Maurice Tan

The Concept design (blueprints)

The concept vehicle is a flight variation of Lamborghini Murcielago and a Fighter jet/sport combination with two Lockheed aircrafts: F22 Raptor (Thrust) and LockHeed NightHawk (wings).

One of the concerns of this combination was to maintain an aerodynamic design. If the car was made out of carbon fiber rather than metal, it would take the weight issue into consideration and improve the possibility of flight.

 Image shown below is a photoshopped Concept art of the vehicle :

This is a top down view of the car design

And side view of the concept art.

As you can see here I have kept the car’s original basic design and added in the aerodynamic wings and rudder from the Night Hawk. Within the engine bay I had placed the F22 raptor twin engines for maximum cruising speed.

In overall, I think the concept design looks a bit sleek.

The process of converting 2D concept image to a 3D model

Firstly,  I scaled the cube to the proportions as indicated by the concept blueprint.

Then I began to place some edge loops on the cube itself to move the edges to position such that I sculpted up the basic shell around the concept outline.

Here is the image of the car before I modelled the details in:

After that, I slowly added some details to the 3D shell by extruding and placing edge loops in some places specified by the blueprints.

Here is an image of the completed model untextured:

With the body done, I moved on to sculpt the wings and rudders and the jet engines out of individual cubes which didn't take long to replicate from the blueprint.

Here is comparison image of the wing in WIP stage and completed wing:

here is comparison image of WIP rudder and a completed one:

However the main unique thing is replicating the car’s grill/wire mesh component as the blueprint had shown it.

Here is the component in question:

Also I modelled the Lamborghini reventon wheels because I had an idea to animate the wheels to fold itself in like conventional aircrafts do to take off. However, I eventually decided against the animation.

Here is the image of the wheel in comparison with cylinder before I modelled it   (I had replicated from online source):

Not only that, I also had modelled the interior from scratch with exception of the seat(Which I had modelled prior to via blueprint), steering wheel and jet thrust controls which were all replicated from online source.

Here is the compilation of images regarding the model I sculpted:

An WIP seat from a early stage of modeling via blueprint.

A quick model of jet thrust control and the floor bit textured (I decided make the floor piece part of the Jet thrust control to save time texturing it.)

A completed model of the racing seat.

And racing seat with textures

A WIP steering wheel.

And completed steering wheel.

Texturing process of the 3D model

What I did is select the whole top section (excluding the windows) to UV map texture the car body as to simplify the texture process of the whole 3D shell in three sections.

However, I had to refresh the textures on the body and both the wings as well the the rudders multiple times (due to savefile not loading the referenced images). In spite of that, I managed to fixed the issue rather quite quickly.

I had textured the car to give further details (only half of details shown).

However, texturing the other components of the car took less time then the car.

Here is the image of the car with the textures applied as well an image of the completed concept car:

Here is one or two images of the wings/rudder, jet engines and the one of the wheels:

 The Process of animating 3D model for 9 second loop

The process was simple setup to camera to do full 360 turntable animation while I animated the finished car to do simple “flying” animation which loops pretty well.

However, I animated the wheels and the jet engine (both the turbine and exhaust vent) to give the feeling of a short takeoff and descent landing animation  

Rendering process of the animation

I was happy with how the animation turned out, I batch rendered the animation and imported to After Effects to give a little afterburner effect animation for the car (which I had researched online on how to create the effect) then applied the afterburner effect by layering the effect on top of the footage.

And here is the image with overlayed Afterburner

In all, the afterburner effect didn’t take me too long to create and animate the thrust effect.

With that done,  I rendered the animation as video.

Final verdict of the whole process

After assembling the scene I started to work on the lighting. I had some difficulty with the lighting, I found that there the scene was casting shadows in a odd way during at some parts of the animation. In the end, I disabled the shadows and decided shadows wouldn’t be required in the final product.

With the lighting I had set-up, the batch render took around 30 minutes to render the 360 frames at once. 

In After Effects I decided to enhance the clip with an audio that I downloaded from the website Bensound.com (Epic).

