Back to work

I'm back from my Lectures at End User Event 2013 (which went very well) and back in my office trying to catch up on the week I have lost.  It was nice to catch up with freinds both old and new and catch some lectures on subjects I don't normally touch. The tech behind my facial mocap and 3d scanning seemed to cause a lot of interest in some quarters (as did a certain part of my second lecture lol)


On a night time I'm currently messing around with a 'Nitrous Toolset' maxscript to relax on as nightime that might see the light of day at some point.

The maxscripts referenced in my second lecture I'll upload (Paul Neale may well upload the one he made for me to his site) once I get turned around and settled in again.

'Monsters!' Episode 1

First up the important stuff that if I just stick at the end, 70% of you will not get to:

 'Monsters!' is going to be an occasional episodic series of 1-2 min shorts in a pseudo documentary format (think of sort of national geographic meets monsters lol).   The first episode is a 'technical test' to iron out the bugs and problems.  It was produced from scratch in 3 days, took another  3 day to render.  I am aware of an problems you that may spot I can assure you,many are either due to having to cut corners so I could actually render it on a single desktop machine, or simply due to the 3 days I had to make it.  At some point I will redo this episode to bring it up to the quality of the others but for now it stands as it does.  Script mattered and acting mattered less for this test than the technical stuff (although I apologies for the 'non rigged' shoulder are.... but hey I had 3 days, deal with it lol).

The concept behind this series is  simply 'what if monsters were real, what would they think of us?'  Each episode will cover both a differing topic and a different 'Monster' (although as this video shows, to them WE are the monsters!)   This subject was picked for the technical test  / 1st episode as it wrote itself and I had the script knocking about for months. I was Sculpted and textured in Mudbox, with facial system created in in 3Ds Max using data from 'Mask', my in house facial MOCAP app / system.  It was rendered  using Mental Ray.

For those interested, the 'Monster' in this video, Xaphan is actually based on a demon documented in both the catholic religion and demonology.  Xaphan was both 'Duke of Hell' and ruled the 28 Legions.  But prior to this,he was an arc angel and was documented as being the 'angel who set hell on fire'.  (Who said angels have to have wings and fucking halo's????? )  So yep I did do some 'demonology research', and didn't just pluck the character out of my arse, you'll be pleased to know.

Before you write for any character I believe you must 'know them'....hence the research.  But again this was primarily a technical test of the pipeline for my in house facial motion capture system / app and re-targeting existing data onto a model with non human anatomy.  Eventually the plan is to compile all the episodes into one far longer, more optimised scripted short

Hopefully you enjoy it and the 'message' it contains ...sometimes its easier to listen to pretend creature than to other humans.  (Plus no one can accuse HIM of being a pontificateing old bastard lol....)

Everything you see and hear was done by me, right down to sound design, although I must thank Lukáš Duběda for help rendering it out, and Ruairí Robinson for the script advice.   No man is an island.

[Side Note]
Far from being a picture of calm over the 3 days making this and the 3 days to render it, I have to admit that sanity was in short supply and that procrastination ruled.  I was convinced I would not meet the deadline (imposed simply as I wanted it ready before I went to the End User Event in Utrecht Holland to lecture lol).  No one is more surprised than me that it is done I can assure you.

'Monsters' (side project)

 

'Monsters' is a muliti part animation i'm trying to get the first part ready for end user event next week.  its a tall order and one i may or may not manage.  the basic premise is each creatures view of us humans....i'll give you a hint......to them we are the monsters.

expect dark overtones...this isn't something that will cause many smiles....sometimes the best way to show how inhuman us humans can be is if it is not a human telling us...  I've had to cut the design back to something less complex and this ones a old fashioned poly model..... its going to take 60 hours to render the rest of the frames..... touch and go....

Something on the side

I'm gambling that I may have a little time left over with the stuff I'm prepping for the end user event (www.enduserevent.com )  so I'm currnetly in the middle of this one...sort of something on the side....work in progress so usual disclaimers stand.

Me - Digital Double ...almost done

Almost done..... just afew minor tweka to do next week and I'm calling this done.   Yes I am overweight lol.

