Ryan Prestridge

Science Room

2010-05-02T22:28:00.004-04:00

This is the final version of the Science Fiction room. I did not like the way the robots eyes looked, so I reshaped the eye and made him a cyclops. The two shaders that I wrote were for the glowing of the buttons and for LCD screens. I originally did the screen for mental ray, so that I could see what I wanted to try to achieve in Renderman. This is why I decided that I needed to figure out a way to make the buttons glow. Unlike clicking a button for a mental ray shader, the glow has to be a completely separate object, specifically a sphere. The LCD screens actually started as a shader for the robot. I was tweeking and tweeking when it started to look more like an LCD screen. The element that really made me think it looked like a LCD screen is the way the screen looks at different angles. I really wish that we would have had more time to work on this project or the Renderman would have been installed sooner, because at first it was hard to work with, but like anything the more I worked with it the easier and more interesting it became. The types of shaders that can be made or attempted render at very fast rates, especially when compared with mental ray. I did run into a problem with the quality tab under the Renderman render settings. I didn't want to reveal for me. I could access every other tab in the render settings except the quality. At first I was have smoothing issues with shadows and the only way to fix it was under the quality tab. I had to open the Maya scene file in a text editor and find the specific quality setting and adjust it that way. I then saved the file as a new iteration and opened it up to see if it worked and it did. I'm pretty happy with the results of the final image.

This is the AO pass. Images like this make me want to make a complete film with nothing but an AO pass. Stunning.

This is how the scene looks in Maya. The speres for the glow shader look weird and at times were hard to place properly, but the desired look made it worth the time and effort.

Bedroom

2010-03-30T12:15:00.011-04:00

This is the final look of the room. The lighting was actually very simple, only a few lights. I used depth map shadows for everything.

This is a final shot of room without the guitar.

This is a final detail of the amp.

This is the ambient occlusion pass. A fellow class mate showed an extremely simple way to make this pass possible. It added very subtle detail but in my opinion necessary. It really added depth to the blinds and made the guitar strings seem to pop!

This is a view of the bedroom from Maya.

I never had a Marshall amp but I always wanted one to go with my guitars. This bedroom scene was my chance to finally have one. I really wanted the amp to look as real as possible so I researched all the proper textures. The amp probably took me the most time to complete, because it seemed that my mania knew no end!

This is the texture and bump map used for the amp screen. I really wanted the Marshall font to have the proper look and feel, so I made the font have a slight bevel that would show up only on the bump map. This is why the font looks raised and just like a real Marshall amp.

This is the texture that I made in Photoshop for the metal knob board of the amp. I wanted it to have the brushed gold look of a real Marshall amp.

This texture was painted in Photoshop after exporting the guitar body as an obj.
I wanted the guitar to look real but the problem was in how the model was made. The body and neck were all one piece, which in real life is not the way guitars are made. Knowing this I decided to make the whole guitar have an all wood finish because fret boards are not painted on guitars.

Image used for texture on bedspread and pillow case. This image was made in Photoshop.

Image used as bump map for walls.

The King's Treasure

2010-03-02T13:42:00.011-05:00

Above is the final image of the King's Treasure. I wanted to make the goblet look as if it was filled with all of the diamonds, but was knocked over, so they all spilled out. The idea of the spill out was to really attract attention to the refraction of the diamonds. I also wanted the little bits of light in the scene to be mostly reflection and refraction with no visible source of light. I am happy overall with the look, but the true caustics and the coins still bother me.

The above picture is what the scene looks like in Maya. There were times when it was hard to see certain items because in the Maya view they were almost invisible. So, for positioning purposes, I would give them an opaque texture and then after they were placed properly in the scene, I would then apply the intended texture.

The above picture is what the caustic settings were put on in order to achieve the look that I have. I still don't have the true caustics from the diamonds but the settings that I have the caustics set on, are an improvement than the scene without them. I found that by pulling the scale down to almost nothing it made for a more realistic look with the specular and the refraction. If it was all the way up in the white, everything looked blown out and almost overexposed. This took some tweeking in order to make it look more real.