With the Treasure Chest completed, I begin to assemble the scene for Pirates Gold  which took me less than an hour.

The process I took was to import the provided assets and place them where I wanted them to be. However I left both the treasure chest and board in the centre of the scene while I moved the trees, grass, sea shells and starfish appropriately. 

After placing them, I decided to improve the scene a bit more by modelling one or two rocks for scene which I thought improved the aesthetic of the scene slightly.

I was happy with the way how the scene was set-up:

Here is a snapshot of the scene as it is:

Having the treasure chest completed in the previous blog, I decided to texture the chest with a silver/metallic, gold, and wood colour.

Here is the finished Treasure chest textures before it was applied to the model/mesh.

And also this:

What you can see here is a textured UV snapshot of the Treasure chest, the lid and the base.

Which once applied to mesh, looked like this: 

However, in the image above I had used a method to UV map each single part individually on the treasure chest because the two images (displayed above) I used before had been off-center on the actual model and wouldn't wrap around properly.  

So I managed to work around it by taking a complicated path by doing more than one UV mapping to the mesh and texturing the individual sections.

What I meant by that is this :

How can you use social media for your career? What strategies can you use? What is unprofessional on social media?  -(Dena, 2015)

These questions that Christy wrote in her blog are quite intriguing. 

I would use social media for collaborating or networking with other professionals, job hunting, as well as showcasing my work.

One of the most common unprofessional behaviours that people tend to do on social media was communicating inappropriately such as talking improperly (e.g. swearing) and displaying unsuitable content.

After I did some research online, I found four strategies on how to manage your social media professionally.

1. Know your audience and be interactive.

2. Provide value content for your audience

3. Go deeper in conversation with your audience.

4. Expand your social media presence.    

I think that these tips are very useful for me. I would implement these tips in the near future for professional reasons. 

The tip I found most helpful was to be in depth with your audience. 

I like this tip because I think I can always benefit from understanding my audience better. My future blog will benefit from it as it will provide interesting content specific and appreciated by my audience.

References

Pascale, A. (2014, March 5). 7 Tips for Managing and Maximizing Content in Social Media. Retrieved 17 July 2015, from http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2332197/7-tips-for-managing-and-maximizing-content-in-social-media

I placed some edges loops to map out the treasure chest design I had in mind.

What I did next is to expand the top section of the cube to give it a basic treasure chest look.

Then, I extruded the four sides of the cube to give some corners and decent panel look.

In this step I expanded the base and top simultaneity. 

That’s the how the chest looks like up to this point.

Moving on to the process with the chest lid:

Similar to the box I had placed some amount of edge loops to match the shape of the chest itself.

Here is wire frame of the sculpted lid.

Adding details to the lid such as the metal bar.

What I did here is begin to sculpt the lock detail on the chest lid as well hinge detailing at back of it.

Then I sculpted a keyhole and gave the lid a panelled look.

This is what the Treasure chest looked like when put together.

Accessibility

In terms of accessibility I believe that the blog has covered different disabilities which some people would have as consumer (within the industry). Those specified in Christina’s blog are:

Mobility

That the product should allow consumers to have the freedom of free movement which means they should not be restricted of their ability to make use of their skills.

Vision and Auditory

According to the blog,  the statistics for people who are visually impaired are one in seven to one  in  twelve.  However, for a group of people who have hearing problems or their hearing is impaired can find a visual film that have closed captions. Given that there is a disparity in information received by people with visual or hearing impairments, I feel that people who have either disabilities should have more options.

Diverse teams  & Events

I do realize that you have to be aware of the cultural society we live in to accept the people as they are  instead of  just focusing on specific type of people to work with. That includes accepting people for their skills and their ability to work together as a team for any projects/ events that requires in depth collaboration.  

