Tree's and Waterfalls

Waterfalls and all elements added...still a work in progress though ;)

Update to the 3d scene from the MOD302 '3D Digital Environments' course I'm giving at FXPHD this term, this is from week 5 (next week) and sort of a teaser. Unfortunately I can't show the animation I've ran a test render on, but I have to say that it looks very nice with those waterfalls added. Although it was sort of a cheat render as using a still for the scene elements so I can test the waterfall integration.

10 min cheats can be fun

Also as I had the elements lying around as a result of the above I knocked out in 10 mins the following crazy trees render....for shits and giggles. There is a rather obvious problem with the above shot if you can spot it and no its not the girls scale...any smaller and you'd not see her and think she was a branch lol

More Mattes

No waterfalls yet....(there will be two)

A couple of mattes, the 1st is a late work in progress for my next couple of FXPHD classes. Its been nightmare to do as I'm seriously pushing Vue way beyond what it is designed for. Although people in the class won't need to, as I'm the only bugger who has to be able to load it all into one scene so you guys know what your aiming for lol. The final scene will be split across 3-4 scene files and composite.

This is just begging for a caption lol

and the other a mess around..... its a full 3D matte thats got my old mate Joep Van der Steen in it comped from a photo from EUE lol. See now its either begging for a caption or something added on the left on that sand bank lol.

Levelling up

For those of you that may be interested there's an article in the new issue of 3D artist magazine I wrote (there's another next month as well). This month covers 'easy texturing in Mudbox' of a tree stump. You can buy it from www.3dartistonline.com or 'all good book stores' as they always say on the adverts.

A test frame from MY version of the cathedral animation

I'm also at the moment sorting out a couple of full 3d mattes / scenes for the Joan of Arc short being made by FXPHD as part of my MOD302 course. One of these is an absolute doozy of a shot, that will mix both practical effects and digital 3d mattes. In fact I have a timing shot with low res geo rendering out as I type this.

Also the lads over at Breitbild VFX in Germany are kindly letting me use their ender farm in between using it themselves to render out a load of stuff. So as well as some stuff you've not seen, there will also be my own personal version of the cathedral shots (with a few of my own added), some photoreal full 3 external environments and a bit of character stuff as well.

I've also been giving the cathedral a few tweaks as it was finished back at the end of September last year and so wanted to give everything a once over before adding it to a reel as even though the animation hasn't been seen yet, it's an old model ironically. So there are changes I've made to my own personal version that are different to the one covered in MOD301.

In case you hadn't guessed this is for a new reel, mainly as my non environment reel is seriously showing its age now after a year. It also gives me an excuse to show clients some more impressive stuff in actual shots. Now there is no way in hell I would be able to render this stuff out without a render farm...and even then some are having to be seriously optimised to not blow up the Breitbild VFX farm lol. So big thanks to the lads.

Also I'm amazed at the reaction to the free videos... I hope you found them useful and I'll up more once things calm down in a week or two.

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. ;)