This is the opening shot for my thesis. The full version will be released soon.
The hovercraft (drone machine) was modeled in Maya, textured and lit with Renderman. The background matte painting was done in Photoshop and Nuke. The foreground trees are paint effects in Maya. The final composite was all done using Nuke and some minor fixes in AE.
Tools Used:
Photoshop, Maya, Renderman, Nuke, After Effects
This is another shot from my thesis – A projectile crashes into the wall leaving a gaping hole with smoke billowing outward.
The brief first part of the shot was done by Chris Messineo, with whom I collaborated with on the thesis.
All of the compositing was done in After Effects. The effects are a combination of live action elements and CG elements. The wall was shattered using a plugin in Maya called Shatter Plus (the best one I’ve used so far). I used another tool that parents the shattered pieces onto particles at the center of each fragment. I wrote some particle expressions to control the behavior to simulate Rigid Bodies. I also created a couple passes of billowing smoke in Houdini.
Tools Used:
Maya, Houdini, After Effects
This is a shot from my thesis – Orthia, the main character is looking through her Heads Up Display, checking vital stats and the location of a technical device. All of the compositing was done in After Effects. The tracking was done in Maya with the built in tool maya live.
Tools Used:
Maya, Live, After Effects
This was created by emitting a massive number of particles from a texture. Then I used a 3d fluid to push the particles upward – a bit like ink in water, but reversed. Final composite in After Effects. Additional motion blur using rsmb plugin which works really well.
This is actually an intro for my final thesis project called Orthia which will be released later this year.
Tools Used:
Maya, After Effects
A fire simulation done with a high resolution Fluid container in Maya. Some re-timing done in post. The particle embers were added later using particular.
Tools Used:
Maya, After Effects
This animation was done in Houdini. The bouncing effect was created with expressions in VOPS and CHOPS.
Tools Used:
Houdini, After Effects
…and the breakdown of the UFO shot.
After scouting the streets of San Francisco, I finally found a building that had a top shaped like a UFO or saucer. I immediately filmed the background plate in San Francisco downtown, around kearny and post st. It was right at the twilight hour so I was able to get some nice lighting and highlights at least at the top of the buildings. I tracked the entire scene using PFTrack, which took a bit of time actually. Then I brought everything back into Maya and modeled, textured, lit, and animated the UFO. The final composite was done in Shake. I touched up a few frames with photoshop and after effects.
Tools Used:
PF Track, Maya, Shake, After Effects, Photoshop
I was walking around San Francisco when I spotted something strange on top of a building. A circular disk shaped object spinning slowly atop a building. Wow! A UFO hiding there all this time!! A bunch of people saw this too as evidenced by the commentaries on my video.
Fascinated by UFO stories in the sky, I wanted to take a different stab at it – that is, UFOs hiding among us. After scouting the streets of San Francisco, I finally found a building that had a top shaped like a UFO or saucer. I immediately filmed the background plate in San Francisco downtown, around kearny and post st. It was right at the twilight hour so I was able to get some nice lighting and highlights at least at the top of the buildings. I tracked the entire scene using PFTrack, which took a bit of time actually. Then I brought everything back into Maya and modeled, textured, lit, and animated the UFO. The final composite was done in Shake. I touched up a few frames with photoshop and after effects.
Tools Used:
PF Track, Maya, Shake, After Effects, Photoshop, Logic Pro
This was a matchlighting project. I modeled the balloon and characters in Maya.
Tools Used:
Maya, After Effects
Screenshots:
This was my final in a shake compositing class from a few years ago. Unfortunate my footage was bad, so the green screen key was a big challenge – ended up doing a lot of unnecessary roto. I also had to recreate the shadow cast on the wall also. I reshot myself on location and extracted the shadow that way. I guess I was half successful at that. The floor crack, anvil, debris, and smoke simulation was all done with Houdini Rigid Bodies.
Tools Used:
Houdini, Shake
Screenshots:
This is a still to life or day for night shot. I took a picture on a Vegas trip from a few years ago, and brought it back to life. I didn’t plan on it, but the washed out highlights on the buildings give it somewhat of a sin city feel. Originally I had snow in the foreground that I made using Houdini, but I changed it to rain now (done in Maya). For the sky, I used two images rotating on top of each other to create a more surreal sky scene.
Tools Used:
Shake, Maya, Houdini
