|
I'm coming off the end of a degree in Computer Graphic Technology with a focus in animation, but while I started school thinking I'd want to be doing game art, I'm pretty sure by now that the game industry is not someplace I want to work. Reading this thread I've become interested in architectural visualisation, so I was wondering what you archvis guys have to say about your experiences in that field. Specifically, I'm wondering: - What are the hours like? 40-ish hours a week? Are there crazy crunch times? - Where am I most likely to find a job in the field (location wise)? - What should my portfolio have in it? Any input would be greatly appreciated.
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2009 23:51
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 29, 2024 04:00 |
|
|
Travakian posted:Anybody in Toronto work at CORE? Heard they're starting on a Shyamalan film on January. Just wondering if it's Airbender (which releases July 2) or something else -- I figure you probably can't talk about it, but with the whole anonymity thing I'm hazarding a chance. I don't think you'll have people there commenting on gossip on the internet due to NDA's. They work on a wide range of stuff, animated tv shows, effects for film, some production stuff, some 2d/flash/after effects stuff. An easy way into Core is if you are a good Houdini TD. Films get worked on all over the place. One show I worked on was largely done by California studios, but with a few shots done in Canada, a sequence in the UK and some compositing work done in South America or modeling in India, etc.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2009 00:19
|
|
|
mashed_penguin posted:I don't work at core but I imagine most people wouldn't talk about it even with anonymnity. Studios aren't really that big and it wouldn't take long for most places to figure it out if they wanted to. Yeh a bunch of places are getting audited all over the place by them for leaks and other security things.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2009 00:25
|
|
|
^^^ Got to watch out for those Thetans. RE Toronto- if you want to work there you should also have a look at Mr X and Starz (the other two largish 3d studios). There are also a few others but its late and I can't be assed finding their websites.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2009 01:09
|
|
|
Chenghiz posted:- What are the hours like? 40-ish hours a week? Are there crazy crunch times? I do 37.5 hours - crunch is once or twice a year, lasts a couple of weeks. Location wise pretty much anywhere - arch viz is easy to get by with a 2-5 man studio, so theres less of a need for a central area. You'll need to be in a city, but you've got more choice than guys in vfx do. Pictures of buildings mostly. Clients can be proper spazzes at times but the good far outweighs the bad.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2009 02:18
|
|
|
cubicle gangster posted:I do 37.5 hours - crunch is once or twice a year, lasts a couple of weeks. Thanks for the reply. For portfolio work, do you recommend I try modelling existing stuff from reference or creating my own, or perhaps a mix? Also, I'm really familiar with Maya and mental ray, but not so much with max and vRay. Do you know of some good tutorial resources that would get me started on the max/vray specific side of things?
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2009 02:35
|
|
|
CGTalk is always a good place to start looking for tips on a new software you are trying to learn. The max forum has some stickied threads with useful tutorials. Vray is probably easier to pick up than mental ray and places like cgarchitect probably have a good amount of info typical scene setups with vray. There is also a book "the complete guide to vray" or something similar, which is pretty exhaustive.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2009 05:19
|
|
|
Chenghiz posted:Thanks for the reply. For portfolio work, do you recommend I try modelling existing stuff from reference or creating my own, or perhaps a mix? Also, I'm really familiar with Maya and mental ray, but not so much with max and vRay. Do you know of some good tutorial resources that would get me started on the max/vray specific side of things? Creating your own is usually too big a job, you'll spend too long figuring out what it's supposed to look like to actually make it good. When you're doing arch viz, it may aswell be existing for all the information you have. Stuff i'd reccomend for your portfolio: Photo map a building - pick a really old one in your area, take shitloads of photos and model/map the whole thing directly from photos and a section of street - you can get away with fariyl low poly and rough for this, the photos do a lot of the work. Render it under different lighting etc. Model a building based on photos and measurements, and re-texture it with materials made from scratch (use https://www.cgtextures.com) Do an internal - copy a room, wing the furniture, whatever. One cluttered one and one high end minimal one would cover your bases here. Anything else is just padding, those are the 'he can actually do all the work we're likley to throw at him' ones. This is the vray manual - http://www.spot3d.com/vray/help/150R1/ Read every last bit of the plugins & examples section and save the rest to your favourites. The gnomon external lighting dvd is very good - i'd seriously reccomend picking it up, I learnt a hell of a lot from it. It's the one by chris nichols. (the internals one with the bath on the cover is a bit poo poo) cubicle gangster fucked around with this message at 10:38 on Nov 20, 2009 |
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2009 10:31
|
|
|
Does anyone know of any codecs I can use to get 16:9 24fps footage to play back in premiere when editing? It's frustrating as hell when things don't play smoothly. I'm bringing in uncompressed avi's, but when I render them in-program while editing they won't play back smoothly enough. I'm using DVCPRO right now. It looks like poo poo and plays back like poo poo. I tried to get some demos of other codecs but I couldn't get Premiere to let me use them as playback codecs. Edit: Non-HD
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2009 04:45
|
|
|
Why can't you just use the same uncompressed codec your footage is all ready using?
