Windows Tail Program

This is a link to the download page for the program tail.  Tail was designed and is primarily used on linux systems to monitor the updates to a text file.  Basically it continually reads the contents of the file, unlike most programs that make a local copy of a file in memory and then don't read or write to disk until commanded to do so.

 

This works great for RENDER LOG files!!! Most productions houses have a version or conglomeration of tail programs (combined with grep and sed) that will search for certain text strings like "ERROR" or "Warning" and then highlight them and send an email or beep or notify a database of some sort.  These programs combined with scripting languages are the beginings of a render support department that monitors renders every night.

 

Use this program to in conjunction with the render command to generate a log file of your own like so:

 render -r sw -s 389 -log logs/389_CloseUp_6_14.txt scenes/FountainRender.20.mb

Notice the "-log" flag and the specification of a log file that is in your "logs" directory.

Fire Pit - 100 frames - Due 7/11/07

Complete the Chapter 2 Tutorial on the Fire Pit, from the book "Advanced Maya Texturing and Lighting". Submit a 100 frame render in quicktime format. Try to get the fire pit rendered without any shadow artifacts and looking as nice as possible. Graded on quality of render and image beauty. Due: July 11, 2007 in Drop off drive. 

8 DVD Evaluations - Two due Each week

Evaluate EIGHT of the following Gnomon DVDs. Write a 200 word review of the following Training DVDs. Render out two frames illustrating what you learned by using the technique that the disk went over. You can evaluate these in any order. No credit for images that are not your own. The library has all of these for you to check out and watch.

 

1. Bricks and blocks : Jeremy A. Engleman : Photoshop, Maya , Max
2. Character texturing for productio: Ian Joyner : Max, DeepUV, PolyBoost, ZBrush, ZappLink, Zmapper, BodyPaint and Photoshop®
3. Character UV mapping : Sean Mills: Maya
4. Creature texturing and rendering for production : Laurent Pierlot : 3ds Max, bodypaint, zbrush
5. Distressed metal : Jeremy A. Engleman: Photoshop, Maya, Max
   
6. Environment lighting for production : 3ds max
   
7. Global illumination exteriors (3ds Max)
8. Global illumination interiors : Chris NICHOLS: 3ds Max
   
9. Mel 101 fundamentals: Kevin Mannens
10. Mental ray fundamentals : Matt Hartle
11. Mental ray global illumination :Matt Hartle
12. Mental ray lighting and shaders : Matt Hartle
13. Paint effects polygons and dynamics : Ethan Summers
14. Paint effects 101 : Ethan Summers
15. Planks and panels : Jeremy A. Engleman
16. Rendering I-Fundamentals: Jeremy A. Engleman
17. Rendering II-Shadows: Jeremy A. Engleman
18. Rendering III-Light Effects: Jeremy A. Engleman
19. Rendering IV-Light Fog: Jeremy A. Engleman
20. Texturing I-Hypershade and Materials: with Darrin Krumweide
21. Texturing II-Textures and 2d Placement: with Darrin Krumweide
22. Texturing III-Projections and Environments: with Darrin Krumweide
23. Texturing IV-Basic Poly UV Layout: with Darrin Krumweide
24. Texturing V-Advanced Poly UV Layout: with Darrin Krumweide
25. Texture painting fundamentals
    
26. Texture painting weathered surfaces: Paul Campion
27. UV mapping 101: Sean Mills

Submit two evaluation each week. Each evaluation needs to be printed out and should have your written words on the top and the two rendered images on the bottom of the page. Your evaluation must only be one page long. Single spaced 10 point font.

Answer some of these questions if you are not sure what to write about:

• What version of maya was used?
• What year was this made?
• Did the instructor go too fast?
• How many times did you rewind to understand something?
• Were the examples good?
• What interested you most about the techniques on the DVD?
• How can you use these techniques on your current assignments?
• Have you seen a better DVD on this same subject?
• Would you recommed this to your friends/classmates?
• What are the names of the chapters?
• What chapter did you like the best?

Due Dates:

1. 7/11
2. 7/11
3. 7/18
4. 7/18
5. 7/25
6. 7/25
7. 8/1
8. 8/1

Animated Signature - Due 7/18

Using paint effects animate and draw your signature. Complete your signature in less than 30 frames. Stylize and colorize it. You can use any texture or effect (glow) or shader you want.

 

Be sure to animate the writing of your signature by key framing the "Max Clip" parameter in the stroke node in maya.

 

To add style you can change and animate (key frame) the "Smoothing" parameter as well.

 

It is important that you render your signature with no background because you will be "digitally" signing each of your assignments from now on by compositing your signature in the bottom right hand corner just like an artist signs his paintings.

Interior Lighting - Due 7/11

Follow the tutorial in Chapter 1 in the book "Advanced Maya Texturing and Lighting" by Lee Lanier.

 

Turn in a one frame render of the given room geometry in the file room.mb that has been placed in the studentpickup drive for this class.

