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Returning from Holidays after a busy start to 2013

By Digital Lode, Site NewsNo Comments

Unfortunately over the last few months, I’ve fallen into the trap of neglecting my website and have failed to keep it up to date! Since my last post in December, 2012, I’ve had a good start to 2013, working on a few very exciting projects right up to the start of February when I enjoyed a month off.

I spent my 1 month break travelling overseas with my girlfriend, celebrating Chinese New Year with her family and friends in China and Hong Kong. This was followed up by a week’s stay in Bangkok.

I’ve now been back at work since the start of this month and definitely look forward to updating this site. There’s new portfolio Items to add for my recent projects, a showreel (been working on that for over a year now) and a couple of video tutorials i’ve been dying to finish off for a while!

 

Thanks for reading, I really want to work on the LODE and share my projects and tutorials online. I hope you find this site useful!

March 6, 2013
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French Island Camping

Been M.I.A

By Digital Lode, Site NewsNo Comments

This is my first update to the Digital Lode site in a while! I’ve spent the last couple of months on a few projects back-to-back with very little spare time. The spare time i’ve had has been spent with my family and girlfriend.

I worked on a 3D animated project for Siemens/Fed Square, Melbourne, I helped create animated content for a large 9+ metre wide screen at a Melbourne Zoo Exhibit and helped create 3D animated graphics for the upcoming opening of a new Toyota Manufacturing plant & new 4 Cylinder engine reveal. One of the bigger projects has been the creation of 3D Art for a BASF print Ad Campagin.

Siemens Fed Square 3D Animation

Still Frame from 3D animated content for Siemens & Fed Square

I’ve then taken a holiday for the last week where I took part in a developmental course with Boy’s Brigade Australia. 3 Days of the week were spent mountain biking & camping in French Island with my oldest mate, James Eynaud, very fun and a very rewarding physical challenge in the intense heat of last week!

French Island Camping

My campsite along the beach in French Island

I’ve also invested many hours over the past few months into expanding my craft, particularly lighting, rendering and digital sculpting. I’ve recently added Zbrush to my toolset & am having too much fun creating odd sculpts for 20 minutes each day as I come up to speed with the unique interface and tools. Will be uploading a few work in progress character sculpts soon.

I’ve also finally started preparing and recording some video tutorials for the Digital Lode again – i’ve released my first video tutorial since my After Effects Motion Blur tutorial from early 2010. My most recent tutorial covers the new Vray Embree Helper for 3DS Max. Looking forward to add some more.

Things have finally started to slow down to normal and so i’m now putting some time into updating the Digital Lode site. I’m hoping to share some excerpts from the projects i’ve worked on these last few weeks, a couple of quick video tutorials and my first showreel since 2009 – which is finally almost finished!

December 2, 2012
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Vray Tutorial – Vray Embree Helper

By Digital Lode Tutorials, Tutorials

Quick Video about the Vray Embree Plugin. This is the first in (what I hope to becomes) a regular series of Tips & Tricks videos focused on Vray.

I’ve recently come across the Vray Embree Helper object; a plugin that is currently separate from the standard Vray installation. The VrayEmbree plugin allows for render speedups between 20-30+ % when rendering with Vray on an intel processor.

This quick video gives an overview of the plugin with a render comparison and covers the installation and how to use the vrayembree helper in your 3ds max scene.

Download the Vray Embree plugin from the Vray tools page:
http://www.spot3d.com/vray/misc/

Release thread on the ChaosGroup forums:
http://www.chaosgroup.com/forums/vbulletin/showthread.php?68970-Embree-raycaster-for-V-Ray&highlight=Embree

Intel’s official page for the Embree Kernels:
http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/embree-photo-realistic-ray-tracing-kernels/

Official Intel Embree forum:
http://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/embree-photo-realistic-ray-tracing-kernels

i7 Processor Comparison:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_i7_microprocessors#Desktop_processors

 

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November 3, 2012
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Inspiration – Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes & Realtime rendering

By InspirationNo Comments

I am a huge fan of the Metal Gear series and haven’t been this excited about a game for a long time!

