Digital Artist and Director
Here’s a quick render test in honer of kicking off the new year. It features the PBR materials and volumetric primitive in Lightwave 2018. The materials where very quick to setup without the need for fresnel nodes plugged into various shader inputs. The volumetric primitive is also really nice to work with, easily controlled with …
I really like the Panasonic Lumix GX80 (or GX85 in the US). There’s one this missing from the camera, and that is the flat CineD profile found on many of the higher tier Lumix cameras, until today. BTM_Pix user on the EOSHD forums shared their method for using the camera’s Wifi protocol to upload the …
I’ve uploaded a video talking about depth of field in for CG animations. I also quickly cover my workflow from Lightwave 3D to After Effects.
I’ve found myself using depth of field a lot more in project, quite shallow depth of field which is very expensive in render time, require many, many samples. However depth maps can be used to MASSIVELY speed up the rendering process by processing the depth of field as a post process. I put together a …
Got back from Newquay, Cornwall and took the Panasonic Lumix GX80 with me. So far I really like the handling for a travel camera, small enough to carry around all day and very unassuming. But perhaps the best feature, which makes this my preferred travel camera, is the ability to charge it from a standard micro-usb …
I started making some animated GIFs (as a video collection here), I’m not totally sure why but I’ve had a lot of fun doing it. In each one I’ve been playing with different techniques like; animated GI, low-poly, SSS and nodal animation. I think the reason that they’re enjoyable to make it the very fast …
Perfect opportunity try the Canon 100mm f2.8 (non-IS) macro on the Sony A7R II in crop mode. The on sensor image stabilisation works wonders for macro work, even able to pan around without too much judder.
I felt inspired to show some of the sonic properties of morphium. Again, created in Lightwave 3D and After Effects. Using the ‘shrink wrap’ tool to create multiple blend shapes / morphs. Vimeo Album.
Getting a handle on the image profiles in movie mode. I’ve played around with Neutral with -3 contrast, PP6 and PP7 (slog2). I’m liking how slog2 performs in these situation but find it hard to recover colour saturation compared to other profiles. This was also the first time I’d used the smart remote app for …
These polygonal landscapes were created as part of a pitch for a medical expo experience to promote a new pain management medicine. Our approach was to show the user an ever changing landscape based in the noise response from an EEG reader built into the headset.
After experimenting a bit with moving geometry in a character turntable lit with radiosity I thought I’d test a few scenarios with low ‘Maximum Pixel Spacing’, thinking it would be a sort half-way-house between brute force and interpolated. I’m quite happy with the results, considering the low Rays and render times of 2-5 minutes of a …
Got the GH4! And so far I’m very happy with it. 4K video is sharp and there are is a huge amount of flexibility when it comes to image profile adjustments. Almost too much 🙂 Seems like a balance of achieving a flat image for grading without getting too flat as to loose fidelity in …
Ramping up the rays to render some diamonds in Lightwave 3D with the Dielectric node. If you’re interested in the settings I’ve put a screen capture up here and there’s also some interesting links that people commented on the vimeo page.
Out shooting some low light footage with the 5D Mark III with Magic Lantern RAW module. The kind of invert, softlight grade I usually like to use to boost shadows seem to create quite a bit of aliasing on high contrast footage.
Trying out some displacement and material worked based on a little video I took of a of the Thames at sunset. Trying to get some sun highlights in that create a nice bokeh effect in the defocussed areas. I’m going to try
Trying another Vimeo Weekend Challenge of five 5 seconds clips with natural audio with the theme ‘Complexity’. Shooting with Magic Lantern RAW on a Canon 5d mark III. The YN-160 led video light came into it’s own for getting enough light down the Canon 100mm at f14, although I still had to have the ISO …
Trying out the Magic Lantern RAW module on the Canon 5D Mark III. So far no real performance issues with Lexar Pro 1000x and Kingston 1000x CF cards. I did have to return a Komputerbay CF card but I’ve heard they’re a bit hit and miss. So far the quality and dynamic range is wonderful, …
Playing with a Fujian 35mm F1.7 CCTV lens. It’s a tiny c-mount lens. It’s a pretty poor performer compared to other m4/3 lenses but it’s a fast 70mm equivalent lens that will set you back £24 from ebay and it has a lot of “character” 🙂
Music: “Quittin’ Time” by Patrick Lee (patrickleemusic.com) I thought I’d try out one of Vimeo’s ‘Weekend Challenge‘. This one was one second clips, so I went for a walk around London having fun with a Sigma 8mm on full frame. I was really fun being part of a whole bunch of people creating videos for …
Capturing some more video with the GH2 and Dwiftwoods IntraVenus hack while working on the weekend. Had fun with a few split screens and shooting on a very blue (2500k) white balance compensation. Music track from RoyaltyFreeKings.com.
Trying out a new lens purchase, the Lumix 14-140mm. A great all purpose lens with an insane amount of reach. It was very easy to go out with in these kind of conditions without the need to switch lens and the pretty solid stabilisation saved a lot of post-processing.
Trying out the Panasonic Lumix LX7. Love this little camera, the lens is pin sharp and I really like the ergonomics, I had the Sony RX100 for a bit and just didn’t get along with it as well as this camera. I like the wider FOV of the LX7 and the better
Had some time to have a play with getting 3D content into a game engine, namely Unity3D.
Our new company specialising in 3D and Visual Effects is now up and running! We like to work closely with agencies and production companies to help bring ideas to life across multiple platforms. We’ve moved into our new studio and are settling in by trying out some content creation for the Unity 3D game engine. For …