Andrew Dowell

Some time go we started to do is invest time into researching and making ride films. I think this is an excellent time to revisit this and think about the application for VR ride film. This was a welcome departure from traditional filmography and gave us the opportunity to work with some new technology and new clients. http://redraion.com/why-ride-films-are-better-than-attraction-films/ The above website has some interesting points to make about attraction films and ride films. I've copied the relevant parts but I'd say it's also work checking out the link for further reading. Immersive films are not created equally. You can find 5D movies of all kinds: funny, dynamic, entertaining, but also poetic, imaginative, moving. Each 5D film has features and characteristics that make it different from the others. 5D films divide into two groups: ride films and attraction films. What’s the difference? How to understand which genre a movie belongs to? And - most importantly - what gen...

1. Ambient occlusion is a technique used in production to approximate the effect of environment lighting. Unlike the dull, flat look of local lighting models, ambient occlusion can add realism to a scene by accentuating small surface details and adding soft shadows. Use a brush with no hardness and a low opacity. Create layers and add shadow. You can always change the layer opacity if it’s too dark. 2. Lens dirt can be easily done with a new image layer such as the one below and then using a blend mode such as ‘soft light’ to form a transparency. 3. Color correction is time-consuming but sometimes a simple colour gradient can make a huge difference. 4. Chromatic Aberration, also known as “color fringing” or “purple fringing”, is a common optical problem that occurs when a lens is either unable to bring all wavelengths of color to the same focal plane, and/or when wavelengths of color are focused at different positions in the focal plane. This one is easy but looks great, just create tw...

"Great cinematography is not about how to turn a light on but it's about how to shape and mold that light." Lighting Foundation Here is a nice fun video about what light really is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXxZRZxafEQ Now the technical stuff: Light is electromagnetic radiation within a certain portion of the electromagnetic spectrum . The word usually refers to visible light, which is visible to the human eye and is responsible for the sense of sight . Visible light is usually defined as having wavelengths in the range of 400–700 nanometres (nm), or 4.00 × 10−7 to 7.00 × 10−7 m, between the infrared (with longer wavelengths) and the ultraviolet (with shorter wavelengths). This wavelength means a frequency range of roughly 430–750 terahertz (THz). The main source of light on Earth is the Sun . Sunlight provides the energy that green plants use to create sugars mostly in the form of starches, which release energy into the living things that digest them. Th...

Storytelling in VR has a problem. Firstly, stories are usually retrospective. They draw people together to talk about past events and learn from them. It's a way of connecting and sharing information. Creating real time events in VR content relies upon existing forms of linear narrative, at the cross point of video games and film world. Video games become more realistic with deeper and richer stories but the mechanism stays the same, either a cut scene or a cut scene with player choices. (Press 'X' not to die) Is player interaction within a story still a story or is it now a game? Way before video games, I loved to play RPG. Especially 'Vampire Masquerade' and 'Dungeons & Dragons.' Yes, both of these has a set of principle game mechanics but the story was constantly evolving as players took their turns. The job of the games master was to hold everything together, trying and stick to the main plot whilst everyone else did their own thing. It sounds like a...

How to tell a story. Stories are the birthplace of language. Some stories are good, some stories are fantastic, but some stories deliverer such a deep affirmation and connection that they can cross the barriers of time.We are born for stories. Make a promise that the story is worth the viewers time. Start with the message, make me care. Every storytelling exercise should begin by asking: Who is my audience, what is the medium and what is the message I want to share with them? Each decision about your story should flow from those questions. “What is the core moral that I’m trying to implant and How can I boil that down to a compelling single statement?” First settle on your ultimate message; then you can figure out the best way to illustrate it. The unifying theory of 2+2. Since we're all natural problem solvers, it brings us great satisfaction to solve problems put in front of us. Contrary to what it might seem, we actually like to work for results rather than be given them, an...

Growth is often slow and painful. Substance painter took a few hours to figure out but I'm very happy with the results. Building layers like Photoshop and using an IDmap can bring about great procedural textures. The standard brushes and materials are excellent but it's easy enough to find any special requirements you may have via the Substance community. Once complete it's easy enough to export your textures. Once you have your textures you can then use them back in Maya, or a game engine. I tested mine in Unreal engine. I also test my robot hand mesh with 4k textures in a game package build for Android, and tested on the Samsung Gear VR. Looked great, although it should be noted that currently the normal maps aren't working properly in VR however I'm sure this will be fixed soon enough.

It's been a very busy few weeks. Lots and lots of training, working hard and playing in VR. Back to modeling. The first part of the 3D Artist work flow is to produce and accurate model. I used Autodesk Maya. (See middle model). This has been reduced to the acceptable polygon face count for game engine use and then smoothed. This model is then exported in Zbrush. Once in Zbrush, a high poly model is created using a method of dynamesh, ZRemesher, divide and projection. Sounds complicated, but its simple once you've done it a few times. Then you can start on adding detail and mesh texture to make a high definition model. (See right model) Before you can import the high poly mesh into Maya. you need to use Decimation master, in the Zplugin drop down. Anything from 5% to 20% usually works for me. Now you'll have a small file size but still retain most of the detail. Now you need to use the original low poly model to make sure is a good match overlay. Changing the high poly mode...

“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” - Albert Einstein Morning all, Sometimes in life, you just need to know when to let go. Holding onto what you believe is right and sticking to your guns is commendable but often due to stubbornness and a lack of clarity. To understand the bigger picture sometimes you need to make smart moves, this doesn't mean it's the right move but if i can project you forward then it's got to be benifitial. So with that in mind, I've made two big changes. Forget what I think I know and start again. The other one is to abandon my first robot hand project as it was going nowhere. A few hours in Maya and I'm back with a new model. Exported and imported (in parts) and boom, we have a model. Now to introduce my five new best friends. Duplicate, DynaMesh, Zremesher, Divide and Project. In that order. You can take any shape of booleans and merge them together correcting the mesh and keeping the original shape whilst...

Back into the grinder. As the wolves grow closer to the door it's hard to remain positive and when you can see little value in what you can offer. As the industry changes so do expectations, artists are required to know more and have a larger skill set and provide a better quality of work. I know that this is self-fulfilling suicide as now one artist can do the job of three or four whilst remaining on the same salary and a shorter time frame. You need to be a god damn wizard just to get into the game. So, I need to take more productive steps to learn more software to a higher proficiency. Maya, Zbrush and Photoshop to name three right off the bat. The shape of things to come will include a lot of late nights, early mornings, family sacrifice and a lot of coffee. Adventures aren't meant to be easy or everyone would be doing it. Model training 101. The Robot arm. Below is an image I resourced from the internet. It's got a nice range of design elements and will require differe...

Welcome back. Another exciting week and a lack of work due to another Typhoon. Luckily this one isn't as strong but it's gonna hit us straight on. But, Typhoon Megi isn't strong enough to stop me. Lots of cool stuff happening so let's get into it. A few years ago I really enjoyed a video game called 'Remember Me', clearly, from the same Deus Ex mold this game's core feature was to allow players to rewind scenes and change other NPC's memories to effect the scene in play. Straight out of Ghost in the Shell, this game not only had a great story, fantastic visuals but also a nice game mechanic.  It's actually very revolutionary and raised the bar for in performance and quality. Like a lot cutting edge games which help drive game engineers to excel, this one also slipped under a lot of people's radar. 'Rage' is another one to check out. It used incredibly diverse textures, a new realistic physics engine, could run at 60fps, had ...