A game trailer that has to be seen to be believed:

Cannot wait for this game to come out. Metal Gear Solid 4 was the only reason I got a ps3 and i’m extremely happy to hear that Hideo Kojima is making yet another game with Solid Snake.

Cannot get over graphics. Like all other Metal Gear games, it appears that cutscene that lasts for the first 7~ mins is all real time rendered. Looks amazing! Apparently this demo was running on a PC with specs comparable to the ps3 hardware. If the game really can run this good on a PS3 i’ll be amazed. It also sounds like the game will be released on PC as well as the consoles. Definitely going to get the PC version!

 

The age of realtime rendering for media other than games is really upon us. Software like Element 3D and development of Maya’s Viewport 2.0 & recent directx 11 shaders allow us to achieve pseudo ray-traced render quality with special effects like caustics, depth of field, shadows, reflections and global illumination in almost real time. 3DS max’s nitrous & Quicksilver engines are similar, but I hope they are developed further. The days of literely spending days rendering are numbered!

Rigid Gems directx 11 demo - real time rendering blog entry

 

To see the quality & realism that can be achieved with rea ltime shaders, checkout the ‘rigid gems’ demo on the Japanese Sakura website. All of the above special effects are rendered in realtime with dynamic physics! There’s a gallery with images and videos, or if you have a decent graphics card, download the demo and see it in real time for yourself!

September 9, 2012
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W.I.W.O: Week 35 & 36 – Melbourne Zoo Underwater Exhibit

By Current Projects, What I'm Working on (WIWO)No Comments

I’m creating 3D animated content for an exhibit at the Melbourne Zoo! Reel Pictures & Mal Padgett design are putting together an update for a 6 minute large-screen video about Australia’s coast and recycling. I’m helping to create 2 minutes of animation for the exhibit.

The video must go live on the first week of school holidays (very, very soon!) but we are confident we will finish the content in time. I’ve spent the last week or so creating the underwater environment.

I have saved a lot of time thanks to a tutorial created by Michael McCarthy- 2011 Autodesk 3DS Max master and one of my many heroes in this industry. For a recent tutorial, he created an underwater enivornment that looks fantastic and renders extremely quickly using Mental Ray. I have used this idea as my starting point for our underwater scene. It’s my first project using Mental ray in a very long time, and i’ve been reminded how good mental ray actually is. It hasn’t been developed properly in a few years (though that may change over the next couple of months), and I still believe vray is far better, but mental ray is proving to be a much better solution for this particular job.

 

I’ve also spent a few days over these last 2 week helping Alf Kuhlmann put together a new website for Reel Pictures, the first update in a few years. The new Reel Pictures folio is only just started, with many more projects to be added and finished, but already there is so much awesome work on there.

I’ve also created an updated poster design for Moonee Valley City Council’s Fling Fest Event.

[image title=”Fling Fest 2012 Poster Design by Michael Wentworth-Bell” width=”544″ height=”757″ align=”center” lightbox=”true” group=”wiwo2012week35″ icon=”zoom”] http://thelode.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Fling-Fest-2012-Poster-Design-Michael-Wentworth-Bell.jpg [/image]

I created the artwork for this poster in Photoshop and 3DS max and rendered it with Vray and After Effects. It was a lot of fun and i’m going to create a new page on my portfolio for this project soon.

The next 2 weeks will be quite busy with the Underwater animation job, but it’s a lot of fun (lots and lots of Particle Flow Simulations) and I can’t wait to see how it turns out!

[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]

 

September 8, 2012
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Inspiration – Red Rose Speedway

By InspirationNo Comments

My inspiration this week has definitely been Red Rose Speedway by Paul McCartney and Wings. I’ve been collecting the Wings albums on Vinyl for a while now and haven’t got many left to go. Though i’d heard the singles before, somehow i’d not yet listened to this  album all the way through. I’ve discovered the album at the start of the week and been slowly annoying everyone at the studio I share space with by playing it over and over on repeat!