 

Make the image and lighting as beautiful as you can. Turn in a 720x486 iff or jpg image. Be sure to use the proper naming format, which is: CA3D-310_section_SP07_FirstName_LastName_Interior.jpg

Six Favorite Movie Stills - One Due Each Week

 

Submit a still image from a movie each week (totalling six) using the handbrake software (or any other screen capture) to your personal photo album on this site. In a comment below the picture say what you like about it and what is good about the texturing and lighting aspects of the image.

 

Here is a link to where you should post the photos

 

Due Dates:

1. 7/4
2. 7/11
3. 7/18
4. 7/25
5. 8/1
6. 8/8

---

NOTICE:
Since this is an online assignment you can turn it in by July 4th and August 8th (both days we are not meeting).

3 Mel Script Evaluations - All Due 7/18/07

Find three mel scripts on highend3d (or other websites) that have to do with Lighting, Rendering, or Texturing and install it on your computer and run it. Write a one page (400 word) report on how well it worked for you.

REQUIREMENTS

Answer these questions:

• Did it crash?
• Did it do what it said it would?
• Was the documentation good?
• Do you find it useful?
• Will you use this script in the future?
• Will you recommend it to your friends and this class?

• BENEFITS & FEATURES Give an overview of it’s greatest benefits and features.
• USEFULNESS: Describe a situation where this script would be useful.
• HTML Link: Provide an html link to the scripts source code.
  To create a link type in this code < a href="http://www.thewebsiteaddress_where_you_found_the_script"> Script Name < /a >.
• 400 WORDS There must be at least 400 words in your write-up. To find out how many words are in your write-up, cut and past your post into MS Word and run "File->Properties" and then goto the statistics tab. You should see a "Words" row that tells you how many words you have.
• UNIQUENESS Your write-up must be unique. No other student can review your script. Use the search feature of this website to see who has written up which script already. The search feature is on the top of each page on this website, or click here.
• NO LIGHT GIRL & GI_JOE You can not review these scripts:Light Girl, GI Joe.

Submission

Submit your write-up as a reply to this forum topic. In order to do this you will need to

1. Login.
2. Once you have logged in then return to this assignment description page
3. At the bottom of this description page click on the add new comment link.
4. Put the script name and your name in the Subject separated with a dash. For example: FileTextureManager - Dan Shumaker see the example below.
5. Paste in (or write) your review in the "Comment"section of the webpage.
6. Click the "Preview comment" button.
7. To finish, click the "Post comment" button at the bottom of your comment. This is an essential step

CG Car In Real Photo

Chose a Car from one that you find online or one that you get from the instructor and put it into a real life photo so that it looks like a real car. In order to make it look real you will need to:

• Find an area that you can take a picture of that will be a good place to put your car.
• Take a picture of the area with a digital camera. Try to take the picture at the camera's highest resolution and quality settings.
• Make sure there is a real car close to where your rendered cg car will be. This is used for lighting reference.
• Render out multiple layers for your car. Spec, diffuse, shadow, reflection.
• Setup a lighting_Rig in maya that will mimic the lighting that you seen in the photograph.
• Try to match the perspective of the photograph with the camera that you have created in maya. A simple one frame matchmove.
• Your car needs to have some unique and maually layed out UV's for parts of the car.
• On those parts of the car that you manually layout the uv's for you need to have some personalized textures assigned to them. These textures can be alagamations of different photos you've taken, or different pieces of art you've done, but they need to be unique to your car.

Use must also use the following on your car somewhere:

• Raytracing
• Bump
• Displacment
• UV Mapping

You need to have a before and after example rendered images of when and where you use the above techniques. In other words, I should see at least eight frames of the following:

1. Before Raytracing
2. After Raytracing turned on.
3. Before Bump was used.
4. After Bump was used.
5. Before Displacement was used.
6. After Displacedment was used.
7. Before you painted and layed out custom textures.
8. After you painted and layed out your custom textures.

I must also see a wireframe snapshot frame of your layed out uvs, with the custom textures underneath them layed out flat from photoshop. 

 

4x4x4 Area

You are to design, capture, model, texture, paint, light and render a scene that is approximately four feet by four feet by four feet (four cubic feet) (+-3 feet). This scene can be anywhere you want but should exist in real life.

Take a picture of an area and mimic it in 3D. Build similar models and assign materials and build textures that are appropriate to those models. You should try to have a good selection of different elements. Wood, glass, metal, stone, rubber, and paper are examples but you can determine what is interesting to you (Rust, spray paint, jello, fruit, chalk, plants, etc.) The area does not have to be indoors, but should be accessible to you so you can spend the necessary time to digitally capture the texture images that you will need from the real life objects.