Conflict Styles and Competition

I am aware that you need to have a clear understanding of the conflicts that arises in your career. the types of conflict that may arise through collaboration are:

Interdependence, incompatible goals (where the goals between two people or companies interfere against each other),  Communication problems (this often occurs when people can’t collaborate efficiently because of the language and cultural barriers, the time zone  between people)     

Bibliography

iamtulus, & SlideShare, 1p. (2011, April 7). Organizational Behaviour - Conflict [Powerpoint]. Retrieved 10 July 2015, from http://www.slideshare.net/iamtulus/organizational-behaviour-conflict

Bacal, R. (1998). Conflict prevention in the workplace: using cooperative communication. Winnipeg: Bacal & Associates.

Dena, C. (2015, April 20). Week 5: Inclusive Design. Retrieved 9 July 2015, from https://medium.com/self-directed-practitioners/week-12-inclusive-design-9df8f239653b

The Phone Call

I believe that  receiving a phone call from a company for a interview can be a nerve-wrecking and exciting experience for some people. After all, the phone call is one of the initial stages of job hunting.  

The phone call is usually informative, particularly about the interview process and its scheduling time.

In relation to my own experience, I received an email regarding the schedule of the interview. The main reason why I  received an email instead of the fore-mentioned phone call was because I was overseas. At the time, I felt excited because to me, it represented a stepping point for pursuing my ambitions. 

Interview Questions

The intentions of the interview questions are to test whether the candidates are better suited to the role.

Candidates feel nervous for the first time because they are interviewed by someone they had never met before and they have to convey their responses in a professional manner.

My first interview was an anxious one because it was important to me and I wanted to do well.

From the Pixar interview category in Christina’s blog, my interview was a mix of Behavioural,  Situational, and Video questions.

I found that during the interview, I felt that the questions ranged from easy to moderate. For some of the questions, I had my responses prepared beforehand in case if I had any difficulties.

The Sneaky questions

The intentions of asking “sneaky” questions is to find out more about how the candidates handle high pressure situations and how advanced their problem solving skills are.   

I had one of two similar questions during my interview that got me thinking for awhile before answering them because it was stressful. I would believe that the candidates could feel stuck when answering related questions.

For an example,  “If you were a part in a car, which part would you be and why?”  (Dena, 2015)

My answer: I would be the accelerator because I get things moving. 

History of 3D graphics (computer) 

It can be argued that the beginnings of 3D graphics started with Gouraud shading:

1971 -  Gouraud shading was implemented as a new method of flat shading. 

Flat shading is  an obsolete lighting technique where minimum reflection is used.

The comparison between Flat shading (Top) and Gouraud shading  (bottom)

  1975 -   Phong Bui- Toung innovated Phong shading which was a one-step improvement over Gouraud shading. However, one drawback is that it is 100 times slower then Gouraud shading. 

The visual comparison between Gouraud shading and Phong shading on the model from Lemmings.

- Martin Newell was responsible for the inspiration of primitives from mathematically modeling a teapot.

The teapot in question was used as a basic line for mathematical model calculations for Nurbs (1983)  (photo above).

  1976 - Future World (1976) was the first film to use an early version of 3D graphics

It used 2D techniques to achieve the initial basic 3D  at the time.

1977-  Jim blinn introduces a new illumination model which is improvement of the original Phong reflection model  (light reflection shader).

Example of the improvement between two light reflection models. 

Frank Crow establishes  anti-aliasing as part of both 2D and 3D render quality in both types of software. 

Above is an example of the use of Anti-aliasing in photoshop and a 3D graph with anti-aliasing rendered.

Anti-aliasing is a  way to smoothen jagged lines or edges in both 2D and 3D works.

1978 - Bump mapping was instigated by James Blinn as to improve illumination model (2D, 3D) so that the textures don’t even look flat on “3D” objects and lack charm.

Essentially, it was meant to give more depth to a model’s realism in terms of lighting.   

 An example of bump mapping with Phong shading.

1979 - Disney produces Black - hole using CGI wire frame technique for opening title sequence.

The same year there were some early attempts of 3D CGI  in motion pictures to simulate three dimensional wire-frame for “advanced” computers in Sci-fi genre. (1979 Alien) 

However, “Alien” wasn’t only film that use this wire frame technique, Star Wars (1977 New hope, Lucas) used the same technique for the death star  briefing scene. 

