Dallas Robinson's Blog

SANDSTORM! WIP

2009-07-10T10:50:00.000-07:00

I painted this, it's 85% complete.

The Devil is in the Details

2009-05-19T10:24:00.000-07:00

Okay, So this little guy's body is now all done. and when i looked at him last night i noticed he seemed to lack the same 'Punch' that some of the earlier renders had. This happens sometimes. When you work on a design too much you can stray from what the core design is. When I woke up the next day I figured out he wasn't as "chubby" as is actual concept drawing and a lot of his arms were starting to look a bit to uniform on top. Also his lips could use a lot more definition on the outside. Overall, it just needs a "details" pass.

I need to plum him up like a sausage.

man that sounds fowl X-D

More hot tentical action!

2009-05-15T10:49:00.000-07:00

I remade the mouth last night. i think it looks way better. Now Friday i just have to UV unwrap the sucker and connect it all together. Wow, and this only took a week (at a really slow pace).

YA! New project YA!

2009-05-14T10:43:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm putting the sewer on the shelf for a while for a while. It's far enough along that I can fix it up later. Here is my new quick project! the starfish, eyeball, tentacle... thing. Ah, whatever it is it's fun to do and that' all that matters.

Just going through the notes and some random crap.

2009-05-04T10:15:00.000-07:00

Just going through my co-worker's notes and some random doodle crap.

Now with copper tone bottom!

2009-04-28T10:59:00.000-07:00

UGH! I so need to finish this. I have so may other things I want to do. Anyway, I got co-workers to crit it and they added this...

-I need to add a focal point. Even if i'm just going to have the tunnel repeat you need to have something fill up that black space. it throws off your crit.

-to need some accent colors. Proabaly Green and purple to contrast the warm yellows and browns you have going on. (I like this one, i nice excuse to bring in slimy algae.)

-you need to tune you "god rays" they create a strange 'slash' in your composition.

-you may need a rim light for objects in the foreground to make them pop a little more.

- the overall image is a bit too dark. You may need more contrast in some areas

- the top of the tunnel is too bright, reverse it with the bottom which is too dark

all in all a good crit.

just need to post this here for cgtalk

2009-04-20T10:37:00.000-07:00

I need help something does not feel right.

Lighting is done and I'm happy

2009-04-09T10:20:00.000-07:00

I finally finished lighting everything and I'm pretty happy. I may need to bring back the soft ambient light I deleted out but overall this is good. Now i just need to texture, texture, texture.

oh and here's a random doodle from me. god i need to draw more. I really miss it.

Figured it out.

2009-04-02T11:35:00.000-07:00

quick note. figured out the problem. It was bad lighting and really bad reference. Now that that has been figured out i can move forward. The large pipes are gonna need 3 different variants though.

God damn distractions.

2009-03-31T10:38:00.000-07:00

uh, I keep on getting sidetracked from this... Anyway, strated ading texture to the pipes. this is about my third texture for it so far. I keep on having trouble nailing down exactly what i want them to look like. ( that and they look more like concrete then metal... ) i'm just gonna leave it for now and move on.... maybe if i saturated the color a bit more...

added a texture... then koncked out.

2009-03-12T11:15:00.001-07:00

Was really tired but managed to do one texture before falling asleep.

It's all Gravy now baby! Time for texture fun! WHOO!

2009-03-11T08:28:00.000-07:00

Well, well. i finally made it to the texture phase of this little project. Honestly for me this is the fun part. I got a little tripped up trying to remember how to project an image onto another but i filally solved it. (mental note, remember to set the default color of the texture ITSELF to black if your using it as alpha when projecting. Otherwise, everything outside the projected area will have that default color. Also, make sure to TURN OFF U and V tiling.) while I'm glad i did my lighting first for this project I am find i have to go back and adjust them each time I make a new texture so in the end i may not be saving as much time as I though. I'm also starting to color my lights most of the ambeant light is warm but the main direct light from above and below is cool. It may not be techniclly correct but it feels way better this way so i'm keeping it for now.

Lighting pass reduex

2009-03-02T10:36:00.001-08:00

Okay, So this is my second stab at lighting this tunnel. I think this version is better. I ended up angling the spotlights above up by 45 degrees to avoid having them spill light into the bottom corners. I also added a set of spotlights on the bottom set really low to make the pipes more visable. I still think I'm lighting things too dark but i also remembered that Maya renders also tend to come out dark in general and need post work to finish up. also some of the lights are still to "sourcey" and dnned to be coreected but that's minor. Overall I like this lighting and I'm gonna move on to color.

Negitive lights act like black holes my ASS!

