Table UV

Monday 28 February 2011



Thanks Tom! You was right, the problem was in geometry!

Friends! Concept Art

Sunday 27 February 2011
My dear friends, colleagues and tutors I love you all. Please would you be so kind and click "I like it" under the pictures on this link - > http://exeshe4ki.com/?p=190

Otherwise this wonderful amazon warrior will come for you :) (joke)


Here is preview

Attic 01

Saturday 26 February 2011
Replaced the fireplace and added thickness to the window. Removed bookshelf. Added mirror, books, candles.

Details v.??





I'm happy with the mirror. Needs to be destroyed a little bit - geometry or texture, don't know.
I also have a cupboard, but I won't use it in my scene. First of all, I don't have any actions with it and don't want to cook up something. Secondly, as I said, it will be too much.

Attic

Friday 25 February 2011


Here are the variations of the attic. Attic has enough furniture for abandoned place, however, I thought to add a cupboard. But later I decided that I would add some household stuff like boxes, plates, bags, etc.

Next question is "one or two windows?". Two allow me to place the fireplace in right positions, because on the second and third pictures it has illogical position (fireplace in the roof ?), but here it is in focal point. On the first we are not able to recognise it quickly.

To conclude:
Fireplace
Windows
Position
Stuff

Ghost Town Script

Tuesday 22 February 2011


V.nice plug-in for those who want to create a massive town!

Details

Fireplace WIP
Eveything is almost done. Hard to make decision about placement of everything. Probably, this continues til the very end :). 

Concerning statue. Hm, I don't want to spend time on her. She works for me. This is not aristocratic fireplace and conceals different meaning. Anyway, will see.

Ready to work on UV's, texturing alongside VFX...

p.s. Камин жутко херовый пока-что. - Message to myself.

Gnomon Tutorial

Sunday 20 February 2011

This is tutorial from Introduction to Maya Fluids Effects Volume One: Smoke and Flames by Wayne Hollingsworth. The tutorial is great, everything is clear and easy to follow. This is my first practice with Maya Fluids... One thing: Maya Fluids are really heavy. :(

There is really only one way to learn how to do something and that is to do it.

Making of N0X-2292

Saturday 19 February 2011




p.s. Thanks to Jon Stewart.

Attic chamber WIP

This is rough preview of attic. I was curious how everything is working together. Actually, it works, nonetheless details are missing. I'm almost ready to start texturing and doing some VFX pre-viz's.

Any ideas and advices about furniture placement are welcome.

Introduction

Friday 18 February 2011
The project I'm doing is based on a H.P. Lovecraft story "The evil clergyman".
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Evil Clergyman