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2009 02:30
|
|
|
Hinchu posted:Does anyone know of any codecs I can use to get 16:9 24fps footage to play back in premiere when editing? It's frustrating as hell when things don't play smoothly. I'm bringing in uncompressed avi's, but when I render them in-program while editing they won't play back smoothly enough. I'm using DVCPRO right now. It looks like poo poo and plays back like poo poo. Just had to deal with this crap, it was poo poo trying to get anything to work, I ended up just using an image sequence inside of After Effects. I'd recommend the same :-D
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2009 03:10
|
|
|
If I create an uncompressed project it won't play back real time. The original footage is all uncompressed and from the way I would think of it is that there is too much raw data to process for it to play back at the real frame rate. It seems like you could get a good codec like mjpeg2000 to edit on, but for some reason Premiere doesn't really let you choose it as the project codec. I can get the program to export rendering to whatever codec I want, but not work in program. All of the DV codecs still stutter while working on the project and an annoyance of mine is that they look bad, which really isn't that bad but annoying. Ratmann posted:Just had to deal with this crap, it was poo poo trying to get anything to work, I ended up just using an image sequence inside of After Effects. I'd recommend the same :-D What do you mean by using an image sequence inside After Effects? I'm confused on how this relates to editing a final project down in Premiere. Google is really not giving me good answers on any of this.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2009 05:32
|
|
|
Does anyone have any school experience for 3D animation in Texas? I'm going to North Texas and I'm in a new program called New Media which is so new that it seems that no one really knows anything about it. The section about it on the school's website is rather vague, and I'm getting cold feet about it. I tried asking in the school advice thread, but no one really answered. Would appreciate any advice, thanks 
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2009 06:53
|
|
|
Hinchu posted:What do you mean by using an image sequence inside After Effects? I'm confused on how this relates to editing a final project down in Premiere. Open your footage in After Effects and render each piece out as an image sequence, then load that into Premiere. No lag / stutters, you can choose the fps without any weirdness and you don't risk corrupting a massive file (should your hard drive decide to die when processing the shot)
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2009 07:55
|
|
|
Here's something I've been working on for a little while. Kind of an hour here and there. A Galapagos giant tortoise. This time I'm going for some actual topology so I can easily texture, rig and animate this sucker. Not that I find rigging or animation easy in any way  It still has a fair bit of fixing up and finessing of various bits before I export maps and start to texture. *edit* Oh yeah and I believe they actually have more toes on their rear foot but by the time I noticed it was too late. Fuuuuck...   ...and the base mesh 
EoinCannon fucked around with this message at 08:04 on Nov 22, 2009 |
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2009 08:01
|
|
|
Hinchu posted:If I create an uncompressed project it won't play back real time. The original footage is all uncompressed and from the way I would think of it is that there is too much raw data to process for it to play back at the real frame rate. Using an image sequence inside After Effects will work but is not going to help you with interactive playback. After Effects can usually only play an image sequence in realtime after doing a ram preview, which is limited by the ammount of memory you have. If you are doing anthing longer than a minute or two After Effects would be really painful to edit in. I don't know if it is supported in Premiere but in FCP I use Prores 422 as my editing codec and it runs nicely in realtime. You won't be able to play back an uncompressed project in realtime because of the data rate that you mentioned. So you generaly choose an editing codec. If you want to maximise quality the general workflow is to convert your footage to a compressed format and edit that. Then export an EDL file to your onlining package. This could be After Effects or Smoke or something along those lines. The onliner then uses the EDL to reassemble your edit from your original footage and maintains your high quality version. The cool thing with After Effects is that you can import a premiere project and relink your high quality footage quite easily. Take this with a grain of salt though. I am an FXTD by day and most of my editing in the last 5 years has been home movies and my demo reel  EoinCannon posted:Here's something I've been working on for a little while. Kind of an hour here and there. A Galapagos giant tortoise. This time I'm going for some actual topology so I can easily texture, rig and animate this sucker. Not that I find rigging or animation easy in any way Nice man. I really like the skin details around his neck. Animating that guy and getting all the skin folds moving nicely will be a total bitch though
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2009 19:29
|
|
|
I played around with Premiere for a few hours today trying out everything I could think of. I discovered that the various codecs actually play back just fine on my computer... as long as I don't play them in Premiere itself. I navigated to the rendered footage and played it back in my various media players outside of Premiere. They all play completely smoothly with no problems whatsoever. I scoured Premiere to see if I could find any setting that would make it play smoothly but I didn't find anything. I'm pretty baffled really. I messed with playback quality settings and rendering optimized for memory and performance. At work I use FCP and Shake. I find the entire Mac video ecosystem to work so much more smooth. I'm honestly not a big fan of Macs except maybe in this regard. Regardless if the source footage was DV or from Shake after rendering everything would play back just fine in FCP. Arggh.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2009 23:17
|
|
|
I've done all my UVW mapping and set up my sculpt to export displacement maps into MAX. This is a test done with low res maps to check that stuff is working. Wireframe is comped over the top. Done with mental ray. mashed_penguin - I think this model might be a good chance to look into blending displacement maps driven by the rig. 