1983 - Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines (NURBS) instituted by Tiller.

(The early concept was dated from 1972 to 1979 and it had gone through different variations by different people before it was tested in 1983.) 

The concept was about if curves could be made mathematically possible within the early stages of 3D software when it come around to 3D modeling. 

1996 - The invention  of hair and fur simulation in 3D was pioneered  by Jim Kajiya and Tim Kay. 

This simulation was to add more realism such as  to three dimensional human like models.   

1997-8 - Titanic (James Cameron) is first film to be incorporate  CGI into live action.

The film had some elements of CGI incorporated such as  simulated crowds and CGI animation of the Ship sinking.

The practitioner I have chosen to speak about is Jeremy Bolan,

Jeremy Bolan is an animator who worked on a few films such as Transformers (2007) and Christmas Carol (2009). The work that inspired me into the creative Industry was Transformers (2007). I was intrigued by the complexity of the transformation of the vehicle which got me interested in the creative medium.  I couldn’t find a blog, instead a professional website detailed about his work in creative industry. 

In Transformers (2007), the animators lead on the designing and animation of the “real” transformations of the vehicles.  When compared to cartoon transformations of the characters, it was the level of detail and effort was put into the animation which is an achievement considering the difficulties they would have had to make the models perform intricate movements without being abrupt. In the article from Creative Bloq, the Transformation of Optimus Prime alone had 10,108 move-able parts  

http://www.bolananimation.com/Default.aspx  <--- Here is a link to a Jeremy's website and his roles in the creative industry is an Animator, Senior animator and Character animator. The video below is an compilation of his work  : 

Bibliography 

Evasion TP1 : Local Illumination Models. (n.d.). [Image]. Retrieved 25 June 2015, from http://evasion.imag.fr/Enseignement/cours/2012/SIA/Shaders/tp1_en.html

Sevo, D. (2000). History of Computer Graphics: 1970 [Website]. Retrieved 26 June 2015, from http://www.danielsevo.com/hocg/hocg_1970.htm

White Phong part 2 - JaJDoo Shader Guide - Basics. (n.d.). [Image]. Retrieved 26 June 2015, from http://www.ogre3d.org/tikiwiki/tiki-index.php?page=White+Phong+part+2+-+JaJDoo+Shader+Guide+-+Basics

Visual and Special Effects Film Milestones. (n.d.). [Image]. Retrieved 26 June 2015, from http://www.filmsite.org/visualeffects10.html

Antialiasing in 3D. (n.d.). [Image]. Retrieved 26 June 2015, from http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/198/antialiasing-in-3d

Bolan, J. (2015). Jeremy Bolan - Animator and 3D Story Artist [Images and videos]. Retrieved 27 June 2015, from http://www.bolananimation.com/Default.aspx

What is nonuniform rational B-spline (NURBS)? - Definition from WhatIs.com. (n.d.). Retrieved 27 June 2015, from http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/nonuniform-rational-B-spline-NURBS 

Bolan, J. (2011). JZZB_CR [Video compilation]. Vimeo. Vimeo. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/13329835

A History Of CGI In The Movies | Features | Empire. (n.d.). [Image]. Retrieved 27 June 2015, from http://www.empireonline.com/features/history-of-cgi/p3

What is Gouraud-Shading. (n.d.). Retrieved 27 June 2015, from http://www.stack.nl/~dimitri/3dsview/gouraud.html

Gouraud Shading. (n.d.). [Image]. Retrieved 27 June 2015, from http://freespace.virgin.net/hugo.elias/graphics/x_polygo.htm

virgilio72. (2012, September 26). ‘The Black Hole’-Opening Credits [Video]. YouTube. YouTube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJaypC51Dds

Garcia, B. (2011). 3D hair experiment [3D render Image]. Retrieved from https://www.behance.net/gallery/1973517/Fur-Balls-3D-Experiment

CV Curve. (n.d.). [Image]. Retrieved 28 June 2015, from http://www.3dmax-tutorials.com/CV_Curve.html

Bump Mapping. (n.d.). [Image]. Retrieved 27 June 2015, from http://freespace.virgin.net/hugo.elias/graphics/x_polybm.htm

Who will give you money to make creative projects? Or how can you make a living while making creative projects?

