Hey hey!! We've been doing the Patreon for over a year! Thank you so much for that!! :D I think that allows me a little indulgent meta-post to touch base with you all!
TLDR: 1.) This Sunday (the 18th- and probably subsequent Sundays as well) at Noon PDT I'm doing a live chat for patrons, and it'd be great to have you there! and 2.) I'd love more info about what you were hopi...
Mostly just talking photoscanning here, but hopefully useful for folks who haven't played around with it much! Super useful for making quick textural stuff.
I'm using Reality Capture (much more affordable as of a week ago- a typical scan can be like 20-30 cents), but if you want a full free open source option, Meshroom is also a great option.
One of my favorite parts of using photoscanned bits is that I get shapes I never would have modeled on my own. When I'm modeling in a void...
Woo! Some of this I touched on before (over a year ago?), but never about this specifically. This is one of the more useful things I've learned in the past year: how to select from various image textures "randomly". I used it a bunch on the "Self Generating Car" asset :) I also used it on the random generated Shipping Containers, and the 2021-03-31 07:40:41 +0000 UTC View Post
Okay so- I'm calling this version 1. I had bigger plans for it, but all of them ended up being complex, and this would have turned into a bigger project than I meant for right now (the sound team has the first episode, but I'm still jumping around updating a bunch of stuff!) And as it's still fairly useful for a lot of applications, I'd rather just release this as-is in the meantime!
To use:
Run the python script, and the "AutoAuto" object will generate new cars!
If you use it ...
Oh man I'm glad I redid the final part of this video. The first version was fine (click here if you want to watch it), but the new version more captured what excites me about this stuff.
Actually- I wish I'd added foreground benches and maybe a little roof or something- being able to wrap the video in other geometry makes it almost impossible to tell where the live action ends and the CG starts (as opposed to my low-...
Glad to finally have this one! I've had a few quicky antennas I made a few years ago that I keep re-using, but it's nice to finally have some better ones! I also have a bunch of mounting hardware and such in there.
(Right click, save link)
2021-03-13 09:10:05 +0000 UTC
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Wanted to jump over to the VFX side of things for a second! Motion tracking costume enhancements. And I apologize; I hadn't realized my microphone was more pointed towards my computer fan than my friggin' face, so I had to filter it a bit more than usual- hopefully not too annoying.
If you want to experiment with the footage too, here's a link (right click, "save link")! Huge thanks to Nate T...
The past year has been hard on everyone, and I keep finding myself missing friends, gatherings, and parties, especially the part where I force people to listen to me play Radiohead at 3am.
With the use of technology, perhaps together we can produce a crude facsimile of this beautiful microcosm of the human experience.
I made it specifically with Eevee-based VR inspection in mind (I have...
Continued from part 1
As I mention (probably repeatedly) in the video, I don't get *super* in depth with all the modeling techniques, since I'm working on an in-depth "speed-modeling" oriented video that'll hopefully go over a bunch of stuff better than just having to re-explain the same maneuvers over and over and boring everyone.
This is good old "find an image texture that wor...
Alright so I'm doing that thing where I have like 5 different projects going at once, and none of them have been helped by the fact that I effectively had no internet this past week (sorry I've been even worse at messages than usual), but I just wanted to give a little update.
I've been trying to figure out a productive workflow, but if we're being honest a lot of this still falls squarely under the "cause it's fun as hell" umbrella. Those umbrellas secretly end up to be cover...
Continued in Pt. 2
First part of a short series (no idea how many parts it'll be- probably just 2??) working through making a flying vehicle, heavily implementing "Wiggle Bones", which are ridiculously fun.
Sort of making this up as I go, so we'll see how it turns out!
Link for the free Wiggle Bones addon by Shteeve!
2021-02-20 01:53:38 +0000 UTC
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I made the opening video this morning using the same techniques as the Snowman video :)
Look I just like sculpting cats, okay?? Future content will contain 100% more ceramic cats. That's a promise (threat?).
Here's Alex's gumroad, if you're curious about the rain shader (there's also a procedural moss, which is ...
Not the most focused video in the world, maybe, but I tried to talk about some parts of the process that I usually skirt around!
If you DID want a more technically oriented step-by-step video, I recommend the "Making a shot" 3 part series from a while ago! Goes through the entire process.
Also- didn't properly credit Greg in the video! I've had this folder sitting on my computer for a ...
[Download below]
First are foremost- there's probably a better way to do moss! Some wild displacement/volumetric solution. This is just the best way I've found so far!
I have ten bazillion things I should probably be working on instead, but gosh darn I had to get it out of my system.
I'm releasing this to all the tiers for a few reasons!
1.) We crossed 4,000 folks here! That's amazing!!! You guys have surpassed paying my bills, so I'm saving up so that as s...
Just a little Sunday Night fun! Oh wait it's Monday. Funday?
Adding a bit of life to a still background! The end result isn't particularly wild, but I tried to stick a bunch of different techniques in there.
I've been galivanting all over social media the past few days- it's nice to be back here! I started writing my own little soundtrack bits for the episode, which, again, pushed out the timeline a bit, but hopefully not much! I think I just kinda need one solid...
Should be super self-explanatory, but I also included a quick how-to-use video up above (although for more information I recommend watching the video I just uploaded earlier today). I went through and gave them all a tiny bit of bounce in their step, too, which helps the realism.
