Reward vs Award

Posted on April 26, 2017April 29, 2017 by mattg73

Back to work this week and I’ve finally, FINALLY finished the last visual segment of the reel. It’s a personal project based on some concept art by the very talented Simon Stålenhag. I’ve spent a little over a year on it and it is by far the most complex scene I’ve ever worked on. I was keen to check that Simon was happy for me to include it in the reel so I tweeted a preview to him.

Now I won’t say I’ve won an embarrassment of awards in my career but I’ve won a few. It’s a great feeling, no doubt. But I can honestly say that recognition of effort you’ve put into a piece of work from someone you respect is worth a great deal more.

Object Tracking and Rotoscope prep

Posted on March 27, 2017April 29, 2017 by mattg73

Spent the last few days trying various approaches to getting some solid tracking results for my last big outstanding section of the reel. It’s only a short segment of live action footage but its got some fairly fast motion and some tricky layered rotoscoping to contend with. I’ve tried many approaches to getting the best results including shooting at 60fps and 4K in order to get a clean read of the marker affine transforms. It’s nevertheless proved to be something of a black art but I’ve learned a lot in the process. I’ve got one last segment of simulation work to do and then it’s on to filming the final footage, tracking, rendering, rotoscoping and compositing.

An armchair, a rug, a toaster, a sculpture, a magazine subscription, a cuddly toy…

Posted on March 10, 2017 by mattg73

Ok, not a cuddly toy.

For those too young to remember ‘The Generation Game’, this week has involved a LOT of modelling as I’ve gone about fleshing out an ArchVis scene. Lots of Blender work, Substance Designer material design and a bit of Painter work to boot. Happy with the results on this Eames chair though. Here’s to a relaxing weekend!

Sofa so good

Posted on February 27, 2017 by mattg73

(A timeless pun)

So, having finished on the substance texture work for an environment map, I’ve turned to re-modelling a sofa I’d created for another project in Unity. The original was ok, as low poly models go, but the cushions missed the subtle creasing that really sells the material and softness of the furnishing so I’ve remade it from scratch and sculpted in the details ready for some normal map baking. Should lead to a more convincing result. Technique based on Blender Guru’s great tutorial made available as part of The Architecture Academy.

Gyroscope influenced typograpy and Substance Designer texture work

Posted on February 21, 2017February 22, 2017 by mattg73

Spent the last few days finishing up a project that calls on some pretty diverse skills. The first task was integrating typography into a rotating cloud in THREE.js. I’d hoped to use a sprite sheet for loading efficiency but, surprisingly, THREE.js sprite sheet support is rudimentary to the point of being non-existent and there aren’t a lot of memory savings to be made so have resorted to good-old 26 individual character sprites. The next step involved trying to integrate the rotating cloud, to be controlled ultimately by phone gyroscope, into a reeeeally complex scene involving multiple post-compositing layers of several reflective and refractive concave surfaces one contained within the other. Having the typography animate behind and in front of these surfaces proved really tricky to get working satisfactorily but I’m almost there. Today has been a bit more relaxing with some environment map modelling and texturing work in Substance Designer.

Exploring Edge Creases in Blender

Posted on February 15, 2017February 21, 2017 by mattg73

Spent today primarily finalising a model for implementation in THREE.js. Did some tests on using Edge Crease Weight in Blender to reduce the quantity of edge loops needed for clean edges. This is part of a wider PBR workflow I’m trying to nail down that includes Substance Designer and Painter ready for implementation using THREE.js relatively new Standard/Physical shader model. Edge creases give pretty good results and definitely keep the complexity of a model like this to a more manageable level. Next step is some tedious UV unwrapping followed by some more enjoyable Substance Designer materials.