Two New Films Award to R & H!!!

It has been a very busy week for Rhythm & Hues. First, Superman Returns opens up this week. I was forturate enought to see it at a company screening it is was awesome, Bryan Singer does it again. The other is that 2 new films were awarded, The Kingdom, and Golden Compass: His Dark Materials.

The Kingdom is a smaller show with a great cast including Jamie Fox, Jennifer Garner, and Chris Cooper. This is a drama/thriller about a team of U.S. government agents are sent to investigate the bombing of an American facility in the Middle East.

Golden Compass : His Dark Materials is the first of a new fantasy trilory. Similar to Narnia, this story based on the award winning book by Pullman and seems like it will be a blockbuster. Lots of fantasy creatures and animals, should be a amazing.

So add those to the films we are currently working on (Night at the Museum, Evan Almighty, and Happy Feet), it seems like things are only gonna get better at R & H.

Freelance Commercial Gig...

Hey all,

I just recently started working a side freelance modeling gig for a local company called F.A.D. It is some commercial work and the concepts looks fantastic. The team seems great and really enthusiastic. I'll keep you posted but I'm sure that the air date is still long off.

Mudbox Head - Update

So I got to spend a few more hours to take this head to the next level. I'm up to level 3 now at about 250,000 polys. Here are some screen grabs. I also thought I'd add the reference image so you have an idea of where I'm going.

Enjoy.

Mudbox Sculpt (WIP)

Kruger Drawing:

Rhythm & Hues Resurrects Marlon Brando...

Check out some amazing work done by R & H for the upcoming Superman Returns film.

link

Mudbox - Head Model

I recently got onto the new Mudbox Beta test team and decided to start a new character head. First off this program is amazing. For those of you who don't know about it, its a new modeling package that is similar to Zbrush that is being developed by Skymatter with the help of Weta Digital. They used it on Kong.

So it inspired me to start a new head model. I am creating a 3D version of Sebastian Kruger's, Chesney Baker caricature. I started it off with my self portrait head that I did for school, just had to convert it from NURBs. I've only had time to spend a few hours on and it has a long way to go but here's a peak.

I've got Happy Feet...

Just this past week I started work on Happy Feet. This is a 3D animated film about a group of singing Penguins who have a new member in the group who can't sing but can dance up a storm. Check out more on the film including the latest trailer here.

Some New Photos from the Evan Almighty Set....

Filming wrapped up in Virginia and here are a few images of the Ark, it's gigantic.

link

Nike Founder to Build New Animation Studio in Oregon

Full article here:

link

Friends Breaking into the Industry...

It's been a pretty exciting past few weeks for a couple of buddies of mine from the Academy. One is Landis Fields, who although still has a year left of school, managed to land a great opportunity at Giant Killer Robots. The other is Simon Christen who has acquired one of the few coveted internships at Pixar. Expect to see big things for these two extremely talented guys who deserve nothing but the best. Congrats to both of you, I hope we get to work together on something again soon.

Updated sections

I took some time this weekend to make a few changes. I added some new links, updated my Bio and finally posted the Wireframe Vector Render Tutorial I wrote a while back. Take a peak.

Ergonomic Arm Rest...

Just wanted to inform everyone of this amazing tool that I use everyday at work. It is simply awesome. Allows you to maintain a parallel line between your wrist and elbow so that there is no restriction of bloodflow to your hands and minimizes the risk of carpal-tunnel. I have used these at Rhythm for awhile now and have yet to have any wrist pains at all. It's very easy to get used too, its just a mobile arm-rest. They're not cheap but well worth the investment.

Here's a link to where you can buy them:

Modeling Scripts

So I thought I would post some helpful scripts that I use everyday to make your modeling process a little more efficient.

One is a simple wireframe on shaded script which allows you to toggle wireframe on shaded with a single hotkey. Another does the same but with the X-Ray function allowing you to X-Ray a single Mesh. Great for image plane modeling. Another allows you to flip the model on the x axis and freeze transforms immediately. One will allign all verticies on the x axis so you don;t get a seam on your mirror. To get them to work you must assign a hot key for the function. So you just copy the text into your User Setting under Hotkeys and paste the script into command tab.

Enjoy




1. mirror GEO


string $flipMe [] = `ls -sl`;
duplicate -rr; scale -r -1 1 1;
makeIdentity -apply true -t 1 -r 1 -s 1 -n 0;
select -hierarchy;
string $selHi[] = `ls -sl`;
int $looper=0;
while ($looper < `size($selHi)`) { select -cl; $looper= $looper + 1; select $selHi[$looper]; ReversePolygonNormals; $looper= $looper + 1; }



2. Xray Mesh string


$sel[]; int $temp[]; int $value; $sel = `ls -sl -dag -ap -typ surfaceShape`; for ($obj in $sel) { $temp = `displaySurface -q -xRay $obj`; $value=$temp[0]; if($value==1) displaySurface -xRay 0 $obj; else displaySurface -xRay 1 $obj; };


3. Wireframe_on_Shaded



string $getPanel=`getPanel -wf`; modelEditor -e -wos (!`modelEditor -q -wos $getPanel`) $getPanel;



4. allign to X Axis


move -r -a -x 0 ;