Growth

Some new images of my 3rd term project named "growth", on my flickr
A small video is also on youtube here

RED5

Here is a quick sneak preview of the group project I am doing at the moment. It's called RED5 and we are 5 : Me, Gonzo, Iva, Naveen, James. I am doing the project management as well as the shading, rigging, effects and all the pipeline/TD job too. All in Houdini on Linux. It's should be up in 3-4 weeks. I'll be posting some screenshots on my flickr account too :)

In the meantime, you can have a look at some completed underwater projects from the MA Digital FX on youtube

Term 1 - underwater project

Yes ! I just finished my first term at the NCCA. Here is the completed underwater project that I was working on since I started at Bournemouth Uni. The making-of is here as well.

Houdini IFD render ( sequence and individual frames )

Here is a little Linux bash script to render IFD files locally ( I'm still working on the padding )

#######################
## ##
## MANTRA IFD RENDER ##
## ##
#######################
#
# by : Julien Depredurand (2009)
#
#################################################################
## 1 - Render an IFD file sequence ( no padding )
#################################################################

# >>> parameters
# ------------------------------------------
filename="my_ifd_file_name"
startframe=366
endframe=501
# ------------------------------------------

i=$startframe
clear
echo ""
echo "-------------------------------"
while [ $i -lt $endframe ]; do
echo mantra -f ${filename}.$i.ifd
#mantra -f ${filename}.$i.ifd
let i++
done
echo "-------------------------------"
echo " JOB DONE ! "
echo ""

#################################################################
## 2 -Render individual IFD files ( no padding )
#################################################################

# >>> parameters
# ------------------------------------------
filename="my_ifd_file_name"
framearray=(001 010 099 100 205 500 )
# ------------------------------------------

len=${#framearray[*]}
i=0
clear
echo ""
echo "-------------------------------"
while [ $i -lt $len ]; do
echo mantra -f ${filename}.${framearray[$i]}.ifd
mantra -f ${filename}.${framearray[$i]}.ifd
let i++
done
echo "-------------------------------"
echo " JOB DONE ! "
echo ""

Houdini and other cool stuff from Japan

A very nice site full of experiments in Houdini, Maya, Renderman, ...

Parallel Tracking

Some really cool real time 3D tracking technology

NCCA Digital Effects - Underwater project

My first Digital Effects Project is underwater and I decided to re-create a deep sea submarine loosely based on some really cool reference pictures. I just started the modeling, mainly NURBS based, in Houdini 9.5 - all of course, procedurally adjustable. I also started to build a really simple interface to control the propellers speed, number of particles created and submarine speed. Not finished and I haven't written any shader yet, but here it is anyway. More very soon...

Cool Architecture

Very cool futuristic architecture going on there : emergentarchitecture

British Heart Foundation

Another brilliant website from Sennep for the British Heart Foundation. Definitely the sexiest annual report ever. Check it out here.

Evenly distributed points of sphere

Placing a set number of points evenly on a sphere isn't exactly a walk in the park. But it is possible to get approximated coordinates, using various methods. Here is a link to an excellent Java applet that uses Electrostatic repulsion to find ( and display! ) the 3D coordinates of the points - impressive.

BBH is live

After a few intense months from everyone at Sennep, BBH website is finally live !
I had some fun with the globe and sheep animations, especially with the R&D part.
Technically, pretty much everyone I knew was invited: Maya, Houdini, After Effects, MEL, Illustrator Javascript, Flash, JSFL, Python, Lightwave, Blender.

Some clever mix of 3D and video was used for the sheep animations.
For the globe, I did some 3D modeling in Lightwave for the main buildings, mixed with procedurally painted cities in Houdini - a total of 100,000 buildings, enough detail to do some moving image work with - as well as some fluids and particles R&D for the animated blobs.

I also started the development of a vector rendering engine written in MEL, which writes layered Postscript files directly from Maya. The features so far are animation ( frames exported as layers ), and backface culling. I'm still working on the Z-sorting.

Maya batch render log file filter

Maya batch rendering log files are very long, specially when you turn the verbosity level to 4 ( -v 4 ) to display the rendering times. Sometimes, all you want to know is the filename and time per frame of what you are rendering. Here is a little Python script I wrote to filter out just that. You end up with a file that contains only 2 lines per frame rendered, just like this:

Result: c:/my_project/my_file.mb

RC 0.2 info : wallclock 0:00:01.14 for rendering

Here is the Python :

# open source file
f = open('render1.txt', 'r')

# open output file ( if the file doesn't exist, create file )
o = open("out.txt", 'w')

# create an array to store all the lines for the output file
outList = []

# loop through each line
for line in f:
# split the line using the space character
split1 = line.split(" ")
# split the line using the colon character
split2 = line.split(":")
# test the number of words in the line ( if > 5 )
if len(split1) > 5:
# if line starts by "RC"
if split1[0] =="RC":
# if "wallclock" is found
if split1[7] =="wallclock":
# add to the output file Array
outList.append(line)

if split2[0] =="Result":
# add to the output file Array
outList.append(line)

# write the ouput file
o.write(''.join(outList))

# close both files
f.close
o.close

Houdini 9.5 beta

Hell, they never stop working! Toronto's mighty Side Effects just released Houdini 9.5 public beta. It's now available for the Mac platform as well, and it's fully 64bits, unlike Maya. I will be very soon starting a new blog entirely dedicated to my studies at Bournemouth NCCA. I will be including some tips, files, and comments on my research on Houdini, Shake, Nuke, PFTrack as well as some Ubuntu stuff...

Nuke 5 review

An interesting review on Nuke5 from Highend3D.

JSFL

Not new at all, but still, not enough people talk about, and use JSFL ( Javascript for Flash ) which can save you hours if you're a bit old school and need to put thousand of images in the Library.
3 very handy Scripts for Flash

Checkland plagiarism

Not as good as Checkland Kindleysides but still very funny indeed, eve images is a group of freelancers from Norway. They do some 3D architecture visualisation, but unfortunately, they are not too innovative in term of web design :)

Gelato Pro for free

Nvidia's Gelato Pro GPU-Powered Rendering Software is now available to download for free. So you can install it now on a 64 Os ( the previous free release was only available for 32Bits systems ). Quick ambient occlusion for everyone ! well, as long as you have a Quadro FX card :) Some nice hardware accelerated renders in the gallery. Stay tuned for some review on Gelato...

Bournemouth NCCA - MA Digital Effects

I'll be very busy for 12 months doing an MA in Digital Effects at Bournemouth NCCA ( starting this October ). That course involve intense use of Houdini and Nuke . You can see the showreel I submitted with my application - that involved the creation of a digital self portrait - that's why my 3D face is in it - oh dear ! :)

Lidell live - Genius stroke freak

Youtube is shit, but thanks to Jamie Lidell it's worth watching. Amazing performance live

I am applying for an MA in Digital Effects / 3D Animation at Bournemouth University, so my showreel should be online very soon. Stay tuned ...