mike's digital anthology » animation http://blog.mikepan.com making visuals with technology Fri, 16 Dec 2011 23:20:53 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3 Image of the week http://blog.mikepan.com/image-of-the-week/ http://blog.mikepan.com/image-of-the-week/#comments Tue, 31 May 2011 01:13:27 +0000 admin http://blog.mikepan.com/?p=980 Continue reading →]]> Two more screencap from the animation I am working on at work.


The images above are screencaptures from an animation I am working on for my university. The video is 2 minutes long, with 5 scenes showing the Northwestern Hawaiian Island and its beautifully pristine coral reefs.

Took about 1 month of preparation, 1 month of modelling and animation in Blender, and 1 month of lighting set up and compositing work to get to where we are today.

]]> http://blog.mikepan.com/image-of-the-week/feed/ 6 Progress Report http://blog.mikepan.com/progress-report/ http://blog.mikepan.com/progress-report/#comments Fri, 22 Apr 2011 01:24:38 +0000 admin http://blog.mikepan.com/?p=902 Continue reading →]]> Here is a screen capture from a video production I worked on 3 years ago for the UBC Fisheries Centre.  It’s all computer generated, and pretty good for its time, and it even got us to the ‘Finalist’ position at the International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge.

And here is a snapshot of what I’ve been working on this year. Straight out of Blender, the only touch-up I did was a minor color correction.

What bothers me is not how bad the first one looks, but the fact that I didn’t realize how bad it was at the time. Well, I am also a bit troubled by the fact that there is less fish in the ocean. But not nearly as embarrassed about it as the huge gap in quality.

The other artist behind both of these production is Dalai Felinto. So I can’t take all the blame credit.

]]> http://blog.mikepan.com/progress-report/feed/ 3 microCT scan video http://blog.mikepan.com/microct-scan-video/ http://blog.mikepan.com/microct-scan-video/#comments Thu, 23 Dec 2010 06:18:00 +0000 admin http://blog.mikepan.com/?p=803 Here is a video rendering of a microCT scan of the same mouse as my last blog post.

]]> http://blog.mikepan.com/microct-scan-video/feed/ 2 A new animation project – teaser http://blog.mikepan.com/a-new-project-teaser/ http://blog.mikepan.com/a-new-project-teaser/#comments Sat, 11 Dec 2010 09:53:06 +0000 admin http://blog.mikepan.com/?p=743 Continue reading →]]> Just a little something I started working on.  This short animation will be mostly eye-candy without much of a storyline, although I am trying to get some sfx shots in there. (explosions and fire,  etc)

The above image is displayed using GLSL view + the new ‘Only Render’ view option in Blender 2.5.  A really nice way to visual the bird animations without all the excessive lines and wireframes.

Sequence editor showing the 720p rendered clip.  Due to time-limitation, I have decided to render this movie in 1K resolution only.  2K is just too demanding on the artist and the computer…

]]> http://blog.mikepan.com/a-new-project-teaser/feed/ 8 Sintel Premiere http://blog.mikepan.com/sintel-premiere/ http://blog.mikepan.com/sintel-premiere/#comments Tue, 28 Sep 2010 18:43:15 +0000 admin http://blog.mikepan.com/?p=616 Continue reading →]]> IMG_1869

Blender’s 3rd in-house short film was premiered last night in Utrecht, The Netherland.  and I was lucky enough to be a part of that!  More pictures on Flickr.

The movie – Sintel – is an amazing accomplishment, I was a bit worried that I’d spent the entire time looking for cloth intersection, rendering artifact and bad physics.  But as soon as the first scene fades in, it’s easy to let yourself go and enjoyed the movie.

Update: The movie is released, watch it online here: http://www.sintel.org/

]]> http://blog.mikepan.com/sintel-premiere/feed/ 2 Animating the beast http://blog.mikepan.com/animating-the-beast/ http://blog.mikepan.com/animating-the-beast/#comments Sun, 27 Dec 2009 22:53:05 +0000 admin http://blog.mikepan.com/?p=309 Continue reading →]]> When I started working on a car model, I had no intention of animating it.  But after seeing Blender 2.5 being able to crank out gorgeous frames after frames at insanely high speed, it would be a waste not to at least attempt to make an animation out of the model.  Besides, this car model is probably not detailed enough for high resolution still images anyways.

Render Stats for the above screen capture:

~1.6million Faces
~10MB of texture
~3 light sources + 1 HDR EnvMap
~Ray traced reflection, refraction, and Approximate Ambient Occlusion
~500MB RAM use
~Intel Quad @ 3.0Ghz
720p resolution at 1 minute a frame. (5 minute a frame when 5x motion blur is enabled)

Edit:

No crazy DoF effect on this one…  I also found out that approximate ambient occlusion causes some artifact on the car body, mainly in how it treats subtle curved panels.  So I am going back to real AO.

]]> http://blog.mikepan.com/animating-the-beast/feed/ 15 Project Durian, aka Sintel, is gaining momentum! http://blog.mikepan.com/project-durian-aka-sintel-is-gaining-momentum/ http://blog.mikepan.com/project-durian-aka-sintel-is-gaining-momentum/#comments Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:00:20 +0000 admin http://blog.mikepan.com/?p=223 Continue reading →]]> Movie making is an expensive business.  Blender Foundation’s upcoming short film Sintel is no different.  Luckily the Dutch Film Funds had just approved another grant to help extend the project to June 2010, this much-needed funding might even allowing them to hire more artists.

Seriously, if you haven’t pre-ordered the DVD, do it!   For 34.00 Euro, you get not only the movie, but every file, texture and asset that is used to create the movie.  Isn’t that super cool?  This DVD will probably be the best (and cheapest) learning resource for Blender you’ll ever find.

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