A short breakdown that I recently put together.

Just noticed this thread. Great examples.

@bwhitz: I just started working on 3D this year. I use Modo. It is great for modeling and really nice Renderer built in. I also have C4D and hope to work on that later. Been watching Retro-SciFi. I really liked your ship. I want to learn how to build those. This is my 2nd render with Modo...mainly learning how to Texture now.

http://photos.jamesthorpe.com/Other/3D/21462416_6HtjM2#!i=1710496558&k=4VtdRvQ&lb=1&s=A

@otcx Thanks but I didn't use any rotoscoping, the soldier is simply keyed (Keylight). Or do you mean the tracking of the Light on the helicopter? I did that manually, it only took me 4 keyframes or so ;)

How can I make the particles not look so...fake? Below is my first pass at a disintegration effect in After Effects with Trapcode Form & Particular. I have an .OBJ of the van that Form can use, but I need to make that more prominent in the next round.

The digital movement seems awkward, there is no life anywhere in the picture. Also try offsetting a darker copy of the particles behind your layer to achieve the effect that the car has a backside. That'll help the picture look less flat.

@ted See if you can also render out a motion vector pass as well as your beauty pass too. I think Reelsmart motion blur can use a motion vector pass, you'll get much better/accurate motion blurs this way. Most motion blur tools can take a motion vector pass. Also render out in passes always if you're compositing (seperate shadow, diffuse, reflection, occlusion passes etc, etc) then you can balance everything alot easier, adding some extra blur or softening to your shadows or reflections for example. you can alter the look a lot to aid integration without having to rerender you sequence. Also, don't be afraid to do some serious colour correction work on your live plate to also aid integration.

Edit : Pretty much every renderers motion blur is too slow, its pretty much always done better afterwards (and hellishly faster).

Can After Effects do 2.5d lighting ? You may be able to add lights /relight too if your renderer can give you a position pass (a 32 bit image that uses RGB to express a pixels XYZ) and a normal pass (which uses RGB to express a polygons faces XYZ rotation in camera space).

Xbox Kinnect motion capture! Awesome!

http://lesterbanks.com/2012/04/introduction-to-using-kinect-motion-capture-in-cinema-4d/

Affordable motion capture with something like the Kinnect is equally exciting to me as RAW video... systems like this used to be easily in the tens-of-thousands!

I just finished my new Reel, like my the breakdown I made earlier in 2012, this one is supposed to be a little different from other reels:

I primarily intended this video as an application for film schools and promotion for my website (which I didn't relaunch yet). It's not so much intended to gain new customers, that's why it may be boring for some in the beginning.

An update to the above, with lots of before-and-after footage...

...and an updated reel showcasing some of my work on big-budget, Hollywood pictures...

...and both of these, in their motion graphics, titles, etc. show my love and fascination with pre-digital optical printer motion graphics and titling techniques and, even more specifically, the look of that analog artwork when it would eventually be viewed by digital or otherwise electronic means (telecine).

I also plan to create my "indies" reel ASAP. I'm attempting to resurrect an old RAID with HD finals from the first indie feature that my brother Tim and I made. These HUGE Systems haven't spun up since, like, 2004 or so.

Thanks @matt_gh2, as a total film it's not my favorite to watch but it was my favorite that I ever worked on. Some of this stuff now seems so dated but back when we did it those machines were just so freakin' slow (SGI Indigo2 Extreme). My system was super lean though and fast for the artists to work with. All the full rez cars only got injected into the mix at render time. I'm going to have to resurrect my auto-banking and hover routines that I used for this show on an upcoming project I'm happy to say.

I had to build it so that a lane of traffic would auto-populate with a random selection of cars with random properties but with control for any single car to be altered or removed, without altering any of the other cars. Once I had that kind of thing working I could do fun stuff like let my team give them all custom license plates, if they wanted. They're all flying around with a basic license texture that has the slogan "New York, the Fuck You State," LOL.

There's hidden little inside jokes and messages spread all through the NY miniatures and effects. Pretty much everyone on the principle team got a storefront or something. Plus the crew is seen throughout, on rooftops and in windows. I'm in the first shot of Leeloo's POV across the street and frame right doing a Highlander impersonation, swinging an actual broadsword around and then there's a copy of me in the parking garage on frame left in the following shot. Bits of internal e-mail war scrolling across a theater marquee in Times Square.

So many little gags. It was a blast. I mean, we were working six and seven days a week for almost the whole show so we had to get our kicks somewhere.

Yea, that floating car scene was awesome! Better than 90% of vfx work in current movies!

Here's some of my latest concept stuff:

...and some prop-building.