The above picture are the settings that I had for the diamonds. I decided to have a few different colors just to add some variation in the scene. I took the basic diamond texture and changed the colors. I also had to very carefully adjust the reflectivity, roughness, highlight size, and most of the refraction options under the raytracing menu. It was a combination of all of the adjustments that gave the final look, not just turning on refractions.

Most people on this project were having problems with the table cloth texture. It may not have been mentioned during the critique, but everyone was talking about it in the lab when they were working on it. Either the geometry was not right on the table, the normals were off, or I don't know what! All I know is I tried a few ways to make the table look good. I first tried to paint it in photoshop, but the level of detail just was not good enough. I then tried a bump map with the Maya cloth texture. Once, again, it wasn't detailed enough and it just looked extremely weird. I also tried to make the table reflective in some way. I put on some of the reflective textures that I already had, but it didn't seem to fit in with all of the other stuff on the table. I finally was able to get the table looking better by adding a bump map with the Maya leather texture. I adjusted the texture a bit to give the proper bump depth, and made the cells a bit smaller. It seems that sometimes, the simpler solutions are the better ones.

The above image is the graph network for one side of the coins. I tried to use real coin images, but they looked horrible. They were just too gray or too black to use a bump map on. So, I made my own image and it looks a lot better, I think. I still am not completely happy with the way the coins turned out, but I can't seem to get them much better than this.

The above image is the reverse side of the coin.

At first, I hated this project and didn't think I would be able to pull it off as well as I did. Each of these projects have really taught me more than I would have learned by myself. I find that while being in the studio while others work on the same project helps as well. One person will be working on a texture and ask another's opinion, or someone will send everyone a link to a good tutorial for making a texture or to help with lighting. The learning process is better this way then just reading a book.

Texturing!

2010-02-11T14:52:00.006-05:00

This is the finished work for the first texturing project. I found it to be very informative to do this project. I was able to learn a great deal by asking the others around me, watching tutorials, and looking for help on the internet. Most of the class tutorials didn't help much but the actual project itself was why I learned as much as I did.

This is the final camera view in Maya before rendering.

One of the most helpful ways to texture for me, was the ability to use Photoshop. I took the banana and did an automapping of it, then exported it into Photoshop as an obj. I then found an image online and was able to project and paint the image onto the model. It was then exported back into maya as an obj. There are endless ways to do it, but this worked fine for this project. If given more time, I would have most likely tried a bit more of a lengthy aproach, only to have specific and direct control of the details.

This is work flow for the banana. At first the way of thinking in nodes for maya was confusing, but once I figured it out, it was a piece of cake.

Pear

Apple

The orange was done procedurally. Again once, I was able to figure out the nodes for Maya it was much easier to do this. After the connections were made it was just tweeking and that takes a long time!

Figuring out how to do the subsurface scattering was as easy as looking up a tutorial online. I did this so I could keep going back and referring to it, step, by step. The tweeking was the hardest part. It took a few hours to get it to look even half way decent. Moving the lights really helped to achieve the proper look.

These are the adjustments that took hours!

Stabilization, Tracking, and Matchmotion

2009-11-29T18:27:00.013-05:00

Stabilization:

The track that was given was all over the place as far as camera movement goes. In order to fix the final track, I had to use both a Stabilize node and a Smoothcam node.

For the Stabilization node I used two separate points to track the movement of the camera. I also made sure that my SubPixelResolution was set to 1/256 as a way of better tracking the pixels. This helped to get rid of extreme jitter in the track but was still not what I envisioned.
In order to achieve a better overall stabilization, I used the Smoothcam node. I found a point to track and analyzed it in two different ways. I found the normal way to be good, but I wanted to see what the high analyze would do, so I tried that as well. The high analyze took almost 20 minutes to complete, but I felt it was a better looking clip once this was done.

http://vimeo.com/7799687

Tracking:

For Tracking I also used the clip that was given. I thought it would be funny to take a video of myself in a tank top and shorts for this cold snowy mountain environment.