2009-02-25T11:34:00.000-08:00

Okay, so now i'm getting deeper into the lighting now that I'm mostly happy with the geometry. So far I've found that spotlights are like the Swiss army knife of lighting. they can do freaking everything! I have also run into my first hurdle. I'm trying to make the areas in the wall indents darker but some of the spotlight light gets in there. so i figure " OH! perfect time to try out using negative lights. They suck light into them."... yeah... NO! after rendering like 20 times i finally figured out they don't suck in like they REVERSE light! So areas that have light on them get dark and areas that don't get lighter. Negitive lights are still helpful but this puts a cramp in my plands a bit. I may wish to not use a negitive volume light but an area light instead. Hmm... a little tricky.

OH! ad I'm lighting things a little to dark. I had to seriously crunch the levels on these images for them to show up proper.

Lastly... I rediscovered Maya Vector render! I just did a render of it for shits a nd giggles.

Oh my god! It's Baby's first Mental Ray image! AWW!

2009-02-19T10:28:00.000-08:00

So I just started using mental ray last night and... wow... I mean WOW! not only is it way easier then I thought it would be it really does make your images look way freaking smexy! The hardest thing for me to do last night was to actually turn it on in Maya. It's a plug-in you have to set on in the plug in manager called "Mayatomr" or something like that.

So, above are the images I made. the first is just the first image i made just to get the mental ray ambient occlusion shader to work. the second is that shader applied to the hallway i posted earlier. and the third is a composit of the one over the other adding much more detail in cracks and such. I'm really jazzed! i can wait to try some sub surface scattering!

small pic update

2009-02-17T10:49:00.000-08:00

Just a small update for myself. I raised the ceiling a bit and added some little details. I'm pretty happy with this overall setup so I think I'll just move onto lighting it.

Back from the grave!

2009-02-12T09:10:00.000-08:00

well, well, I'm back. and using my Blog again. Why? because I need to document my work again. Lately I've been so sick of being stuck in low poly at work for the past 3 years that I really, REALLY, had to do something to sharpen my mind again. So I'm making this sewer tunnel as a warm up to other things. I'm trying out a slightly different system for this one then I normally do. Usually I model, texture, then light. Now I'm modeling, lighting (with bump maps), THEN texturing. The reason I'm trying it this way is that normally i go back and forth between lighting and texturing because the texture is affected by the light and the light affects the texture making the whole process long winded (at least for me anyway.) By lighting the image first I can direct the viewer to what I want before I add a drop of color. I guess this is just the CG way of doing what a oil painter would do. Working in monochrome then using those values to choose your colors. So far I'm happy.

Also, Doing this project has reminded me I need way more refence photos. Using google image search just ain't cutting it anymore. I need to invest in a good digital camera.

A word on Ink Brush.

2007-06-06T12:00:00.000-07:00

I use to do ALOT of this stuff in high school. I mean alot. I could never find a class in it so I had to teach myself. There is a great book called "the way of the brush" that was like nightly reading for me when i was like 15. I love stark compostions but i don't like it when the painting has no earthly subject. For examlple. I hate random shapes floating in space ( you can tell me and modern art don't mix well.) However that doesn't mean that it can be done well. Broadway Boogie-Woogie is a great painting . Typiclly, I find that if an artist has classical training in art their abstract art comes out much better.

I also like Xu Xi. A painter form china. For some reason when I look at his work I think Xerox transfers would look great with them. I would check out his NEw York series. I totally wish I could see the originals up close and personal.

Anyway, here are some other painting that I like :-)

And now for somethjing totally diffrent!

2007-06-06T11:26:00.000-07:00

well, not totally diffrent just a post not related to bunny, rigging and crap :-). I just wanted to post this, my fav drawings by Douglas Wildey. If you don't know who he is he's the art force behind Johny Quest! Johny Quest is one of my fav old time Hanna Barabera cartoons. Right Up there with Top Cat (Don't ask me why I just really like Top Cat for some odd reason.) Anyway, back to Doug. I love his work because. 1) he was mostly self taught I believe 2.) His strokes have movement and energy without getting nosiy or vauge. Just all and all a really great and rare guy to find work of.

http://www.lostonwallace.com/influenceswildey.htm

http://www.toondoctor.com/johnnyquest.htm

More picture for Craig and what I'm doing next.

2007-05-29T10:43:00.001-07:00

Just a short update. These are the renders that Craig requested without the controllers showing. So now that I have Bunny finished what's the first thing I'm going to do with him? I'm going to do this tutorail I always wanted to do on Victor's Website. You can go there by hitting the link

http://www.navone.org/HTML/Tutorial_DashTake.htm

I like this tutorial beacause it's nice and simple and will be a good test of Bunny's blend shapes :-)

I don't know how exactly to post animation up here but since only people from work really read this blog. I'll just show it to you guys as you ask or as I finish.

that's all for now!