August 29, 2012
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New Content – Portfolio & Archives

By Site NewsNo Comments

My spare time over the last week has been poured into the LODE website and i’ve added some new content to the blog, my portfolio and the LODE archives.

 

Here’s a quick summary of the new content this week:

The LODE Portfolio

Tony Robinson’s London Games Unearthed – 3D Zeus Animation – Live action & CG animation created for a recent London Olympics Documentary on the History Channel.

Shaping Education – Henry Bastow Part III – created over a period of 5 months in 2011/12. I created a 3D cafe and filled it with about 3 billion pieces of junk!

The LODE Archives

A series of four 2D animations I created in 2008 – created as part of my 2D animation class in first year uni. Each animation focuses on a different 2D animation technique.

Experiment 091637 – filmed and edited in 2005 (7 years ago!) when I was in year 11 highschool. Included in my archives for a bit of fun!

 

 

As of August 2012, the LODE site is still a fair way off from being officially finished, but I am close! Before I complete ‘version 1′ of the site, I look forward to uploading a 2012 Showreel, add and refine 9 portfolio pieces and upload content for the ‘Motherlode’ tutorials section of the site. The Showreel is my main focus at the moment, and I hope to complete and upload it very soon.

August 27, 2012
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My 2 Year Anniversary

W.I.W.O: Week 33 & 34 – Kubota Truck Launch

By Current Projects, What I'm Working on (WIWO)One Comment

A double journal entry this time. I’ve had a pretty exciting past 2 weeks!

I spent a lot of this time working on animated content for an upcoming Kubota Truck Launch. The Animated content was created for a 40 metre wide screen!

All the animation was done using Video Copilot’s Element 3D plugin. I thought this project would test the plugin to it’s limit but it would render these massively large animation files without any issue…although I was doing a lot of this work with a beastly GTX 680, which may have had something to do with it!

I worked primarily on a ~90 second animated sequence for the main Kubota truck launch. I look forward to sharing some of the work after the launch!

 

I also helped create animated content for another upcoming ‘Go For Gold!’ corporate event, this time completing all the 3D animation in 3DS Max with Vray.

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In this past week, I also attended the first ‘meet and greet’ for Pause Fest, Melbourne. It was interesting to see the showreel of clips that will be featured in the upcoming festival at the end of the year, and I also bumped into my first year 2D animation Teacher, Megan Nairn, who amazingly still remembered me! I created 4 2D animations for her 2D animation subject.

 

In week 33, I also celebrated my 2 year anniversary with my girlfriend, Ivy, and enjoyed some time off!

My 2 Year Anniversary

 

I’ve used some of my time off to start a few new personal projects – more info on that soon!

[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]
August 26, 2012
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W.I.W.O: Week 32 – VSSEC Mission to Mars in Stereoscopic 3D

By Current Projects, What I'm Working on (WIWO)One Comment

After almost 5 months, I am happy to announce that I have finished my work on the VSSEC Mission to Mars animation. I have been working on around 4 minutes of 3D animation for the ‘Mission to Mars’ space experience at the Victorian Space Science Education Centre.

Mars Lander touching down on the Red Planet | VSSEC Mission to mars 3D animation

The Mission to Mars program allows secondary school students to spend a day simulating a trip to Mars. At the start of the journey, the crew watches a 12 minute briefing video which was shot, edited & produced by Chris Joiner and The Pod. I was contracted by Alf @ Reel Pictures to help convert this briefing video into Stereoscopic 3D. This has been a challenging, but really fun job!
Red/Cyan 3D Glasses - required to view Anaglyph 3DI 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!

