Bon Voyage

Portfolio Content Creation 1 (PCC1) - October 2015

It is with great excitement that I share this. This is the first pass / presentation of my very first demo reel asset - a yacht interior located in Australia. While there is still some work to be done before its final presentation, I am happy with how far it has come. Please enjoy. Comments and critiques are always welcome. Learn more at www.riviera.au.com | Music provided by Shakeem “Sonny” Ramos

Honey

Visual Effects 2 - June 2015 - Project 04 - Houdini FLIP FX - Viscous Fluids

Another sweet and simple project. Although it looks pretty now, it took many hours of rendering (just under 24) and a ton of troubleshooting (believe it or not) to get to this point. Initially, the honey was intended to be drizzled over warm rolls, but the geometry at some point failed to load and bake into the scene. I lost days trying to fix this issue to no avail. Thus honey being drizzled over dark chocolate truffles came to be. Enjoy!

Breakfast Time!

Visual Effects 2 - June 2015 - Project 03 - Houdini FLIP FX

I really had a great time bringing this project together. In total, it took about 20hrs to render and 30mins to bring it all together in post using Final Cut Pro X. I thought it would be fun to do something a little more on the lighthearted side of things, and nothing gets lighter than a bowl of your favorite cereal accompanied by hours of great classic cartoons. That was my inspiration for this project. Enjoy!

Still Hot

Visual Effects 2 - June 2015 - Project 02 - Houdini Pyro FX

Here is a more simple project, as it was my first Houdini PyroFX project. It is a small bonfire with colored LED altering its appearance. It was more daunting than I anticipated. I incorporated the blue and purple into the actual color of the fluid, but instead of illuminating and shading from right to left, it shaded the fire vertically from inside out.

It's Getting Hot In Here

Visual Effects 2 - June 2015 - Project 01 - Maya Fluid Fire

Isn't this the coolest fire you ever did see?! Well okay, I'm sure you've seen other cool fire but just look at that aesthetic! This was my first go at creating fire using Maya fluid simulation, and I thoroughly enjoyed the process. The reference I used was a flamethrower, and you can sort of see the motion of that. However, I am missing that cusping motion and significant volume increase as the flame fans out. On the plus side, however, I've made some super pretty plasmic smokeless fire. Stay tuned for what I do with this particular effect.

Super Smash Juice

Visual Development - April 2015 - Lesson 3

This is probably my favorite asset in the project. I had a lot of fun getting to this point with the color of the drink and learning about caustics. I referenced Snapple Mango Madness for the color, and it took a little time but I got it to an acceptable point. I had to do a lot of touching up with the bump map for the beveled text on the top and bottom of the label: (top) "Smash Bottling Co" and (bottom) "Peach Mango Punch." This drink is inspired by my favorite Super Smash Bros character Peach. Yeeeeah, she's the bomb. Anywho, I had to really crank up the photons for the caustics to show up, and I used the refraction index of cranberry juice (1.320) to get the look of the caustics; I enjoy the way they kind of glow in the shadow. I believe it helps to sell the look and function of the Peach Mango Punch; it is supposed to grant you the power of the Smash Ball, hence the label.

The biggest issue I had was with creating photon and final gather maps. I am still learning how to use them properly. That aside, I had a ton of fun with this particular project. Don't you just want to try some? It's so tasty!

Scraping On By

Visual Development - April 2015 - Lesson 2

This was the first segment of a three-part project. I had a great time making this project come along. Although the box texture and bump files were provided, I utilized the internet to find and manipulate the textures for the box's sticker and some of the rust on the scraper. I decided to go with a Super Smash Bros theme for this project. I also employed the layered texture tool in Maya to create the attributes for the reflectivity, transparency, diffuse, and bump attributes. This project had its challenges due to it being a while since I used the layered texture tool, and I had never used the tool the way it was exploited for this project. Needless to say I got it all done, and I am happy with the result.

Reunited and it Feels so... Good?

Provided Reference

My Render

Visual Development (VSD) - April 2015

This class hit me right in the memory region of my brain. Visual Development is an extension and deeper look into the concepts of Shading and Lighting, a class that I took many moons ago back in 2013. Above you see two images; the one on the top is the reference image, and the bottom is the the image that I rendered after manipulating the scene. If you can't manage to make out any outstanding differences between the images, then compliments and kudos are in order. Matching things like shadow position and light color are tedious and (often) arduous works. I can tell you that the light color in the back room is not quite the same, and the shadows in the front room are slightly offset just below the position in the reference image.

Reference

My Render

The images above are the second segment of Lesson 1. I improved the light color in the middle room, but it still is not spot-on to the reference. The back room's light color is also off just a bit. The shadows are still a bit grainy, but it isn't too bad. This was a fun and challenging first lesson, which re-acquainted me with the skills and knowledge I gained in Shading and Lighting class back in 2013.

Sweet Tooth

"Sweet Tooth" - Visual Effects 1 (VEF1) - February 2015 (1502)

Here is my second and final project of VEF1; it is an exploration of soft bodies coupled with the desired simulation of how they move. I was actually hungry when this project was introduced to us during lecture, and after seeing a couple of examples on jiggly movement I decided that jello cubes were the way to go. I figured I could put some fun colors on the jello cubes and set up a tasty scene. I decided to go with the scene I used in the previous visual effects projects - just at a different camera angle and position to accentuate the back area of the scene.

I had no trouble creating basic cubes and applying fun textures to utilize as soft bodies for this project. I actually created two versions of this scene in Maya - one using the geometry as soft bodies and the other using lattices as the soft bodies. I ended up going with the scene utilizing the lattices after consulting with my instructor.

Despite this being a fairly simple project, I ran into quite a few issues with getting my scene to work properly. The first issue essentially dealt with my cubes exploding on impact after colliding with the hidden plane sitting just above the counter. It turns out I had too many all-springs per jello cube (over 43k). My lattices were too dense so I brought them down to about half the density of the cubes, and that brought my springs count to just over 16k per cube.

I still had an issue with the geometry of the cubes exploding upon impact, but this was because I was animating the conserve on the particles decreasing upon impact. I ended up having to delete the keys on the Conserve; instead I keyed the dynamic functionality off after the simulation settled enough (this stopped all movement of the simulation). In order to get the cubes to settle up into their relative original shape, I keyed the Stiffness node at from 0 during the fall to 15 after impact. It worked out just fine after that.

I enjoyed this project. By the time it came along in the last week of the class I had a decent enough understanding of dynamics and rendering to know not take on anything too task-heavy. I enjoyed setting up a tummy-tempting and visually appealing scene. I struggled with which key light to use for this scene, but I ended up using the spotlight across from the counter (coming from the window above the sink) to achieve a naturalistic afternoon lighting. Perfect for that after-school snack time setting. I feel like the music just brought it all together. I hope you enjoy it.

If You Can't Stand the Heat

Visual Effects 1 (VEF1) - February 2015

Here is my very first visual effects project! I had such a blast making this scene. I am not responsible for the modeling of this scene; it is by an artist on TurboSquid.com under the alias JoseAPMG. While I would have liked to model my own kitchen scene, I unfortunately did not have the time to do so. Besides, I was way more focussed on properly simulating these visual effects.

I used a combination of fluids and particles to achieve this scene. The water in the sink is fluid that I bounded to the sink geometry. I created a collision to keep the fluid water in the sink so it would fill that volume. The