THE RABBIT HAS LANDED!

2007-05-24T10:44:00.000-07:00

Thank you GOD! the Rabbit IS DONE! Yes! My Re-Rigging of Bunny has finished and touched down! (Well, minus a few little things I need to clean up.) but in general it is done! done! DONE! His Rig is way super clean now and his ears and face are rigged way better. Honestly I'm really really proud of him now and he's just so mother fucking cute! I can't wait to do animation tests with him! (of which I'm not promising will be good.. I'm talking to you Justin! :-D ) But at least I know I totally Own this little guy and he's got some spit polish on him.

On a side note, the thing I'm most happy about is that his overall design has truckloads of activated curves! it's really easy to see all his lines interacting with each other to keep him pleasing in 360. (he does have a couple sour angles but overall you can film him from any angle and he'l lokk good.)

So yeah, today is a GREAT day! I'm so happy I could BURST! I set out to make a better cleaner rig and I did it! now onward to the next Challenge!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :-D :-D :-D

(oh, and another side note I did another pot test.. uh, it looks better then the last pot.... BUT THAT"S BORING compared to this so WHO CARES! WHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHHAHAH!!!!)

the Re Rigging continues...

2007-03-27T10:53:00.000-07:00

Hmm, It's been a little while since my last post. Usually i would just chock that up to me being lazy but this time I've actually been busy :-). First, at work we started work on our new game. I'm actually very happy with how my level came out which is really rare for me. The best part is that I'm still actually pretty detached from the level. I find I work better when I'm detached, that way I can view my work more objectively and can make changes. Before, when I worked (about 5 years ago) I always had this super master plan and if other people didn't understand it or if it just plain didn't work it would be someone else's fault. They just didn't “get” me or my concept. Now, at the ripe old age of 27 I can say this is a royal piece of CRAP! Now, don't get me wrong, I still love to plan and figure out how to do things. Hell, I wouldn't be doing all this study with Bunny and Toonshaders, etc. if I didn't see the value in having a pipeline and a plan. What I try NOT to do anymore is assume that everyone is going to 'like' my ideas and that they are perfect. By being detached i'ved found that ideas have more room to grow to become more then what they are.

Okay! So after that rant. Here is were I am in my personal work.

Bunny: He is almost completely re-rigged! His face blend-shapes are more exadurated then they were before and should help his acting out. Also, as I said last time I ripped out all of his bones and re rigged him from scratch. The old rig had HORRABLE problems mostly from not properly attaching controls. Almost nothing could be zeroed out. (mental note: always make sure to group your controller in an empty node, like a group, before parenting them.)

the new things he has are:

No Flip Knee: You can no longer turn the knee inside out by rotating the foot controller too far. Handy for climing and other strange leg poses.
No Follow Head: Bunny's head no longer follow his body when moved around. This is cool because if I make a change to the body animation you don't need to counter animate the head.
A Pelvis Controller: I wish I had this before on the old rig. Now I can rotate the pelvis around without effecting the torso.

the last thing I need is IK/FK switching and matching arms. I've kinda hit a snag with this. The most used method I know requires a script. I dislike using scripts because I don't know how they work. Sometimes scripts break and unless you understand what is going on (or you have someone to fix it) your pretty much up shit's creak without a paddle. After looking into other methods though I think I'm going to have to use a script.

Jason S has a really great script that switches back and forth and matches wonderfully but it has one big flaw that I hate. When your in FK mode you have to select the bones to animate. I'm surprised that he did this because rigging rule number one is “NEVER EVER EVER select the bones to animate!!!” you always us a controller or make set driven keys to do that. Now, Norman made my Morgan also uses a script but that script turns on and off controlers that control the FK arms. But yeah.. Since i don't scripting i have no freaking clue how he did that. I think I'm gonna have to mail him or check out his website.

I want to try and wrap this rigging stage up because I won't really know if i rigged him well until I actually animate him. God, I'm rusty at animation too (and i was never really good at it to start with :-P )... I should do a bunch of bouncing balls and walk cycles to warm up. Also, this is the point where all the previous work i did comes together. The toonshader can now be tested on a complex model and then I can test out my new compoiting method to see if it works. All in all I'm aiming to try and make a really good 'final' test shot. Whew! :-)

Movies that I Like, the ever growing list.