After I shot this video of me outside (for better lighting), I was then able to pull the key.

After pulling the basic key, I needed to resize and roto out the parts of the background that didn't work.

I then used Matchmove node in order to place myself into the image. I found it hard because the clip that was given was of pretty bad quality. I had to deinterlace the clip in order to try make it the quality not look as bad and to get a better track. I also had a hard time trying to make my clip, which was shot in HD look as bad as the background clip.

Overall the quality of the clip limited the final output, but I was able to track the clip well and get a pretty decent looked final piece.

http://vimeo.com/7801765

Matchmoving:

For my Matchmoving, I thought it would be funny to have some guns in the lab. I don't really know why I think that this kind of thing is funny, but I do.

I first shot the footage I needed of the lab.

I found some guns on Turbo squid and brought them into Maya so that I could try to get the perspective and lighting right, and to also pull a key for them.

I then brought them into Shake and used the ColorReplace, and Switchmat nodes in order to get the key that I wanted.

I then used the Matchmoving node to track the markers that I put on the wall in the original clip. I also had to use a good number of nodes to try to get the color and shadow to look correct.

The final clip is pretty good and I think is pretty funny as well.

http://vimeo.com/7799546

2009-10-27T13:00:00.018-04:00

Live on Live: Vegas

Original

Composited

http://vimeo.com/7296721

I took this screen shot into Photoshop and used it as my base to help get rid of the lights and the Nevada text.

This is the layer in Photoshop that was put onto of the above picture.

This is the image after the layer was applied. This image also has the flickering "C" that was animated in Photoshop.

The layers below are the frames used to animate the "C"

The image with the animation was exported out of Photoshop as a .mov, and then put into Shake. This is the final Shake tree that was used.

There was no need for an Alpha with this composite.

CG on Live

Original

Composited

http://vimeo.com/7296770

This is the playblast that was made from animating a leaf in Maya.

This is the Alpha.

This is the final Shake tree

Live on CG

Composited

http://vimeo.com/7298225

This the video that was shot in front of the green screen.

This is an image of a CG jungle background that I found on the internet.

This is the Maya model of the watchtower. This was found on the internet for free.

This is the Maya model of the sniper rifle. This was found on the internet for free.

This is an image of all of the models and the jungle background together in Maya.

This is the rendered version of the Maya file.

This is the Alpha.

This is the final Shake tree.

Project 2

2009-09-26T19:49:00.000-04:00

This is the all live action foreground/background piece that was originally going to be my final. This was made using Shake. I really wanted this picture to blow my last Terminator image out of the water, so I decided after trying it on Shake I would do the final piece in Photoshop, because I would need a lot more time to do it properly in Shake.

This is the background that I used. The image was taken in the basement of Fike.

Here is one of the two images that I used for myself in the image. I needed two images so that I could actually make the legs look like the were not standing on anything. I had to rotoscope myself out of the background.

Here is the second image I used to make the complete, me.

After I did the roto in Photoshop, I made the background blue. I had to do this because my shoes are the same shade of green as the green screen color.

Here is the Alpha channel of that image.

This is the image the I used for the Terminator. I shot him against the green screen. It took me a while to get the right angle and the right amount of light to match the background image that I took, but I was finally able to get it right, after two shootings.

This is the Alpha channel for the Terminator.

I had to roto the foreground part of the background image so that it would look like the Terminator was actually standing at the bottom of the steps. After that I made the background blue so I could pull the key.

This is the Alpha.

This is the final image done in Photoshop. I chose to use Photoshop, because it would be easier to blur certain parts of the image, burn and dodge others while still keeping the images all on separate layers.

Below are a series of images that show the progression of work and the different layering methods used in Photoshop. One with the background and one without.

This is the layers menu.

