Gigantopithecus
Voici un de mes derniers projets: un gigantopithèque. C'est un singe préhistorique géant, mélangeant des charactéristiques de gorille et oran outang.
This is one of my latest project: a gigantopithecus (a giant prehistoric ape). It's a mix of Gorilla and a Orangutan.
3ds Max, V-Ray, Ornatrix, Lucid.
King Lionel robot using mocap
StrobFX designed modeled, shaded, animated via mocap and rendered this King Lionel robot for a music video clip for Patrick Guérard, under Patrick Boivin direction. Mocap wit perception Neuron and hair grooming in Ornatrix.
Mobile Strike Playtime VFX breakdown
Voici un petit breakdown de mon travail de VFX et d'animaiton sur le spot Mobile Strike Playtime.
Here is a little breakdown of my VFX and 3D animation work on the Mobile Strike Playtime spot.
Entrevue à propos de mon travail sur CGrecord.
Entrevue à propos de mon travail sur le spot Mobile Strike Playtime par CGrecord:
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Interview on CGrecord about my work on the Mobile Strike Playtime Spot:
Spot for Mobile Strike
Voici un spot que je viens de terminer avec mon ami réalisateur Patrick Boivin pour le jeu vidéo Mobile Strike. J'étais en charge de tous les effets visuels, supervision sur le plateau (photo HDR 360, scan 3D de certaines parties du set poureffets d'éclairage) et animation 3D.Les modèles et texutres m'ont été fourni par l'éditeur de Mobile Strike: Epic War (nous avons seulement ajouté des lances-missiles à l'hélico modelisé par mon aide, Joseph Tran). J'ai traqué tous les mouvements de Caméra dans Blender avec un peu d'aide de mon ami Joseph Tran. Le tracking dans Blender fonctionne super bien surtout pour ce genre de shots: i.e. des shots très difficiles et qui se portent très peu au tracking automatisé. Blender était très stable et fluide pour ce genre de travail.
J'ai fait le reste avec 3ds max, V-Ray et PhoenixFD. Quelques explosions ont été faites live sur le plateau et c'était très cool d'y assiter. Le piano a explosé dans une déflagration assez impressionante, par chance on nous fournissait des bouchons d'oreilles! ça nous a pris à peu près 2 semaines pour traquer toutes les 18 shots qui étaient toutes très blurrées, pleines d'objets qui bougent ou de fumée et débris et avec des mouvements assez complexes. Ensuite j'ai passé 2 semaines à faire seul les animations, les simulations de fumée, de feu et d'explosion, l'éclairage et le rendu (j'avais fait le rigging du tank à l'avance).
J'ai par la suite fait des précomps pour le réalisateur Patrick Boivin, qui a fait le comp final lui-même ajoutant détails d'étincelles, débris, lens flare et glow. Patrick a d'ailleur joué le rôle du père avec son fils Roméo.
Ce fut un autre projet très excitant avec Pat et mon seul regret est de ne pas avoir travaillé avec Arnold Schwarzy (qui jouent dans plusieurs spots de ce jeu) même si c'est sa voix qu'on entend à la fin. Peut-être la prochaine fois! ;)
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A spot for Mobile Strike that I just did with my friend: director Patrick Boivin.
I was in charge of all the VFX, onset supervison (HDR 360 photo shoot, etc) and 3D animation. I used some assets (3d models and textures) supplied by Mobile Strike's editor: Epic war (we just added some missile launcher to the chooper modeled by my helper Joseph Tran). Then I tracked all the camera movement in Blender with some help from my friend Joseph Tran. First time I used Blender in production and certainly not the last, it was amazing, smooth and stable to track with Blender.
I did the rest with 3ds Max, V-Ray and PhoenixFD. Some explosion were done onset with real explosives and it was really cool to be there to see and hear that. It took us approx 2 weeks to track the cameras for the 18 shots since they were all blurry, full of moving stuff and pretty difficult motion. So not the kind of shots that can be track automatically. Then I spent another 2 weeks doing all the animation, smoke, fire and explosion simulations, lighting, rendering (I did the rigging for the tank in advance though).
I then did precomps for director Patrick Boivin who did the final compositing himself, adding some details of sparks, debris, bloom and glare. Patrick is also playing the role of the father with his son Romeo.
It was an amazing project to do, my only regret is that I didn't get to meet with Arnold, who plays in most Mobile Strike spots, even though we can hear his voice at the end! Maybe next time. ;)
A test I did for the tank firing FX and rigging:
I did a few 3D scans of squashes and pumpkins and put them up on Turbosquid.
Here are some Squashes and Pumpkins that I grabbed myself from the field with my little family, scanned them with love, retopologized and cleaned UVs in zbrush and uploaded them for sale on Turbosquid.
Click each image to buy them on Turbosquid if you want to use them in your projects or just study them..
V-Ray Alsurface VS other SSS methods
Some SSS render tests just fresh out from my render farm! Comparing all the SSS methods we now have in V-Ray.
N.B: The effect is exagerated just to show how the SSS behaves and not mean to be photoreal. I also didn't spent too much time trying to match each shader cause the other ones are just too long to adjust and I think it's just obvious that the best (at least for skin) is the Alshader. The translucency in the regular V-Ray material is so much faster that it could be useful too.
The Alsurface shader (originally developped for Arnold by Anders Langlands) that Vlado just ported for V-Ray is available on Github:
https://github.com/ChaosGroup/vray_al_surface
This shader is not too long to render, the effect of the light passing through is the most realistic and the colors of each part is easy to control, you can adjust one color without screwing up the other colors.
V-Rays SSS2 was so difficult to control when you wanted to add some more red in the ears, the rest of the skin started to get some green (or the complimentary color).
The Alsurface render time is approximatively equal to that of SSS2.
The skin material was faster to render but also difficult to control the color and not so realistic.
The scatter volume is maybe the most realistic but I rendred it with the samping at zero cause it was just too slow to render, probably more than a hour to get clean result. Also I the transparency is too direct on that one, I could never get it to blur like the refraction glossiness. Maybe there's a way but it's so long to render to have didn't have time to test this shader more than this.
The translucency in the regular v-ray material is another method to get sss and it is very fast to render. That's the one that I used the most in my jobs cause it works great for food like cereal and such. But on a human's skin it doesn't look realistic unless you use it in a very subtle way.
But now with the alsurface, you can be sure I won't use any other shader in V-Ray for SSS (except maybe the translucency when I need to render very fast).
For more on this shader, also see those links:
http://anderslanglands.com/alshaders/alSurface.html
http://forums.chaosgroup.com/showthread.php?87304-skin-shader-a-la-Alsurface-pleaseeee
Music: Erik Satie: Gymnopedie No 2 by Kevin MacLeod: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Alshader for V-Ray Mr Groleau turntable
A test with the new V-Ray Alsurface shader just implemented by Vlado. I just pout it on my WIP anatomy model (I call him Monsieur Groleau) I am creating in Zbrush and did a turntable to see how it's going. Far better than the vray sss2 shader!