It’s been another few busy weeks but things are coming together and I will have a little more time to spare soon, but I hope not for so long! It will be stressful until I get my first job. Meanwhile I’m developing some Nuke tutorials for a course in my old university Kingston. I’m very happy to do this and give the students the chance to learn and little more and hopefully motivate them to do more on their own.

I’m going to upload my masters project here today, this is the first time it’s going online officially and only here in my weblog! It’s been different experience and I’m not sure how much I’m satisfied with it, but what I’m really satisfied with are the things I’ve learned from it, have it look!

Still working on the DE Techniques, the third term project. Have made some progress with designing the environment but the fluids are still making trouble! It’s a bit tricky to make them float up!

Global Illumination is such a magical light! although on its own it can never really deliver a complete result but the level of the reality that it brings into the scene is fascinating!

The first effect project of the Digital Effects course at NCCA (Bournemouth University) was to create an underwater scene. It was pretty interesting and I think I did an acceptable job although at the end I got sick of it so didn’t finalize the project as good as I should have been!. There’s still a lot left to do and I’m hoping to find time and go back to make some improvements.  Here is the final render plus the making of;

I shot the backplate in Christchurch a small town near Bournemouth.  The model and some of the underwater effects were made in Houdini and the rest were recorded live in a small aquarium. Apple shake was used to do the comp; a very powerful package which doesn’t attract you in the first look. I quiet enjoyed using the acquisition elements shot with a black background for this project, I painted a cocnout black and used it as the proxy. I think  now and for the first time, I can call myself a compositor!

The course had a good start, very well organized course with timetables arranged for every week of the first term plus a big one for the whole year showing the teaching programmes. Everyone has a dedicated computer which is how it supposed to be! and they seem to be pretty decent systems. Computers are Linux based (Gnome Ubunto released) which is something new for me. The Graphic interface is pretty much like windows and it’s always good to learn something new, so after Windows and Mac now i have a chance to get my hands on Linux after about 10 years.We also learn shell scripting for Linux which apparently will be useful for the Houdini later on. It will be a challenge for me since I’m not a big 3D fan and hate programming! but the truth is there’s no escape from these two! Shell commands (programmes) are very similar to DOS but much more flexible.

They seemed unorganized and obviously they hadn’t prepared for  this meeting and just showed up thinking they know what to say, so there were a lot of pauses and they looking at each other! The first meeting with the academic team of the media school didn’t make a big impression! but maybe I’m expecting too much. The course starts next Monday and according to Philip Spicer the Programme Leader of MA Digital Effects, it will be really intense! he suggested we get as much rest as we can this week and repeatedly said “I kid you not!” when the students didn’t take him seriously! Although just by looking at the timetable you can see that he’s indeed not kidding! Main software taught are Houdini, Nuke and shake, although they emphasized that this is not a software based course and they teach “transferable skills”. It’s a very good approach but to what extent they can actually execute it remains to be seen.