The Influence of SigGRAPH (2012) -- Part 2

One of the major highlights of my journey at the Los Angeles convention to attend sigGRAPH this year was the Zbrush User Group. It was an accidental discovery, thankfully, but one in which I was grateful to be present as my learning curve for Pixologic's new release, dubbed R4R, was considerably preschool to the feeling I had after leaving the meeting which was comparable entering highschool. I am still bashful to the full potentials of each sense-slapping update, so these meetings and any outside knowledge of Zbrush is welcomed by me with open arms.

Even for experts, there's always some piece of advice, some tactic, that can be learned and applied to speed up a workflow or cut some corners.

And, no doubt, I was surrounded by experts.
So what I learned along with the fact that there is such great talent out there, I also have the privledge to learn from that great talent, too.

Presenting the opening demo was Mr. Eric Keller, the author of the book I've been progressing through -- "Introducing Zbrush". Suffice to say that he has now completed his Third Edition of this book, the bare necessities of what it takes to operate Zbrush on a fundamental level are definitely within his first edition. That book has helped me tremendously with getting comfortable navigating a foreign interface such as zbrush, and meeting Eric in person was a nice entrance into the start prior to opening of sigGRAPH's exhibition hall.

The meeting had also given me the chance to become familiar with Scott Spencer and the opportunity to watch him at work. Scott was mentioned early in Eric's book.  Eric sourced the reader to Scott's book if an artist was considering working with zbrush in animation versus creating sculptures for still renderings. The book sited was a called 'Zbrush Character Creation: Advanced Digital Sculpting' (which I believe is on its second edition currently). As Scott walked through examples of his work, it was clear Scott could flaunt his saviness in anatomy and he has a books out to prove it.

He took us for a refreshing breeze through of the latest updates that r4r offers, which currently labels zbrush as a benchmark alongside other 3D software. After watching the link demoing the updates via Pixolgic's direct website a week beforehand, I was then able to take a closer look that these modifications and the variances of options available working with them.

This may be old news to the most avid and up-to-date users, but the new release as of July 2012, some of the largest rave has been going to the topology brush. It allows the user to step back from sculpting and focus in on the underlying components to help make a character more functional for animation, or retopolgy. In a simple way of understanding what the brush does, one can fix a model beneath the 'surface' or structure in sections called "quadrants". A model can also be built from scratch this way structuring the quadrants before sculpting by interactively drawing on the surface. Quads can be made, connected, redrawn, and removed by adjusting and dragging the curves and points between one quad and another. The plane can be extruded to create shells, which enhances the ability for drafting a hard surface model, which was sometimes a difficult feat in previous versions of zbrush. In the summary of this wordy nutshell, the topology brush makes this all seems too easy. If you haven't yet, take a look at the Pixologic demo on the Topology Brush Demo. Only eyes can interpret what my words might fail to explain.

Other handy features are the ability to scoll backward and forwards through sculpting history, the insert multi mesh brush, a multitude of abilties with working with curves, and an extensive list of added features to more organized stack of collapsable menus.... There's so much, really, both covered and unconvered in the span of 3+ hours of the meeting. To view all of the features: Link here.

My excitement mostly came from in the usage of the insert mesh brush in tandem with the curve and snap modifiers demoed by Scott, and the idea of using MatCap modifiers to mimic viewing shaders, but with a real-time updating-- something which is not predominant in some 3D packages yet.

The remainder of the demo was commanded by Paul Gaboury, who has quite an ease up there as well as well a great sense of humor. It really makes his presentations easy to sponge. He breezed through some shadow-box modeling techniques with the dynamesh/subtools combos and blocked out areas of rgb's in order to get a sense of where he would be cutting up his model for extruding seperate plates of armor to dress up his character with the topology brush. His demo was quick, humorous, and to the point, consistent to the way he had been at the last meeting I attended, commading the mic at these meetings and keeping the energy of the audience flowing.

It was a long day for me-- Up all night packing and preparing my work, and a sleepless seat in the middle on a six hour flight from New York. By the end of the night, my head was throbbing with an overload of knowledge but unwelcome painful exhaustion. With all I had left in me, I teethered at the back of the hanger watching Paul cover part of the final Q+A before heading to get some aspirin and stop in at Denny's for a quick late meal. All in all, the Zbrush meeting was well worth renting a car to me. I hadn't realized until that day it wasn't part of the convention itself!

The booth at the exhibit itself covered the same type of material, except different artists were debuting and raffled prizes were being given away. Danny Williams had the run of the show at one point or another and the maquettes being raffled were pretty damn amazing. I didn't hang around too long at the booth, but passed by and hovered occasionally, of course, in case I had missed anything.

I like to feed my brain with everything I can while at sigGRAPH.
I can get lost in just about anything on exhibit there.  It's happened every years so far...
But, Zbrush was like desert for me this year--  A definite mandatory vactaioning treat.

And speaking of vacations.................

The Influence of SigGRAPH (2012) -- Part 1

A little over a week since I came back home from sigGRAPH 2012 and I recap.  I admit I slacked a bit this year.  One would think after the few years of attendance that I'd have surpassed being a rookie, but I haven't.

I couldn't escape a day at the pool. 