2007-03-12T10:49:00.000-07:00

Movies I like

Justin asked a very intresting question. While is offical question was “What Movies do you like?”. I will extend that question to “What movies do you like and why?”. The 'why' part, at least for me, is really important. I like a lot of things but i don't get emotionally attached to much. I tend to seperate good into two groups. There is Good as is in basically “ I felt something” whatever the emotion was I know it was honest emotion that resunates and stays with me long after the film is over. These are the films I usually can watch over and over and never get bored. Then there is 'good' as in “ it was well made”. I intlectually understand the parts that make up the film and why they work well but that doesn't mean i have an emotional response. I liken this to writing a good reseach paper. Sure, the paper takes a lot of work and energy and can be very impressively presented but i doubt it's going to be a new york times best seller. These films I tend to watch once and never watch again until they come out on DVD.

To sum this up I remeber the old saying “A craftsman works with his hands and his head, and artist works with his hands and his heart.” Many people work with there head, very few work with there heart.

So here we go! Films I love!

Kiki's Deliver Service

Treasure Planet

Joy Luck Club

Hero

Taxi Driver

Das Boot

Shaw Shank Redemtion

Forest Gump

Coffee and Cigerrets

Robocop 1 and 2

Ghostbusters

Full Metal Jacket

KIDS

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

The Never Ending Story

Chicago

Spiderman 1 and 2

Fried Green Tomatos

The Nightmare before Chrismas

Unico

Castle of the Cagliostro

Monster's Inc

The Incredables

Sinbad (the Dreamworks animated version)

Natural Born Killers

the last unicorn

Riding Bean

Iron Gaint

the last temptation of christ

Indiana Jones ( 1 and 3 )

Watergate

Catch me if you can

Paris is Burning

Birth of a Nation

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

The Breakfast Club

The Color Purple

Seven

Cinderella Man

Who Framed Rodger Rabbit

The Last Emperor

Alien and Aliens

Singing in the Rain

Seven Samuri

Rashamon

North by Northwest

The Last Picture Show

Apocalypse Now

Driving Miss Daisy

Aguirre, The Wrath of God

Run Lola Run
The Little Princess

Inharet the wind

JFK

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Super Size Me

Brazil

Telephone Both

12 monkeys

5^th Element

Sin City

Saving Privite Ryan

Jurassic Park.

The Big Kahoona

American Beauty

The Big Laboski

I probably can get this list twice as long as soon as i remember more films that I have watched.

Next week, why i like these films :-)

Ona side note. Bunny's legs are rigged as of yesterday. These legs were done by Jason Schliffer (horrable sp.) and they are light years better the crappy ones i made before. This week I look into good spine setups! YA!

Q and A

2007-02-21T19:27:00.000-08:00

okay, somebody asked me... Dallas, why are you doing these toon shaders? what kind of "Look" are you going for? Well, that's a two part question. First I'm doing them because everyone needs a hobby and I enjoy working on them and 2 because alot of normal toon shaders feel so limited that I wanted to create my own system.

Second, What "Look" am i going for? Well, in general i don't have a specific "look" in mind just a process for doing any look I want in the future. However, I do look at 2d image examples when working. I think This Wolverine pic is the best example if what i think i can do with this system as it currently stands. you need a lot more layers to get that wolvie pic but it is doable.

I had a three day weekend so what did I do?... Clean out my closet!

2007-02-20T10:31:00.000-08:00

Oh yeah! i'm such a man of excitement! give me a three day weekend and i clean out my closet. No seriously, it really needed to be done. I had stuff dumped in there that was 5 or 6 years old. Naturually, I found shit loads of old doodles. Many of which deserved to be stuffed in the closet. :-P So the ones I'm posting here are some of the more intresting ones.

(OH! and Justin, I'm not being 'negitive' :-D )

Hmmm, In other news I modified the blend shapes on Bunny so they work better. (for those not in the know, 'Bunny' was the animated rabbit I made in maya about 2 years ago. Ever since I've been hired at High Impact I've been going back here and there to redo parts of him as my knowledge grows larger). The only thing left really is to edit his smile shapes. All my blend shapes in general needed to be pushed way further.

Once I finish those blend shapes (which should be tonight actually) I'll gut his rig and re rig him from scratch. This will take me a little while (since rigging isn't my first love) but it needs to be done. Looking back bunny has ALOT of rigging mistakes.

Hmmm, what else... I made some minor tweaks to the toonshader method. It seems to work a little better now. For what it's worth I'm done with the toonshade. It pretty much does exactly what i want it to do. I've already started writting up the process into a formal document so I don't forget how I did this.

Okay, that does it for me. Let me post these doodles and strat to do some real work. :-)