Sebastian Giannoulatos

Animation and Final Gather

Sebastian — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 13:58:46 +0000

Recently I had to optimize rendering for a large project featuring several animated characters.
The project used final gather to create bounce lights.
Initially I thought that baking final gather at a set number of frames with the ‘Optimize for Animations’
option turned on would be sufficient.
Render Settings > mental ray > Indirect Lighting > Final Gathering Tracing > Optimize for Animations.

I couldn’t have been more wrong, the characters moved in and out of shadows and the flickering was awful.

Enter the solution: Animation Snapshots!
Animation Snapshots will create a duplicate of your model at set ranges, so if you have a sequence of a hundred
frames and create an animation snapshot for frames 1-10-20 etc and bake final gather once, you will have
successfully baked 11 out of 100 positions in one cycle.
Repeat the steps as necessary for 2-11-21 etc until you have all the positions of your character on you FG map.

The reason why I chose steps of ten for this example largely depends on the speed of your animation.
You will want the snapshot to not create interpenetrating models or even models that are too close because then FG
would not catch bounce light and the character would still be dark for certain frames. This means if you’re animating the
Flash go ahead and set your snapshot to single frames, but if your shot is a character monologue a bigger distance
in key frames might be required.

Nye bar zhi ba – The Story

Sebastian — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 05:14:13 +0000

This small temple used to be an outpost as part of a bigger gnas bskor (pilgrimage) towards Shambala.
It was a way station where people could rest, as well as a place that protected travelers on their pilgrimage.
From the central watchtower the monks could keep the road safe for the travelers.
One day, a huge earth quake brought down parts of the mountain destroying parts of the facility and destabilizing
the ground around the temple. With great haste the monks brought the travelers to safety and the way station was abandoned.
The monk who was on watch duty that day, in his hurry left a dear friend behind. Up in the watch tower he forgot a small pot in which
he tended a young tree that got trampled by a traveler not long ago.
Lovingly he called it nye bar zhi ba (Tranquility) for the way the little sapling endured its injury. Over the centuries, that little tree grew
to encompass the entire way station, but its roots still feed back into that small pot from which the monk lovingly took care of it.
Even though that monk has long since passed, the tree took up his job to protect the temple, its roots being the only force that keep the temple from falling into the abyss.

To Gallery

Faanui: A utopia on water

Sebastian — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 15:53:45 +0000

I decided to tackle a large scale sci-fi project. So far I’ve been focusing on organic and architectural projects, so I want to diversify my scope by branching into new themes. So far, I’ve been working on this project for about a month and a half. Being new to sci-fi I’ve had a lot of difficulties ‘feeling’ out this project.

After looking for inspiration I felt awestruck by wipeout HD’s Moa Therma track, and so the first couple of models reflected that. Soon after I got stuck.
Where to go from there? The core idea was to take a real life setting and build a futuristic city surrounded by water. A modern day Venice.

For the rel life setting I recreated Bora-Bora and that also gave me the name for the city. Faanui, is an actual bay and where the city would lie in should it be real. Following the Venice premise I started placing buildings in and around the lagoon. Somehow that just looked awfully wrong.
It wasn’t until I saw the loading menus of Mirrors Edge that I realized what I’ve been missing. Urban planning!!!
My city just had random buildings standing around, I needed residential areas, docks, blocks and all the elements that suggest a city has grew over a large number of time. With that in mind, I looked at Singapore and Hong-Kong and finally could paint some concepts and determine the scope, scale and placement of everything.

You can find WIP in my WIP gallery :http://www.g-cg.com/content/?page_id=234
As well as these locations:
http://www.game-artist.net/forums/work-progress/12387-wip_futuristic-city-water.html
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=70167

mib_color_mix node

Sebastian — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 00:49:29 +0000

In this tutorial I will introduce one of my favorite nodes in the Mental Ray tool set, the mib_color_mix node.
Often overlooked, this node will transform any material into a powerful multi-texture solution.

So let’s begin. You can find the mib_color_mix in the Mental Ray section under the Data Conversion sub-group.

You can use a mib_color_mix in any channel of any Mental Ray shader.

You will notice that the mib_color_mix is broken up into 4 sections.
From top to bottom these are, a field called Num, Mode 1-7, Weight 1-7 and Color 1-7 + Color Base.
The Color section is where you will plug in any visible maps you wish to use.
The Weight section will house your alpha maps.
Mode will determine how the layers will blend together and Num will tell the Shader how many channels to calculate.

Each layer that you add after the Color Base, will be a combination of its Color Layer, Weight and Mode settings.
So, Color 0, Weight 0 and Mode 0 will belong together and so on.

In the image below, I added a breakdown on how I used the mib_color_mix to create a multi-layered texture that
significantly reduced my memory consumption while at the same time increasing the available detail.

Click on image to view in full resolution.

Now that we understand how the shader works, let’s take a look at how the settings affect the overall look of a texture.

Below, I added another example on how the node can be used.
The project called for a waterfall and a dynamic simulation was not a realistic option due to time constraints.
With a single texture and an mib_color_mix I was able to take a more game-engine like approach.
The same texture was overlayed four times with different UV repeat rates that were additionally animated.
Below, you can find the results of the waterfall effect.

Sci-Fi game project

Sebastian — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 05:17:06 +0000

It’s finally underway.
After a week of going through docs, installing plugins and reading tutorials I finally have a basic grasp of the Cryengine.
Over the next couple of weeks I want to build a city inspired from WipeOut HD’s Moa Therma track.
You can find WIP stills in the realtime gallery section.

Breakdown_Reel

Sebastian — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 15:57:54 +0000

Credits

Breakdown_Reel
Sebastian Giannoulatos

Music track
“Miss You” by Trentemoller

Duration
1 Minutes 25 Seconds

Mental Ray Issue

Sebastian — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:05:39 +0000

I’ve been having some trouble with an anisotropic material that I want to use on a leaf shader.
The areas highlighted in red show the problem.

WIP_Animation

Sebastian — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:02:27 +0000

Credits

Animation and Mocap CleanUp: Sebastian Giannoulatos
Additional Mocap CleanUp: Ryan Wood – ryan.wood@woodymation.com
Environments: Chris Raicich – chrisrai89@yahoo.com

Duration

52 Seconds

Ready, Steady, GO!!!

Sebastian — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:03:19 +0000

After revisiting Aberdeen I decided it was time to tackle Nanyang as well.

I’ve been meaning to relight it and turn the scene to night for a while now.

Of course that means that I have to model the interior:)

So, off I am without any measurements and a single night image as my guide.

This is going to be fun:)

Maps, Maps, Maps

Sebastian — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:52:02 +0000

It’s finaly done.

The last UV has been laid out, the last texture painted, and the last object tweaked and optimized:)

All the color maps have been posted to the gallery.

Now I have to compile the scenes, apply and adjust all the shaders and set the lighting.

Not long now and I can start rendering.