New Microfighters Episode!!

CLICK HERE TO SEE EPISODE!!

The first episode of the Microfighters series has been posted! I am so excited about how this turned out!
This was one of our studio's first longer episodes. I had the privilege of lighting all but three shots for this episode and compositing most of them in Fusion. Definitely had quite a few hiccups and there are things we would have liked to have done better, but it was still very fulfilling to work on :)

Enjoy!

Updated Lighting Reel

Lighting Reel 2013 from Shreyasi Das on Vimeo.

Updated my lighting reel with some shots from the LEGO Star Wars webseries that I am working on at Doodle Pictures Studios. As always, the demo reel break down is listed under the video description on the Vimeo page.

Check it out! 

I will be updating this as soon as more episodes are released online for public viewing. It would be nice to be able to show more than Geonosis ;)

LEGO Star Wars

Here's the episode I did some shot lighting for during my first two weeks at my new job at Doodle Pictures Studio!

And... PART II !

=)

Lighting Reel 2011

Current lighting reel! I'll add my thesis shots as and when I complete them.

1) Group Project with Paul W. Gerla during the Summer Pixar Undergraduate Program (2011). We had to come up with a short, two-shot narrative. I was responsible for the lighting, set-dressing, layout, some of the modeling as well helping develop the concept and design of the piece. Paul was responsible for modeling, shading as well as the fog-effect. 

Time taken for all aspects of the visuals: 5 days. Rendered using Renderman.

2)Lighting from Reference: a one-day exercise during the Pixar Undergraduate Program. Rendered using Renderman.

3)Final Compositing Project for a school Lighting Class. I worked with a photography student, Jami Ann Plekon. We planned the concept together and set up the lights in the photoshoot. I then built the CG cage to be composited into the photograph. Rendered using mental ray. Time taken: 5 days

4)Final project during the Pixar Undergraduate Program. I was responsible for changing the time of day from the original shot in Toy Story 3- from day to night. All the lights from the shot file were removed except for the default character light rigs. I was responsible for all the lighting. Everything else was created by Pixar. Time taken: 10 days. Rendered using Renderman.

(I chose this shot for its level of complexity: it has both a main human and toy character and the focus shifts from one to the other during the shot. In addition, there are several props, toys with fur, and a human with sub-surface scattering. I also wanted to challenge myself by trying to light a playtime scene at night while still keeping it friendly and warm. I took the liberty of cheating a night-light screen left, which was not there in the original film)

Acting for Animation

Blocking progress for my acting for animation final assignment:

And heeree is a very flattering video of me acting. I'm not very good at being angry usually so this was a bit challenging. I was feeling pretty weird... emotionally...by the end of the day after doing a billion takes of this!!

Lighting Class Updates

Final composite project. Each CG lighting student had to pair up with a photography student, come up with a concept, go on a photoshoot and then composite a CG object into the photo. If anything, I learned a lot about studio-lighting itself from this project, more than I did about lighting in Maya.

Updates!

Thesis character turnaround:

Snippets of work from my Summer internship at Pixar Animation Studios:

Compositing!

This is for my lighting class. We had to do an exercise by pairing up with a photo student in our school and going on a photoshoot. We then had to bring the photo into Maya and place a simple CG object into the scene, lighting it to match the photograph.

Primitive Still Life

I finally got into a lighting class and I love it!!

Here's our first assignment- we were told to light a still life using primitive shapes, a white lambert shader, spot & ambient lights, and direct illumination with Maya Software. I decided to find a painting use it to influence how my still life looked. Here it is!

Reference:

And then I decided to do another render with some white blinn and phong shaders just to add some specular highlights.

dialogue_school of rock

First spline pass for our last animation assignment - dialogue. I also blocked out the jaw movement and mouth corners (ins and outs) for the lip synching.

monologue progress

WIP so far for my monologue. I started blocking out the lips. I haven't messed with the teeth and tongue yet. Just the jaws and the lip corner ins and outs. This is only my second time lip-synching in 3D and I know it's not perfect yet. So any feedback would be appreciated. I guess it doesn't help that Blogger unsynched the sound for me though =/

you can just call me yoshi!

Next animation assigment: monologue with the Morpheus rig!! Woo! I got used to the controls pretty quickly actually. So for the assignment, I decided to do an intro of how pronounce Shreyasi. If I can get a nice animation out of it, I'll put it with my intro slate in my reel and that way people will know how to say my name!! And there'll be a little bit of my personality in there too. So here's the first pass at blocking: (She doesn't look like me, no)

Update 04/08/2011: Body Spline, first pass-

latest

Latest playblast of my Jekyll-Hyde (shift of thought) animation assignment.

it kicked!

First pass at blocking for our Jekyll and Hyde animation showing a shift of thought. The timing needs a lot of work. The total time has to be less than 10 seconds so everything is rushed now. So any feedback would be welcome!

heavy things

Final render for Weight project. Not the best- there are some elbow snaps and the torso floats around a bit.

weight

Blocking for my first 3D character animation assignment- expressing weight

Dissonance Trailer

Will be done in 4 weeks! Aa!

render party!

Modeling, Shading and Rigging Reel 2010-2011 from Shreyasi Das on Vimeo.

[2012 UPDATE: If you wish to view this older version of my 3D Generalist Reel, the password is "reel2010". Please note that this is not my current demo reel. Thank you!]

Quickly threw this together today. Well not so quickly, but finished it in one day, compared to my first reel that took me half my academic quarter to compile.

I want to refine it further, and re-render some things that our Renderfarm messed up. Also wish I knew better last year than to smooth my typewriter model. It's not the best reel, I admit. Either way, I at least have something right now, so I don't have to panic near deadlines. I want to focus more on working towards an animation reel in the coming months.

Ohkay, good night!

lighting tests, cntd.

[2012 UPDATE: The passwords for the following videos are "test"]

Shot001_LightTest_11.10.10 from Shreyasi Das on Vimeo.

Re-did some lighting tests, with the character textured correctly this time. It's not bad, but it still feels flat to me. Going to play around with the lights more before break starts and I don't have the privilege of rendering in the lab anymore.. Rim lights should help break out the flatness a little, and probably a little more contrast. Other than that, I don't want to get carried away with lighting and texturing. Animating the clocks from shot-to-shot is going to take some meticulous thought, and that's next on my list to tackle before I start animating next quarter.

I also plan on thumbnailing most of my shots over break.

Shot010_LightTest_11.10.10 from Shreyasi Das on Vimeo.

Also, working title has been changed to "Dissonance".

sneaky peaky

These tests took about 11 hours to do. The character isn't done texturing yet. Now that he's in the set, I have a better idea of how to texture him so he doesn't blend in with the background so much. Till now, I've been using the Norman rig in my 3D animatic, so now I have a better sense of where I should be going.

Also, rigging is still as terrifying. But I have to thank my self from the past for making life easier for me in the present by practicing rigging all of summer =)

^ I goofed up on the timing of the light for this one.