Toon Rendering

Recently one of my school projects required me to do a short animated film in a group. My role in the team was modeling/lighting/texturing/rendering/compositing. The film was basically done by animating characters traditionally and the backgrounds in 3D. To have a consistency in style, a stylized look for 3D rendering was required. Hence, I began my research in toon shading using Maya. I faced a few problems such as lighting and getting the shadows right, but I fixed most of them.

This car was modeled by my friend, Gregory Poon. I constructed the set, did the mountains background in Photoshop and rendered everything using Maya software. Finally, everything was composited in Fusion. The original clip has camera shake, which I did using an expression to randomly offset the camera's position.

The exterior set of a gas station on a highway just before a death valley in the United States. The shadows were blurred during compositing in Fusion. Entire shot done by me, including concept, layout, modeling, texturing, lighting, rendering, and compositing.

The Death Valley sign. Still facing the issue of jagged-edged shadows.

These two are interior shops inside the gas station. For the first shot, everything was done by me. The hand is the same hand used in the previous iSellfish project where the shop-owner puts the bag of fish on the counter. For the second shot, the character was designed and traditionally animated by Angeline Chong. The rest of it was all 3D and done by me.

I'll update here once the video is uploaded on YouTube.

Z-brush Old Man

Okay, I've been really busy with school stuff and preparation for my summer internship at MIT. I'm trying to get some stuff uploaded on YouTube but I'm facing problems. I'll fix those as soon as I can.

Anyway, I had been playing around with Z-brush in more depth. I started working on the default super average man provided by Z-brush and started sculpting it to make him look like an old man.

I used my Wacom tablet to do this. I've only worked on the neck-up area. I have yet to modify the nose, ears, cheeks, chins and pretty much the rest of his body. I'm pretty happy with the result, however I do wish to continue working on this elderly dude once I have the time.