I’m honoured to announce that Machine will have its festival debut at Annecy 2015. We look forward to seeing you there in June!
]]>After a long run we’re finally looking at our first showing. Above is the official trailer in preparation for the launch of the film.
Credits:
After a long departure, the team is finally back onto Machine and finishing up the film. Above are some brand new images from production. These haven’t gone through color-grade and are still in progress, but it’s been very exciting to see new shots rolling through the pipeline. We’re on a tight production for the next month, but if all goes well, we’ll be looking at finishing in May, and starting our research and application process for festivals.
]]>This is a quick timelapse filmed on our own loco motion control system. Here we see (mostly) Charlene Barre setting up props and buildings for one of our city sets. Very rough car animation by me – Sunit Parekh-Gaihede.
Eventually, we’d like to show the full evolution of a shot (from set dress to final grade), but we decided to put up this test sooner than later.
]]>This is another grade test – which is now a couple of months old, but I thought would be interesting to put up. There are some cloth penetration issues here which we’ve now solved using a combination of a custom shader (which traces a distribution of rays, out along a normal from the clothes, and displaces the penetrating geo back inside of the clothes), and some manual fixes in the lighting scenes.
We’ve also been testing the recently open-sourced stretchMesh as a way to solve the penetration issues, which we’ve had some success with and are considering integrating into the main character rigs.
The eyes in this test are based on raytraced reflections, using specific reflection objects. Since this test, our methods have shifted to instead use our point cloud as the reflection environment (this makes things a bit more predictable).
]]>Here is a rough comp test of one of our sequences. The animation (still in progress) is by sean ermey, one of our recent team additions (I hope to have a post on our crew in the near future). The lighting comes mostly from the digitized version of our miniature sets and is entirely the work of our “psuedo” global illumination framework for 3delight, which we call hydraLight. The framework makes easy a color managed workflow, and multi-bounce lighting, as well as seamlessly blending strategies (raytrace, point cloud) for reflection/refractive. More about the framework in another post.
We also used this sequence as our test of the newly (re)branded Autodesk PhotoFly, now called 123D Catch. 14 photos from our miniature sets (as many angles as we could get, including our shot camera), and about 3min later a fantastic 3d mesh (which we use for character interaction and color bleed). I’ve attached some of the photos below.
For those interested, we’re using a 300W Arri Fresnel (with a few layers of diffusion) for the hall light (which is perhaps a bit too sharp), a bounced 1000W Arri, with closed gates, for the moon light, and a dollhouse practical for both the interior lamp and the outdoor lamp (you can see the shadows on the curtains). I might bring in a desk lamp instead for the hallway light if we reshoot this sequence.
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Mid-senior level
3-4+ years production experience with Maya (although we will also take talented applicants who don’t match this criteria)
4-6 months employment
Skillset:
Your job will consist of adding subtlety and finish to an already well-developed animatic. The project is performance and dialogue oriented, and based around a live action shoot (4 simultaneous reference cameras). The style is inspired by naturalistic motion (not realism) and it will be your role to bring that style to the character’s performance.
Additionally, there will be some animation that is not character-based, but more general (vehicles, camera, etc), as well as some crowd animation.
We will be assessing applicants on the basis of their character experience and reels.
Send a mail with your CV and a link to your reel to: [email protected]
Please include [Animator] in the subject.
Hydralab is a small multi-talented studio in Denmark. Our projects range from feature film work to hardware and software development. We welcome new team members from all areas.
Experience/skills outside of your focus area are a plus.
Hydralab is an equal opportunity employer
]]>Mid-senior level
3-4+ years production experience with Maya (although we will also take talented applicants who don’t match this criteria)
1-2 months, with the possibility of continuing further into production
Understands cameras, staging, composition, pacing, timing, general filmmaking concepts, both in animation and live action contexts
Animation experience required
Comfortable creating basic assets
Broader range of skills+
Your job will consist of working with our previs lead to help set the blocking, tone, pacing, and direction of storytelling. The task will be to translate a live action reference cut, script, storyboards, concepts, into a working blueprint for the rest of production. This is a challenging but rewarding role, with the possibility of a substantial creative contribution.
We will be assessing applicants on the basis both technical know-how and storytelling skill.
Talented applicants will also be considered for production roles.
We will be soon advertising for the following positions:
Send a mail with your CV and a link to your reel to: [email protected]
Please include [Previs Artist] in the subject.
Hydralab is a small multi-talented studio in Denmark. Our projects range from feature film work to hardware and software development. We welcome new team members from all areas.
Experience/skills outside of your focus area are a plus.
Hydralab is an equal opportunity employer
]]>The above video is part of our recent development work, and took place at a studio, and their neighbor, in Copenhagen, Denmark. The video describes some of our process working with actors, miniatures and cg characters. As we get a bit further into production, and have worked a bit more with our actors, I’ll go into some more of the details of the process.
credits:
So, this blog has been pretty quiet for a couple of months. Hydralab has been busy with a number of other projects (which we hope to put up soon), and also with developing our pipeline tools.
At the same time, for the last 6 months, we’ve been working with the Danish Film Institute, through their New Danish Screen initiative, and spending some more time with the script. The focus of the story has sharpened considerably, and we’re now entering our second development phase, where I hope to test out some of my ideas.
We’ve also stepped back to rethink the production process. I’ll post more on this later, but our new process puts a considerable emphasis on a robust previs, with a skeleton crew, before any production begins.