 

[image title=”VSSEC Mission to Mars Animation – Michael Wentworth-Bell” width=”544″ height=”306″ align=”center” lightbox=”true” group=”wiwo2012-32″ icon=”zoom”] http://thelode.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/VSSEC_Mission_to_mars_3D_animation_011.jpg [/image] [image title=”VSSEC Mission to Mars Animation – Michael Wentworth-Bell” width=”544″ height=”306″ align=”center” lightbox=”true” group=”wiwo2012-32″ icon=”zoom”] http://thelode.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/VSSEC_Mission_to_mars_3D_animation_03.jpg [/image] [image title=”VSSEC Mission to Mars Animation – Michael Wentworth-Bell” width=”544″ height=”306″ align=”center” lightbox=”true” group=”wiwo2012-32″ icon=”zoom”] http://thelode.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/VSSEC_Mission_to_mars_3D_animation_04.jpg [/image]

Most of my 3D animation focused on the journey of the Mars Explorer crew, with their journey from Earth to the Mars Explorer in orbit, and then the Mars Lander’s path to it’s landing site on the Red Planet.

[image title=”VSSEC Mission to Mars Animation – Michael Wentworth-Bell” width=”544″ height=”306″ align=”center” lightbox=”true” group=”wiwo2012-32″ icon=”zoom”] http://thelode.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/VSSEC_Mission_to_mars_3D_animation_02.jpg [/image]

I modelled the terrain for the landing site in 3Ds max using the artisan brush, and created a procedural texture that would cover the entire the landscape. I painted a black/white blend map to mix 4 different rock & sand textures over the whole terrain. This is a new way of painting textures that I will use from now on! The last shot in the animation lasts for over a minute – A large Zoom shot that reveals the entire desolate mars landscape. Over 1,400 frames long, it took an absolute age to render!

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I’ve had a heap of fun working on this job! My eyes are a bit sore from constantly looking a 3D images, but I learnt a lot along the way! I further refined my stereoscopic workflow for After Effects as a result of my work on this job & I hope to make a quick tutorial soon to share some tips, scripts and plug-ins that were indispensible!

[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]
August 12, 2012
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Digital Lode - Tony Robinson's London Games Unearthed

W.I.W.O: Week 31 – Tony Robinson, Element3D and a Stereoscopic movie

By Current Projects, What I'm Working on (WIWO)No Comments

Early this week Alf Kuhlmann received a DVD copy of recent hour-long documentary – Tony Robinson’s London Games Unearthed. The show looks at the history of East London – the site of the 2012 Olympic games. A few months ago, I worked for Alf on a few sequences for the Documentary.

[image title=”Tony Robinson’s London Games Unearthed – Zeus Sequence” width=”544″ height=”386″ align=”center”] http://thelode.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Zeus_Title.jpg [/image]

 

We created a 3D statue of Zeus and animated the 13 metre statue in some live action sequences with Tony Robinson. We then had to make the Zeus model crumble into a pile of rubble. It was a lot of fun! This week was the first time we actually got to see how our sequences were used in the final documentary. I edited together just the sections featuring our Zeus model & made a new project page in my LODE portfolio about the project.

[image title=”Tony Robinson’s London Games Unearthed – Still Frame” width=”544″ height=”304″ align=”center” lightbox=”true” group=”wiwo2012w31″ icon=”zoom”] http://thelode.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/ZeusSCreenshotB.jpg [/image]

This week I have been helping Alf a bit on a big product launch for Kubota. He is creating the animated content for a massive screen that will be on stage. We are using Element3D for the 90~ second sequence – this is the first time we’ve tried out the plugin and there have been many quirks and bugs, particularly when trying to create 3D models from Illustrator or Vector paths.
Video Copilot have just released an update for Element3D so we will install it on monday and hopefully that will address these issues. None of the bugs are show-stopping; the plugin is very powerful and we can find workarounds to get our final renders out, it just takes a lot of time at the moment trying to troubleshoot these glitches!

[divider_line_padding] The remainder of my week has been spent working on the 3D stereoscopic animation for the VSEEC. This project is now in the final compositing stage and i’m hoping that this coming week will be the final week needed to get it completed. On Friday I watched almost the whole animation in 3D (for the first time!) and it is looking pretty good! Very excited to see the final result on the extremely crisp projectors at the actual museum.

August 5, 2012
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