bo . log

No Soliciting - May 1st

2010-04-26T06:12:00.003-04:00

Here's the poster for my finally complete senior film, 'No Soliciting.' Be sure to check it out once it makes its way onto my site. Thanks to Jess Pom for the idea of using Where the Wild Things Are. 8)

ixg - imagine: pixel generator

2009-10-18T10:48:00.004-04:00

Such a cool idea... until it wasn't...

So... I've always had this idea of "what if you could generate every image that had ever, does ever, or would ever exist.... ever...". It was such a cool idea, because you'd be generating every frame from every movie ever made, all your family photos, and anything you could think of. You would probably even generate a picture of Obama riding a penguin through trenches filled with reese's cups, and it would look totally real. The thing would generate the past present and future of images and all their possibilities, and it would only take 1 simple loop of code to do it. So after years of just thinking about how cool it would be to have that thing, I went ahead and made it. But.. somewhere along the line I miscalculated how long it would actually take to go through a cycle... I was thinking for a 16 x 16 pixel image with 255 colors per pixel it'd take maybe a few hours... but I was definitely wrong. So if you feel like spending years just to see a thumbnail of that wonderful reese's surfing penguin riding Obama, then go ahead and set the colors per pixel high and just start watching... but I think I'm gonna wait until our computers get faster...

Simple Clouds in Maya that are still pretty :D

2009-08-07T04:37:00.010-04:00

So clouds are obviously a daunting task, no matter what use you have for them. More often than not, if it's in the background, it's just going to be an image. But if you're involving them in your story somehow, or just want them to be more in keeping with the whole look of your piece, you may want to create them in beautimus 3D. The problem with that, however, is that you'll most likely have to use some sort of volumetric shading, or even worse.... fluiiiddds 0_0. So in prepping for my thesis I've come up with a procedural shader for making clouds that are worthy of being called pretty, but won't destroy your life like a ridiculously long render will. The video explains in depth how to create the shader, as well as things to think about while making it, so that you can have a good understanding about how to customize the look of your clouds (it's rather large, 60mb). For those who aren't interested in shading tree shenanigans, you can simply download the source .ma here.

Nuke

2009-07-31T01:49:00.006-04:00

So I've just recently been messing in Nuke (started only a few hours ago actually..) and I have to say it's pretty awesome. It's really easy to get into, and really easy to get good stuff from it. I was kind of just messing around but I ended up re-compositing my lipSync animation, and it looks much better than the one I had done in Shake. There's so many cool things I like about it, but I won't go into it now. Here's the composites from nuke and shake (respectively). Wish I could've improved the animation though...

A Link to the Past

2009-07-21T15:46:00.006-04:00

So considering that a break from thesis usually just involves other endeavors in Maya, I've finally started something I've wanted to do for a long time. The drawing in the picture below is from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and I'm recreating it in what will hopefully be beautiful three-deenesss. I've only put in about 2 or 3 hours so far, which is why there isn't any texturing yet (aside from the displaced decal and flat colors). Most of what is there is lighting. Anyhoo.. stopping to continue thesis but hopefully I can etch away at it in the breaks I take.

Oh and those triangly thingies in front of the sword (in the model view) are reflection panels that are a part of the controlled reflection set on the swords blade. They're one-sided so you can't see that theyre bright white.

Because it is fun.

2009-07-07T15:05:00.004-04:00

thanks to tyson for the penguin model

Scripting Blog

2009-06-19T14:01:00.007-04:00

So I've started a separate blog devoted solely to scripting and it's magical endeavors. I'll be putting any script related stuff on there from now on, and keeping this blog to just general stuff, more stuff, and other unrelated stuff.

boscripts.blogspot.com

Bűvös Kocka

2009-04-30T01:57:00.011-04:00

After so long, I have finally defeated the daunting task that is the animateable Rubik's Cube rig.

It can use any pieces you give it, plays forward and backward, scrubable, and it's really cool. The setup is pretty much fully automated, so it's real easy to make em, although there are things I would like to improve. Anyway, hope you liked it!

So many lines!

2009-04-18T19:15:00.009-04:00

So I was workin on boTimingCharts today, and suddenly noticed that I had reached over 3000 lines of code, making it the biggest single script I've written so far!

Intrigued by this number I decided to find out the total number of lines in all of my "bo" scripts (the ones I've written from scratch). The total thus far is over 11,000 lines 0_0. That's like a 200 page paper! I think I may buy myself a chocolate bar for this accomplishment... and later watch a movie.

Timing Charts 0.5

2009-04-15T09:26:00.008-04:00

Just about ready for testing. This video shows some of the cool new features like default color schemes (saved to prefs) and the chart marking menus...