What I understand of this topic is that you have to financially support yourself in creative industry. 

As an employee, you could choose to work locally or internationally for a company. However, there pros and cons to working for a firm which are common across both the creative industry and non-creative industries. For example;

Pros (as mentioned in Dena’s post)

Stable income

Can take a paid leave

You find it interesting in every job

Collaborative responsibility

Cons

You have limited creative freedom (ideas) within the Company’s own projects

Sacrificing a job security for creative freedom 

 I think  personally that working internationally provides more job security then working locally mostly because the local market is smaller and may have a few creative jobs compared to the international market.

Furthermore, your resume will determine your clients and that an awareness of  your products and services worth to the general public is very important.

I do realize that you have to manage your own prices in accordance to your projects or services that you sell to general public. 

Running Your Own Studio/ Crowd - Funding

According to the topic, I do agree that you should collaborate with your fellow colleges when it comes to running your own studio since that they have other experiences of how the industry works.

Also, I do find that crowd funding is an acceptable option when in considering both personal and collaborative income. Moreover, I think crowd-funding is an alternative method of funding your own projects but it isn’t a reliable source of income .

Lighting combined with shaders  is required to showcase final models rendered at highest quality. The tone of the lighting is adjusted  to certain levels so to be enhanced by visual editor softwares. 

Examples: 

Fig 1 example of Lighting (render of “art class”) done by  Robert Craig

Rendering is an action where the model is analysed  within Software’s ability to process the complexity of the model before producing light toned rendered image of model. However this procedure doesn’t stop there, it isn’t limited to 3D software itself but to photo editing soft-wares that allow drawing/ coloring.

Examples: 

Render of Bane by Yoongkun Kim

Compositing is  a combination of different lighting and video-image elements which is made up of layers that may or not include green screen.

Which is useful when putting the final touches to display final product.  

Examples: 

Example of what compositing looks like and how it is useful.

Craig, R. (2013, November 1). Making Of ‘Art Class’ by Robert Craig [Image]. Retrieved 18 June 2015, from http://www.3dtotal.com/index_tutorial_detailed.php?roPos=1&catDisplay=2&id=1800#.VYI-zfmqpuA

Kim, Y. (2014, September 12). The making of Bane by Yoongkun Kim [Image]. Retrieved 18 June 2015, from http://www.3dtotal.com/index_tutorial_detailed.php?roPos=1&catDisplay=2&id=1918#.VYJc9_mqpuA

UV Mapping is a process where 3D models have their 2D textures (unwrapped mesh)  projected on the mode’s surface in relative to X,Y,Z coordinates as however the 3D artist sees fit. It serves as texture baseline for the model texture. 

Examples:

Figure . UV mapping of a pixie 

Texturing and Shaders

Every model often needs its own unique texture which has its lighting texture, that includes shadow effect on its surface, to render the final product in both 3D software and video editing software combined. 

Examples: 

Fig.1 borderland texture example done by Brent and 

Fig. 2 another texture example done by  Zeljko Tasic for giant tortoise  model.

Rigging is a process where animators have a completed humanoid model. It complicates the animation process as it is without skeletal “structure” to properly animate life-like movements or other complex movements. Rigging is like “draping a cloth” over skeletal bones. What rigging does is allow animators to add “skin” to the rig/ skeleton thus allowing them to animate the models to move anatomically whether based on human or animal (this does not apply cartoon-ish versions) .

Examples:

Fig example of Rigging looks like with model by  Jahirul Amin

Animation is a series of pictures or a film that involve movements key framed within a 3D program to render the animations. Depending on the hardware that processes it,  normally  an animation can be made in one or two  different types such as Stop motion ( a sequence of images complied to form a “film”) or with precise positioning to set-up the atmosphere or how scene should be portrayed.

Examples:

Fig example of how stop motion works (this type animation set the baseline for Traditional or animation in general.) by  Camilo Duarte Franco.

