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

Camera move mock-up

I decided to link up this playblast i created of what i think the camera movement should be like. In essence the shot is meant to look as if it is one fluid camera movement but as you can see most of the important stuff is on camera a fraction of a second. The final version will have speed ramps and will slow down when it reaches areas of interest (eg. going throught the glass, travelling inside the actual watch etc). This playblast is meant to show the actual path i have thought of in my previs.

More titanium

Further tests with the titanium shaders. Contrary to what i initially believed, unlike brushed steel or aluminum, titanium has much smoother surface texture and although if looked at closely one can see minute brushed steel qualities, it is best achieved using layered textures as opposed to trying to get the whole effect in one go.



This rendering shows my initial titanium test (left) and the latest version of the shader (right). I think i got the specular highlights locked down at least to a point where i can move on and then come back and fine-tune the shaders to suit my live action.

HDRI Baby!

I managed to sign-up for Professor Witte's HDRI class so definitely watch out for some image-based lighting and heavy HDR use in many of the CG stuff.

I will link up to my HDR portfolio website as soon as its ready.

Initial glass tests

Messing around on Maya i decided to take short break from the actual watch and run some tests rendering glass materials. Of course watch companies don't use glass for their watches. The crystal protecting most watches' hands and inner mechanisms is usually highly polished quartz crystal (mineral or synthetic) due to its anti-scratch qualities, low distortion levels and overall strength. Of course i don't mind about the actual physical strength of the crystal for my project, but i thought since the camera will come pretty close to the crystal (it will cross through it actually), it would be wise to have a Photorealistic crystal prepared.

I have played around with many of the glass shaders available online (once again, highend3d.com) and most of the times i have abandoned testing phases without any concluding results; so this time i decided to go that extra mile i had never gone.

The basic characteristics i'm looking for in this shader are:

-High reflectivity

-96% - 98% transparency (with some slight opacity nearing the edges)

-a fine balance between distortion, credibility and usability





Right off the shelf i got some pretty convincing results. Of course they will still need much further tweaking, but i was pleasantly surprised to see that i am not as lost or helpless as i thought. As you can note on two of the tests, i replaced the funky-looking grid reflection with a skyline (to simulate something that would be reflected in real life). I played around with the transparency and reflectivity gradients around the edges and i found that using a Smooth V-Ramp gradient (going from dark gray to black) showed the best results (far left).

As soon as i crank out some more tests i will add to this post.

Good watch resource

Doing a little bit of side research for later on in the project (namely the part where i have to recreate the inside of an automatic chronograph timepiece) i came across a rather interestingly detailed website narrating the step-by-step process by which one can disassemble a Miyota automatic watch movement (a cheap, generic, japanese watch movement used in many low-end timpieces).

Eventhough the website focuses on japanese Rolex movements, the movement inside the Breitling Chrono Avenger, which is the watch i'm using for my piece, has a 7750 Japanese movement so most of the similarities are there... and bottom line WHO THE HELL will be able to tell the difference when looking through an Endoscope??? no one!

Click here to view the images and description

First run on the titanium

After getting some of the basic modelling out of the way, i couldn't help myself and had to fo into some texturing. Something that has been on the back of my mind is 'how the hell am i going to replicate the titanium case on the watch to match the look and feel of the original?' well, i still don't know, but i'm sure gonna have fun finding out.

My first instinct was to test some procedural or prefabricated shaders to gauge how off-target they were and take it from there. I travelled to Highend3d.com and downloaded their 'polished titanium' shader in the Maya downloads section. Crap.

Next in line i thought of sampling actual textures and create a high-res Photoshop tileable shader. So i found some free stock images of titanium and other textured metals of the kind and sampled my own. I appended a test render on a proxy object. This is by no means the final version of the shader of course. From here i will experiment with other sampled textures and mix and match to more closely resemble the brushed titanium on the actual watch that is to be shot as part of my live action.


Here is a nice texture i found. I like that it has some highlights, midtones and some darker reflections. this could be useful when sampling and creating reflectivity and specularity maps.

Endoscopy?

After some careful reviewing (and replaying some 200 times) of the video i posted on how 'Double Negative' achieved the look inside the Cryptex in 'The DaVinci Code' one word came to mind: Endoscopy!

It makes perfect sense if you think about it. So far, apart from one or two exceptions, the only electronic device that allows for a clear view of the inner workings of an enclosed system (such as engines, our body, small shafts etc) is Endoscopy and compact fiber optic cameras of the same type.

I found a bunch of endoscopy footage on youtube and Google video but i will refrain from embedding the video on here due to the gag reflex i felt in the back of my throat all the while i was watching. I will post the link however just for reference sake... however i must warn you it is pretty nasty content since most footage shows inside of stomachs.

I think the endoscopy approach for this project will have quite a nice look and feel. I like how all endoscopy footage looks like there's a camera attached to the top of the camera so illumination is uni-directional and follows the camera wherever it goes. Notice how the footage also has a sort of mask around the corners which makes it feel even more caged-in.



Click here to view the Endoscopy footage (beware)

the gathering...

The first task at hand, before starting the modelling phase, will be to collect all of my images and visual resources. This includes the high res images of the watch i mentioned earlier as well as: high res logos and other typography to be used in the final beauty pass and detailing, materials and textures later to be synthesized into usable shaders in Maya and any other material that i think might come in handy at a later stage.

One of the clips i originally had in mind regarding the look and feel of my commercial, was the scene in "the DaVinci code" where the investigator explains how the 'Cryptex' works. Notice how the camera 'glides' into the cryptex, explores its insides with a very interesting look and feel to it(almost as if they had attached a flashlight on top of the camera), and then smoothly glides out of the criptex through the side. This is basically the same procedure i want to do with my project. Glide in through the top, explore, glide out through the side.

Week 1 - Project Kickoff

Week 1 of my "Watch project" is now well under way. Go here to read the project description or view the sotryboards and animatic.

As part of my preparation for the project, i have taken some high res pictures of the actual watch in preparation for the modelling in Maya. It is unclear at this point the level of detail i'm going to have to model in order to achieve the effect i want. My educated guess at this point is i will need a medium quality model of the outside and a very high quality detail model of the inside of the watch.