Cathedral : DONE!!

Finally it's done! There's a polycount in the tens of millions and brought not one but 2 PC's to their knees and me to the edge of insanity over the last 2 weeks of it. I've had dying machines to contend with, epic powercuts, both kids at home for 2 months due to crazy stuff by the local education authority who seem to see a simple move of schools as worthy of international debate...but I digress. The bottom line is its done.

Although modelling, texturing, lighting and rendering out the shots for both the Durham cathedral interior from last year and the exterior this year have been fun, I'd a little glad to be able to move onto something organic for a while. The above shot is a style frame from the actual shot done as part of the MOD302 class that's just wound up after 10 weeks spread over 3 months. Things can and do change before final composite although that could take quite a while before I see it. (The stuff from MOD 301 finished last October has only just came into my hands ..and there are still a few shots not rendered out and composited yet.) I'm sort of hoping I'm not the last dude to have it rendered out as be sort of a bitch if the guy who created it does not get to put it on a reel till after everyone else lol.

EDIT: Here's a quick reel of some of the shots I have got a hold of from MOD301 so far.

So no more Norman architecture for a while for Wayney boy! Its been full on 18 hours minimum a day the last few weeks and for most of this year in fact. So in one way its nice to have some more 'me' time and time for the wife and kids.

Its back to organics for a while and prepping for Anomaly in Vancouver for my lecture and demo at the end of this month. I can promise something special as you do not go to what could be called the 3d sculpting capital of the world unprepared ;) Not only is there the lecture but also 6 hours where I'll be demoing and available for questions and practical stuff as well.

I've not made an antique kids bike before to original specs...groovy.

Also I just did a quick logo for Danny John Jules film 'Bucky'. Very fast turnaround on this pone as a favour to Danny. I'd urge you to donate if you can as I'm probably one of the few people to have even a rough overview of what it's about (Danny has been purposely keeping it very secret). I can say it's going to be damn good.... I normally don't pimp other peoples stuff in my blog, but :

A - I count Danny as a mate

B - Its a very cool idea and story line

C - If I didn't he might get the thumbscrews out again...lol

So here is the LINK

So it's back to organics for me for a while so next week or so I'll be getting back up to speed after a year of mostly environment stuff. Expect monsters, expect creatures as it's been a bloody age since I did any. So no more banging on about the cathedral unless its to show you animated comped shots ;) ...mainly as of right now...my books are empty so back to freelance work searching for me.

Durham Cathedral: Modelling Finished!!

Trust me there is a LOT of detail behind those shadows!

After what feels like 6 life times (in truth less than 1 1/2 weeks) I'm finally calling the modelling stage of the Durham Cathedral complex for my FXPHD class MOD302 done. I feel like I know this cathedral better than the people who bloody built it afer starring at it for a week and a half lol 18 hrs a day.

So many areas are detailed I can't get them all into a single still

Now this was not just a modelling 'challenge' for me (it being without doubt the most complex model I've ever done...especaily if you count the interior I did last year for MOD302), but also a software one. in the end I had to use 3d max 2012 for this for one simple reason...it was the only software with any chance of being able to have the ammount of polygons in the viewport at the sametime without crashing like a bitch all over the place.

Its gives me migraine just thinking about ever doing this again LOL

We're talking tens of thousands of seperate parts and a polycount that technically should 'break' 3d max, its viewport ....as 3d max has a theoretical poly limit of 10 million for a single scene (without proxies etc). This model breaks that by a fair old bit. In fact its between 12-15 million..with no instances or proxies used. There is detail thats not visible even in a 1080p frame lol. (in fact even trhe sanctuary knocker is modelled even though it takes up about 3 pixels.) So every part of the cathedral complex is capable of supporting a close up.

Now I MUST give props to Neil Hazzard and the nitrous team who handle the 3d max viewport progamming. Any other app would have not only crashed but certainly not have such a nice viewport as respresentative of the final render. In fact below at the bottom is the viewport grab of the scene to compare with the 1st image in this post. Not bloody far away I think you'll agree!

The model will stand up to a close up on any tiny part of the entire complex.

So lets remember that when 3d tech works well...god damn its impressive...and this does. So hats off to Neil and his crew. (I promise to buy him several drinks next time I see him.)


But....

Now comes the hard part...texturing the entire cathedral complex ,setting shaders up and getting it ready to create the entire 3d scene it will go in. But 1st I'm taking a damn day off as a week and a half 18 hours a day working on this has me on the verge of running round with an axe.

insane polycount in the viewport of 3d max....

Calling this final now....

ok calling this one done or I'll sit and tweak stuff from now till doomsday...so it'll do for a weekend doodle. It uses Three 4k maps (color, bump and diffuse) on high res model using couple of spot lights in 3D Max.


also this weekend (back on thursday night) produced this full 3D scene as well (so its been quite a productive weekend!)

