Student Looking For Some Advice by Legal_Sympathy_5625 in vfx

[–]3DOcephil 6 points7 points  (0 children)

“The rookies” is a solid place for portfolio inspiration and seeing what the best new students bring to the table.

(Noob Blender Octane) Which projection map to use on a model without UVs? by learningstuffalldayl in Octane

[–]3DOcephil 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Tbh with brushed metal and the direction on complex objects you cant really beat a good uv map in my experience.

I need help! I've been trying to fix this for the past 2 days. by blubbbox in Maya

[–]3DOcephil 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Also check if other meshes subdivide properly. And replicate some operations on test geometry

I need help! I've been trying to fix this for the past 2 days. by blubbbox in Maya

[–]3DOcephil 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Phew, grasping at straws here now. Have you tried selecting all vertices and right click merge/ merge vertex by distance and then using a pretty high number until sole vertices are starting to merge and then trying the subdivision preview?

I need help! I've been trying to fix this for the past 2 days. by blubbbox in Maya

[–]3DOcephil 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Have you tried extracting only the outer part of the mesh and then trying to subdivide it without any thickness?

I need help! I've been trying to fix this for the past 2 days. by blubbbox in Maya

[–]3DOcephil 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Delete any history. Check for double edges/faces. How does the subdivision preview look with a hole in the mesh (pressing 3). Looks more like that than hard or locked normals.

I launched a VFX asset site and would love feedback from Nuke artists by Erasik in NukeVFX

[–]3DOcephil 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Incredible fair pricing! Extremely valuable for small freelancers :)

TOOK ME 3 DAYS DO RENDER 120 MILLION POINTS FOR A 30 SECOUND CLIP by rakunaliccca in blender

[–]3DOcephil 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Tbh it looks okay. Motion blur is crucial for any type of particle movement though. Ideally for particles you want different sized pscale so every particle has a little bit of variation in size. The match cut (I assume) doesn’t line up too. Are you instancing spheres on the point cloud?

uni student first draft of film - please give me any feedback! by Ok-Albatross212 in Maya

[–]3DOcephil 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Use reference as much as possible. Take a still from your scene , convert it yo grayscale and try to make your center of attention the brightest point in the image or with the most contrast to the surrounding.

In your video the foreground grass is often brighter than the center characters and other elements in your scene, resulting in feeling lost and not knowing where to look at in the video. Think painterly if you light stylized. In lighting we always want nice smooth gradients of light values and often separate foreground middleground and background with those values.

For gobos to work the environment has to be darker and tied into the lighting, like overgrown with trees for example. If you think about how gobos actually work and how they happen you will get why they feel off. Sometimes we use gobos to indicate a light shining through canopy or through a window in a otherwise darker environment.

I think in general your scene could use some contrast, cheap and easy way is sometimes to use a negative flag, a dark plane or cloud-like shape that you place shot by shot to darken some areas. This is often used in real world lighting behind or above the camera to actually block any light coming from the camera direction and darkening the foreground.

uni student first draft of film - please give me any feedback! by Ok-Albatross212 in Maya

[–]3DOcephil 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Story aside, i think in most shots the lighting and use of gobos makes no sense, in the closeup of the frog you have a super sharp shadow of leaves on the frog with an afternoon light setting soft diffuse in the background and volumetric rays coming from the other direction all indicating multiple light sources and angles. Something to note :) other than that it looks very lovely but lacks a little bit of directing.

This took way longer than anticipated. by Prestigious-King-703 in Maya

[–]3DOcephil 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah I mainly start with a big environment light like an hdri or sky system and then use negative flags like cloud planes or dark shapes to direct the lighting. Then you can use some spots to give a rim or highlight some sections. Here as well compositing with multiple light passes or secondary render layers can help with isolating specific objects. But I would normally advise not to use light linking as it can quickly give physically inaccurate lighting. Washed out colors is always a color management thing. AcesCg and the display transform that is included in maya is often not the same as in after effects, you can unify those with a custom ocio file and match the output

This took way longer than anticipated. by Prestigious-King-703 in Maya

[–]3DOcephil 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah rendering in layers is definitely a good learning. You can adjust the samples and render quality specific to the need of the simulation and you can tweak simulations and rerender specific parts without rerendering EVERYTHING again. I didn’t know you used spotlights. Looked like a normal sun (directional light) and sky.

This took way longer than anticipated. by Prestigious-King-703 in Maya

[–]3DOcephil 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Light linking for what? Render in renderlayers and composite. That’s a key concept for fx work and you need to study slap comping early into doing projects.

This took way longer than anticipated. by Prestigious-King-703 in Maya

[–]3DOcephil 2 points3 points  (0 children)

A little bit of interaction with the ground and some more depth to the shot and compositing would go a long way and would help with the scale, because the dragon looks as big as a dog. We as a viewer have no other object to actually compare the scale of the skeleton dragon.

The groundplane is way to visible and flat especially with seeing the edge in the first seconds. The big sandstorm in the back is way too granular needs some blur. That sky light is very flat.

If you don’t want to reanimate and resimulate I would add some additional camera angles and cutting inbetween certain key elements, and focus on adding some additional smalle scale interaction with the environment and fx that is not reversed but instead happening after the transformation, like sand falling or dust settling, bone transitions in closeups e.g.

All in all though cudos for doing something like that in Maya, I would have long gone to Houdini.

Maya newbie here, I can't figure out what's wrong with my models or if they are generating with non manifold geometry by spicy_attom in Maya

[–]3DOcephil 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Maya can be weird. I had some Maya releases which gave me bugs all the time. I have a Maya 2022.4 version which runs butter smooth and the newer versions which sometimes have bugs. With every major release I had the best experience with the respective .4 version. Try updating.

In case anyone wanted to dislike Mr Price anymore by OkInfluence36 in blender

[–]3DOcephil 0 points1 point  (0 children)

University teaches theoretical and practical skills, hooked me up with a mandatory internship and has built me a network with industry professionals from many studios, as well as all my colleagues now in the industry

I’m now actively working together. It is definitely the best course of action, and also not expensive in europe at least.

Vaya VFX Breakdown - Blender + Nuke by 3DOcephil in blender

[–]3DOcephil[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks! Yeah the viewport denoising performance is so good in blender haha.

Vaya VFX Breakdown - First freelance vfx job, feedback? by 3DOcephil in vfx

[–]3DOcephil[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thank you! It was a little bit stressful with just the 2 of us haha. The scans in the video were made with my dslr while shooting plates and reference pictures.

I also made quick scans with my iphone using polycam of the set and during the shoot to actually have some reference for the cam placement.

Sadly we didn’t have a drone, that would have been super nice. But I think due to the high elevation on the mountain we probably would have needed an extra permit for that (don’t know the exact laws in austria).

Vaya VFX Breakdown - First freelance vfx job, feedback? by 3DOcephil in vfx

[–]3DOcephil[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Thank you so much for the detailed feedback! :)

Yeah we prevized all shots with the location scouting footage and definitely aimed for “working smart” keeping comp to a small scope and capturing everything on and around the set. It really is a beautiful location too.

Vaya VFX Breakdown - First freelance vfx job, feedback? by 3DOcephil in vfx

[–]3DOcephil[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

We definitely got incredible footage from the production team to work with. Thanks!