Below is a comparison of the Shake image on the left, with the Photoshop image on the right.

This is the final image for the second piece. Live background, CG object/foreground.

This is the background that was used. It is a picture of my living room while my wife and I are still trying to unpack from moving in.

This is the image that I wanted to use for my CG foreground. It is a vase made for 807. I brought in the background image into Maya and used it to help me get the lighting and placement correct.

Since I was having problems with Maya, I just brought the above image into Photoshop and used the magic wand to select and delete the gradiant background.

This is the image with a green background to help with pulling the key.

This is the Shake tree.

This is the final image for the CG background, live foreground. I found this one to be really hard to pull off without looking horrible or stupid. I tried to make it looks as if I was in some sort of tunnel looking for a way out.

This is the image the I used for the live forground.

This is the image after the key was pulled.

Here is the Alpha of that image.

I decided to give myself a little bit of a red-ish hue. I thought it would add to help the image look more movie like.

This is the tunnel that I made in Maya to use as my CG background.

This is the inside of the tunnel with the perspective that I wanted for my image. I added two lights to the inside of the tunnel. One was more of an ambient light just to help show the location of where I was. The other light was a spot light and it was used to help simulate the light was that coming from the flashlight was I was holding.

This is the tunnel after I applied just a dirty stone texture map.

Here is what the tunnel looked like when it was rendered without me in the image.

This is the Shake tree.

I found that doing each one of these presents it's own problems. Each have to be thought out in their own way. I also realized that by limiting myself to just using Shake, I would not make images that were not what I considered to be good. I had to use Photoshop for the first one to make it look real. For the second image I just had to use it to help me pull a better key. The third image was done completely in Shake and that may be why it's not as good as the other two. I think the third image holds up a bit better than some of the examples that were shown in class.

add shadow

2009-09-22T15:02:00.001-04:00

The Add Shadow node can be found under the other menu tab.

Once the Add Shadow node has been clicked, the control parameters will appear on the right bottom side of the screen. On the image itself a white outline will appear, as well as a crosshair in the center of the image. The crosshair is the center of what will be the "shadow" and will let you move the "shadow"

The shadow has been moved to the right and the offestX and offsetY will reflect this movement.

The fuzziness parameter will make the edges more fuzzy or more crisp depending on which way the slider is moved.

The opacity parameter will make the "shadow" more opaque or more translucent depending on which way the slider is moved.

The color parameter will control the color of the "shadow"

After clicking the color box in the color parameter, a menu will appear that will enable the shadow to be any color chosen.

After adjusting your parameters to what you like, you will have a shadow!

Here is the books description of AddShadow:
The AddShadow node takes the alpha channel of an image, and then colors, blurs, fades, and moves the alpha channel. Next, the alpha is composited under the input, creating a basic shadow effect. It differs from DropShadow in that it already composites the shadow under the element; DropShadow creates an entirely new shadow element that can be manipulated separately.
Parameters
This node displays the following controls in the Parameters tab:
xOffset
Controls the shadow’s horizontal offset from its originating layer.
yOffset
Controls the shadow’s vertical offset from its originating layer.
fuzziness
Blurs the shadow. The slider’s range is from 0 to 100, but this parameter can be set to any positive value.
Shadow Color
A color control that lets you define the color of the drop shadow.
opacity
Defines how transparent the drop shadow is. The slider’s range is from 0 to 1.

Compositing Project 1

2009-09-02T19:56:00.000-04:00

Los Angeles, CA. "Apparently, my future self sent a Terminator back in time to protect my company!" This is the claim of Wally Amos, the founder of Famous Amos cookies. Weekly World News has found out why Famous Amos is still around and why his cookies are so good.

"My future self," says Amos "went through some rough time with my cookie company. Determined to make it no matter what, he sent a Terminator back in time with a recipe from the future in order to secure the company. Just ask the Terminator yourself!"

After having this discussion with Famous Amos, Weekly World News decided to sit down and interview the Terminator himself to figure out all of the details behind this amazing story.