Free Zbrush Hair to Spline's plugin for 3D Max

'Wayne's Poly to Splines' 3D Max plug-in (Free)

Link: www.psychocore.com/WaynesPolyToSpline.zip

Well as a personal thank you to all the zbrush users that were so positive about the mudbox videos and realised they are just as useful to them, and also didn't insult me or start ww3.... Here's a little thank you for those of you that use 3D Max. Its something I knocked out in an hour tonight that takes imported zbrush hair and converts it into splines so that they can be used with to comb max hair and fur. This of course gives you dynamics and opens the whole thing up to animation. Its single click and works fast...oh and free.

It operates in a single click and includes a very basic installation and usage PDF....if there are any spelling mistakes or typos don't blame me as I wrote the damn thing in 5 mins lol. As mudbox users have sort of had a monopoly on me of late I felt it would be a nice way to say thanks to the zbrush users who often get sidelined in my freebie releases.

I can't stick this on zb central as I've been banned for 'daring to use mudbox' now for over 3 1/2 years lol. So pass the word amongst yourselves as I cannot.

MOD301 & MOD302 about to Start at FXPHD

I have two courses you can take part in this term at FXPHD. In case you missed it last time MOD301 Advanced environment modelling is being shown again, and yes this means I will be answering any questions you may have during the 10 weeks on that in the fxphd forum. Also I'm doing a brand new course MOD302 3D Digital Environments. So lets have a quick breakdown of what each course is about:


MOD301 : Advanced Enviroment modelling






This 10 week course covers from start to final renders the creation of a full cathedral interior based on Durham cathedral for use as background to some green screen shots. The final asset is photoreal and looks rather nice even if I do say so myself. The courses uses 3d Max and Mudbox although many followed along well with Maya and / or Zbrush (as there are a few extra videos covering both. It is not a beginners course and is hard, but as anyone who has taken the course will tell you 'you will learn stuff'.


MOD302 : 3D Digital Environments



Lets 1st get out of the way that this is not a one shot course. It is also a hard course to put it mildly and covers the creation of a number of photoreal full 3D digital environments. That means no camera projection, no 2.5D cards... so basically it means no cheating. We are living as artists in an increasing stereoscopic environment where both TV and films have made the step into it. As such many of the old tricks either no longer work anymore, or look terrible if used. The only solution is a full 3D environment in most cases.


This course will be using a combination of Vue 10, Mudbox 2012 and Maya 2012 and will be using real production examples from the 'Joan of Arc' short film being made by FXPHD. Some stills you can see on the main part of my site (www.dashdotslash.net) while others you can't because...well the script isn't locked down yet. The last 2-3 lessons will cover the creation of the external shot to accompany the interior shots made during MOD301. (Although both courses have been designed to be stand alone.)

The shot we have to match the cathedral, set dressing and any environment changes to is a complex long shot taken by Mike Seymour on the Red in New Zealand. This will work the initial reveal of the cathedral, in fact I would strongly urge watching the O day video over at FXPHD to get an idea of exactly what that will entail. We will be using suppplied tracking data and not only creating the assets for the final shot but compositing them as well in Nuke so we have a final shot.



This has been a widely anticipated course since it was annouced about a week back and I will outline again this is not a beginners course and is the highest level that FXPHD run (the other levels being 100 and 200 level courses). Again this course features a series of hardcore practical examples from a high end short actually in production.

I've also been told that an interview with me is in the latest 3D Artist magazine, I've not seen it myself yet, but keep your eyes open for it. You may also want to keep your eye on the next issue as well. ;)

'Cathedral' ::: Interior Establishing Shot mock up

A very rough mock up using a still of the 1st interior establishing shot. with roto as rough as a donkeys arse. Final will be full animated,tracked & cleaned up. There will be about 15-18 shots in all in my version of this.

Now, see if you can spot the hidden 3d max teapot ;)

Waynes reviews: 3Ds Max 2012 (or 'How I tried to break Nitrous')

I felt after spending the time making the cathedral for FXPHD I'd cover some stuff that I was not able to cover as part of my classes as it was not part of the remit, that people may find useful. First up is my mini reviews of some of the software I've used as part of the course to create the thing. I'm going to bypass Mudbox as my opinion is well known and not exactly impartial lol. So in this 'every now and again review' section of the blog let's start with the app used more than any other in making the cathedral.

3D Max 2012

Now I've used 3dmax as my main 'rendering app' for an age now, although I use all 3 of the big main apps (Maya, Max and Softimage). I'm in a situation where I'm using both max 2011 and max 2012 as 2011 is on my 'dev machine' and 2012 is on the machine I use to record a lot of stuff. There are times when it's easier to use my dev machine as it's in my work room, which is far cosier to work in. Of all the features added to max of late the one that has been the biggest game changer for me is the Nitrous viewport.

