Wednesday 20 July 2011

FXPHD: MOD301 week 2: advanced enviroment modleing

Well its back down to work on the stuff for FXPHD now for the MOD301 advanced environment modelling course I'm the professor for. As luck would have it the version I recorded at 3am this morning was corrupted by Camtasia...which is nice of it I think you'll agree! So it was all hands to the pumps tonight to redo it in time to meet the deadline, so yet another working till tomorrow to get the final edit etc done and ready.

This is going to be one helluva detailed cathedral interior as Durham Cathedral itself is insanely detailed in places. The full low res will be about a million polys or so...I remember when low poly meshes were a couple of hundred lol. Although to be fair this is going nowhere near a game engine and is intended to fit a series of chroma shots. So it has to stand up to photoreal quality.

It's not exactly giving away a lot to say that anything repeated is instanced, although interestingly enough many things in Durham aren't repeated and are unique. Which provides its own set of challenges. The students are going to have a lot of fun when it comes time to sculpt and texture this. The plus point for me is that I get to show I can indeed make stuff other than monsters, plus as I've ben visiting the cathedral itself since I was 5 year old, it'll be nice to have a 3d version. There's about a 99% chance that once the course is done that I'll continue on with the set dressing and other stuff that's not needed for this as it is not seen in the shots. I'm enjoying myself immensely.

In other news, my wife and I went to the cinema for the first time together, which as we've been together 9 years may sound odd. But as with a lot of you who read this blog, work often gets in the way of real life, so I simply haven't had the time to take her till today. (Plus once kids came along we had a whole other set of reasons why it was far more difficult to get to see a film together as baby sitters are a bit thin on the ground lol. We went to see the deathly hallows part 2 as we both like harry potter...in a non weird 'it's a decent series of books' non scary way. It gets a 9 1/2 out of 10 from me and the wife.

Sunday 17 July 2011

Need some advice from photography peeps

OK Photography type peeps, I need some advice. Looks like I may have to sell enough of the list below to buy a replacement camera for my one stolen in Holland as otherwise this stuff is just sitting around doing sod all. So need some advice about what makes the most sense to sell (ie getting rid of minimum ammount of stuff so I can buy a replacement 550d or a 60D).

I could probably pair down my stuff pretty much to a couple of lenses (as I dont use the zooms at all) and the stuff I've not put on this list like reflectors, tripods, mini chroma rig etc..... Bt ideally would like to A: get rid of shit I'd not use even with another camera...and B: ideally have enough to possibly upgrade

Basically I need some advice as god damnit I need a DSLR!

The List:

Canon zoom lens EF 100-300mm 4.5-5.6
Canon zoom lens EF 75-300mm 4-5.6
Canon zoom lens EF 28-80mm 3.5-5.6
Canon zoom lens EFS 18-55mm 3.5-5.6
Ensinor 24mm 2.8
Helios 58mmF2
Ziess Jena 50mm 2.8
Tokina SD 28-70mm 3,5-4.5 (with FD to EOS Adapter)
Ensinor 80-300mm 4.5 (m42)
Optomax 28mm 2.8
canon lens EF 50mm 1.8
Proskar 2x anamorphic + red custom clamps + diopter set
Canon 550D battery grip
Manfotto modosteady (unused)
Manfotto 701 HDV head
Manfotto 680B monopod
large chroma Rig - BG and stands (and I mean BIG!)
ZOOM H4n