The Freelancer

I rarely update the blog when I have nothing to show and no news to tell, I can't convince myself that anyone wants to hear me ramble on nothing in particular. But sometimes I want to write anyway, so maybe this post (and perhaps others like it that follow) is for me.

I'm back at Aardman, 3rd innings. Commercials this time. Feels like real responsibility, more so than ever before, partly because I'm surrounded by people whose work may depend on me meeting my deadlines. Partly because CG dept can feel more serious that Digital dept, though no less fun, and partly because my go-to mentor and Jedi troubleshooter is off on paternity leave. So selfish.

After a couple of weeks getting to grips with the workflow behind Aardman's blend shapes- the (in this case facial) expressions created to assist animators in lip sync and unique poses, and practicing car modelling I'm now working a character for the commercial. This feels like a massive step up from prop and environment stuff and its really taught me another level of refinement and discipline in maintaining the curves in your edge flow. There have been some cool new tricks like flattening surfaces at odd angles by setting the scale tool to orient itself to the average direction of an objects normals, making sure to use symmetry all the time, transferring UVs using the correct settings so that the UV shell doesn't disintegrate (topology not component). The slide edge tool has, again, been invaluable.

See, I'm not sure why I include sections like that last paragraph, maybe someone reading knows what I'm talking about, but its not committed enough to be a tutorial, nor is it thorough enough to make sense to a layman.

I've been at friends and relatives the last 3 weeks, I'm just now looking at potential short term lets, to find my own place at least until mid April. I am essentially a very well connected and employed homeless person (so in fact nothing like a homeless person you entitled and privileged bastard), and it gets to me. Long commutes, no space, no time to myself. Though that's not to say I'm anything less than completely and utterly grateful for those you have been so hospitable, I wouldn't be able to do this without their kindness.

It seems there's an archetype for the bachelor seeking a tenant. Must be mid 20's, girlfriend abroad, studying for a PhD, whilst also working overtime/running your own business. And I thought I had no hours in the day. Habitat is new, clean, tidy. Probably because its barely lived in considering how much time is spent out of it working.

A genre has emerged in games, someone dubbed it the FPW: first person walker. I like this, it produces interesting games. Dear Esther, The Stanley Parable, Proteus, and to an extent Miasmata. I really want to say more about both of those last two, especially the latter. I'll save it for another post. Since the game jam the desire for design has been steadily burning. I read a quote about inspiration:

"Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work." -Chuck Close.

And with that in mind, I'm going to stare at a blank page for a bit.

Professional Pixels

New work shirt with my super awesome access card

This post was entitled semi-professional pixels. It is now entitled professional pixels, I got employed! I'm currently freelancing at Aardman for 2 weeks, after transitioning smoothly from my work experience there. I'm working on some pre-rendered assets for a game that the "Digital" department downstairs are working on. Its more than a little exciting and I'm really enjoying the miniaturisation effect of viewing my models from an almost orthographic camera. At that kind of distance modelling almost becomes like impressionism, the model looks pretty basic up close- blocks of simple geometry here and there (lots of polygon primtives), but zoom out and the collective components come together to give the impression of lavish detail. The camera distance does mean however, that things like the bump properties of the shader have to be pushed to 10 times what theyd usually need, in order to be visible. Also the advantage of being pre-rendered is that the assets can use very fancy shaders and lighting, so many materials look much better than they would if shown running in a realtime 3D game engine. The picture above is of my access card for the building which everyone I've excitedly shown it to has beem thoroughly underwhelmed by.


The view from the drive back from work

They have a crazy workflow at Aardman, its a hybrid between linux and windows involving two workstations each running a separate OS. This means I've had to learn how to set projects and launch programs from a "shell" by typing lines of code. Clearly, buttons are for amateurs. I've been using a lot of Vray, I made sure I knew the basics before going which has been a massive help but I've continued to learn a lot more, both about that renderer specifically and shading in general. Mostly from the talented and humble Ali Dixon. For example, everything has reflectivity, and with modern raytracing its actually possible to factor this into your shaders without killing render times. It means colours reflect better between objects and details can be emphasised by controlling things like the glossiness attribute. I really, really wish I could show renders. That was always the most enjoyable part of these posts for me. I textured an old wireless radio recently and tried to give the impression it had been tuned by the greasiest fingers imaginable. By having shiny plastic with more diffuse finger smudges in the glossiness I could realistically recreate this effect. Breaking up specular highlights in this way is an almost guaranteed route to more pleasing renders that avoid looking overly CG.

My monster pasty kindly supplied by the grandparents

 Another revelation has been my old friend fresnal, now while I knew everything was slightly reflective, I did not know that every reflection is fresnel, even if only a little. Fresnel reflections are what determine the angle at which an object is moat reflective for example water and glass are most reflective when viewed at an angle, for example the sun setting on the sea, but looking straight down into water and the reflection is weaker allowing you to see below the surface. Its rim lightings best friend basically, helping to outline objects with glancing angle reflections. When metals have fresnel, its just handled differently, usually controller by the shaders reflective index. Ratchet it up to 5 or 10 and it starts to act more like chrome. In this way you can create great reflective metals that act realistically driven by reflection alone. I've also had some fun with sub surface scattering and 2 sided shaders for wax and leaves respectively.

Rendering Shiny Things: Fresnel Reflection from yeoldebrian on Vimeo.


Also, there's a recording of Wallace's voice is in the lift. And there are stop motion sets in reception. Everyone is friendly.

Pixel Propaganda

Extra Credits recently did a couple of videos on meaning and mechanics, a favourite topic of mine as most of my dissertation centered around it. One game they wanted to address it in specifically was this one, entitled Loneliness. It takes 2 minutes to play is really worth the time, all it requires is the directional keys.