Thursday, September 29, 2005

Back home in London!

I am back home in London and it's awesome!! I haven't been here in a really long time so it is cool to be back. Looking forward to seeing people from high school while I am here. Good times!

I'll get some pics from my time here of old friends and post them if I get a chance.

Sunday, September 25, 2005

Houdini Assignment 1

Just finished my Houdini Assignment 1 "Still Life Arrangement", this is a test of our new knowledge of Houdini and also a chance to play around with lighting and shadows.


Front perspective view

Side view with soft shadows

Another crazy angle

Friday, September 23, 2005

Still Life Assignment draft

Here is where I am at the moment with my first FINE 328 assignment, this is the Still Life Arrangement. I still need to fix the lighting on the back panel, it is way too bright at the moment.

For this assignment we are only allowed to use 3 primitive types and flat lambert shaders. This is an exercise in learning Houdini but also in developing an eye for scene layout and more importantly a sense of lighting a scene in an interesting manner to "increase compositional interest."

I still have a little ways to go but this is where I am at the moment.


Still Life Assignment project 1 so far...

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Houdini Render Tests

This term I am taking FINE 328, Advanced Electronic Imaging at Waterloo and it is AWESOME so far!! Our first assignment was a Photoshop assignment and basically just a review. For the second assignment, we need to create a Still Life Arrangement using only Houdini Primitives.

Here are a few render tests I did tonight to test out the lighting and shadows. I need to figure out how to soften the shadows and I will likely use shaders in this first assignment (although this wasn't allowed in the past, our Prof said we are allowed to use shaders in the first assignment now to dim the specular highlights on the objects and add colour to the scene.)

Pretty interesting assignment possibilities here and I am pretty excited to build my artistic abilities over this term! Here are some initial render tests in Houdini.


Inital render test with bright cone light, fast shadows

Second render test with softer light, same shadows

Monday, September 19, 2005

Rock Climbing at John's house

This weekend I went to Toronto to hang out with some old friends from Alias and also to see Matt and Alex and hang out with those guys. Good times!!

We went to Spring Rolls (a Thai Restaurant) 3 times in 3 days, so that was pretty sweet, that is some good food. We got to John's house to go rock climbing on his home climbing wall that is along the outside of his house, crazy eh?! It rocked and it was definitely a good time.


Matt workin' it 'ol school

Alex before the wall climbing

John excited about his new shoes

Me on my first climb of the day

Matt making it look easy

Alex trying to figure out where to start!!

Matt getting some expert advice on the routes...

Alex taking a well needed break

Me on the white taped route

Trusting very much in the sturdiness of that huge orange foot hold...

Sweet! Around the corner of the house

John doing the low route

Matt after lots of sweet climbing

Thursday, September 15, 2005

Waterloo Black and Gold Day

Here are a few more pics from Waterloo's Black and Gold Day. (Black and Gold are our school colours.) This was the last day of Frosh Week and it was awesome, got lots of food (Pizza again, sweet) and face painting etc. Then lots of people went to the football game and Waterloo won! In the evening we had the Toga party which was amazing as usual. Good times.


Hangin' out at Black and Gold Day

Mmm... McDonald's Orange Drink

Waterloo face painting

Gotta love the Waterloo "W" painted on everyone...

Word up

Dana and I lookin' sharp

Waterloo... whhhatt upppp!!

Morgan in his Top Gun pose

Great pic of me with David Schwimmer, I mean, Joel

Rachel, Sarah and Ashley

Sumeet and I looking like a force to be reckoned with

Mark looking both confused and as if he is about to hop over this handrail

VOC crew

Cute pic of Me and Dana

More Siggraph pictures from August

Hey all,

I am at my buddy Alex's house in Toronto at the moment and we finally exchanged the rest of the pictures from Siggraph. Sweet!!

Here are a few more cool ones from Siggraph last month in Los Angeles.


Me walking the streets of Hollywood

Hollywood Blvd

My hands are the same size as Tom Hanks' hands, sweeet

Rock on, it's Steven Spielberg's hand prints!

Me next to the best star here!!

Hangin' out at the Kodak Theatre

Hollywood sign on the hills

Our Hotel in LA

Walking around at Siggraph

Matt and I at Siggraph

Sony sketching booth

Someone in a light suit for motion capture

The Apple booth

A cool motion capture Pirate dude

More motion capture pirate action

Super cool rotation screen in the Emerging Technologies exhibit

Cool portable map screens in the Emerging Technologies exhibit

Alex heading back to Canada