I was shown into the attic chamber by a grave, intelligent-looking man with quiet clothes and an iron-gray beard, who spoke to me in this fashion:
"Yes, he lived here- but I don’t advise your doing anything. Your curiosity makes you irresponsible. We never come here at night, and it’s only because of his will that we keep it this way. You know what he did. That abominable society took charge at last, and we don’t know where he is buried. There was no way the law or anything else could reach the society.
"I hope you won’t stay till after dark. And I beg of you to let that thing on the table- the thing that looks like a match-box- alone. We don’t know what it is, but we suspect it has something to do with what he did. We even avoid looking at it very steadily."
After a time the man left me alone in the attic room. It was very dingy and dusty, and only primitively furnished, but it had a neatness which showed it was not a slum-denizen’s quarters. There were shelves full of theological and classical books, and another bookcase containing treatises on magic- Paracelsus, Albertus Magnus, Trithemius, Hermes Trismegistus, Borellus, and others in a strange alphabet whose titles I could not decipher. The furniture was very plain. There was a door, but it led only into a closet. The only egress was the aperture in the floor up to which the crude, steep staircase led. The windows were of bull’s-eye pattern, and the black oak beams bespoke unbelievable antiquity. Plainly, this house was of the Old World. I seemed to know where I was, but cannot recall what I then knew. Certainly the town was not London. My impression is of a small seaport.
The small object on the table fascinated me intensely. I seemed to know what to do with it, for I drew a pocket electric light- or what looked like one- out of my pocket and nervously tested its flashes. The light was not white but violet, and seemed less like true light than like some radioactive bombardment. I recall that I did not regard it as a common flashlight- indeed, I had a common flashlight in another pocket.
It was getting dark, and the ancient roofs and chimney-pots outside looked very queer through the bull’s-eye window-panes. Finally I summoned up courage and propped the small object up on the table against a book- then turned the rays of the peculiar violet light upon it. The light seemed now to be more like a rain of hail or small violet particles than like a continuous beam. As the particles struck the glassy surface at the center of the strange device, they seemed to produce a crackling noise like the sputtering of a vacuum tube through which sparks are passed. The dark glassy surface displayed a pinkish glow, and a vague white shape seemed to be taking form at its center. Then I noticed that I was not alone in the room- and put the ray-projector back in my pocket.
But the newcomer did not speak- nor did I hear any sound whatever during all the immediately following moments. Everything was shadowy pantomime, as if seen at a vast distance through some intervening haze- although on the other hand the newcomer and all subsequent comers loomed large and close, as if both near and distant, according to some abnormal geometry.
The newcomer was a thin, dark man of medium height attired in the clerical garb of the Anglican church. He was apparently about thirty years old, with a sallow, olive complexion and fairly good features, but an abnormally high forehead. His black hair was well cut and neatly brushed, and he was clean-shaven though blue-chinned with a heavy growth of beard. He wore rimless spectacles with steel bows. His build and lower facial features were like other clergymen I had seen, but he had a vastly higher forehead, and was darker and more intelligent-looking- also more subtly and concealedly evil-looking. At the present moment- having just lighted a faint oil lamp- he looked nervous, and before I knew it he was casting all his magical books into a fireplace on the window side of the room (where the wall slanted sharply) which I had not noticed before. The flames devoured the volumes greedily- leaping up in strange colors and emitting indescribably hideous odors as the strangely hieroglyphed leaves and wormy bindings succumbed to the devastating element. All at once I saw there were others in the room- grave-looking men in clerical costume, one of whom wore the bands and knee-breeches of a bishop. Though I could hear nothing, I could see that they were bringing a decision of vast import to the first-comer. They seemed to hate and fear him at the same time, and he seemed to return these sentiments. His face set itself into a grim expression, but I could see his right hand shaking as he tried to grip the back of a chair. The bishop pointed to the empty case and to the fireplace (where the flames had died down amidst a charred, non-committal mass), and seemed filled with a peculiar loathing. The first-comer then gave a wry smile and reached out with his left hand toward the small object on the table. Everyone then seemed frightened. The procession of clerics began filing down the steep stairs through the trapdoor in the floor, turning and making menacing gestures as they left. The bishop was last to go.
The first-comer now went to a cupboard on the inner side of the room and extracted a coil of rope. Mounting a chair, he attached one end of the rope to a hook in the great exposed central beam of black oak, and began making a noose with the other end. Realizing he was about to hang himself, I started forward to dissuade or save him. He saw me and ceased his preparations, looking at me with a kind of triumph which puzzled and disturbed me. He slowly stepped down from the chair and began gliding toward me with a positively wolfish grin on his dark, thin-lipped face.
I felt somehow in deadly peril, and drew out the peculiar ray-projector as a weapon of defense. Why I thought it could help me, I do not know. I turned it on- full in his face, and saw the sallow features glow first with violet and then with pinkish light. His expression of wolfish exultation began to be crowded aside by a look of profound fear- which did not, however, wholly displace the exultation. He stopped in his tracks- then, flailing his arms wildly in the air, began to stagger backwards. I saw he was edging toward the open stair-well in the floor, and tried to shout a warning, but he did not hear me. In another instant he had lurched backward through the opening and was lost to view.
I found difficulty in moving toward the stair-well, but when I did get there I found no crushed body on the floor below. Instead there was a clatter of people coming up with lanterns, for the spell of phantasmal silence had broken, and I once more heard sounds and saw figures as normally tri-dimensional. Something had evidently drawn a crowd to this place. Had there been a noise I had not heard?
Presently the two people (simple villagers, apparently) farthest in the lead saw me- and stood paralyzed. One of them shrieked loudly and reverberantly:
"Ahrrh! ... It be’ee, zur? Again?"
Then they all turned and fled frantically. All, that is, but one. When the crowd was gone I saw the grave-bearded man who had brought me to this place- standing alone with a lantern. He was gazing at me gaspingly and fascinatedly, but did not seem afraid. Then he began to ascend the stairs, and joined me in the attic. He spoke:
"So you didn’t let it alone! I’m sorry. I know what has happened. It happened once before, but the man got frightened and shot himself. You ought not to have made him come back. You know what he wants. But you mustn’t get frightened like the other man he got. Something very strange and terrible has happened to you, but it didn’t get far enough to hurt your mind and personality. If you’ll keep cool, and accept the need for making certain radical readjustments in your life, you can keep right on enjoying the world, and the fruits of your scholarship. But you can’t live here- and I don’t think you’ll wish to go back to London. I’d advise America.
"You mustn’t try anything more with that- thing. Nothing can be put back now. It would only make matters worse to do- or summon- anything. You are not as badly off as you might be- but you must get out of here at once and stay away. You’d better thank Heaven it didn’t go further...
"I’m going to prepare you as bluntly as I can. There’s been a certain change- in your personal appearance. He always causes that. But in a new country you can get used to it. There’s a mirror up at the other end of the room, and I’m going to take you to it. You’ll get a shock- though you will see nothing repulsive."
I was now shaking with a deadly fear, and the bearded man almost had to hold me up as he walked me across the room to the mirror, the faint lamp (i.e., that formerly on the table, not the still fainter lantern he had brought) in his free hand. This is what I saw in the glass:
A thin, dark man of medium stature attired in the clerical garb of the Anglican church, apparently about thirty, and with rimless, steel-bowed glasses glistening beneath a sallow, olive forehead of abnormal height.
It was the silent first-comer who had burned his books.
For all the rest of my life, in outward form, I was to be that man! (c) 1937
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I'm recreating the attic chamber and the experience of the evileness, mysticism and uncanny visions etc..
I'm not creating characters and so on. Just the atmosphere trying to dive into VFX field.

