Seeing the northern lights in person is definitely near the top of my “Things to Do Before I Die list. Until then, however, I figured I could make do with engineering them digitally. The unique look and motion could be called abstract, but when you really study them you realize how particular their movement is. I discovered a great technique after a good deal of experimentation that involves projecting Bercon Noise patterns through a directional light.
Having had time at work to perfect the technique for use in a project, I was able to use the render farm to render long sequences and examine the motion. This video shows the raw un-color corrected renders and is just a small sample of my full results. More to come soon.
30 Seconds @ The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas
Watch the new :30 spot for The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas that we just finished creating at Digital Kitchen! The actors were filmed on a custom built elevator set, but the surrounding lobby was all done in 3D.
I started off by animating the elevator doors in 3DS Max. As the project moved forward, I had a heavy hand in the Fusion compositing. I became the point man on taking the graded footaged from the color correction artist and marrying it to the 3D environment. Creating fake shadows, light wraps, and color correction mattes were required to make the two appear seamless.
Once the composites were complete, I then worked with other artists to wrangle each shot back into the rough-cut (which was re-built in Fusion for final color), matching all the action frame to frame.
Substrate
These programmed images by j.tarball are really incredible. I want to have this printed on a 6’ canvas and hang it on my wall.