Now let's get right out of the way early on that I consider many of the max team as friends including Neil Hazzard responsible for leading the team iwho make the Nitrous viewport. This is not to say that does them any favours in this review...far from it as those guys know that if I think something is crap I will tell them and will also do best to push any tech far beyond sensible bounds.

Viewports normally have a habit of flattering the model and thus makes nice pretty shots for sales images and videos. To me that is as useful as a chocolate tea cosy! I want to see in the viewport a near as possible representation of what I will see at render time. If lighting is off or material are going to make it look shit, I'd like to know before I hit render on a heavy scene thank you very much.

The cathedral in the nitrous viewport in 3Ds Max 2012

The biggest difference from a lighting point of view for me was indeed the nitrous viewport as it doesn't try to make things look better, it shows you how it will be at render time. Or at very least a damn good estimation of it. This may be quite easy in this day and age to turn an apps viewport into something that looks far nicer....however.....what is far harder is also keeping high end performance.

Now if you've looked at the blog posts below you can see that the cathedral is a damn complex scene with a lot of parts and instancing ignored for the most part (as later on I had to create part of the course in Maya for maya users, so instances were best to be avoided in this particular case.) The shot you see here of the cathedral in nitrous was from part way through the progress and has 17million polygons in the scene and a lot of materials and maps. Now I'm fairly sure Neil didn't think anyone would be stupid enough to have a scene with that many non instanced polys in it. So had the viewport broke down in any way it would have been forgivable. But it didn't, it handled it very well indeed.

Yes with that much data being passed around it did take a couple of minutes for the on screen shaders and maps to become all visible, but once they were I could navigate the scene with the same speed I could in max 2011. Where it came in most useful was for lighting, as in previous versions of max it could be a hit and miss affair and sometimes the viewport would seemingly get confused and have a mini nervous breakdown and show something completely different to what it would be like at render time. When I was using 2011 to light the scene it took far longer than with 2012, to me that speaks volumes.

You can tell just by using it that Max 2012 has had a lot of work and improvements put into it, REAL improvements that are useful and not just meant to sell you a new copy of 3d max. I'd strongly recommend it over previous max releases and if you can update, please do as chances are you'll find it a great boon to your productivity. What I would like to see next from nitrous is for it to be kept improving in development and get it closer and closer to the render. Information is power and the more you know what a render will look like before you hit that button the better.

EDIT:I was asked what spec machines and how many textures so here goes:

3 different sets of 35 4k texturesfor variation accross the whole cathedral

Machine 1:

dell custom laptop
i7 core cpu
12 gig of ram
quadro 4200m (with only dell 2 year old drivers that are crap and make it unabel to do cuda!)
and a Keyboard that you have to hammer very hard to type with lol.

Machine 2:

i7 core
12 gig of ram
nvidia gtx 260

Cathedral opening shot 99.9% final

Well for the establishing shot this is almost done (barring adding the pulpit and swapping out the other column designs that I forgot to do for the renders last night I noticed today). There's about 10 million poluygons in the viewport for this shot, which is one of about 6-8 I'll be doing (although probably only 1 or two will be used next term for fxphd courses on tracking etc...). The rest are for my reel. The polycount on absolute final version will double with the use or proxys, although to eb fair those wont all be visisble in any one single shot.

So where the wireframe wayne boy I hear you shout? So here it is, the wireframe from hell.... Enjoy

"nah son, thats not a wierframe....THIS is a wireframe" lol

Cathedral model and renders copywrite FXPHD

A dick around for an hour or so......

Hour and a bit dick around in 3dmax

So.... as well as having my dad in hospital, who has now had his triple bypass and so far is doing very well ( big thanks to all those who sent their good wishes) and the FXPHD Durham cathedral interior I've also had time for some dick arounds. Either for use in some cases as set dressing that I'd not be able to cover as part of the course, or in the case of the one from tonight just as some relaxation for an hour or so in 3Dsmax. I have suddenly of late had an urge to do more environment modelling, and not just because of the FXPHD course I'm teaching, but because I find it amazingly relaxing and far less pressuring than creatures or people. Mainly as with a enviro model you either get it right or wrong.

Work in progress of altar screen

Another reason is it gets me out of sculpting everything and forces me to take a break from that for a short time(which always ends up producing better work in the long run). I do find poly modelling environments easy and so low stress, it's not usually something you want to do at 600 miles an hour and so I can stop, have a coffee, take the kids to the park or whatever and come back later. I don't have to 'catch the idea' before it fades in my head.

I also want to point out that this week is your last chance to join the current term at FXPHD, there are a LOT of amazing courses on offer...and mine lol. I know it can be a lot of money, but if you added up all the hours upon hours of tuition and availability to the tutors you get its a steal. (it'd cost a shit load more if it was DVD's for example! ) So far everyone on my course has had nothing but good things to say about it, which is always a plus point. So if you are serious about making this industry your career it's a very good option to consider.

Kit-bashed Pulpit dick around / test design