Odd Enough

The videos/images listed below are in chronological order based on when I produced the render. Hopefully, it should show improvement over time. You can click the images below to view them at a higher resolution.

Programs currently being used: Cinema 4D, After Effects, Illustrator, Photoshop.

Start date:  June 11, 2010

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UPDATE 1

Starting on the FITES.net 2011 promotional video. This one is going to be a doozy. For what I have in store for it and the rendering time required, it could take some time. This is a completely pro bono project, but one that I feel could be my portfolio cornerstone. What you see below is a simple rotation animation. Was checking the environment and lighting. Added some music and effects for fun.

UPDATE 2

Rigged the outer “plates” into Xpresso to extend via a unified slider. Possibly to animate as a release valve action. Created a simple “core” prototype. Will beef it up much later down the road.

UPDATE 3

Added the FITES radioactive symbol to the front plate, still trying to figure out how to make the circular window texture appear more like glass and less like water. Since the FITES subtitle is Frag Infinity Tournament, I thought it would be clever to name this the Frag Infinity Generator, along with an ID plate of 2011, marking the event. Did some tweaking to the HDRI environment, and to the reflectivity of the materials. If you’re wondering about those 3 things around the rim, I’m calling them “latches” for now.

UPDATE 4

Started work on some decals and texturing. Did some browsing on cgtextures.com, and went to town on them in Photoshop.  In C4D, I tried my hand at UV mapping on the radioactive symbol. Very frustrating, was about to do the same for the decals, until I had the bright idea of putting them on their own planes and placing them barely above the plate surface. Not sure if I will run into trouble with that down the line.

UPDATE 5

VIDEO: Rendered out a simple flyby of the textures to make sure they are up to snuff. Dialing down the reflectivity of the striped texture. Might even change it to something else eventually.

UPDATE 6

I’m calling these “stabilizers”. Something to keep the generator core afloat and… stabile. Was on a kayak and camping trip over the weekend, and as I was staring into the campfire, the way the logs were stacked, gave me the idea for these. Moreover, when I looked at the logs, I thought.. “I could put a cylinder object where the logs touch there, extend out 3 sides to make legs and angle them down a bit in the shape of that log, and make an inverted flat piece on top just how the other log is sitting on top…” etc. Scary, I know.

UPDATE 7

As you can see, there is a bit more added in here. I redesigned the stabilizers a bit, And placed in the equipment rack I have been making. Hope to fill it out with lots of cool looking instrumentation; buttons, lights, dials, stuff, and junk. Since this environment will be a lab filled with testing equipment and such. Figured I should get a start on making the necessary props.

UPDATE 8

So here is one of those rack units mostly done. The screen will have a pre-animated layout, or if I have the time to rig it up, a dynamic one. That might be thinking a bit too ambitiously at this point, though. Also, I would like to point out that I’ve modeled everything from scratch so far. The LED’s, which I also modeled a diode into, and the screws. Unfortunately, a friend pointed out that somebody released a free C4D screw generation project already. Which will come in handy later on, no doubt.

UPDATE 9

It really is amazing how much of a difference the right materials make. The textures on the previous renders struck me as being too clean or perfectly glossy for the object. It is, after all, supposed to be the core of a machine that generates “frags”, and any object associated with it should look like it has undergone considerable stress and wear. I also added suitable replacements for the formerly bulbous looking “latches”. The result is sharper, mechanical, and real. TODO: Decal alphas are bugged, texture seams need fixing, add dirt to the remaining “perfect” textures.

UPDATE 10

Fixed the texture issues mentioned above. When I finally started placing out the rudimentary environment elements, I realized that my campfire-induced vision of the stabilizers, while they did look nice, were not designed well for this particular environment. I still might change the panels, as even they look somewhat out of place now, too. The blocky-ness of the new design is not final; Just a simple representation of the general shape. Added more scene lights, visual aids, and darkened the room to help me as I begin to design a darker environment.

UPDATE 11

The outer core is now 100% modeled and textured. Starting work on fleshing out the other props. The obligatory simple rotation video is below.

UPDATE 12

Back on the task of fleshing out the rest of the modular electronics rack. I modeled this one almost verbatim off of the Elgar Continuous Wave AC Power unit. Some minor changes, but it is generally the same thing.

UPDATE 13

It’s been awhile since my last update, but I still have been hard at work on it. I have gone through 2 redesigns already, before settling with one I liked. When I started this project, I had sketched everything out on paper beforehand, and yet I still didn’t think far enough ahead. So every time I went through a new design, I had to visualize what my limitations were. I think I finally found an environment that can handle what I want. As it turns out, in the new environ, I most likely won’t be using the equipment rack. I may be able to use parts from it, but that is to be determined. The video in this update shows how I rigged the redesigned “stabilizers”.

UPDATE 14

I’ve been working on texturing and hard surface modeling this week. Had gotten extremely frustrated with UV unwrapping and eventually gave up on that. I figure, since this is my first detailed Cinema 4D project, I might be expecting a bit too much from myself. It might not look top grade when finished, but I have to think about spending too much time on it. It will never be perfect. So, I’ve been attempting to learn how to create procedural textures instead. They will save on render time and memory in the long run. The textured core from Update 9 was made using all bitmap textures. The image below was made using all procedural textures made from algorithms/noise shaders. Click to enlarge the image to full res (1920×1080).

I am also slightly improving the surface of the sliding doors. Hard surface modeling isn’t one of my strong points. Up until now I had mainly been adding unconnected geometry on top of other geometry. But I am beginning to enjoy polygon modeling.

UPDATE 15

Wow. So, I’m suspecting this is what good lighting looks like, or getting there at least. I added 2 lights on from what I had in the previous update but, man does it make a difference! Those lighter highlights contrasting against the darker textures.

I also added some new additions to the cabinets that store the stabilizer panels, as well as actually made the 3-axis joint on the mechanical arms. It used to be just a placeholder torus object filling in.

UPDATE 16

Plenty of progress made, despite taking a week off to go to the beach. Added image-based lighting (via global illumination), that you can see the reflection of to the left of the image. Added the interface projector to the top half of the contraption thingy. Replaced the stabilizer panels with scanner doohickies. I figured.. why the hell do I need stabilizers on that thing, when you assume that the big glowy light thing underneath the core is holding it up anyway. Doy. It doesn’t have to be real, just has to look cool. Played around with some textures, added more doodads to the base. There are other stuff I’m probably forgetting, but that’s the gist of it.

The video below shows off the interface startup animation and how I synced it to the music. As I mentioned to a friend of mine, this is Inception-style syncing. First, I have to sync the interface with the music (which is a 5000×750 After Effects project. Needs to be huge in order to fit around the cylinder object in C4D). I bring the interface animation in to C4D as a stacked material and stick it on the cylinder object. I then add the music clip that I used in the interface anim, make sure it is played at the correct frame and rate, then I sync the scene and model animations to fit with what the interface is animating, then possibly sync the camera shots to the music. Weeeeee! Will most likely need a sanity check by the time I’ve finished this nonsense.

UPDATE 15

So this is a smaller update, but still progress nonetheless. I’m just psyched that I got a compliment from the great FUI(Fantasy User Interface) master himself, Mark Coleran. I also recently updated the interface video in the above update within the last week. It felt like this part of the project was going to be the hardest, but I think that after I got the base layout down, it’s now getting a lot easier and much more enjoyable. And compliments by interface masters certainly helps too. So I know I’m going in the right direction. I also fixed the back of the screen in C4D (you can see it on the left and right edge of the image) to be darker than the front, just to help out in the depth perception area. It’s a small fix, but it should help make it look a tad nicer, too.

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