My Album 'Fat Funky Bastard' - Full Free and Legal

My nights at the Twisted Pepper in Dublin may be showing on this lol

My second album that I have been recording over the last twelve month, is more 'Electronic' and more club friendly.  Fat Funky Bastard was recorded mostly while I was living in Dublin while working at screen scene on the film Last Days on Mars. All but the last couple of tracks were recorded there at 'Apartment 12'.  Some people working there with me at the time may be able to deduce what was going on at work by the titles if they are clever.

Some have rather controversial meanings if you can work out the knotted spaghetti that is my mind such as The Jonestown Massacre that features vocal samples with the murdering bastard himself 'the reverend Jim Jones' to prove exactly how easy it is to twist words.  Others have deeper meaning that may allude anyone but me.... but if the tunes fine then it doesn't mater. ;)   If your interested, I was imagining a sort of 'tarantino-eque' vibe or this one by the way. While 'Kill he Batman' is an attempt to put into music what is going through my head while I sculpt (although not actually killing batman or any other well known superhero lol)

In case your wondering.... the 'Fat Funky Bastard' referred to in the title and the title track is me.   The photo that I used for the cover (as I couldn't be arsed to make a special one...and the 'alternative idea' as a for it to feature a picture of my arse), was taken one  took  a greasy spoon near Stephens green in Dublin to check my camera one Sunday.

There are all sorts of styles and bastard hybrids of electronic music on here.

Again all songs are composed by me, recorded by me, performed by me and I did all mixing adn engineering (as usual). Think of it as a distilled ego trip by a world class control freak lol.

I make my music free as its not done to make money from and I do it to relax and unwind. But all rights are reserved and copyright Wayne Robson 2013, if you want to use it for any reason then drop me an email and I'll probably be fine with it. (Unless its for use as the soundtack to a martian donkey porn film. lol)

My Classical Music Album 'Adoramus Vertexium' Full Free and Legal

'1/2 'Proper classical', 1/2 metal and 1/2 crazy shit

I thought it easier to link both of the two album I have wrote and recorded over the last twelve months in two posts with a single player direct from my soundcloud.  I think of this album as having  halves (lol), as its half 'proper' classical compositions I have wrote peformed and recorded half rock and metal stuff and half crazy stuff.
Again all songs are composed by me, recorded by me, performed by me (apart from the classical vocal bits) even the damn album are work is by me.  Think of it as a distilled ego trip lol.  Although hopefully it show there is a little bit more to me than just being 'Mudbox guy'.

I make my music free as its not done to make money from and I do it to relax and unwind. But all rights are reserved and copyright Wayne Robson 2013, if you want to use it for any reason then drop me an email and I'll probably be fine with it.  (Unless its for use as the soundtack to a martian donkey porn film lol)

Something Different: 2 new albums of my music

Over the last year I've be writing, recording and producing 2 albums wroth of music. As its in 2 different musical fields I've split them into to albums. The first album is called 'Fat Funky Bastard', the second album is called 'Adoramus Vertexium' and is a 'mostly classical music' album.  The links and track listing are below:

[EDITED] I've removed the links as I will be upping the playlists for both albums soon so they are far easier to listen to without copying and pasting links.[/EDIT]

As I do these 'for me' to relax...  I put them out as I always have with my music for me..... Enjoy

Markerless mocap: Meekon Channels Samuel L Jackson

Another experiment... syncing to an existing sound track...in this case Samuel L Jackson in a short bit from pulp fiction.

Wayne's Markless Facial Motional Capture Application

Back when I first started there were a number of things I wanted to do that I never got around to (usually as to do them would either have been hideously expensive, was out of my skill range or simply wasn't possible on a small setup).  But now I have both time and space (and on occasion...resources), I thought I'd start doing some of the things I always wanted to do.  Hence my recent invention of a hybrid 3d scanning rig capable of both very high detail and its portable without compromising on quality (oh and its a shit lad faster as well...but thats for another day).  

