“If you simultaneously can’t afford any frills and can’t afford any failure, you end up with millennial design: crowd-pleasing, risk-averse, calling just enough attention to itself to make it clear that you tried. For a cohort reared to achieve and then released into an economy where achievement held no guarantees, the millennial aesthetic provides something that looks a little like bourgeois stability, at least. This is a style that makes basic success cheap and easy; it requires little in the way of special access, skills, or goods. It is style that can be borrowed, inhabited temporarily or virtually. At the very least, you can stay a few hours in a photogenic co-working venue. At the very least, Squarespace gives you the tools you need to build your own presentable online home.”
Amazing....
Wow, just wow. I have a fairly nasty cold at the moment and this is cutting though the fog in a lovely way….
New Portfolio pages added!
Heya all, just added some new updates to the site! We have some new things on the main landing page and a bunch of fun stuff in the Portfolio sections now as well. Motion, Photography, Product Swaps and more. Check em out ;)
The Mandalorian: This Is the Way
Really cool article on how the shot The Mandalorian. All in Unreal and pretty much realtime on giant LED screen.
“The Volume was a curved, 20'-high-by-180'-circumference LED video wall, comprising 1,326 individual LED screens of a 2.84mm pixel pitch that created a 270-degree semicircular background with a 75'-diameter performance space topped with an LED video ceiling, which was set directly onto the main curve of the LED wall.
At the rear of the Volume, in the 90 remaining degrees of open area, essentially “behind camera,” were two 18'-high-by-20'-wide flat panels of 132 more LED screens. These two panels were rigged to traveler track and chain motors in the stage’s perms, so the walls could be moved into place or flown out of the way to allow better access to the Volume area.
“The Volume allows us to bring many different environments under one roof,” says visual-effects supervisor Richard Bluff of ILM. “We could be shooting on the lava flats of Nevarro in the morning and in the deserts of Tattooine in the afternoon. Of course, there are practical considerations to switching over environments, but we [typically did] two environments in one day.”
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And one of my favorites bit is this little Karma payback in here about the LUT they used.
““Our desire for cinematic imagery drove every choice,” Idoine adds. And that included the incorporation of a LUT emulating Kodak’s short-lived 500T 5230 color negative, a favorite of Fraser’s. “I used that stock on Killing Them Softly [AC Oct. ’12] and Foxcatcher [AC Dec. ’14], and I just loved its creamy shadows and the slight magenta cast in the highlights,” says Fraser. “For Rogue One, ILM was able to develop a LUT that emulated it, and I’ve been using that LUT ever since.”
“Foxcatcher was the last film I shot on the stock, and then Kodak discontinued it,” continues Fraser. “At the time, we had some stock left over and I asked the production if we could donate it to an Australian film student and they said ‘yes,’ so we sent several boxes to Australia. When I was prepping Rogue One, I decided that was the look I wanted — this 5230 stock — but it was gone. On a long shot, I wrote an email to the film student to see if he had any stock left and, unbelievably, he had 50 feet in the bottom of his fridge. I had him send that directly to ILM and they created a LUT from it that I used on Rogue and now Mandalorian.”
Deep in the weeds of portfolio stuffs....
Work is slow so I am doing a portfolio overhaul ATM, which I kinda dread doing. Not a fan. Rather be in the Houdini Tuts, but what can you do. Gotta keep all this stuff updated to a degree. But anyhooo, keep a look out for new things popping up around here.
Cloth, cubes and an abstract forest
Messing around a bit more with @markfancherfx Houdini class here. I went ahead and brought in a vellum sim into this cube movement cloner thing. Really enjoying the sound design aspect of these little animations as well.
And then here was a quick little one off that I thought could make some pretty cool album art for a band.
Daily Doodle
Simple quick paper cut out thingy with cloth draped over it. Working on my vellum chops on these mostly ATM.
Heya Steve, Check this out!
The whole album is good!
Just a balloon lighting study. No politics I promise!
Todays doodle took way freaking longer than it should. Just could not seem to land on a concept that clicked. Luckily it was a lovely day out here and I got a nice loooong walk in as well. Wanted to play a bit with just changing up the lighting for different feels. Mylar balloon was modeled in C4d as I just could get it to work in Houdini. The string is another Vellum simulation that was fun to quickly knock out. Stuff like that is why I am focusing so hard in Houdini. Whenever you want some kinda of element like smoke, string, cloth or what have you, you can just bang it out in the scene. It’s really nice.