|
|
#
?
Nov 23, 2009 13:32
|
|
|
mashed_penguin posted:If you want to maximise quality the general workflow is to convert your footage to a compressed format and edit that. Then export an EDL file to your onlining package. This could be After Effects or Smoke or something along those lines. The onliner then uses the EDL to reassemble your edit from your original footage and maintains your high quality version. The cool thing with After Effects is that you can import a premiere project and relink your high quality footage quite easily. This is actually what we did back in college in our intro video classes. The computers weren't fast enough to play raw DV footage, so we captured a lower-res version in a more playable codec in FCP and did all the editing with that. It looked like garbage, of course, but that didn't matter. Once you had your edit locked down, you ran some sort of process that took the timecode instructions, went back to tape and captured the DV res and it edited it for you automatically. Not sure how this would work in Premiere(or even FCP at this point).
|
|
#
?
Nov 23, 2009 16:04
|
|
|
Eh, why not. Mid texture WIP: 
|
|
#
?
Nov 23, 2009 16:07
|
|
|
tuna posted:Eh, why not. HAY TUNA. While we're at it, here is something I was working on.
|
|
#
?
Nov 23, 2009 23:30
|
|
|
EoinCannon posted:I've done all my UVW mapping and set up my sculpt to export displacement maps into MAX. This is a test done with low res maps to check that stuff is working. Wireframe is comped over the top. Done with mental ray. pretty dam awesome sculpt as for animation thouse edge loops should work fine bit perplexed as to the distibution of polygons across the shell tho not that it'll matter much.
|
|
#
?
Nov 24, 2009 01:58
|
|
|
Cheers Steve With the shell I wanted to lay out the joins between the shell plates before going into Zbrush and I got obsessed with maintaining quads. The poly distribution got pretty uneven but I guess it's not deforming geometry so I'll live with it. Ratmann - is that krakatoa running from a fluid sim? Is it fume? An FX artist mate of mine would like to know. Looks really cool btw
|
|
#
?
Nov 24, 2009 05:18
|
|
|
EoinCannon posted:Ratmann - is that krakatoa running from a fluid sim? Is it fume? An FX artist mate of mine would like to know. All done in Houdini  Trying to get a custom looking thing like Krakatoa working in Houdini, though I've used Krakatoa and fume stuff before. Ratmann fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Nov 24, 2009 |
|
#
?
Nov 24, 2009 09:26
|
|
|
 Click here for the full 1920x1080 image. Why does my model end up like this when i'm trying to animate him (move vertex to make him smile etc). What am I doing wrong?
|
|
#
?
Nov 24, 2009 13:59
|
|
|
At a rough guess, I'd say your skinning weights arent quite right for the bits that are going haywire.
|
|
#
?
Nov 24, 2009 14:17
|
|
|
This thread makes me hate myself for dropping out of film school... You guys think if I learned the poo poo out of 3D modeling, compositing etc on my own, and got a graphic design degree, that as long as I have a sweet reel I could still get a decent job doing motion graphics, maybe compositing? I've learned all my graphic design skills on my own, and while they're low level, they got me my job now, and even though its a small business and this recession has put us on a skeleton crew I'm the only graphics/media guy they have, so all video and marketing is on me, and for the CCTV Business I'd say I'm more than qualified, and they're more than pleased. So I'm wondering if I got good enough at compositing and motion graphics etc on my own, while getting a graphic design degree (no schools in my current city really have good video/3d programs) would be enough to land some decent jobs. I know the only thing really keeping me from getting a great job at some of the bigger firms in town is that stupid degree, most wont even interview if you dont have one. And the school I could go to here focuses on still graphics, posters and product development kind of things.
|
|
#
?
