In the summer of 2011 I worked closely with creative director Phil Webster at Play Nicely on the titles for the ITV Rugby World Cup.

I was responsible for managing the pipeline for the whole project, as well as the FumeFX particle systems used to render the ink effect.

I think we created some pretty damn fine particle effects.

Breakdown

Credits

Opening title sequence for ITV1′s coverage of the 2011 Rugby World Cup. The sequence is based around images created in ink – a reference to the native maori tattoos of New Zealand where the tournament is being held.

Directors Richard Norley, John McKenna.
Designed by Lee Jacobs. Composited by Russell Mann.
Particle Effects: Play Nicely

People often assume the architectural visualisations will be stilted and “all computery” – which is of course the exact opposite of what any decent 3D artist wants to achieve.

The client was very happy with the final result!

Rubber Republic, Play Nicely and myself spent a couple of weeks working around the clock to intercept live webcam video feeds from all over the world as part of a viral campaign associated with with a fake ‘Paranormal Surveillance’ website.

Users were invited to leave their webcams running throughout the night to see if anything, well, paranormal was happening.

It turned out there was – a few of us CGI guys were sat up all night comping, splicing and animating into live webcam footage to create some spooky visual effects.

The idea was that some lucky people would wake up in the morning to find out that someone had been watching them in the night, standing over their beds & moving things around.

I recall listening to the sound track to The Shining on a loop and generally being scared throughout the process.
I also discovered that it is in fact just as scary to make a paranormal CGI effect as it is to watch one in a film!

Although I had a lot of fun with the project, I will probably be forever scarred.

Fairways front plots

I recently completed some exterior architectural visualisation CGIs for a local property developer – the results are nice and the client is happy – but the best thing about the project was building up the relationship; working directly with the developer and liaising with other parties has been an enjoyable experience.

Apart from circumventing layers of management I was given the opportunity to help in the design process – the developer sat next to me and we ran through different material scenarios & adjusted architectural details until he was happy.

I think that architectural visualisation can easily be leveraged by property developers at the design process as well as for advertising and planning permission; by planning the project as I did, I was able to arrange an afternoon meeting where we used real-time rendering to quickly explorer design elements.

Another great experience with this project was that I share an office with a group of talented artists and designers, and the developer was so impressed he asked for one of my colleagues to produce the marketing materials and brochures.

Just after Christmas I helped out with some motion graphics work for the National Television awards.

I was responsible for animating the text that explains how the voting system works - the sequence lasts for a minute and was the longest animated sequence of the whole night.

Animation done in Max then exported to Maya for rendering.

[See post to watch Flash video]

See the AR project HERE. You’ll need a webcam and a printer.

By pure coincidence, this is my second dinosaur project to end up showing at the Natural History Museum

Thought Den have done a pretty good job describing the project here, so I will only talk about my role, which was producing the 3D.

Yeah, so basically I did the 3D.

My tasks were split into 3 major sections – the first was to produce the Spinosaurus skeleton to be manipulated in the Flash AR environment – I chose to  rig the skeleton in CAT, which meant I could easily add, remove and edit bones; the second task was to create a fully skinned Spinosaurus, again in realtime for AR; and finally, to produce a looping animation segment examining an Egyptian dig site, that you can see below.

Modelling the skinned Spinosaurus was easy – I bought it from Turbosquid; To be be fair though it was a high poly model and was textured in a bit of an old school way with multiple sections pasted into multiple subobjects. So basically it was a simple ‘render to texture’ job followed by the proOptimizer.

The animation was pretty straightforward too. I used MentalRay’s daylight system and created a looping animation, moving the camera with a bit of old-school motion capture. I enjoyed this animation immensely as I knew it was for the kids – I always remember being a kid and looking at those science books that had incredibly detailed illustrations which could lose you for minutes at a  time. I tried to pack in as much detail and information as I could, from tent pegs to Indiana Jones hats – but alas, there is only so much you can do with a desert dig-site and 4 days.

I would also like to give special thanks to Mike at Everything Dinosaur who’s help was invaluable on this project.

I’ve just completed work on some animation for the BBC 1 Christmas eve broadcast of the National Lottery Euromillions draw.

The show was broadcast live from the Natural History museum and occasionally featured animations projected onto the building itself.

The projections were based on laser scans and photographs of the building, so that when animated the building looked to be moving.

I was supervising the VFX for a couple of the sequences, notably the finale where a dinosaur smashes out the front of the Natural History Museum revealing the final Euromillion number.

I produced everything in 3DS Max and imported the animated dinosaur in from Maya via FBX – the dinosaur was animated by the ever lovely Scott Pleydell-Pearce.

My favorite part was smashing the building up using Rayfire and PhysX – I think I have a real taste for blowing things up and destroying them in 3D now – can’t wait to do it again!

You can see the entire performance here (opens in new window).

[See post to watch Flash video] ]]> http://www.jd3d.co.uk/2011/01/national-lottery-christmas-eve-draw/feed/ 0 http://www.jd3d.co.uk/2010/11/wallace-gromit-stamps-royal-mail/ http://www.jd3d.co.uk/2010/11/wallace-gromit-stamps-royal-mail/#comments Thu, 11 Nov 2010 00:46:24 +0000 Justin Dowling http://www.jd3d.co.uk/?p=920 Aardman Digital have just gone live with their new Wallace & Gromit Royal Mail stamp creating tool – and it’s pretty damn cool as it goes.

The idea is that you can select all sorts of plasticine bits out of a typical Aardman Model-makers toolkit and create any kind of face you like, choosing eyes, noses, mouths and even festive christmas hats.

Once your face is made you can save it, share it to Facebook, use it as a profile pic or even get your own stamps made!

I was hired to create the 3D models of the body parts, which I did using 3DS Max – transferring effortlessly to Maya where it was rendered in Renderman.

https://www.wallaceandgromitstamps.com/createyourself.php

I recently completed work on another viral video animation project, this time for M. Night Shymalan’s take on the classic Avatar, the Last Airbender.

My role as VFX supervisor mainly meant I was creating FumeFX animations of subtle dust and particle effects.

With just under two weeks to work with  the director, Matt Golding of Rubberductions, showed me some ILM clips and said “make it like this!”

Generally my workflow consisted of using PFtrack to track the shot, or to simply eyeball it if the camera was locked off – I then created a Particle Flow system that worked the way I wanted and used the PF particles as a fuel source for Fume FX.

Although the shots are very subtle there is a lot going on – especially with bodies and items swooshing the smoke around.

[See post to watch Flash video]

Vimeo link

Element Academy – webcam game

I also produced VFX for a webcam game where the user must learn complex martial arts moves and demonstrate them in front on a camera - click here to play.