But you may be asking 'why' if I can (and do) sculpt likenesses like the one of myself in the blog post below, would I want or need a 3d scanning rig. The answer is simple and rather obvious when you think about it.  To create a digital double from scratch it takes time.  Time is money and often clients do not have that time and money for me to spend what to them is an age nailing a perfect likeness.  So at times like that its actually less expensive for them to have a 3d scan done.  But at other times (like for example the Jesse Owens digi double I did for the london olympics opening ceremony last year), scanning is not possible so you sure as hell better have the skills to do it the old fashioned way by hand.

Onto the facial mocap....(which lets face it, is why your probably reading this)

I decided as I was covering the workflow for sculpting and modeling for use in a facial mocap rig, that it'd be fun to do a quick 'advert' for the end user event.   It also gave me a chance to start ironing the bugs out of the app I wrote to do the facial mocap...as 2200 frames has a habit of exposing any unusual bugs lol.  My system is a rather heath robinson affair at the moment,(look it up if you don't know to what I am referring) but works extremely well.  Amazingly so when you bare in mind the programming only took 4 days ...and that was including putting together the rig itself as well.  Once I am 100% happy with the rig and app then I will arrange it into something nicer on the eyes lol.

The rig.... what is in it?

yes that is 3d max, no it is not what I am using for the facial mocap.... I could show you...but I'd have to kill you

While I have no intention of EVER selling my facial mocap app (its for in house use only), I have no quarms about outlining the actual gear I use.

Here's the 'recipe' list

• 2 Kinect's (360 versions...early models work best...no idea why, I havent worked that out yet)
• 1 Sony Nex5N (sometimes swapped with my canon 5D Mk2, although oddly enough the nex gives better results)
• 1 Zoom H4n high fidelity Audio recorder (no point doing any facial mocap if the sound is shit now is there??? Plus I already had it lying around).  This is also an excellent audio to digital interface as well
• My brain
• 1 computer

Now while the example above is uncleaned (apart from the eye blink near the end that needed cleaning)   uses 2 kinects, I have got exactly the same quality with a single one....  but two give more 'options' later in the game.   If you are wondering how I stop the canceling between them that is inherent when you have more than one kinect... thank Microsoft R and D dept and a tiny bit of info hidden away on the net.  All you need is vibrations that on each kinect, it then magically auto syncs to the others. (I'm achieving this by a bit of magic known as an old knackered pair of very loud headphones placed carefully with 'Ace of Spaces' by Motorhead playing ...which works magically best for some reason).

The capture is in real time and while I'm not telling you how it works, it can output to either a blend shapes workflow or to a point cloud to run a Facerobot or similar rig.  It enables me to transfer the animation between rigs in about two clicks (thats to a script paul neale run up for me as a favor).  It can also theoretically be used on any face, human , animal, or 'other' with ease.  S yes you could map your facial movements onto a donkey if you so wished or pretend to be a fucking monkey if thats your bag.

Below you can see the raw mocap data.... there is about 75-90milliseconds delay (perfectly reasonable) only and it does the job.  Again....this is early days and a '4 hours coding' version that if I were a software house wouldn't even count as a bloody alpha version, let alone a beta lol.  But I know that with some refining its perfectly possible to increase motion fidelity about another 70% at least.

The only thing that mildy pisses me off is that as I had a ver tight self imposed deadline on this the model suffered as a result as did the render set up (render time could be no more than 1 min a frame.... so its a bit shit as a result.)

By anyway.... enjoy and remember I'm covering both digital doubles (lecture number 1 at EUE), that will cover hand sculpting digital doubles and handling crap scan data you will often get handed.  Lecture 2 covers sculpting and modeling for facial motion capture and covers my own workflow to enable you to get a flu set of blend shapes done in about 20-40mins..oh and the facial motion capture setup and some explanation how you can set a similar rig up.

'Me' :::: Digital Double Work in Progress

The Digital Me

Well I'm calling the head part of this done, there are a few things I could change but chances are I will whne I do the rest of the image anyway.   This is the 3rd attempt ata  digital double of myself that I am happy with over the past year.   The first I was way too flattering with myself and by the time I 'fixed' all the things I dont like about myself, I came to the conclusion it was no longer me.  Which is an intersting lesson to us all that it is the inperfections that make us who we are.

