This is a sequential series of four 27 x 40 in. posters I made for the IFDM program. By using the simplest of geometric shapes to yield unexpected evolution and form, the letters I, F, D and M are revealed, thus illustrating both the nature of growth of the program as well as the potential for students to grow and evolve as they advance. Like pareidolia, viewers can potentially find their own forms in the geometry, such as a designer sitting in front of a computer.
IFDM 210 Pipeline: Preproduction assignment
Rudimentary preproduction materials for first project. Includes backstory, ball character, top-down set and camera chart, two pieces of concept art and a storyboard.
Acme Rubber Ball Pipeline
For my IFDM 210 pipeline class our introduction to the concept was to create a pipeline for accomplishing an objective, such as creating a product or building something. I chose a rubber ball:
Vertebrae
This was my final project for my Maya Foundations class. As you can see I’ve mixed architectural structures with biological structures, in this case vertebrae models that I constructed in ZBrush. This is in ongoing artistic theme of mine that I’ve been exploring for a long time now. It is also part of an environmental design for a franchise I have been designing for several years. You can see some similar artwork here called Cirrus Architecture. Some of these themes are going to appear again in my program of independent study using Cry ENGINE 3, which will enable me to make these environments more immersive and interactive.
Group project site: Luxikom
Quadratura, After Effects assignment
First let me say that it is impossible to see what is going on here with a size of 320×240 so I rendered it larger. I figured that if I am going to make the effort then I should do it right and in a useful way. If you click the Youtube link you can watch it larger and in higher quality, if you wish (click on HD in the cog wheel or put it on full screen).
So, Quadratura is the title of this piece and you’ll find I have also made a blog entry called Quadratura. Briefly, Quadratura is a concept of dimensional, sometimes illusory, painting techniques designed to create the appearance of added depth and space. In this piece I have taken a rather famous example called Apotheosis of St. Ignatius by Andrea Pozzo and brought it to life. This particular type of animation activity is something I am interested in and it seemed like a great subject for this assignment.
Essentially what I had to do was separate the characters from the background. How did I do that? Using Photoshop (and many, many layers) I had to select each character to be animated, copy that onto a new layer, and then reconstruct the environment of the painting as if the character had never been there in the first place. For a detailed piece of art such as this it was complex and time-consuming. The characters that appear to hover are where they were in the original ceiling painting, while the ones that move around were altered copies of some of the original figures. In After Effects you can draw a motion path in real time, as the timeline scrubs through your allotted space, then you can go back in and smooth the path, which is what I did. I also used the Wiggler to create motion for the hovering characters. The trail effect behind the moving figures was created with an effect called CC Wide Time that enables you to show a certain number of frames before and after the location of the playhead. I copied the rear layer and applied a radial zoom blur that faded in and out, and put that in Lighter Color blending mode at about 53% opacity. I used another effect called Shine on the larger clump of clouds and figures in the upper center portion of the picture, and that creates the crepuscular/God rays effect you see moving back and forth. It’s easy to abuse such effects so I kept it under control. Obviously I also altered the colors of the overall piece, increasing the saturation and making it all much warmer in general. In addition to changing colors in Photoshop I also used an adjustment layer of a gold color in Linear Burn blending mode with 28% opacity. I find that such tricks help to unify a piece, especially when you are altering so many elements and making changes from the original.
I created the ambient music you hear in the background, combing choir sounds (from a VST plugin I use called Symphonic Choirs) and also a sample of some birds I had. I have thousands of samples in a library I have built over the years. In this case I played the sounds of the birds chirping in reverse and applied a delay (it creates an echo effect).
Threshold Eternity video assignment
This is my video project for the urban derive-based assignment. Essentially what is happening here is cutting back and forth between cuts of motion and, with any two shots, one is moving in reverse. The goal was to create the sensation of traveling without getting anywhere, since your eyes pick up on both forward and backwards movement at the virtually same time. However, in spite of this feeling you are actually traveling somewhere, yet at the end you arrive exactly where you started. That is why the title is Threshold Eternity. It feels like motion is happening, yet it also feels like you are trapped between two spaces. The idea is to create a different perspective of location, movement and space using mundane aspects of an urban environment that we take for granted.
I used the interstate, tunnels and arroyos as my environments. I had quite a bit of extra footage that did not get used, thereby deviating somewhat from my original storyboard, as once I established the bidirectional motion and saw how effective it was, adding the other elements only served to distract. I had planned on using some footage of some ants walking in a death circle, to drive home the idea of moving without getting anywhere, but by the time I got to it, it seemed rather redundant and distracted from the overall feeling that was already functioning. Also there was some sort of union dispute and the ants wanted extra benefits and I’m just a poor student so, whatever. All of those cuts were by hand. I looked for ways to automate certain sections but I just did it this way. Took some time but it was fun to work on.
I used After Effects to apply a curves editor to an adjustment layer, and then above that I used a solid layer with another color in color burn blending mode and turned down the opacity to give it that color quality and to also help unify the different footage. The sequence that shows the bright, square corridor at the end is rotated 180 degrees upside down which makes it slightly more surreal than when I walked through and filmed it.