   Bibliography

pixie unwrap model [image] Lecture: Texture Mapping, Sprites and Billboards. (n.d.). Retrieved 15 June 2015, from http://goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au/~gl/teaching/Interactive3D/2012/lecture9.html

Tyler, B. (2013, March 25). 3D Art by Brent Tyler - Brent’s Sketchbook [Image]. Retrieved 15 June 2015, from http://tylerart.com/sketchbook/tag/rendering

Tasic, Z. (2013). [Image]. Retrieved from https://www.behance.net/gallery/12938175/Giant-Tortoise-3D-model

3D Models for free. (n.d.). Retrieved 16 June 2015, from http://tf3dm.com/

Amin, J. (2014, February 3). Maya rigging: Introduction to rigging by Jahirul Amin [Image]. Retrieved from http://www.3dtotal.com/index_tutorial_detailed.php?roPos=1&catDisplay=2&id=1836#.VYFqlfmqpuA

Week 2: What do animators, audio engineers, game developers, filmmakers, web developers, and graphic artists share in common?

There are similarities between different disciplines of the creative industry. As Christy Dena (Dena, 2015) covers in her article, there are 10 key points that Rosalind Gill’s study found that best depict work life traits that a new media worker has. They are entrepreneurism, short term, precarious work, low pay, long hours, keeping updated, self-learning, informality, industry-wide inequalities and exclusions, no future and having passion for one’s work.

From what I have learnt from the article and further discussion, I understand the collaborative nature that we share in the creative industry is important. As no project can be done by one person alone, it is imperative that we are comfortable with other people. This is why networking is an essential asset to working in the creative industry. We know people and their skills through their ability to communicate about their work. I would like to grow my confidence in collaborating and networking with other professionals. I find it a valuable skill, and a key asset for surviving in the creative industry.

Entrepreneurism is the ability to come up with ideas. As being a creative professional, I recognise that ideas are important as they drive the industry. I like developing my own ideas, and will seek to keep being inspired to drive my creativity. As the article stated, being entrepreneurial or creative is a mindset. I would like to grow habits that fuel this mindset throughout my career.

I also believe that DIY learning improves your ability to be creative and collaborative as a learning attitude. We can always find room for improvement in our personal and professional skills. Additionally, as most of the industry tools and systems used are regularly updated, it is important to have this attitude towards learning to remain a relevant and skilled employee. I would like to keep this attitude throughout my professional career as it is a highly valuable outlook to have.

References

Pre-production: The pre-production is a process that usually consists of an early Storyboard briefing for the project that has been approved.  It is for the 3D/2D animators to understand the story and the involvement of the characters in order to create the assets for  the storyboard. They also collaborate with the group and come up with ideas.

Examples:

Fig 1. Pre-production process with group work

3D Modeling: 3D modeling is when 3D software places an  object/ Primitive in three-dimensional environment to sculpt it into the required background and props or characters to use in the required setting depicted in the storyboard.

Examples:

Fig 2. Dragon from Game of Thrones made by Andrea Giordano

Bibliography

30 brilliant 3D artists to follow on Behance | 3D. (2013, August 28). [Image]. Retrieved 13 June 2015, from http://www.creativebloq.com/3d/top-artists-follow-behance-11121367

Andrea Giordano. (n.d.). [Image]. Retrieved 13 June 2015, from http://www.krop.com/andreagiordano/#/

Here is the pre-after effects rendered demo.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2ojqVJZnGPSY0pRakZrZ0pZMVU/view?usp=sharing

i was satisfied with the movement of the camera as well animation of the vegetation appearing into view during the scene.

and another one, a finished “commercial” title

Here is the render test of the Pirate’s gold

On 6 of May i have been constantly trying to update the current Treasure Chest textures. (improved textures not by much for Pirate Treasure Chest will be shown as comparision  with the exception of lighting rendering test) 

The V1 textures. (without lights)

Same as above but with rendered lighting.

Here is the improved Unwrap Textures for the Treasure Chest (top and bottom)

which i would update the model with if the texture file would line up properly.

and another one but with lights