Primitive Man (Escape Course Week 01)

A simple introduction (or reintroduction to be precise) to Maya turned out to be quite entertaining. Constructing a human figure from only polygonal primitives and grouping them in hierarchy to make the world's most basic human rig was the first week on the course, a good way to get used to navigating the viewport and playing with the primitive creation methods. Getting to pose it later to mimic a photo reference was entertaining. Nothing too exciting, just a little fun to begin with.

Officially learning Maya from an Escape Studios Course

Ok, so it's been a while, but I have a good excuse, honest! In fact, I won't just tell you, I'll show you. I've been enrolled in Escape Studios 3D for Visual Effects course since the start of the year, as well as working full time still in Modelworks Media on an 8m 1:50 scale model of Battersea Power Station, which has been quite a drain. The course is 40 weeks long, and has an assignment for every week which has absorbed every spare minute I have (To the extent of working on a laptop in an airport while waiting for my flight back from a business trip!). However, with some semblance of normality returning to my working hours (for now), I'm hoping to be able to post weekly updates on each course assignment as I complete them. And seeing as I've already done 18 weeks, I'm gonna get the ball rolling with one a day until I've caught up! Consider this an introduction to a long, long journey. Let the games begin!

Sneak preview of my latest render!

I'm breaking up

Fracture Testing from Matthew "Rick" Shaw on Vimeo.

Well, I'm not, but poor old Pearse is taking quite a beating. I wonder if he regrets letting me make his head?
Oh well, too late now!
So, rather than just let Houdini fall by the wayside having completed the course, I decided to sink my teeth further into the voronoi fracturing and dynamics system. Of course, it helped that digital tutors had a very recent video on the subject. Rather than play along with everything he did, I decided to use my own files and simply pick up some pointers here and there (Most importantly, how to layer voronoi fractures safely and how to make the blasted glue network do what I want). Anyway, this was the result of my first attempt.

No, in no way do I consider this close to being finished, but I thought I'd best keep some updates on here before I forget about it altogether. Now that I know what I'm doing, it's time to scrap this fall and start over with a clean slate for a proper piece.

Now if only ANY of my hard drives had any space left... Smoke simulations will be the death of my computer.

Houdini Beginnings

Introduction to Houdini from Matthew "Rick" Shaw on Vimeo.

I recently completed an 8 week Introduction to Houdini workshop led by Spencer Leuders (a fantastic VFX TD at Sony Imageworks, previously at Rhythm and Hues) and I have to say it was one of the best decisions I've ever made. The course was fantastic, and I would highly recommend it to anyone else interesting in starting in Houdini.

I have long dreamed of getting into VFX, but it always seemed to be a long term goal. However, I couldn't pass up the opportunity when I saw the course and now I'm delighted to say I have a fairly strong grasp of the workings of Houdini. Of course, working full time and dedicating most of my free time to the course meant I wasn't able to go anywhere near this site, but at long last I have found the time to post once more. So, what better to start with than a piece from the course. Obviously, in such a small time frame for each topic we covered, none of the results are particularly polished, but I was quite pleased with the general result of this piece. I'll hopefully be posting more of them as I find the time (and ideally get them a little more polished up!).

Learned Python, does that make me a Parseltongue?

It took a long time, but I finally picked a coding language to learn; Python. Once I realised how easily it could be used with Maya and Houdini, it became the obvious choice. Unfortunately, I can't really think of any good way to demonstrate this new skill, but I can say that everyone should definitely learn a coding language if they can! While I certainly can't claim complete proficiency just yet, I have completed the courses over at code academy and would recommend the site to anyone looking to learn a new language. There are plenty of other routes you can take too, the best compilation of which I have found being on Double Negative's Learning Resources page.

Quick Sketches

It's amazing how quickly things change, one minute I'm steadily working away on various creative projects and the next I find myself working 60 hours a week to meet impossible deadlines in a studio in Dublin. With one just gone by I have a brief interlude before I have to sink my teeth into the next (And boy do I mean brief, I mean I actually just got a weekend off for once), I realised I've neglected to update anything. While pictures of the studio work will hopefully appear in the near future, they may have to wait til the project has been handed off and is on display, so til then, here are a few hasty little life drawing sketches I managed to sneak in.

Angus the Animated

Meet Angus:

           

A good friend and recent housemate of mine is a particularly talented stop motion artist brimming with ideas; the lovely miss Adrienne Dowling. One of her creations was that of Angus, a simple fellow with an interesting job. However, his story is yet to be told and so I'll have to leave some mystery as to his origins as he may yet attempt to make it to the big screen. However, I liked him so much that I couldn't just leave him as a stop motion model, and asked if she wouldn't mind me turning him into a digital piece. So after getting her to send on a few photos of him, I set about trying to feed him into a digital world. I was quite happy with the result.