Bob Piscopo » Blog

SWING

Bob — Wed, 02 May 2012 08:06:02 +0000

A few months ago, my classmate asked for some help rigging her swing set. For the shot, the swings needed to drop down from their peak and settle into a resting position. The method I came up with was an IK Spline setup with a Hair System on top of it. This allowed her the control of animating the starting motion of the swings while providing the option of switching to dynamic based motion when necessary. Below is a breakdown of it.

New Site!

Bob — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 11:15:13 +0000

I just redesigned my site and moved it fully over to wordpress, so expect some back-dated blog entries to come rolling in. Then I’ll update ya’ll on where I’m currently at with life!

NPR WIP 03: In Motion

Bob — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 00:02:02 +0000

I like the non-ambient occlusion image above better, but I’d like your thoughts on both. Also, here’s it in motion:

Last is probably the final update for this iteration of the shader. I wanted to see how it would hold up when added to a full environment. Here is the “out of the box” result:

NPR WIP 02

Bob — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 23:55:38 +0000

I couldn’t get into the labs today (er, yesterday), so I jumped back into my non-photorealistic rendering tests. I stayed up way too late working on it, so this entry will be short. I promise I’ll have a more in-depth update soon, but for now you just get images. Overall, I’m happy with my progress:

I’m using two different shaders to achieve this result: One for the etching, and one for the color. I broke them up because I felt I had better control when combining them in post. For the second image, I added an ambient occlusion pass to see what it might add.

That’s all. Time for bed!

NPR WIP 01

Bob — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 23:53:47 +0000

My thesis is in its final stages, so I’m finally going to start updating my blog with CG! First up is a test with non-photorealistic rendering. There is plenty of inspiration out there which is driving my interest, but what really motivated me was the recently released Diablo III cinematic. The begging of it has a really awesome style to it:

So, since the labs are closed for the day, I began experimenting this morning and came up with this:

(I lost the video link. If I find it I’ll put it back up.)

I’m using the facing ratio of the object to drive a ramp which selects the color. To break it up a bit, I averaged a bump-mapped shader with the facing ratio, and connected that to the ramp. I got the idea for the approach from http://sunnykharbanda.com/blog/2009/10/behind-the-toons-part-2-the-shader/ (thanks!).

I altered the shading network as I saw fit (which I’ll describe once I make more progress), and with some minimal comping, came up with the above result.

It isn’t quite where I want it to be, but it’s a good start. The next step is to adjust the contours to get something similar to brush strokes.

Side Project: Massive Sim and Environment

Bob — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 23:29:42 +0000

While waiting to defend my thesis, I started a side project! It will be a 5-7 second shot of a crowd of baby bird-egg-dudes running around. The main goal for this project was to revisit Massive and have fun doing so.

The characters and environment have already been created, as well as all necessary animation cycles. I am currently building the brain for my agents, and should be able to simulate the crowd within the next day or two (if all goes well!).

Here’s the most recent WIP of my environment:

I got a little particle crazy (NUUUUUKE) when my friend suggested that I put a few in the scene, so ignore those. Also, I will be making a few other minor adjustments to the lighting and shading. The middle ground and foreground are pretty bare right now, but my plan is to finalize the set-dressing once I finish the crowd sim that way I’ll know where the characters will be going.