Yikes, be safe peoples....
Daily Doodle on some current news here. CoronaVirus is no joke it seems.
1,000 confirmed cases of infection.
8,420 people are reported to be under observation.
Lockdown acrossthe province of Hubei, 35 million people.
Buses in cities of Chibi, Xiantao, Zhijiang, Qianjiang, Xianning, Huangshi and Enshi have suspended services.
Ezhou city has shut its train stations.
70,000 of the country's cinemas will remain closed this weekend.
Shanghai's Disneyland also announced that it would not open its gates.
Pretty seriously scary stuff.
Technically speaking, this piece was pretty interesting to me because I incorporated Volumes for the cloths and Vellum for the cloth. Using the FBX loader from Calvin Atorr to load the mask as well.
Seriously? This is how repubs are gonna play it?
I can’t believe the shit the republicans are pulling. What a bunch of jackasses….
A little Houdini therapy for the daily doodle today. Text in C4d because text in Houdini is Terribad.
See that little “unpack” node in there? You NEEED that shit when working with ABC!
Pearl Jam?
Huh, did Pearl Jam just somehow make themselves relevant again?
Houdini Particle Doodle
While not trying to do the “Daily” thing, I do wanna try to do SOMETHING in Houdini everyday as a learning exercise. Last night I got into some particle effects which was super fun. Using only three nodes and no code I was able to come up with this movement. I just did a bunch of keyframing in the popAxisForce, popAttract and popWind nodes.
Rendered out in Redshift and then I threw some sound design on top of it all in Davinci Resolve. Pretty fun little piece for a quick little doodle.
Some Personal Renders messing around with Houdini
Just some of the instagram images I have been posting as I mess around in Houdini. Might have to switch to some High Key imagery for a change of pace… lol!
Impossible Pork?
I dig the burgers, but in our opinion they are still a treat and not something that is “more healthy” per say. Be interesting to see the nutritional breakdown on it.
Animation point cloud study
Here is the animation I have been working on for the last few days. The first time really getting into camera movements and editing and I really enjoyed the process. Looking forward to doing more in-depth animations like this soon. Sound Design by We Are Parasols. All done in Houdini and Redshift. This blog post has some more stills and shows how it was built out.
Flip SubFrame Interpolation
Or, how to make Houdini sims move in slo motion using the Time Shift Node.
Messing around with a new animation in Houdini
Taking a class on VEX and I’m applying some of the ideas from it in this animation I started yesterday. I want to add in some camera movements yet before I render it out. Hoping to get to that today…..
Better Flip book export for Houdini
Working on a VEX class and was looking to get a flipbook out of Houdini and it’s kinda wonky but I found this way to use ImageMagick to export as MP4s. Much easier.
Alienated, Alone And Angry: What The Digital Revolution Really Did To Us
10-20 years ago if you would have asked me about killing off the internet somehow I would have fought you tooth and nail. Now though, I think many of us agree, the internet has become a hellscape and it kinda needs to be changed or go away. So sad to see what so many of us hoped would improve the world be corroded in such a way. This article does a good job of summing up a lot of my feelings about where we are.
“Which brings us to the new economy of freelancers and gig workers, precarious, unprotected, and connected. Hourly workers fry their brains with images no one should ever see — information detoxification — working to meet bizarre and inconsistent standards handed down from a distant authority, and then melt down in filthy bathrooms. Harried subcontracted delivery drivers feel so desperate to meet overnight shipping deadlines they get in deadly crashes. Uber drivers, some of whom sleep in parking lots, have separate bathrooms than Uber corporate staff. These people, it stands to reason, might be alienated. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
Meanwhile, the median home price is San Francisco is $1.4 million. This is where the Digital Nation mostly lives, in the most beautiful place in the country, profiting directly or indirectly off our participation in the alienating world they’ve built. Many of these people don’t want their children using the products and networks they build and sell. The people running the country don’t really care what happens to you.
Still, they’ll listen to you and spy on you for law enforcement. They’ll use that data, which they may or may not protect, to get richer. They’ll build special privacy schemes for themselves. Most people with power try to take advantage of people like yourself. Disempowered and unsure how to express it, you may take a strange comfort in the fact that there is another alienated human on the other end of your device. You’ll never meet them, but at least they will hear you.“