Weekly World News: Please sit down and tell us of your amazing journey from the future to our time and please explain why you came back for Famous Amos.

Terminator: I will not sit down. My mission is to make cookies.

WWN: Oh, okay, well then please continue to make cookies and explain to us why you're here.

T: I am here to ensure the survival of the Famous Amos cookie company and to make the most delicious cookies the world has ever known.

WWN: Why have you come back in time to help the company? Was there some sort of fall out in the future?

T: Thirteen years from now there is an over saturation in the cookie industry. There are hundreds of companies all trying to out sell each other. Famous Amos was one of these companies. Eventually, mankind grows a distaste for all cookies except for one company, Charlie's Cookies. Charlie's Cookies caused all of the other cookie companies to fail. Famous Amos realized in order for him to stay famous and have his company come out on top, he would have to send me back in time with the ultimate cookie recipe.

WWN: Where did this amazing cookie recipe come from?

T: Once Famous Amos realized that a recipe needed to be sent back in time, he reprogrammed me to go to Charlie's Cookies and steal the recipe. I was then instructed to come back to this time and cook Charlie's Cookies for Famous Amos and have him claim them as his own. This would ensure that Famous Amos would win in the future cookie war.

WWN: Why are you cooking the cookies? Why did you not just give the Charlie's Cookies recipe to Famous Amos?

T: It is one of my mission parameters.

WWN: I don't understand.

Famous Amos: I think I can help explain this.

WWN: Please, go ahead.

FA: The reason the Terminator will not give the recipe to me is because I might be tempted to sell it off. If the Terminator is the only one in this time who knows the recipe, then it's safe. The Terminator can't be bargained with, it can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity or remorse and it absolutely will not stop, ever until Famous Amos is the only cookie company left in the world.

WWN: Wow, it sounds like you've a pretty full proof plan on how to make stay a float in the cookie world?

FA: Well, I can't take all the credit, it's really my future self! By the way have a cookie!

WWN: Don't mind if I do.

The cookie that Famous Amos gave to Weekly World News was in fact the best cookie that we've ever tried. It was rich and moist with just the right amount of chocolate chips. The only draw back is that now that we've had one we want another. Each day we want more and more of those delicious, amazing, addicting cookies...mmmm.

This is the view of everything in shake. The main image for the newspaper was done completely in shake. It would have been easier, by far, to do this type of compositing in Photoshop, but for the sake of learning, I stuck to staying in shake.

This is a detailed view of my tree in shake. Finding my way from branch to branch was a bit difficult at first, especially when I didn't have a middle mouse button, but I was able to get used to manipulating an image this way. I tried all kinds of different nodes to see what each does.

Here is a view of just the image made in Shake.

I decided to take a picture of my 12" Terminator figure using the green screen partially because I couldn't wait to use the screen and also because I knew it would be easier when making the matte. The Terminator that I used is articulated at every joint in almost the same way that a human moves. Without this, I would not have been able to make this image.

This is the full sized cookie sheet that I brought it and shot against a blue screen.

I decided to make real cookies for the shot. They really didn't come out looking the way that I wanted to in the final image. It is mainly because I still don't know everything about Shake. It would not have been a problem in Photoshop.

I found this image of a kitchen with an oven on the internet. The quality and perspective are the reasons why I choose this image.

After doing the main image in Shake, I decided to do the paper design in Photoshop. The limitation of Shake had a lot to do in the decision to use Photoshop this way.

This is a picture of the real Famous Amos that I was going to use as a lay over image in the final paper. I decided instead to use this image in the background of the kitchen, to help show that the Terminator was cooking in the right place.

Overall, the project was fun. I liked my idea and it came to me as soon as I read what we were going to be doing. I know that once I get used to Shake making an image like this will be quicker and easier. Knowing Photoshop as well as I do, helped with making this image, but if I was given an option, I would use Photoshop to make this image.