I’ve just started working on a new 3D animation for Siemens. It’s a fun project with a very short deadline (for 3D animation) but I am excited about it! I am working on this project for Alf Kuhlmann (Reel Pictures). The animation centres on Fed Square and luckily we were supplied with an accurate 3D model of the entire Federation Square site. It’s very cool!
The file we were given originated as a CAD model which is both good and bad. Good because it is a very true-to-life representation of Fed square with correct placement of structures, individual triangle tiles(!), pavement blocks, etc. Bad because it was imported as well over 60,000 individual polygon objects into 3DS max! CAD models are designed for accurate construction of a real structure, not 3D animation! It took the better part of a day to combine/merge all the pieces and cleanup the whole model, but it was worth investing the time because the model is now quite nice! I spent the rest of this week preparing the shaders and queued up some test renders for this weekend.
Here’s a few quick renders of the whole model at this early stage in production.
[image title=”Fed Square animation – Michael Wentworth-Bell – complete view ” width=”544″ height=”306″ align=”center” lightbox=”true” group=”2012week30″ icon=”zoom”] http://thelode.com.au/site_assets/image_uploads/FedSquareAll.jpg [/image]
[image title=”Fed Square animation – Michael Wentworth-Bell – Overhead view” width=”544″ height=”306″ align=”center” lightbox=”true” group=”2012week30″ icon=”zoom”] http://thelode.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/FedOverhead.jpg [/image]
Earlier this week I attended the Adobe Roadshow at the Melbourne Convention Centre. The first 45 minutes were quite underwhelming and I thought it was going to be a massive waste of time! The free coffee and biscuits during the break were nice though, as were the partner booths displaying new tech like the Cintiq 24HD, but the best part of the day was the 2 ‘video breakout’ sessions after morning tea. These sessions were held in separate rooms 3 levels above the main show, and the attendance for these sessions was much, much less (around 100 people instead of 1000+. but they were truly unmissable, hosted by Karl Soule and Jon Adobe, 2 adobe Evangelists. Karl runs a few video production blogs and hosts many ‘how-to’ videos on tv.adobe.com. They covered a lot of new features in CS6 Production Premium. Many of these tips were focused on Media Encoder, Audition, Prelude & Speedgrade and they highlighted new features that I was completely unaware of.
The most exciting part was at the end when they demo’ed a research project using Premiere Pro. This is a feature that may be released in a year, if it works. It was called ‘Premiere Pro – Edit Anywhere’. It allows 2+ Editors to work on the same sequence together from anywhere in the globe! all the source media (typically over 1TB of footage) is kept on a central server. The effects processing and compositing is done using the server, so the editor receives only the input and output frames as they edit and perform compositing operations. It’s very fast and secure! Karl said that the editing experience would remain responsive as long as you had a minimum 1.5Megabit internet connection.
For someone like Alf, this feature would be awesome! He often works on up to 30(!) Swisse Advertisements a week, collaborating with 2 editors remotely (one is in Portland). this feature would save a lot of time that would be spent transferring Gigabytes+ of source footage via FTP, courier, or airplane (sometimes quickest on a tight deadline).
At this stage, Adobe were talking of releasing this as a software solution only, so it would be up to the customer to setup the server hardware and security. This is a good move, allowing big studios to set up their own international network exactly how they want it, but i hope Adobe offers a subscription-style cloud server model for smaller shops that might only need it for an occasional job.
This was the week I finally launched a preview of my website (and the official facebook page) this week. Very exciting! I am still working on portfolio items, tutorials and proper body copy of the site as well as business card, letterheads and stationary design before I launch the website proper.
Finally, this week I also celebrated my birthday and had a great few days of celebration, including an epic dinner with my Girlfriend Ivy at the Melba Restaurant, Melbourne.
[image title=”Michael Wentworth-Bell – Birthday Dinner” width=”544″ height=”408″ align=”center” lightbox=”true” group=”2012week30-light2″ icon=”zoom”] http://thelode.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/MichaelWentworth-BellBirthday.jpg[/image]
[divider_line_padding]
I try to create a quick journal entry at the end of each week that covers the projects, events and highlights of the past 7 days. These weekly blog posts are known as the ‘WIWO’ Series
(What I’m Working On).
[divider_line]
I worked on 4 sections of the movie, all requiring 3D animation, which was done in 3DS Max and rendered for Stereoscopic 3D using Vray. There are a few still frames included below that are rendered in Anaglyph 3D. You can view these in 3D by wearing some Red/Cyan 3D Glasses. Click the images below to view them fullscreen. All of the 3D content was created to be projected on a 5 metre-wide sceeen, and to be viewed from a distance of 6.5 metres away. This means that some of these Stereo3D renders below may not look very ‘comfortable’ when viewed close up on a small computer screen!
