Hey hey!! We've been doing the Patreon for over a year! Thank you so much for that!! :D I think that allows me a little indulgent meta-post to touch base with you all!
TLDR: 1.) This Sunday (the 18th- and probably subsequent Sundays as well) at Noon PDT I'm doing a live chat for patrons, and it'd ...
Mostly just talking photoscanning here, but hopefully useful for folks who haven't played around with it much! Super useful for making quick textural stuff.
I'm using Reality Capture (much more affordable as of a week ago- a typical scan can be like 20-30 cents), but if you want a full free open source option, Meshroom is also a great option.
One of my favorite parts of using phot...
Woo! Some of this I touched on before (over a year ago?), but never about this specifically. This is one of the more useful things I've learned in the past year: how to select from various image textures "randomly". I used it a bunch on the "Self Generating Car" asset :) I also used it on the random generated ...
2021-03-31 07:40:41 +0000 UTC View Post
Okay so- I'm calling this version 1. I had bigger plans for it, but all of them ended up being complex, and this would have turned into a bigger project than I meant for right now (the sound team has the first episode, but I'm still jumping around updating a bunch of stuff!) And as it's still fairly useful for a lot of applications, I'd rather just release this as-is in the meantime!
To...
Oh man I'm glad I redid the final part of this video. The first version was fine (click here if you want to watch it), but the new version more captured what excites me about this stuff.
Actually- I wish I'd added foreground benches and maybe a little roof or something- being able to wrap the video in other geometry ma...
Glad to finally have this one! I've had a few quicky antennas I made a few years ago that I keep re-using, but it's nice to finally have some better ones! I also have a bunch of mounting hardware and such in t...
2021-03-13 09:10:05 +0000 UTC View Post
Wanted to jump over to the VFX side of things for a second! Motion tracking costume enhancements. And I apologize; I hadn't realized my microphone was more pointed towards my computer fan than my friggin' face, so I had to filter it a bit more than usual- hopefully not too annoying.
If you want to experiment with the footage too,
2021-03-06 04:42:44 +0000 UTC
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The past year has been hard on everyone, and I keep finding myself missing friends, gatherings, and parties, especially the part where I force people to listen to me play Radiohead at 3am.
With the use of technology, perhaps together we can produce a crude facsimile of this beautiful microcosm o...
Continued from part 1
As I mention (probably repeatedly) in the video, I don't get *super* in depth with all the modeling techniques, since I'm working on an in-depth "speed-modeling" oriented video that'll hopefully go over a bunch of stuff better than just having to re-explain the same ...
2021-02-27 12:39:43 +0000 UTC View Post
Alright so I'm doing that thing where I have like 5 different projects going at once, and none of them have been helped by the fact that I effectively had no internet this past week (sorry I've been even worse at messages than usual), but I just wanted to give a little update.
I've been trying to figure out a productive workflow, but if we're being honest a lot of this still fal...
Continued in Pt. 2
First part of a short series (no idea how many parts it'll be- probably just 2??) working through making a flying vehicle, heavily implementing "Wiggle Bones", which are ridiculously fun.
Sort of making this up as I go, so we'll see how it turns out...
I made the opening video this morning using the same techniques as the Snowman video :)
Look I just like sculpting cats, okay?? Future content will contain 100% more ceramic cats. That's a promise (threat?).
Here's Al...
Not the most focused video in the world, maybe, but I tried to talk about some parts of the process that I usually skirt around!
If you DID want a more technically oriented step-by-step video, I recommend the "Making a shot" 3 part series from a while ago! Goes through the entire process.
[Download below]
First are foremost- there's probably a better way to do moss! Some wild displacement/volumetric solution. This is just the best way I've found so far!
I have ten bazillion things I should probably be working on instead, but gosh darn I had to get it out of my system.
I'm releasing this to all the tiers for a few reasons!
1.) We crossed 4,000 ...
Just a little Sunday Night fun! Oh wait it's Monday. Funday?
Adding a bit of life to a still background! The end result isn't particularly wild, but I tried to stick a bunch of different techniques in there.
I've been galivanting all over social media the past few days- it's nice to be back here! I started writing my own little soundtrack bits for the episode, which, ag...
Should be super self-explanatory, but I also included a quick how-to-use video up above (although for more information I recommend watching the video I just uploaded earlier today). I went through and gave them all a tiny bit of bounce in their step, too, which helps the realism.
Maybe some day I'll red...
