Digital Self Portrait : Alternate Reality

Digital_Self_Portrait_1.jpg : This is the Self Portrait I did for BU. I had always wanted to experiment with a particular kind of lighting so I shot this picture at night with only one source of light....a torch.

To further complement the picture I wanted to develop an environment which would reflect the darkness ( which could be attributed to the situation or the feeling of loneliness or to Fear ) of

the moment as well as had a stylised look and feel to it. I love trying to converge the different worlds, if you will.

A world of Fantasy, something very unrealistic and a world of Realism....and yet I like to keep the individualistic nature of both these worlds and show that in my art....my goal while doing this was not Photorealism..it was more about how can I depict the same incident/situation/moment happening in some Parallel Universe.

I tend to use Optical Artifacts a lot in my work to stylise it and not for realism....Realism for me is just a state of mind in which one is willing to accept things the way they look, feel, smell...but what if you decide to create your own Realities?? What if you decide to see this place from a different sense of Reality?

But its not something thats easy..right??

Well thats anther, point I wanted to make with the Environment....Its pretty distracting at first....but when you focus on what you want to see..the way you want to see....YOU SEE IT.

Campaign for Hummer!!

these are few of my Academic Projects....

Though these were projects for Advertising as a subject..I made

these using 3D package (XSI).

The Monster's and Dino's model was made by me(with the help of a tutorial).

The Vehicle was a 3D model I downloaded from the internet since I was running short on deadline.

One is a Storyboard of a TVC and the other two are Outdoor Prints I did.

Since I wanted to give it a different and a raw look I decided to use the Ambient Occlusion Images as the final images to be used in the campaign.

The campaign focuses on the RAW Rugged appeal and Strength of Hummer as a vehicle;

The pure Domination of Hummer over others in its class.

Also there is 1 more artwork which was done for our college festival ( Advertising ) and was one of the contending Official LOGO/artwork, to be used by our college.

Monster!! Monster!!

its been looooong break since I my last post here..

well I had been travelling quite a bit for some time now..

anyways since i dont have anything specific to put this time,

I thought of putting up one of the monsters I modelled with the help

of a tutorial about an year back....well it was a great learning experience and yes, it helped me

to get over my fear of organic modelling :)

the detailing was done using ZBrush..(well this was a direct render out of Zbrush, using its Turntable utility..a nice and handy one)

(while I have setup this blog to be specifically for my Houdini progress,

I guess this time I'll take the liberty to put up something done in another

software..)

Low Resolution file ahead!! :D

RnD for new project

well its been loooooonnggg long time. specially since I had exams to take care of. its been two days since the exams have gotten over and somehow, its getting all too lazy....two days later I also have to leave for some 10-12 days.

so now I realise that I should atleast start with the RnD for my next project.

I'll keep this updated :)

Jaunty Jackalope!!

well its been long since I last posted here..
what brings me back here?? well I have been trying Ubuntu 8.10 on my laptop and am definitely pleased with its performance!!
so I thought of sharing things I liked and disliked about it.

Firstly, lets clear out some things about the configuration of my laptop (just because this WILL help in keeping things within perspective)
Core2Duo processor (santa rosa platform)
2GB RAM
NVIDIA 8400M GT (256MB)
160GB HD

this config is what I would say 'OKish' :)
Orright..
I was searching for better options to performance. I was curious about Linux and so I'd asked a friend for a copy of it..(this was probably 2 years back) and he gave me a copy of Ubuntu6.04 codenamed DAPPER DRAKE!!
I tried running it from a live CD but could not. (I have not yet figured that out!! probably CD got corrupted??)
I wanted to run it and experiment with it but simply couldn't.
After a series of failed attempts and burning quite a few copies in a CD to try again, I left the attempts for some other time..

now after almost 2 years the same name crossed my mind..only in a new avatar!!
Jaunty Jackalope!!
I did extensive research and found it extremely impressive. With still a month left for the stable version to come out, I decided to wait.
BUT
After all that I had read and heard, could not wait more than 4 days. So I decided to try out Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex (since I'm a new linux user, I decided to play safe and use latest stable version which was 8.10, and wait for a stable release of Jaunty)

here's the thing: I dualbooted my laptop.
Out of 160GB in my HD, I alloted just 5GB of partition to entire Ubuntu OS!! (since I was unsure of whether I could take all that GEEK Fire's heat....sorry I meant GREEK lol)
Since I work on Houdini for my CG work and Nuke for compositing, I just wanted to try out whether these apps would work in Ubuntu (else shifting to Ubuntu would be plain useless....atleast for me)
I'm damn impressed with the performance!!

