bluphoenix - third dimension

StreetWorks Short Animation

This short animation began as a concept in my sketchbook. Originally focusing on the girl and a large pachinko parlor sign (now the large yellow sign in the foreground,) once I started blocking out the scene in Maya the focus quickly shifted towards capturing my unexplainable fascination with urban alleyways. Aesthetically, I tried to confine the bright lighting to this crack in the city landscape, with only a minimal light pollution enabled glow gracing the rooftops and sky. The animation is 16 seconds long, and makes extensive use of the Mental Ray for Maya (7) renderer. Depth of field, atmosphere, and the few stars that do shine through were all composited with After Effects CS3. Modeling was accomplished via Maya 7 and ZBrush 2, and most texturing was done in Photoshop CS2.

Development
Not up yet. Sorry!
Original sketch focusing on the girl and the juxtaposing sign.	Initial blocking in of general alley space, figure placement.	End of initial placement process. Note the large exhaust pipe on the right that will later be moved to the background.


All signage texturing has now been added, and most of the initial lighting has been set up.	The figure was started in Maya and refined mostly in ZBrush. Much more detail was made than required in certain regions, as this will make the figure a more valuable asset in future projects.	The final wireframe. Note the number of point and area lights, as this night scene cannot benefit from a singular sun source.


Here we have an ambient occlusion pass. Although this was not used in the final composite, it still looks quite good.	The is an inverted depth pass. This was used primarily for post-production lens blurring in After Effects.	The final After Effects composite. The depth map to the left was also tinted and then add-blended for some hazy atmosphere.


The first frame of the animation. Because the camera is looking more or less up, we can see a few stars shining through the light pollution yet.


A good crisp look at two of the signs in contrast to the depth-blurred background.


The camera comes to rest. Click below or the picture on top of this page to view the animation. It requires the XVid Mpeg4 codec.

Click to watch.

bluphoenix