Finished...

End of quarter... finally done! Project turned out pretty good but it obviously could still use some work (not to mention a breakdown!)

Will post screenshots and a link to it later in the week. I will also be updating this blog as soon as i make any mods or updates over summer.

Special Thanks Professor Pasquale

Render Tests...

I finally got around to finishing the watch face texture, i added the subdials at 9, 6 and 12 o'clock, finished the date window and the tachymeter on the outer perimeter of the main dial - saved out at 3K so i could zoom right in on it and it wouldn't loose quality.



I took the liberty of leaving the outer bezel of the watch as is. I didnt even bother with the bump mapping for the numbers or the little ratches since this would only mean more tedious work when it came to morphing between CG and live action in Shake. As of right now i will be working on the textures for the inside gears and the lighting rig for the inside. Will post images of the test renders as soon as the renderfarm spits it out.

Updates!!!

After a couple of weeks of no relevant updates to report, im finally updating the site with the statusd of the project so far...

This weekend was pretty eventful, not only was it Cinco de Mayo, but i also shot all of the footage! I finally didn't get to use the locations i intended originally because i failed to take not of Armstrong Atlantic's graduation day (which was coincidentally ON cinco de mayo which was the day i had scheduled the equipment and actor) So by the time we got there and saw the amount of people we knew immediately it owuld be imporssible to shoot there and we also knew it was too late to back out. So some quick re-planning and we managed to get the patio outside Sunzi's on Drayton and York streets (downtown). This turned out to be spectacular since we ended up having much more room to work the crane and literally no interruptions due to people walking through frame. The second location we decided would be Forsyth Park (right by the triton fountain) which turned out to be just perfect as well.

Now, down to the interesting tech part... We shot it all on an HVX HD digital camera with a very sweet 35mm lens and adaptor. We also used a 10 foot crane and shot all of the reference material and HDR's with a Nikon d70 (6mp) digital still camera. For the HDR's though, i decided i would really be needing a full resolution 360 HDR sphere, instead i just shot a chrome ball which i will 'unwrap' using HDRshop and use as a lightprobe (using the LightGen plugin) as well as an Image Based Lighting (IBL) node in the actual Maya scene. This way i have maximum control over the lights and shadows.



I will be selecting the best clips out of the 7 gigs of material we shot and will be uploading the maya scenes to the render farm any time now. I also managed to get a hold of a sound design student who will help out with the sound effects in post.

First major setback

Decided to work on modelling the inside of the watch prodecurally in Houdini... i was planning on doing the actual modelling in Houdini (since making gears and mechanical parts is a breeze) and then export and render in Maya. I had some previous experience with exporting geometry from Houdini into Maya for a project i did for my RenderMan class. According to my notes from that project i exported the geometry as .OBJ and worked perfectly in maya... but turns out i was wrong... to start off, i couldn't even get Maya to recognize my .obj files and the only file it did recognize and open was .dxf the thing is that the models it imported using this filetype were complete rubbish.



At this point i am officially not going to try to figure out how to do the export ( if someone has any feedback on how i screwed up here please say so...) and what i will do is export the models as damaged as they are and delete every face except for the profile curves, i will then use this as a building base to recreate the rest of the gear in Maya. Probably not a MAJOR setback but definitely a pain in the neck...

Initial phase completed

My goal for this initial phase of the project was to get the basic modelling done (watch body, bezel, hands etc) the textures for the titanium outer body and the enamel coated minute, hour and second hands are all textured. I will only need to finish up on the high-res textures for the actual face of the watch (the numerals, date window, logo etc). This texture needs to be particularly high-res since the camera will come extremely close to it and it would ruin the effect if the texture appeared pixelated.



The next phase of the project will be to start working on the inside mechanism and working out the test camera moves through the inside of the watch.

I will revisit every texture to fine-tune them to play well with the HDR images i will light the actual Maya scene with and fit it in with the rest of my footage. I did not want to fall into the trap of spending all my time and energy at the beginning of the project focusing on beauty fine-tuning my model since i will have time for that at the end. I first want to get all the base models out of the way since this is what i will use to continue on the second phase, and the beauty details can wait.

Amazing glass sequence reference

Looking for some inspiration i turned to the brilliant folks over at BUF Compagnie in Paris. The have an awesome 2006 Chevy Tahoe commercial where the camera goes straight through the front windshield (similar to my camera going through the crystal face of the watch) and they did some amazing detailing inside the watch i would have never thought of. They actually show the microscopic crystals inside the glass and then have some funky diffraction effects when the camera 'exits' through the other side of the watch.

Because of the way their website is setup i cannot link directly to their commercial so i went and 'print screen-ed' every two frames to have a jpeg reference of the actual shot. To see the actual video you can go to:

BUF > commercial > 2006 > Chevrolet "Tahoe".



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UPDATE
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Looking around on the web i came accross a pretty neat Shake macro created by the guys at MadCrew called MadLens Destroyer which basically creates the lens distortion effect that comes standard with Shake 4.0 and adds a color separation effect to the corners and edges, simulating a type of aberration effect that shows up when lenses are misaligned.



Notice the subtle distortions near the corners of the image. I think it is VERY close to the effect used on the BUF Chevy Tahoe commercial.

More watch resource images

This is particularly perfect because it shows a cross section of a Breitling 'Chronomat' which belongs to the same family as the Chrono avenger, which i'm, using for my project. Hence the inside will be practically the same. Also some very nice closeup images of the actual face of the watch. Thanks to Watchuseek user forums