Hasta La Motion!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyKF2w5uExU

I used about 80 pics and turned them into one 360° pic of the environment. I used mental rays production shaders.

Tell me, what you think about this

It has composited footage as the foreground and midground, but the background is a matte painting. The foreground/midground come from the same source so there is no issue with matching grain. However, they are relativly grainy (especially in the figure’s face) and I am having trouble matching the grain on the matte painting. If I fully match it the grain is huge and looks just awful. I have tried adding SOME grain, but it just looks akward and as though I do not know what I am doing. At the moment we have no grain on it at all but we think it looks too clean. I have included a video (uploaded to vimeo… the grain really isnt that visable.. But I thought I would include it anyway…) as well as a still. If anyone has any suggestions or solutions I would appreciate it very much 🙂

Also, any critiques on the shot/piece as a whole would be appreciated as well!
If anyone is interested my Thesis Partner and I have a blog where we post updated WIP etc. the URL is gentlekillereyes.blogspot.com

thank you in advance for any help!!

I don’t have a strict plan yet, i know what direction I’m going in, but I’m going to take them 1 step at a time.

Starting with a jet fighter. On loan from a very generous Mike James , i have a F22 Raptor. My first stop has been to do some textures..

I’ve started with low res t maps as i don’t want to make detail that wont be seen later. I think these bad boys will be flying pretty fast.

Now I’m gonna rig everything that will be used in my animation, from the control surfaces to the thrust vectoring afterburner and weapons bays.

Then i might take her flying, to put it through it’s paces..

P.s. One question, the cannon that’s in the mid stbd fuse, where do the rounds come out?!

I thought I’d remake my clones/stormtrooper model i did years ago. This time making him a properly rigged character, to work better with animation.

So i have started with just the basics, skinning a tight body suit onto a full but basic skeleton of bones. Here’s what i have so far (you can even see me working on the texture as it rendered!)..

http://www.episode2ish.net/2008/outfitting.wmv

More to come very soon..

So the other day i thought I’d come back to the whole planet thing with a different approach. Thinking how I’d do it if a client asked me to do it, time being money etc.

What i came up with was a 2.5D approach, mapping a NASA photo onto part of a sphere and only working with that past of the planet. I removed the specularity from the NASA image and any camera reflexes. Then made a new specular map, mainly just where the oceans were..

This is what i had when rendered..

http://www.doghouseanimations.com/planet.wmv