The animated crowd pack I'm using here'll be uploaded for the tier 7 folks in a sec! (just the photoscanned low-poly crowd with some shape keys. Never really intended to use them this way :P)
So- folks new to the patreon may rightly wonder, "Is Ian always so inordinately pleased with himself?" and the answer is- errr- definitely more often than I should be, yes- but loo...
Well- mostly just magazine covers, which'll hopefully still get the job done. And before you ask- h'oh yeah this is totally because of that cyberpunk game, cause you can run around and see random magazines everywhere, and it's such a cool way to imply a larger world (and because- I dunno. The game is so full of things I'll never be able to do, but magazines? That's doable.)
Hello! This is in that zone between a tutorial and a breakdown. A Tutdown, if you will.
Covers some ground the tier 7 folks have seen, but hopefully not too boring.
Also- this started up as a breakdown for various bird particle systems, but I ended up getting super excited about controlling the BOIDS with force fields, so it gets a bit off the rails towards the end.
Here...
EDIT: Figured out why the birds wouldn't change altitude! Something to do with the "minimum speed" slider (who knows why). Changed that from being maxed out, and they can fly up and down again. You can re-download the updated version, or just, y'know, make that slider not maxed out.
ALSO- in the video, I think because I just jumped straight into building the particle system from scratch...
Just a quickie!
RAILINGS! I hate 'em! I've modeled so many railings! But lately I've tried to embrace the railing. While still getting it finished as quickly as friggin' possible.
BUT YES! Working hard to get a locked edit on the first episode of Dynamo Dream! My goal was the end of the year, and I'm REALLY close. I might have a piece of VO or two that I still need to slip in th...
This is my favorite lazy way to make animations- Auto Key Framing synced with an MP3 in the video editor!
Also- instead of AV Sync in the pulldown, maybe use Frame Dropping? Didn't really matter to me since it was such a simple scene, but if your stuff is complex that might help keep stuff in sync, not sure.
And2020-12-24 05:58:05 +0000 UTC
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So this is two videos in one, 1.) modeling a gizmo, then 2.) creating content for a gizmo's monitor (followed by modeling a new gizmo).
It seems long to me, but a lot of you have said you enjoy that, sooooooo- hopefully that's true! (there's also chapters down on the timeline if you want to scrub around).
(Also look I've never seen Knight Rider okay I'm sorry I thought ...
2020-12-22 01:14:57 +0000 UTC View Post
H'Alright! We've got stirring! We've got frying! It's... kinda a stir fry??
As I say in the video, 95% of making physics-based projects is tweaking the settings, recalculating, then doing it all over again until stuff works out right, but hopefully this covers enough ground on the chance you'd want to try something similar!
So- while I really need to stop adding shots to...
Eh, call em "statues" or "sloppy photoscans", take your pick- I think they're fun though. Imagine combining them with a cool photoscan like this (CC0 wooo*) and...
2020-12-13 00:46:06 +0000 UTC View PostDOWNLOAD LINKS BELOW
SO this isn't the MOST organized file ever (it's made of pieces I made without ever really considering the fact that I might be sharing them one day, so texture names and such are a little nonsense)- but I've tried to optimize it a little! Personally I just import the whole thing and delete stuff I don't need.
Also aesthetically, this stuff blends really nicel...
Not covering all that much new in this one (the idea's exactly what it looks, "clean up a photoscan and give it a marbley texture"), but it's so fun I had to make a video about it!
Also, as I mention in the video, if you don't want to go the photoscan route, you can always just download statues; there are tons of resources out there for downloading pre-existing real-world ones. 2020-12-05 05:04:21 +0000 UTC
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(I have chapter markers if you click through to the YouTube video proper)
SO! I had a bazillion things I meant to be doing this week, but instead I got distracted working on a scene for Ep. 2 of Dynamo Dream. I'm still kind of torn if I want to do the final 10% of work to totally finish it, or just leave it almost done (as I apparently do with everything), and jump back to finis...
I wrote the above scene for Dynamo over five years ago (and filmed it in... 2015? Eeesh Time flies!), mostly as a writing exercise. I'd gotten kind of worried that I was treating CG as a crutch (cause ya knowww), so I wanted a whole scene that was just a guy (the amazing Aaron Moore) talking. I think it turned out alright!
Huge thanks to Aaron for his memorization/acting, and Selena Ann...
OKAY SO YES- most of you probably already know all about shapekeys. But they are so fun and powerful that I wanted to make totally sure! Imagine your childlike joy upon learning of shapekeys for the first time! And O'! I am filled with envy.
