Sucker Punch Intro Logo Breakdown

CG breakdowns have always served as a key source of inspiration for me. This by far, nailed it! Check it out - (the description is in quotes)

"So this is a larger and (sorry) longer breakdown of the intro.

This was an extremely complex shot. You have 3000 frames length, full CG car, Rain, Splashes, Mist. and environmental elements.

I was lucky in the task of being able to develop this whole shot's fx work.

The first part is a cross cut of the many passes of the cars rain covering. This was meshed with Thinkbox Frost. The logo was completely texture driven from a Fusion comp. So I would time out the logo reveal/font type in a B/W comp in Fusion and then take that render and drive particle births based on luminance. This logo technique was an absolute life saver. If the client changed the font in the last min, all i had to do was go into fusion, update font, roto, and noise. render that out, and you have your new logo ready to sim. The car's over all rain covering was driven with Pflow and a lot of tweaks to wind, random walk, and lock bond. This was all cached out to many MANY prts. I used the PRT loader as a composting system. I broke out each layer to its own descriptor, rivulets, drops, stuck drops, and splats. In each PRT loader i was able to, with director notes, either reduce the count of each layer and then pump that into frost for a final meshing. My logo PRT master list was 15 PRT file sequences. The final full car meshing took 45min a frame with the beta version of Frost....now it takes 2 mins to mesh the WHOLE car. Sadly, we couldn't use the latest version because I had already had Director by offs on a lot of the elements. Using a new version of a software, even if its faster, changed the appearance of the trails and those were locked. Damn that sucked haha.

The second part is the many little clips of RnD from when I had JUST started to figure out how the hell i was going to cover a car in rain for 3000 frames from clouds to inches away. It also includes a few RealFlow passes of tire splashes that were added into the shot.

It's one of those year long effects/shot that feels impossible to explain or show all the work of because its just so damn complicated to do so. So I hope I shed a hint of light on the making?

enjoy!,
Mark "

Some Mind Blowing Animated Shorts

Stormbirds 


A short concept produced at RealtimeUK for THQ and Juice Games. A team of 8 artists finished the project in about 3 months time using 3Ds Max, V-Ray, Vue and Afterburn. 




The Backwater Gospel 


This is by far one of the most creepiest horror shorts I have ever seen! It's a 9.5 min animated flick which I think serves a better purpose than most modern horror films out there. It manages to pull you in with it's dark and eerie environments as the residents of the western town descend to madness. 





Eskmo: "We Got More" (Ninja Tune) 


There's really not much to say about this one, apart from this: It's an official video for the tune 'We Got More' directed by Cyriak Harris. Makes for some pretty eye candy this one! 

Address is Approximate [Animated Short] by The Theory

I spent most of today watching animated short films from a channel on Vimeo of the same name. Stumbling upon this one - partly because the thumbnail looked so real I thought someone had done an extremely unbelievable job at CGI - fell in love with this short for very different reasons. Have a look at the video below and have your mind...blown! 

Credits Go to The Theory and Google Street View as highlighted at the starting. 

Biomorph - Nike Flyknit Promo

The work done on the promo for Nike's upcoming shoe was beyond astounding. The creative masters themselves, Digital Domain and Mothership - DD's advertising and entertainment company - have released an insight of what it was like bringing Nike's vision to the screen. 

Director David Rosenbaum compiled a 30-page story with images and concepts to show-off the shoe's attributes. More of this on CGSOCIETY. 

Check out "Biomorph" below. 

CG Bullets in After Effects [Composite]

CG Bullets in After Effects [Composite] from Umar Ansari on Vimeo.

I made these bullets in 3D Studio Max, and rendered them out in separate passes. I personally loved the Reflection pass, it came in so handy with it's almost-unnoticeable HDRI.

Color correction has always played an important role in compositing and in this case the bullets had to undergo a few corrections. Originally they were given a golden/brass diffuse but I preferred a more red-like color. I added a small camera move inside of After Effects to show-off depth. And a camera-lens blur to top it all off - I find that there is some problem with it though, in that there is something wrong with the focus, maybe the order in which the lens focuses is a bit off but feel free to correct me.