Animating a planet in orbit
I have spoken to some individuals who are having trouble with the planet animation assignment. The trick is to create a circle that will be rotated around the sun, and then attach your rotating planet to the circle. You do this by selecting your planet, then up in your menu bar you select Animation>Constraints>Link Constraint. You will then see a line following your mouse. Click on the circle and your planet will now be orbiting the sun. The same concept applies to making moons orbit your planet. This is one way of creating parent/child relationships, a concept used in all animation applications.
Another way to do this is to move the pivot point of your planet. The way to do this is to select your planet object, click the Hierarchy button at the top of your creation/modifier stack area, then select “Affect Pivot Only”. Then use the move tool to move that object’s pivot to the center of Mr. Sun, then deselect “Affect Pivot Only”. Then when you animate the rotation of that object, it will be around the sun instead of the center of the object.
You can add some variation and wobble by adjusting or even animating the angles of your orbits.
Remember, you can use lynda.unm.edu for tutorials. It’s an incredible resource that is packaged into your UNM experience that would ordinarily cost $300/year.
3ds Max animation assignment: Ausgang zum Himmel
Ausgang zum Himmel from Eric Chamberlain on Vimeo.
If I could get paid to produce work like this then I would be the happiest guy on the planet.
This is my animation for the spiritual assignment, envisioning a type of waypoint for the soul. Ausgang zum Himmel means “output to heaven”. The idea was to create a surreal state beyond the confines of the conscious human experience. On either end of a path are two identical groups of structures. One side is completely static, while the other has motion. The structures represent our foundations as individuals versus how we change and how that alters our spiritual path over time, leading to this space that exists between the physical universe and the afterlife. This is a concept that is central to a franchise and personal project on which I am working.
I combined these abstract forms with a more recognizable type of audio based on a choir sound, such sounds often the focus of the eternal. The sound itself is created on a VST that emulates old Mellotron instruments, which were instruments that played looped recordings of sounds. I felt that this older sound fit in with the monochromatic visuals and the grainy depth of field. I applied a filter to bring in the sound. I also gradually applied reverb to open up the intensity and space over time.
The unusual shifting patterns and gaps on some of the objects were created by applying a black and white texture as an alpha map. I then animated the UVW tiling and rotation. Some of the objects have a reflection map. I added a 35mm target camera and used that to create the depth of field. The lights were simply two omni lights, with the shadows turned on for one, and off for the other. I animated the movement of the lights.
I created a very large geodesic sphere with which I encompassed the entirety of the animation, applied a reflection map, activated two-sided rendering for the material, and this created the surreal, self-contained environment.
I export to AVI, then put that in After Effects for assembly. I used a Level effect (as in Photoshop) to tighten up the dark and light. I also applied a blur to one of the layers. Since this was a gray composition being brought into an RGB environment, color artifacts were added when I applied the blur. So, when everything was wrapped up, I used an adjustment layer for hue/saturation to constrain the color of the whole piece.
I would like to explore this concept more, but I need to make sure I have access to the render farm in order to do it. This took just over 32 hours to render the original piece, which was 300 frames at 24 fps, just slightly over 12 seconds. Beyond that it took a further three hours or so to render from After Effects.
Product Design 3ds Max + lighting and materials
Here is a model/decorative train engine I designed using a burl texture.
I used polygon modeling, NURBs curve modeling, extruding splines and converting to editable mesh and poly. I used a lathe modifier for the smoke stack. In order to make that work properly I had to move the pivot point. I used some basic extrusions on the engine itself, and I used the quick slice to add extra edges to faces so that I could flare out the geometry on the front and the back.
For the lighting I used spot lights, target spot lights and omni lights. I moved the lights for each render. Given that a scene should have multiple lights to mimic reality, I have shadows turned on for only one light here . Obviously you can use more shadows if needed. This isn’t perfect lighting, but lighting is never “perfect” in real life, either, unless you are creating a portrait. When you walk around and interact with reality you don’t think to yourself, wait, that object is not properly keyed with a warm color, with a cold fill light. Unless you’re psycho, like me. My personal taste is more subtle differences in a more or less monochromatic environmental so that way the object seems more rich. Sometimes. So, I use the three point scheme as a convenient starting point and then work around that.
If this was going to be used the geometry would have to be cleaned up, maybe some retopology. You can see the cow-launcher on the front has too much geometry, but I could use that to add more detail if I wanted.
I just tried to pick some interesting angles but eventually you run out. For the texture I applied a UVW modifier and set the tiling to 2, and I experimented with the different applications such as box, face, cylinder, etc. For most of the geometry I used box but for the main chassis I had to use shrink wrap because the texture was showing some wrong distortion on certain parts. That’s a modeling issue. I also increased the specular light in the material editor. For the environment I just made some planes and applied textures as before, but I also added bump maps. Gotta love bump maps. I tried a bump map on the burl texture but it looked bad so I skipped it. An object like this is supposed to be polished, anyway.
In the last one, below, I used more exaggerated lighting just to show the back and forth between the key and the fill. The wood has that specular quality so even though there is a rim light it’s placed pretty high above with low intensity. You can play with this stuff forever.
Eric Chamberlain 