Nov 24, 2009 17:37
|
|
|
Easily - it's an industry that goes by portfolio more than anything so you're only really as good as you let yourself be. edit: I always find it odd that you need a degree to get an average job - but if you were applying for one of the high end film/vfx places they couldnt give a poo poo if you had one or not and it's all done on quality of work. I made some water today!  It's on a 50x50m plane, completley procedural and set up for 2000 frames of animation. Aside from some flickering that comes in after a few hundred frames (I think it's my displacement settings), it's all set to go. cubicle gangster fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Nov 24, 2009 |
|
#
?
Nov 24, 2009 18:53
|
|
|
RizieN posted:stuff Yes, go for it, if you can show that you can do the work you will have a chance. Are you from the US or the UK or in Vancouver? That's where most of the work seems to be going on at the moment, so if you are from those places VISA issues won't apply to you.
|
|
#
?
Nov 24, 2009 19:07
|
|
|
RizieN posted:This thread makes me hate myself for dropping out of film school... I have no degree in anything, and barely finished high school. Pretty much been self taught with books, dvds and in work. If you got a job somewhere doing graphic design that's a good start, you just gotta practice and hone your skills, the key thing about this line of work is to practice and practice. Compositing and motion graphics are good skills to have and go together pretty well. The way I got my first jobs I basically moved to LA on my own with no job and sent out resumes at studios for whatever, luckily I'm somewhat technical and not afraid of anything in work so I was able to start as a Data IO and other stuff, and the rest is history, but it still takes a lot of work.
|
|
#
?
Nov 24, 2009 19:26
|
|
|
RizieN posted:This thread makes me hate myself for dropping out of film school... As others have said your qualifications or lack thereof mean diddly squat if you can put together a good reel. The only thing a degree is really useful for is work visas for the USA if you aren't American. If you want to aim for an entry level job in Film / TV the best thing to do is focus on one specific thing and become really good at that. By not spreading your time thin you will get much better results than trying to learn it all. For compositing the best way in is probably to focus on plate cleanup work, painting out wires etc. A lot of shops recruit jr compositors into the BG prep team first and usually graduate into compositing after a few shows or years of doing that. For motion graphics i'm not really sure what places look for I'm afraid. Of course if you aren't going to be looking for work in a major production center the things to aim for are probably completly different.
|
|
#
?
Nov 24, 2009 20:17
|
|
|
Any of you guys seen this before? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHD8Xf5Rnvo Absolutely blew me away.
|
|
#
?
Nov 24, 2009 20:24
|
|
|
On the vein of posting cool stuff: http://www.vimeo.com/7670880 This is pretty much the coolest thing I've seen all year.
|
|
#
?
Nov 24, 2009 20:26
|
|
|
Kristneder posted:
AAAAAaaaaaaa for the love of god never animate vertices, use blendsapes or clusters.
|
|
#
?
Nov 24, 2009 20:29
|
|
|
Ratmann posted:On the vein of posting cool stuff: can we  things that involve tits and tongues together please
|
|
#
?
Nov 24, 2009 21:51
|
|
|
Ratmann posted:On the vein of posting cool stuff: I don't know what to say I'm completely at a loss for words Jesus
|
|
#
?
Nov 24, 2009 22:02
|
|
|
Sigma-X posted:can we My supe walked past at the point when the poop goes on the tongue. He asked for the link That said I don't know whether someone from IT is going to come and yell at me yet.
|
|
#
?
Nov 25, 2009 00:23
|
|
|
A5H posted:Any of you guys seen this before? SHELBY! CAMARO! jeep...
|
|
#
?
Nov 25, 2009 00:51
|
|
|
mashed_penguin posted:My supe walked past at the point when the poop goes on the tongue. He asked for the link There are like 3 people at my company that would probably give a gently caress but considering I have a hallway-facing monitor I worry about these things. edit: goddamn that video is a pro click zone Sigma-X fucked around with this message at 05:29 on Nov 25, 2009 |
|
#
?
Nov 25, 2009 05:18
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 29, 2024 04:00 |
|
|
Hi guys, do you know of any good rhino tutorials for an architecture student?
|
|
#
?
Nov 25, 2009 07:49
|
|