I did get the chance to watch the making of Disney's "Paperman" is the production session.  As always the storyline remained flawless and emotionally moving.  I can never seem to read if it's the storyline itself-- or the way the the story is told visually.  It truly feels like both.  This story centers around a restless young man struggling against the monotony of his  day to day life and his pursuit for more after he is captured by the interests of woman in passing on his way to work. 

It is short scheduled to sequence before "Wreck-It Ralph"which is on release in theatres in November.

With its unmistakable Disney timing as far as its animation, I watched reminiscent of the mop sequence in Fantasia as the paper airplanes embodied minds of their own as they paraded behind the lead character.  The spirit and pacing of Disney animation was very clear throughout, as well as camera cuts significant of artists who have carefully studied cinematography deep into the history of the trademark.  The look was a true reenactment of Walt's mastered original design, cell animation.  It was obvious that a large concentration was placed on lighting. The only thing-- as a Walt was a man who lead the way to utilizing Technicolor in film-- I sat there wondering what was the benefit of choosing to go black and white.  But contrary to that, it is obvious how Disney is still honoring his name to date and taking old school animation tactics from the days of Mickey Mouse, to weapon them with the modern day benefits of 3D.  Frame by Frame is not so taxing in 3D once the components are built as it is in drawing all of its layers by hand.

They were recreating the antique look which we have all come to know and love.  Of course!

One piece of proprietary software created by Disney (software engineer Brian Whited) that was designed specifically for this piece is one called Meander.  Meant to be comparable to the overall effect that results from the ToonShader, Meander is a vector based line art program that tracks to movement of 3D animation to give the character (or environment) a 2D appeal.  The artist draws directly on top of the surface of the animation while the program is built to interpolate the inbetweens, leaving the artist to work pose to pose and, well, tweak away to match the  line art to the animation data.  Imagine compositing this vector data on top of a 3D plates.  It seemed fairly intuitive if not completely accurate for its purpose-- but it was reinstated that there was also lots of options to undo/redo as well to get the precise look and movements.  All in all, it its first introduction at the production session I attended it seemed to offer a lot of potential for honing in on that traditional look and the signature designs that Disney tends to hold onto tightly.  The piece was well done and executed brilliantly as a classic looking silent.

One thing I admired for sure is Disney's open arms for personal creative freedom.  They do this all of the time between working on features.  They allow the artists to breathe between runs, collaborating their ideas and working as a team to develop small independents.  Independents owned by Disney, yes, but crafted from a small system of seemingly non-corporate artistic individuals lucky enough to have the honor and privilege to work at Disney to begin with!  Tim Burton as well was another fortunate soul to get holed in a room at Disney to just sketch and just create his amazing oddities after his bouts of animation on "The Fox and the Hound".  Thus surfaced his first short stop motion film "Vincent".  It was implied according to his Bio "Burton on Burton" they loved his work as a individual but just didn't know what to do with him.

Directed by John Kahrs (animation supervisor of 'Tangled'), it is rumored that Paperman may develop into a full feature, which is not the usual route for shorts on release nor something that I would desire, as it was enough just as is.  Life truly is a teaser anyways and offers no definitive result to how one should come across contentment in the actual journey of life itself.

Pixar's production session at sigGRAPH last year of Enrico Casarosa's "La Luna" left the same feeling.  Any more tacked on to the short would have been too much.  The hardest accomplishment that I find with a short that always seems in a nutshell with these two powerhouse companies is summing up all of the emotions offered to the viewer in a short and silent span of time. 

It was a pleasure to watch and learn.  I left with aspiration that an artist should always try to have.

But as one captivated fan in the audience, I am only one of many that anticipates more of Disney's perseverance as a unbreakable trademark and as a frontrunner in the competition of digital technology in entertainment.  For lord knows with the growth of technology today, to make the cut a company would need the best look development team and the best software engineers on hand--  a 24/7 militia of artisans all around.  And Disney's definitely still got it!

Wrinkles in Time (So Far).

Chapter 7: "One fine detail"

Still in the process of Insanity....  But he's getting farther along than he was before.  Right now I an flipping through Chapter 7 of Eric Keller's book, which has been quite helpful with working on Insanity.

Well, I threw the book and the wacom tonight and got myself some "Strawberry Sonoma" red mango instead with a ton of sprinkles and strawberries.  (A full-blown meal's worth).

BUT TOMORROW--  My Insanity's On like Donkey Kong!!  waka waka waka  ;-)

Ahem.  Seriousness.

I find that adding in details is difficult for me.  What in the HELL?  I love details to a fault.  I guess it's just the modeler state of mind versus the sculptor state of mind.  I mean, where are his veins and wrinkles anyway? 

This chapter is perfect timing for it all.  It teaches how to work with polypainting (which honestly I find to be very finnicky thus far) and detailing with alphas. 

I'm thinking of color...  he is a demon, but I was thinking corpse.  Pastey-Bluish-Greenish?  I don't know.  Is that ethical for a demon?  Technically they are usually red?  And he has picthfork-like hair.  I keep going back and forth.  But it's all a matter of playing around at this point.

But it order to be a play, I need to know how to play, right?

I see tons of errors as well.  Flatness or sagginess or pinches from too much detailing in maya...  Lots of work to do.

For my first 'concept' model.  Not too bad, I guess, so far.

I'm considering re-doing his hair in Maya eventually so I can make it dynamic and animatable.  But for now he's for 'show'.  Perfect.  He's got a long way to go, but here is Insanity for now.