You should try your best to artistically incorporate all the Rendering and Lighting techniques and tools that we have gone over thus far, such as:

Shaders: Anisotropic Layered Ramp Lambert Blinn Phong

Reflections & Refraction. Displacement Maps Bump Maps Lights <!--[if !supportLists]-->· <!--[endif]-->Area <!--[if !supportLists]-->· <!--[endif]-->Point <!--[if !supportLists]-->· <!--[endif]-->Ambient <!--[if !supportLists]-->· <!--[endif]-->Spot <!--[if !supportLists]-->· <!--[endif]-->Directional <!--[if !supportLists]-->· <!--[endif]-->Lights with decay “regions” <!--[if !supportLists]-->· <!--[endif]-->Color Mapped Lights <!--[if !supportLists]-->· <!--[endif]-->Lights with modified penumbra and drop-off. <!--[if !supportLists]-->· <!--[endif]-->Linked Lights. <!--[if !supportLists]-->· <!--[endif]-->Volume Lights.

Textures: <!--[if !supportLists]-->· <!--[endif]-->Layered Textures <!--[if !supportLists]-->· <!--[endif]-->Hand painted textures <!--[if !supportLists]-->· <!--[endif]-->Spec Maps <!--[if !supportLists]-->· <!--[endif]-->Translucence Maps <!--[if !supportLists]-->· <!--[endif]-->Transparency Maps Hard and soft shadows: DMAP <!--[if !supportLists]-->· <!--[endif]-->Shadows from glass objects <!--[if !supportLists]-->· <!--[endif]-->Ray traced shadows. <!--[if !supportLists]-->· <!--[endif]-->Mental ray traced shadows. <!--[if !supportLists]-->· <!--[endif]-->Accurate Self Shadows.

The closer your renders look to the real life image the better your grade will be. Please composite 30 frames of the real 4x4x4 area before your rendered images.

Camera Suggestions:

<!--[if !supportLists]-->· <!--[endif]-->Animated: The camera should animate around the different objects to show off the different features/objects that you have in your scene.

<!--[if !supportLists]-->· <!--[endif]-->Smooth Transitions: If you render out different shots with different cameras and then composite them together with After Effects make sure the camera moves are smooth and not jerky.

<!--[if !supportLists]-->· <!--[endif]-->Depth of field focus differences are nice touches.

No time limit.

Car Style

Go crazy and have fun with a car of your choosing. Go crazy in modifying your car's paint job and body. However you are graded on style and originality, so try to keep the car looking good as apposed to obnoxious and rediculous. Try to settle on a theme for your car. You could use these types of themes if you wish:

• Totally rusted out. (see rusteeze cars in the Pixar Cars movie)
• Totally tricked out to Cruz.(see Fast and Furious trilogy & Freeway Car gang from Pixar's Cars that cause Lightning McQueen to get lost off the highway)
• Totally pimped out. Low rider style
• Rally Car style (stickers all over the place)
• Demolition Car style
• Bottom of the Ocean style
• Bat mobile style
• Monster Truck style
• Exploded on Fire style

Or you can come up with your own theme. As fun as this will be, your car still needs to fit into an environment that is close to real. The environment needs to be:

• Comprised of geometry that you modeled
• Textured with photos of a real environment. (ie. Real side walks, real roads, real buildings, etc.)

Show off your new modified ride through a serious of slowly moving cameras that pan around your car showing off the intricate detail that you have created for it.

 

Advanced Rendering Technique:

You need to use one of these advanced rendering techniques for one of the "shots" (ie. Camera moves) in your project:

• Global Illumination
• Final Gather
• Caustics
• HDRI

These techniques take a long time and therefore I am not requiring that you have to render your whole project with them, just one of the shots.

LABELING: You must label the effects you are showing off. Therefore, put "GI + HDRI", or "Caustics & GI", or "Shadow Layer", or "Displacement" text with a compositing program in the corners of your renders.

BEFORE & AFTER: In order to get credit for this advanced rendering technique you need to show a frame of the scene with regular lights and a frame with the rendering technique.

LENGTH: at least 700 frames

Deep Blue Sea

Underwater – Deep Blue Sea

• Caustics (Fake or Mental Ray)
  
• Fog with water particulates (granit mapped)
• Surface reflection (using Water/ocean shader)
• Sand texture
• Kelp (paint effects)
  
• Rocks (with different textures)
  
• Some fish
• algea
• God Rays
• Coral
• Sea Anenimi's
• Reckage (boats, anchor's rusted )

Make the under water environment as real and tropical as you can.

 

400 frame minimum. 

Outdoor scene

 

Choose an outdoor area that you are going to try and mimic in 3d.  It must cover at least 20feet by 20 feet by 20 feet.

 

Model, texture, and render it.  Try to choose a texture and lighting rich environment.  Here are some ideas:

 

• Redwood Forest
• Beach
• Hillside trail
• Junk Yard
• Jungle
• Mechanic workshop
• Old Atic

400 frame minimum.

 

 

Perfect Storm

Perfect Storm do a shot like in the movie perfect storm. 

• Clouds
• Shadows
• Moon texture
• God rays
• Stars – granite
• Boat on ocean
• Ocean shader.
• Rust on boat
• Storm + Lightning (using paint effects)
  

 

400 frame Minimum