Because Gaussian Splats are basically just a pointcloud with fancy point attributes, I wanted to see how easy they were to edit in Houdini. This example takes a splat from PolyCam, cleans it up in Houdini, and renders it in Unreal. Not quite performant enough to beat polygons just yet, but it’s a promising workflow for the future.
This example takes a detailed scan with a relatively featureless material, and repurposes it as an undersea rock formation covered in barnacles and seaweed.
Volumes are subdivided based on modular rules – so a building volume is first split into floor volumes. Each floor volume is then further subdivided into window, wall or column volumes based on it’s position in the overall building.
The vegetation tools have been used on several projects, however. For speed and flexibility, I also moved away from CSV data transfers to native USD stages.
VP showcase at Scarab Digital’s stage in Vancouver, demonstrating the underwater environment created with ‘Greenhouse’, and streamed in to nDisplay as USD.
The VFX asset build was, as usual, extremely heavy, and required significant optimisation for realtime. We ran a semi-automated Houdini workflow for merging, cleaning, retopologising and re UV-ing the stadium into 13 manageable sections.
I was also responsible for final polish and stage delivery of the Colosseum / Ludus Magnus Entrance Environment, as well as the Judean workers camp. This included set dressing, Blueprint control utilities for stage operations, and the usual cleanup/retopo/retexture of the Colosseum itself.
Snow scenes represent a particular challenge in Virtual Production, and require a lot of care to sell the blend between the practical and digital worlds. They also look VERY different on set than they do ‘in camera’, which adds to the challenge.
My work was primarily the BG landscape and lighting, as well as the integration of the scattered tents (courtesy of an extensive Blueprint scatter system built by Marko Seper). Four lighting scenarios were created, but I think only one of them made the final cut.
The dense jungle in the opening sequence was the most detailed, primarily done by myself and Emily Cho. Layout and temp renders were done in Unity, with the result exported to a ‘shotPKG’ for rendering in Katana/Renderman
The production shut down Highway 17 on Vancouver Island for several weeks for the ‘drone chase’ sequence, but shot all the driving plates from exactly the same height. To get the dynamic camera moves the sequence needed, I set up a system in nuke that reprojected the plates onto a smoothed version of the lidar scan, and re-rendered the (more interesting) shot cameras.
Some ‘Wolf cove’ shots were more successful than others, but in the end the VP environment was just used for lighting, and to give the actors a sense of place – the entire background was replaced in post by ILP
Concept paintings to help guide the DNEG build team on the creation of Agna Qel’a
I really wanted to see how a Diorama environment would perform with realtime raytracing – these are my first tests with an alpha of 2019.3.
Houdini Vector-displaced water in Unity HDRP
Houdini procedural assets – one that warps photogrammetry scans to fit a custom shape, and one that grows dripping moss on arbitrary objects.
Two of my earliest photogrammetry experiments, both around mosquito creek in North Vancouver. I was comparing ‘Photoscan’ (now ‘Metashape’) and ‘RealityCapture’ at the time, so I don’t know which one these were solved in.
I oversaw a team of 13 artists, who created more than 240 unique assets. I textured around 40 of them myself in ‘Substance’.
Freelance contract for ‘Neverstop’.
Interior visualisation for a rebranding of ‘TopShop’
Freelance contract for ‘FlamingCGI’
Visualisation of the Theatre District in ‘Bawadi Square’, a proposed district of Dubailand.
‘Skimmer’
Boston Marina – another shot that could have been filmed on location, but was actually a greenscreen in Ireland.
American Sniper – 2015
I didn’t lead this show, but (along with Scott Eade, the head of layout), I supervised the construction of Sadr City, Baghdad as a fully digital environment. The 9km² that was required for this sequence was laid out using Modo replicators, and rendered using Modo’s native renderer.
Jack the Giant Slayer – 2012
I created the FG forest in ‘Vue’, as well as projected matte paintings of Jack’s farmhouse.
Rocky islands DMP, done in collaboration with Rose Wang. Concept obviously inspired by Ha Long Bay.
Concept art for Fludd’s forest city. Model and base render by Gavin Jung and Remo Weiland.
Another angle of the Triffoil facility destruction. Build architecture is inspired by a water treatment plant close to Heathrow airport.
Post Triffid outbreak DMP
Only direction given was ‘a Crazy Alchemist’s Lair’, so I had a lot of creative freedom.
SketchUP has it’s roots as an architectural modeler, so creating the vaulted ceilings was easier than I expected.