Maybe some day I'll redo this with better photoscans and more variety (the initial scans were mostly just a test, not somet...
The animated crowd pack I'm using here'll be uploaded for the tier 7 folks in a sec! (just the photoscanned low-poly crowd with some shape keys. Never really intended to use them this way :P)
So- folks new to the patreon may rightly wonder, "Is Ian always so inordinately pleased with himself?" and the answer is- errr- definitely more often than I should be, yes- but look'it all the little people!
Definitely far from perfect, and only works in wides, but
2021-01-16 22:36:43 +0000 UTC
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Well- mostly just magazine covers, which'll hopefully still get the job done. And before you ask- h'oh yeah this is totally because of that cyberpunk game, cause you can run around and see random magazines everywhere, and it's such a cool way to imply a larger world (and because- I dunno. The game is so full of things I'll never be able to do, but magazines? That's doable.)
Truth be told, I thought a dozen magazines would give me more variety than it did- but should s...
Hello! This is in that zone between a tutorial and a breakdown. A Tutdown, if you will.
Covers some ground the tier 7 folks have seen, but hopefully not too boring.
Also- this started up as a breakdown for various bird particle systems, but I ended up getting super excited about controlling the BOIDS with force fields, so it gets a bit off the rails towards the end.
Here's the raw (unanimated) pigeon, if you want it. It's in FBX form, so just go file>import>FBX. ...
EDIT: Figured out why the birds wouldn't change altitude! Something to do with the "minimum speed" slider (who knows why). Changed that from being maxed out, and they can fly up and down again. You can re-download the updated version, or just, y'know, make that slider not maxed out.
ALSO- in the video, I think because I just jumped straight into building the particle system from scratch, it might make it look more complicated than it has to be? You can just open the file, hit play, an...
Just a quickie!
RAILINGS! I hate 'em! I've modeled so many railings! But lately I've tried to embrace the railing. While still getting it finished as quickly as friggin' possible.
BUT YES! Working hard to get a locked edit on the first episode of Dynamo Dream! My goal was the end of the year, and I'm REALLY close. I might have a piece of VO or two that I still need to slip in there, but I should have this thing sent off to the sound team VERY soon. I couldn't be more excited :...
This is my favorite lazy way to make animations- Auto Key Framing synced with an MP3 in the video editor!
Also- instead of AV Sync in the pulldown, maybe use Frame Dropping? Didn't really matter to me since it was such a simple scene, but if your stuff is complex that might help keep stuff in sync, not sure.
And here's the blend file if you want to make your own version???
So this is two videos in one, 1.) modeling a gizmo, then 2.) creating content for a gizmo's monitor (followed by modeling a new gizmo).
It seems long to me, but a lot of you have said you enjoy that, sooooooo- hopefully that's true! (there's also chapters down on the timeline if you want to scrub around).
(Also look I've never seen Knight Rider okay I'm sorry I thought it was the Bat Mobile).
Also be sure to check out 42:18 if you want to see me lose 40 minutes...
H'Alright! We've got stirring! We've got frying! It's... kinda a stir fry??
As I say in the video, 95% of making physics-based projects is tweaking the settings, recalculating, then doing it all over again until stuff works out right, but hopefully this covers enough ground on the chance you'd want to try something similar!
So- while I really need to stop adding shots to the Waterworks Market sequence, I'm going to be pushing this shot a bit, and I think it's going to ...
Eh, call em "statues" or "sloppy photoscans", take your pick- I think they're fun though. Imagine combining them with a cool photoscan like this (CC0 wooo*) and having a little sculpting studio?
Or-2020-12-13 00:46:06 +0000 UTC
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DOWNLOAD LINKS BELOW
SO this isn't the MOST organized file ever (it's made of pieces I made without ever really considering the fact that I might be sharing them one day, so texture names and such are a little nonsense)- but I've tried to optimize it a little! Personally I just import the whole thing and delete stuff I don't need.
Also aesthetically, this stuff blends really nicely with the
2020-12-11 01:23:26 +0000 UTC
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Not covering all that much new in this one (the idea's exactly what it looks, "clean up a photoscan and give it a marbley texture"), but it's so fun I had to make a video about it!
Also, as I mention in the video, if you don't want to go the photoscan route, you can always just download statues; there are tons of resources out there for downloading pre-existing real-world ones. This is one of the first reso...
(I have chapter markers if you click through to the YouTube video proper)
SO! I had a bazillion things I meant to be doing this week, but instead I got distracted working on a scene for Ep. 2 of Dynamo Dream. I'm still kind of torn if I want to do the final 10% of work to totally finish it, or just leave it almost done (as I apparently do with everything), and jump back to finishing the stuff I meant to be finishing.
This is the type of scene I dig when it comes to low-...
I wrote the above scene for Dynamo over five years ago (and filmed it in... 2015? Eeesh Time flies!), mostly as a writing exercise. I'd gotten kind of worried that I was treating CG as a crutch (cause ya knowww), so I wanted a whole scene that was just a guy (the amazing Aaron Moore) talking. I think it turned out alright!
Huge thanks to Aaron for his memorization/acting, and Selena Annis and Nathan Vegdahl for playing the background restaurant goers, Nate Taylor for helping me go nut...
OKAY SO YES- most of you probably already know all about shapekeys. But they are so fun and powerful that I wanted to make totally sure! Imagine your childlike joy upon learning of shapekeys for the first time! And O'! I am filled with envy.