The 2nd was using old refernce images (as I was working in dublin at the tikme and didnt have time to take any more) and as a result that version looked ten years younger and a whole shit lot slimmer lol.  So as a result that one went the way of the Dodo as well.

This version is sculpted in mudbox from the old default mesh andf taken to 8.2 million polys.  It uses 4k maps or diffuse, bump and spec (plus a few tweaked variations of these) in a stacked layered vray skin shader inside of 3Ds Max.   Lighting is with full GI and only some very basic colour corection and depth of field added in post in photoshop (seen below in the centre is the render without any post work.)

Only 2 extra passes were renderd out a reflection and a wirecolour pass (usually I've use a multimat material and a gbuffer ID but for some reason it didnt want to work today, so I fell back onto plan B).

Mudbox Sculpting Process

Above I've stuck quick image of the different stages of the sculpt in Mudbox for those intersted. At they moment it doesnt have animatable tlopollogy, although I doubt I'll need it as animating my own head seems a bit redundant and a bit of an ego trip too far lol.

I do have an image in mind for this, and hopefully I will find the time to get that final as well.

I should also take this oppotunity to remind you all that creating digital doubles is the subject of my 1st lecture at the EndUserEvent on the 26th June this year in Utrecht Holland.  You can find more at www.EndUserEvent.com

Me :: Work in Progress

 

Work in progress.... early days

The Big 1 Million and the Bigger 4.9 Million

http://www.youtube.com/user/noggity

I very rarely pimp my youtube channel on my site or blog, in fact apart from the occasional video or time lapse I let people come across it themselves.  But as its my birthday on thursday (23rd May) it sort of hit me as I am at the time of typing only 73 views away from 1 million official views on my youtube channel, its sort of as good an excuse as any.

Now its probably unofficially way more than one million as about a year back I deleted about 300 videos that ironically were the ones with the most views as I thought they were not indicative of the current quality of my work.  And doubly ironically as there are still plenty I detest that are ancient that I never got around to....

So head on over and there is all sorts of sculpting stuff, time lapses the infamous 'Waynecasts' (best viewed with the reminder they are meant with tongue firmly in cheek).

For those of a curious nature theres been 495,000 views also on Vimeo on one account (I'm buggered if I can find the details to my alternate account at the moment....  And from the beginning on that account there has been 4.9 million views since back in March 2008.  on to of this there are bloody videos on all sorts of other places on the net that aren't counted.  So While its not exactly 'Gangnam Style' its not bad for some videos on Mudbox and of me rattling on like a senile old sod.

So I suppose nearly 6 million (that I can check on at the moment) is not bad really.

...and if your wondering I am 42 on thursday which according to douglas adams book 'The Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy' is of course the meaning of life. ;)

End User Event Teaser

Digital Double of my Dad

A small teaser for one of my two lectures at the End User Event this year.    The full description can be read here: End User Event .   As a small part of one of my lectures I'll be covering using scan data (which usually I fgind is pretty crap).  Being sick to death of having to clean up dodgy scan data over the years here at my office at Academy FX I have been settings up a unique 3d scanning technique.  There is nothing like it anywhere as its a hybrid system of my own devising.  Click on the image above to see the full res image from one of my test runs.   One thing that makes this system so special is not only does it give good results... its very fast, provides a full map set and its portable.

I suppose I should mention that an animation freindly retopped model pops out the other end as well as the maps sets etc:)

This is a tiny part os what I will be covering at the end user event on digital doubles, with more on my unique facial mocap system (and how anyone can set up a very similar one...minus the 'secret' stuff of mine of course) and how to achive a likeness when having to sculpt a digital double by hand.

Now if I could just get my bloody website for Academy FX up and behaving itself I'd be far happier. (I did say I'd get more done once in the office... tip of the iceberg ;) )

Work in Progress

Work In Progress

Something I'm on noodling with at the moment.  Its a work in progress and as such unfinished..... I have pixelated out the hands as they aren't touched yet and if I dont you just know some bugger will say 'those hands look wrong' lol.  So best way is to pixelate them out ;)   Its unposed at the moment...and yes done in Mudbox and 3d max.