[AD] Pharma company advert for medical fair

Helped to realize 11 different clips for Expopharm 2009, a medical fair in Germany.
Those were finished in September.

Created during my internship at Fiction Films GMBH.
Did modeling, shading, animating and compositing.

The following video is just a compilation of those clips.

  HD links: Vimeo

 

[PHOTOS] Classic car meeting Fuerstenfeldbruck 2009

Visited yesterday the classic car meeting at Fuerstenfeldbruck ( called Oldtimertage Fürstenfeld ), which is held each year.

More infos here: www.classicmobil.de

Photos might take a while to load.

The complete gallery: LINK

And a small selection:

[3D] Dittschberger Bier ad - testing shaders

Well just added some textures and shaders to the bottle and the Pils glass for the custom made Dittschberger beer ad.

Well here is just a render with the shaders. The glass, bottle and beer are just simple dielectric shaders with just some textures attached to it via layered shader.
The foam is just a fast simple SSS shader with a little bump. Im rather happy with the result. Foam isnt very easy. Once animated I probably need a different method for the closeups.

[GRAPHICS] Animated short WIP - creating some props

Well created a few props for my animated short Im planning. Well its only some fairly basic stuff. In fact I only created a beer glas and a beer bottle. Nothing fancy.

My idea is using my snail character in a custom made commercial. You may think, snail and beer does that fit together? :-)
Well I think so. My main inspiration comes from this old Guinness ad about snail racing as well as the reactions of a drunken snail .
Somehow found it hilarious.

[3D] Maya snail character - updating the shaders

Just edited the shaders for the 3d snail character. Now it also got a specular map and reflection map, giving the slug some more moist look.

[VIDEO] Maya snail rig - test animation

Just did a quick test animation of the snail character rig. I mostly tested the facial blendshapes. Might not be an accurate animation, but its just a test anyway.
Also updated the snail body shader by changing the subsurface scatter on the skin. The moisture look on the skin was just created by mixing the subsurface shader with a blinn that has a transparency and a reflection map on it.

Here the test animation:

[RIG] snail character - added facial GUI

Added a facial GUI to my snail rig created with Maya. The GUI operates all blendshapes that drive the facial expressions of the snail. The rig itself is now finished and ready to be animated.
Probably will do some test animations tomorrow.

Facial GUI for the snail rig:

[RIG] WIP Maya snail rig - Paint weighting

Mostly did paint weighting today. Well still need to add some control curves for the face blendshapes. But all in all the rig is mostly done.
Probably will do a facial GUI next week as well as some test animations.

The shaders are still WIP.

[RIG] Maya snail rig - adding control curves

Just added some control curves to the main body of my snail rig created with Maya. There were some issues with the constraints on the control curves, but I managed to fix those errors.

I still need to add a facial GUI for all the blendshapes, so animating the facial expressions will be easier. Probably will do that next weekend as well as doing some test animations.

Here a snapshot of the control curves:

[GRAPHICS] Blog header update

Felt like updating my blog header. Initially I tried using some Java code, I found on the web to create a rotating banner, that randomly shows both headers.
Unfortunatelly the result wasnt as good as I hoped, besides the more gif animations have to be loaded by the browser the slower my blog.
Besides those gif animations dont work with the right frame rate in non- Mozilla browsers, which is a bit annoying.

here is the old header animation:

[PHOTOS] "Unter der Bavaria" 2009 Classic car meeting

Today was the 6th classic car meeting on the "Theresienwiese" below the Bavaria statue in Munich Germany.
Usually this is where the Oktoberfest is celebrated in September/ October.

Not sure how many vintage cars participated, but it was quite a lot. According to the Automobile club of Munich around 1200 classic cars came. ACM Info

Well I took plenty of photos:Complete gallery: LINK

[RIG] WIP Maya snail rig - facial blendshapes

Managed to create some 41 facial blendshapes for my snail rig in my spare time. The snail has several facial expressions, such as , frown , sadness, happiness , some geeky look etc, but also mouth rolling and munching leaves blendshapes.

Will start rigging on the weekend probably.

The blendshapes: ( not yet rigged to the main body )

[RIG] WIP snail rig - first rigging test

Well since Im doing a placement at FictionFilms I only find time over the weekend to work on my animated short.

Just created a rig for the snail character. Its still work in progress, just did some test rig. It rather works quite good in my opinion, although I still need to bind the clusters to the curves, do the paint weighting, create some blendshape for the facial expressions and clean up the overall rig. Besides I need to adjust the positions of the Local Rotation Axes on the joints and create some control curves.
But Im happy with the first result.

[3D] WIP snail body and shell texture - 1st test render

Here the snail body texture created with Photoshop. the render is just a quick test using the SSS mentalray shaders. Nothing is final its still WIP.
Before I finalize the shaders I move on to rigging the creature.

Here the snail body texture:

[3D] WIP snail shell texture - first test

Well the texture still needs some cleaning up , also the test renders are just quickly created shaders. Nothing is final, yet.


Here the snail shell texture and bump map created with Photoshop:

[3D] snail 3d model at 3dvia

Just uploaded the WIP snail model at 3dvia. Textures and details still have to be created.

Requires the 3dvia browser plugin to view it in 3D.

[GRAPHICS] Twitter logo design

Just signed up to twitter and thought I could create a twitter button for my blog. I used the "Ruffles" bird character and used it as the twitter bird, posing it onto the twitter font.

my twitter site is at https://twitter.com/animore , coulndt use animationandmore, since twitter only allows a certain amount of characters.

[UV] UV layout for the snail character

Just created the UV layout for the snail character. Now i can start with creating the textures , bump maps etc.

The snail with the UV layout texture:

[3D] Snail polygon model WIP - the body & face

Just finished the body and face for the snail character. Obviously its anatomically not correct, but I need the mouth so i can do some lip syncing.

Now I need to start developing the UV layout. Then follows texturing and rigging.
For the textures I will also create a bump map for the details as well as a specular map.

The snail. I will later add a tongue, which is necessary for my next animation:

[3D] Snail character - the shell ( WIP )

Cureently working on a snail character. Modeled the shell today. Its still not finished, the polygon topology has to be cleaned up a bit.

Used Maya and extruded along a curve, however the result was very unpredictable, so it took some time till I was happy with the result. It is one whole mesh now, no polygons intersecting each other.

The mesh:

[VIDEO] Some idle animation and a walk cycle

Just a walk cycle and and 2 idle animations:

[INFO] Back to normal

OK, everything works fine now. :)

[INFO]

Apparently my domain provider "Enom" seems to have some trouble with their DNS servers. Even their site is down www.enom.com
So thats why my domain www.animationandmore.com doesnt work at the moment.
Hopefully they fix that quickly.
For the meantime I switched off automatic redirecting, so my blog will be hosted at www.animationandmore.blogspot.com

[GRAPHICS] new favicon design

Decided to create a new favicon, since the blogspot favicon is a bit boring and not unique. Just doing a quick job.

Well, since legibility is quite important I decided to use the one with the orange & symbol. After all the favicon is only around 22 x 22 pixels.

here some other ideas. Those were hard to read once reducing their size.

[INFO] new domain

Just registered a new domain with Google. So now this blog will be hosted at www.animationandmore.com .
The original page www.animationandmore.blogspot.com will automatically redirect there.

Quote from Google :
Your new address should work for everyone after at most 3 days. At that time we will redirect your readers from your old address to the new one.