could get the line of water right and leave a trail of foam behind."

That paragraph sums it up pretty well. I created all the flowline splashes simulations for the horses and soldiers, as well as the interactions of oars going in and out of the water. I want to mention the great work of Rob Hopper (fx lead) in creating some nice tools to place all those splashes to match the cached ALICE crowds, with sometimes thousands of agents on screen. Also worth of mention is Nicola Danese's setup and scripts for the dozens of boats' interaction with the water surface and the foam they leave behind.

Because Sharing is Caring

2010-05-11T00:17:00.000+02:00

I have added some new functionality to this blog. Now, at the end of every post, you will find the following button:

Thanks to it, it is very easy to share my posts on almost any social networking site (like facebook or linkedin), or online bookmarking site, as well as the old-fashioned direct e-mail (I can still remember when old-fashioned was the so-called snail-mail).

"Politeness & Tires" screening in Edinburgh and Stirling

2010-05-08T20:35:00.000+02:00

My short film Politeness & Tires will soon be screened in Scotland, at CinemaAttic's Norman McLaren - Spanish animation today: converging identities?

There will be two screenings:

University of Sterling: May 13th, at 5pm

Roxy Art House, Edinburgh: May 22nd, at 5pm

The film is part of the section Diversity & Inventiveness: the total artists, which in the programme is described as:

The variety of his filmic expression together with a technical invention that continously transcended the barriers of traditional animation made of Norman McLaren a modern, total artist. Introduced by his stunningly multilayered and expressionistic Begone Dull Care (1949), this section opens a deep browsing into the richness and diversity of the Spanish animation nowadays.

Fluctuating from a wide range of formats and skilfully accomplished techniques, the list of Spanish animated films grouped here are nothing less than the epitome of McLaren's career: inventiveness, spontaneity and powerful expressing quality.

More information here.
Programme download here.

new MaxScript: Chain Rigger v1.1

2010-05-02T02:01:00.003+02:00

I just released a new tool for 3ds max, called Chain Rigger.

This MaxScript tool creates a simulation rig for a chain (free or constrained) with a few simple steps. The rig is an optimized one, very stable and fast to simulate, based on a Reactor rope.

Update (02/05/2010):

I uploaded a video that shows how to use the tool.

To download the script (including an information text file, a tutorial and an example scene), visit the scripts section of my website.

Like Autumn Leaves, this tool is also based on a technique I used for some FX in Planet 51. Namely, rigging and simulating the alien-dog's chain.

As with all my other scripts/tools, feel free to use this for any purpose. I only require proper credit and that, if you feel like it, drop me an email to tell me how useful it was. All comments, bug reports and ideas for improvement are most welcome.

Accepting donations for my scripts

2010-04-18T15:00:00.003+02:00

I never thought about it until someone recently asked for a way to make a small donation for the Maya and 3ds max scripts I make freely available at my website. They were using a couple of them in their daily work and wanted to show their gratitude. What a nice surprise!

That is why I have added a "Donate" button to my website's scripts page, which takes you to an easy and secure paypal donation process:

Don't worry, the scripts are still free to download and use. But if you find them useful, a donation is a nice way to say "thanks", and to support any future developments by showing your appreciation of the time and work I put into them, and helping with the hosting costs.

As a small reminder, another nice way to show your support if you use my scripts, is simply by letting me know, telling me what you use them for and giving some feedback as to what you like or not, bugs, wished-for features, or any other comments.

New FX Reel (2009)

2010-02-13T20:41:00.004+01:00

I just put up my latest FX Reel, which sums up my work during 2009. It is mostly made of shots from the CG animation feature film Planet 51. It includes a couple of breakdowns at the end, so watch it all if you are curious to see how some of the effects were made.

Mayec Rancel's FX Reel (December 2009) from Mayec Rancel on Vimeo.

You can also find this reel in the "reels" section of my website, togeather with links to download it in HD (1280 x 960) and a detailed breakdown PDF.

new maxscript: Render MOV Maker

2010-01-12T02:09:00.003+01:00

Following a petition from Daniel Swahn, I adapted my ".mov Preview Maker" script for 3ds max to a new form: "Render MOV Maker". This maxScript is intended to be used as a Post-Render script. After the render is finished, it will automatically create a Quicktime .mov file.

You can download it from the Scripts section in my website, with the release info & details.

You can also find it at ScriptSpot (and spare a vote if you find the script useful).