Nuke used to take ATLEAST 10secs to load on my Windows and it took only 3-4 secs in Ubuntu. (that also because of the notifications I get about nuke running in PLE mode)

It loads up in around 30secs from grub screen till login!
What about shutting down?? It shuts down almost INSTANTANEOUSLY!! (it takes a meagre 6 secs for this..inspite of just 5GB of disk space alloted to it!)
windows takes ATLEAST 20-35 secs for the same.

All this makes me jump with excitement...WHY?? Houdini 10 has been scaled up performance wise (according to the website, H10 will be better at performance along with newer features and options!) and all I needed was a faster OS.

With news of Jaunty bringing on the Blitzkrieg (its loading at a reported 17secs on few machines, of my friends) and scaled performances of Houdini10, I can only be looking out for more!

Now for the parts I did not like about it:

Nuke shows a buggy viewport with patches of coloured squares on it. (the display otherwise on the desktop is simply FANTASTIC! but in Nuke's veiw port, it screws up)
Installation of drivers and few softwares can be real pain sometimes in Linux, (for new users like me)..I wanted to install different version of NVIDIA graphics but the process was pretty time consuming considering I'd need to do extensive research before starting with it.

I hope the above mentioned display issue I have (only in Nuke) would probably be fixed in Jaunty :)
Today, I gotta test Houdini9.5's compatibility with Ubuntu..
Will update later....
phew!! long post :)

Lo and Behold..(recession hit my blogging??)

nope, as the title suggests my blogging has not been hit by recession!

(I guess its become a fad to layoff people in large numbers here and there. So people who needed to shut down, can very well say 'sorry buddy, Recession screw me arse'.)

Anyways, whats been happening is that my final semester's exam are approaching and things are getting pretty stingy coz of that. I've been more active on twitter than here. (well twitter's just 140 characters..come on)

Here's the thingie..I have sort of visualised what I might be doing next once my exams finish. (all such planning seems to shoot up exponentially before and during exams....I guess its same with everyone?? )

So the next project's gonna be a real test. Its gonna have bit of FUR, DYNAMICS, PARTICLES, (probably fluids too!!) , also some RIGGING & MODELLING!

Basically, its gonna get me to run on my toes!

I have not yet tinkered with furs and rigging. So its gonna take lots of time and RnD.

Well thats about it..dude in times of Recession, you dont expect me to write long posts without being PAID!! come on :)

Lo and Behold,

TO INFINITY & BEYYYYYYYOOONDDDDD!!

Addition of nifty utilities and snippets of codes!

Well, I have been pretty busy with college hassles so have really not been able to catch upto

things and push updates online.

But

I have integrated my twitter with my blog and

yes I've few new nifty *retweet* buttons at the top right corner as well as after every post :)

People with similar interests (i.e. VFX, Animation, Arts etc.) feel free to follow me on twitter.

By the way, if you have an account with Twitter and want to add *retweet* button to your blog, visit this site:

http://tweetmeme.com/static.php?page=button

Its very easy and straight forward :)

Parallel universe....Multiverse!!

This post is not for me to exhaust my rationale' on Parallel Universes and/or Multiverses,

its just that I find the whole idea of intertwined time and space intellectually very inviting.

Well, I have just decided to handle two projects simultaneously. That should clear the air

about the title though :)

I have been working on the crater project which has been pretty demanding by far and

its really difficult to maintain my sanity stuck with just one thing.

Having said that, I'm making a note to my memory about the fact that my exams are pushing in

ever so slightly and inadvertantly, that I wont even realise when they hit me!

Implies-----> I gotta get this finished as soon as possible.

Alrighty..I have reallly been thinking a lot about doing something more, something with Volumes or Fluids in Houdini. So I have zeroed in on Volumes for the moment....I hope I do justice to this :) (or atleast hit a decent try at it)

(I wish I could create a whole new multiverse for myself in Houdini....FANCY THAT!!)