Fireplace Detailv2

Horned Woman Devil  - Fireplace column for my attic room.

Fireplace Detail

Tuesday 15 February 2011
As I understood no one looks in the WIP section. Well, maybe I leave it for myself.

I'm also working on a fireplace. The idea is to make a woman-gargoyle-hybrid for columns. Why ? Because this incarnation refers to succubus [In folklore traced back to medieval legend, a succubus is a female demon appearing in dreams who takes the form of a human woman in order to seduce men, usually through sexual intercourse], which will add demonic bias to my scene ;). Anyway, I'm trying not to fall in modelling too much. As I ...
1. It is not I'm going for
2. Don't have time

Torso.

The Table v2

Average table, I'm satisfied.

As one of my Mighty tutors Alan told me, I need to block everything in Maya and see what is working and what is not. I'm kinda stupid that didn't understand that idea on the previous week, poor me :). Anyway, this is my next step. And I hope that everything will work. If it's works, then according to my plan I'll start texturing on the next weekend. In other words, I will set a platform for VFX.

The Table

Saturday 12 February 2011
Well, I've created a table only to understand that I don't need complicated one. Because table must ascetic, primitive and massive. It must look simple and rough for this case. Also, there will be different details on it. So that, it will create contrast. Simple with florid.




Houdini Demo Reel 2010

I love you!

Beautiful animation and poetry that touched my heart. Sorry, no translation.

The Clock

Friday 11 February 2011
In the Evil Clergyman everything starts after midnight. The chime of the old clock will let the audience know about time and, also, this is a good start for "evil, dreadful" events.


Thursday 10 February 2011
Rough thumbnails of the attic room.Update is possible.

Antique furniture research



Wednesday 9 February 2011
We are the film characters
Where are no directors, no make-up artists,
No operators, no lighting designers no,
Where all actors are employed
And has its own role, ultimate priority and text.

We are the film character,
Without front cover, sentimentality, intrigues
And no accompaniment
Where is no lie nor truth,
Where everything is clear
Story line is the major line
Life - one big script
created by ourselves,
not written, but memorized.
And we don't know the ending,
however charging and shooting,
shooting, shooting ... action!

We are the film characters
On the black and white type
And playing delicately
Almost seamless
Without static shots
One big race
Without close-ups, everything in vista shot,
From the distance

We are the film character.
Almost silent movie.
With various special effects and tricks,
Without stunt persons and dublicates
And only one shot
One careless movement:
Stop, thanks, cut!

We - film characters
Not television serial
There will be end and no happy ending
We are the film characters
It is shame that there are few good films...

Sorry for primitive english and mistakes. In this case it doesn't matter.
Бог простит.

Interesting to read

The Anatomy of an Explosions

Making of Tron

Tuesday 8 February 2011
I think from this point the modelling process will speed up.

Ornaments preview.

Into Maya Dynamics & Particle System

Monday 7 February 2011

Sunday 6 February 2011

I still need to add carved patterns, however, I don't know the best way to do this. Modelling, normal map, or use claster and push or pull or play with curve.
Alan, if somehow you will have a glance to this post, maybe you suggest me something. Otherwise they look way too primitive. Anyway, there is tuesday.

p.s. progress in WIP section.Indeed.

Description of the Attic

Wednesday 2 February 2011
It was very dingy and dusty, and only primitively furnished, but it had a neatness which showed it was not a slum-denizen’s quarters. There were shelves full of theological and classical books, and another bookcase containing treatises on magic- Paracelsus, Albertus Magnus, Trithemius, Hermes Trismegistus, Borellus, and others in a strange alphabet whose titles I could not decipher. The furniture was very plain. There was a door, but it led only into a closet. The only egress was the aperture in the floor up to which the crude, steep staircase led. The windows were of bull’s-eye pattern, and the black oak beams bespoke unbelievable antiquity. Plainly, this house was of the Old World.