Lighting

3D layers in AE

At the risk of sounding totally douche-y this is the logo I created for the production company consisting of myself, Harrison Reynolds, and Shane Gibson. It was a pretty basic task of getting the sides to unfold onto each other (although I had to watch for seams since the slightest bit could stick out) and the hardest part was lining the pivot points up with the edges of the squares. I had it a bit easy since the sides didn't contain any depth, too. I then just animated a camera flying around (also to hide the fact that there are more swinging panels than there are sides - to make it more complex looking I folded a few sides over twice and just deleted the layer once it was in position - and then added Trapcode Shine to it for that super blue look. Overall I think it worked out quite well! Added some sounds and here's the production logo...although after the fact I noticed it did look a bit like the game cube logo - but if you won't tell I won't either.

A Box of Thirty Logo from kabraz on Vimeo.

3D Texturing

So while modifications of R2 continue I decided to just go ahead and try to texture in a very basic way some of the shapes on R2's dome (since the main body doesn't really have any detail yet. I added blinns to both the dome and the body to give it that shiny look and messed with the specular a bit on the dome to bring it up. Then I just made 1 blue blinn and used the same one for the rectangles around his dome, then made a red one for the circular "eyes". Nothing amazing, and quite honestly I thought it looked cooler when it was just the model. But oh well...til it gets more details I'm going with that.

Text and Particles

So had some computer troubles which caused this post to come up late but here it is! I tried my hand at a little kinetic typography and ultimately decided it's not something you can do quickly...obviously. I think the biggest problem for me wasn't that it would take a long time - I was expecting that - but that the camera was extremely finicky. I started by creating a simple vignette around a blue solid (both 2d layers) and then made the letters themselves 3d since my original idea involved a lot more 3d camera movements, as opposed to say a lot of 2d used in Cee Lo Green's "F*ck You!" unofficial music video. Anyways, the challenge came in keeping the Point of Interest of the camera locked onto the text as it came up, and since the camera was moving all the time to accommodate the text. Basically when I went down too far the POI wouldn't change and while the camera was still at a "90*" angle to the 3d Text the offset of teh POI made it deform. So...yeah. I ended up making 2 sequences and in the 2nd I kept the camera still but animated the text so the POI and Position never changed.

Mitch in the s'th from kabraz on Vimeo.



The 2nd was the particle shot. I've dabbled with Trapcode Particular, 3D stroke, Form, etc, but never really got the hang of it. I did use Shine a lot but that's a pretty simple one...but after seeing tests of Particular 2.0 and watching a lot of videos I was determined to learn a bit more about it. Based off the Lexus Orb tutorials (crazyyyy commercial...way cool) I used particular to make a constant stream of particles. Unlike the tutorial, I managed to create what I think was a really cool texture of semi-transparent...material that made up the "tails" of the particle streams. I made the "heads" lights and attached Trapcode Lux to amplify them, then parented both to a null which I then used to control both streams. The subtle movements they make individually were achieved by messing with their individual orientations. Anyways, I had fun, learned a lot, and am excited to do more with custom particles.


Particular 2.0 Test from kabraz on Vimeo.

3D model

So still not exactly how I'd like it, but here is my first 3d model! I did R2D2 because I thought it might be easier to work with something mechanical that had no organic parts. Also, I figured if we'd be potentially using the same models for a few projects it would give me time to tweak all the little details. Unfortunately, sometime early in the modeling process the dome I extruded something weird resulting in the top of the dome being kinda deformed, but I decided just to keep it that way.

 I used some schematics and blue prints from the Artoo Detoo builders club website and also based off this guy's amazing model. I also had an R2 USB hub model that I used for some of the details to base it off of.

Not expecting mine to look anything like his but it's good reference...anyways I guess finishing the details at a later date, texturing, and rigging are up next....