There's a lot here that isn't being shown, but maybe in the next video!

A tiny peek... at Timing Charts

2009-04-09T03:52:00.015-04:00

So naturally there's something I'm always working on... but I just happen to think that this "thing" is especially cool. Here's a peek of something in the works...

more to come...

A new robot friend...

2009-03-22T01:06:00.007-04:00

Touched up after a long while... here's my final drama painting.

Attack of the minorly improved still life!

2009-02-11T15:53:00.008-05:00

So I wanted to fix the glass bowl in my still life, and... so I did. Still not ideal to me but... time is of the essence. Also made some other minor changes...

Tutorial: Wireframe Rendering

2009-01-17T16:18:00.008-05:00

So I made this tutorial a while ago, but figured I should post a link to it on my blog. Enjoy.

Cookieeeees!

2009-01-04T17:03:00.023-05:00

Here's my push pull natural and exaggerated from this last semester. I'm hoping to edit the sloppy bits, but we'll see if I can get to it before the next semester comes.

Push Pull Natural (7mb)

Push Pull Exaggerated (7mb)

Almost Done

2008-07-13T21:49:00.009-04:00

So yeah it's been a while but, I'm just about done with the site I've been workin on. It definitely took longer than I expected but it came out pretty good. The best part about it is the custom manager and as3 SQLQuery classes that I made during the process. Basically in the site (and the site that manages the site) the flash swf can make custom queries to MySQL databases on the fly, and with only 1 php file, which makes life super easy. I can't post the link to the manager, because it's password protected but maybe I'll put pictures up a little later. Here's a link to the site.

*Edit: Site has been replaced and updated by other companies

Parent Ease, or so it is for now

2008-06-07T16:41:00.010-04:00

So in my takings of breaks from flash work, of course i'm messing around in maya, and I came across the want to do something that led me to some cool expressions. Basically this 'parentEase exp generator' that's in the vid creates a constraint that elapses over time, essentially looking like overlap. Now no this wouldn't be a replacement for the animators overlap, because there is no such thing, but I think it's purposes will come in the next step of developing it. In the area of plant life or other unique special effects that may require it. Anyway, check out the video. For now I only have a generator for a basic parent constraint (relative to each objects local space). The final cube seen in this video is a demo of using the information from the parented object and combining it with rotation expressions to get some simple single object overlap. A plant skeleton using this gen is in the works, but that will come later.

Also, I'm thinking "soft constraints" is a better name for it...

Jobarific!

2008-06-05T17:14:00.007-04:00

So I haven't gotten to work on GD ninja lately because of a cool job I got doing a website for a small medical company out in Massachusetts. But I wanted to keep posting updates on my work, so I figured I'd put up one of the early stages of the site. There's lots to be said and done about it so I'm gonna keep workin on it. After I finish this it will be back to 3D and hopefully I'll be doing some other art as well.

Visions Medical Center early design

sketches

2008-05-29T03:37:00.007-04:00

I'm always tryin to draw somethin good, so here's me dabbling again...
oh and i was just visualizing some loops for fun. not terribly accurate but whatever...

Tutorial: Move Channel Box Attributes

2008-05-26T23:57:00.015-04:00

So here's a quick tutorial on how to rearrange attributes in maya's channel box. You may have wanted to one way or another, so this is my version of how I resolved it.

GD Ninja Sketches

2008-05-25T22:16:00.005-04:00

So right now I'm in the modeling and rigging part of GD Ninja. I should be done with that soon, the feet are rigged as well as the body for overlap and bend. I need to finish the arms and then proceed to the weapons. I think I might add a ribbon or two to the back of his head, maybe as an afterthought. If I do it it'll probably be ncloth, because I want to practice caching etc, get used to the workflow and such. Anyway, after this I'll be texturing and doing stretch tests. Some screenshots should be up soon enough.

GD Ninja

2008-05-22T16:37:00.002-04:00

So Gumdrop Ninja is his name, and he kills people, just like every other ninja. I'm going to be using this guy to practice the whole workflow again. Modeling should be pretty basic, I had a few cool ideas for some of his parts. I'll be trying a couple things during the rigging process, like manual stretchy arms for more precise control as well as some tricky facial stuff. I also have some weapon rig concepts that will be fun to see like a controlled ghosting effect (included in the renders) and random other things. I'll see what happens. All in all this project will just be overall practice, from concept to composite. Hope to make progress soon...

WElfcoemse...

2008-05-16T22:06:00.000-04:00

Welcome. So I guess I'll start here. I'm gonna be using this blog to display a lot of the work I'll be doing, as well as cool links and reference that I stumble upon.

Hopefully this will serve to keep me on track as well as inform anyone who's interested how I do whatever it is that I do.