Like ".mov Preview Maker", it makes use of my qtSeq2mov.js CScript, which needs Quicktime (Pro? can someone confirm?) to be installed in your system.

The script has an optional 'express' mode, which will skip the UI. The UI gives you options to delete the render files after creating the .mov, and for embedding a sound file into your .mov.

I will point out a weakness, inherited from ".mov Preview Maker": these two scripts are still one step short of full automatization, as the Quicktime part requires user interaction to set the compression/size/format options, and pick a path/filename for the mov file. Since the beginning I wanted to add the option to save a presets file for all these, which qtSeq2mov.js would read, but I never managed to make it work. Some day, I hope...

Please, let me know if any of these scripts are useful to you (or not at all), if you would like any features added, or if you encountered any ugly scary bugs.

Mundus Substantioso (III)

2009-12-27T16:07:00.005+01:00

"Venus" is a stunningly beautiful porcelain sculpture by Kate MacDowell.

Note: The Mundus Substantioso posts show images of things connected, one way or another, to my short film Substantia, without implying that such connections are anything but coincidental.

If you find anything "Substantious" around you, please, send me the link/picture!

These are the two previous posts:

Mundus Substantioso (II)
Mundo Substantia (I)

Merry XMaxScript - Stick Locator v1.2

2009-12-25T19:59:00.002+01:00

Merry ChristMax everybody! Guess what Santa brought for you? Yes, you... if you are a 3ds max user, anyway:

I just released a new MaxScript tool I made for myself, and which I have been using a lot for a while, called "Stick Locator". What Stick Locator does is create a point dummy (I called it "locator", please excuse my late Maya influences), which will "stick" to a reference object's specific vertex. You can also have it stick to its geometric center.

Since I am specializing in FX these days, the main use I have for this tool is to attach particle/fluid emitters to specific parts of a character, or any deforming/moving geometry which has been "baked". But I'm sure you can find new uses for it, like attaching props to a character's bodypart or... well, it's free for you to use in production (with proper credit, please), so if you find any interesting use for this script, do let me know!

For more information, and to download the script, check out my website's Scripts section. You can also find it on ScriptSpot.

Ridley Scott's "Robin Hood" 2nd trailer

2009-12-22T17:21:00.002+01:00

You can see the "World Exclusive" second trailer at Yahoo! UK.

It shows a more complete picture of the whole movie and its story.

Avatar, an archetypal story

2009-12-22T12:32:00.005+01:00

The most frequent criticism I have heard against Avatar is about the story. Even some people who loved the movie say things like "It's amazing, although the story is not". Well, I disagree.

I agree that the story is predictable and not specially original or witty. It's a story told a hundred times before, and it all looks very familiar. But it's the kind of story that great classics are made of. It's a strong archetypal story, full of archetypal characters and archetypal symbols. It is not a story to be intellectualized. It resonates with the deepest instinctive storymonger in us. There's the chosen one/hero, the mentor, the rite of passage, etc... And that makes it work in many, many levels: visceral, instictive, moral, intellectual, spiritual.

I will issue a warning here: "Archetypal" does not mean simple or superficial. I also think that it's a story masterfully told, with all characters carefully and sklillfully built, and every one of their actions adds to the meaning. If, as the great storytelling mentors say, your story is your character, then Avatar's story is excellent, because it has excellent characters. All of them. I cared about and related to all of them, and every single one of their actions had great meaning and importance to me. Even the pitiful and mindless obsession of the "bad guy" to destroy everything, because that's all he knows how to do. It's the dark side of every human-being.

I am the kind of guy who doesn't flinch at the scariest scene in the scariest movie, or who doesn't even get watery eyes when everyone else in the room is buried in handkerchiefs. When watching Avatar, I had goosebumps more times than I can count, and had tears to my eyes more than a couple, and not specifically on sad or happy moments. Has a movie ever had you almost crying of rage? Avatar was the first for me. And I know I am not the only one. I could feel it in the people around me. For almost 3 hours, the silence was absolute, and heavy with emotion.

I could keep elaborating about many more arguments to make my point: the way that every element in the movie (art direction, the music, or even the other stories it reminds you of) reinforces the story. But I will just state my position simply: My opinion is that Avatar is an example of very skillfull cinematic storytelling. In every single character. In every single action. In every artistic choice. Anyone who wants to learn storytelling should study Avatar. Thoroughly.