March 2008 Archives

This is the idea I came up with last night. The cool thing about living in an 80-year-old house is that there are some really neat interiors and objects to work with. I can do all kinds of things with this room... daylight (it has a window), night with candles or a nightlight (maybe one of each), artificial light, etc. I’m dying to model that claw foot tub anyway.Actually I think I’m going to start with this one. I can accomplish quite a bit with this one environment.Oh yeah, I did what I said I would and updated the motion page today. It’s now separated into “Lighting & Compositing” and “Experimental & Video.” Someday maybe I can take all that ... more

Glenn and I drove around a lot today looking for interesting outdoor environments I can model and light. The guys I talked to yesterday said I could just use someone else’s environment (giving them credit of course) and light it, but since I really want to get back into Maya, I decided I’d spend the extra time and effort creating something from scratch. We finally found this abandoned car wash on 380 in Princeton. Not too complicated a model, and it has some nice qualities, allowing light to pass through and providing a good amount of shadows. Today was pretty cloudy, which is one of the lighting scenarios I want to explore. We did some shots with my gazing ball ... more

What an incredible day I had. I made this decision to get back into 3D only a couple of weeks ago, and on Wednesday I got an email from A Bunch of Short Guys. I’ve been on their mailing list for a few months now but haven’t made any of the meetings yet. This one sounded intriguing: a portfolio workshop with a panel consisting of two guys from the animation industry and two from games. What timing, right when I’m trying to think of a good project that will help me ramp back up. I thought, my work is six years old but maybe it still has some value, maybe I can learn something. I would really like to know ... more

Welcome to my project blog. I’m starting this so I can track my progress on some CG projects I want to complete in the next few weeks (optimistic). Web-based project blogging is a habit I developed at the Viz Lab and can’t seem to shake. Not a bad thing though — the process is often as interesting as the result, which is probably why I’m addicted to it. I’ve named this blog Rendered Speechless because of the tie to CG (rendering) and the unapologetic irony of naming a blog “speechless,” which is something I rarely am, especially to those who know me. I just have to be careful to follow the rules though, because rules are there to keep everyone ... more