My first project done as a “Professional” at R+H. So, should I put this in my reel before the tank or after the explosion?

If you’re curious, I comped the first shot, some of the second, the fourth, the ninth and a did little roto work on the 15th.

I’ve been posting to Google Buzz for a while now, most through Google Reader, to share some cool links with my Mom. I took a look recently and realized just how much it had piled up, so I’ve I added a link to the sidebar. Take a look and subscribe if you’d like, I post the best of the internet to it multiple times a day.
Mattdoovall Google Buzz

While packing to move to the west coast, I came across this behemoth of an adapter I built my first year of college. Read the rest of this entry »

After being away from Savannah (and this project) for four months, I managed to find some free time to spend polishing it off.

One of the main things I learned during the Rhythm & Hues compositing apprenticeship was to push as much of the work as you can in compositing. The first problem with the old rendering method I was using was that it didn’t give me enough control when piecing the whole thing together. So once I did a little backtracking and rerendering, I was able to devote time to 2d problem solving for the rest of the issues.

Feels good to press publish on this post, and finally archive this project’s files.

Almost exactly a year ago, I was interning at Top Gear USA, BBC America. I wrote mostly blog entries and photoshopped top-five list headers, but made sure to watch a Top Gear episode weekly and talked about cars all day, I loved it. Before the site was closed and I moved onto doing other stuff for BBCA, we took on a little project, creating an automotive hoax. We decided to make a shooting brake (wagon) version of some car, people either love or hate wagons so no matter what, strong opinions are in order. At first I suggested a Hyundai Genesis, because I think that would be awesome, but to get the strongest reactions we aimed for a much higher horse, Porsche.
I modeled the car in Maya over about two weeks, we shot some video and an HDR in a Brooklyn alley, and rendered it with Mental Ray. I had to composite it in Final Cut Pro due to lack of resources, but the result was semi-successful.
http://jalopnik.com/5310288/porsche-cayman-mule-spotted-with-shooting-brake-shape/gallery/
http://www.autoblog.com/2009/07/08/spy-video-porsche-cayman-shooting-brake-caught-on-camera-phone/
http://blog.caranddriver.com/three-door-cayman-mule-spotted-possible-928-successor/

We did a second part with a screen grab from the then upcoming Forza Motorsport 3 video game, which garnered even more attention and helped remove some doubt on the car’s legitimacy.
http://jalopnik.com/5311903/cayman-shooting-brake-confirmed-in-forza-3-screen-shot
http://www.autoblog.com/2009/07/13/more-evidence-of-porsche-cayman-shooting-brake/
http://cupholder.blogs.topgear.com/2009/07/14/shoot-to-play/
http://www.0-60mag.com/online/?p=14925
http://forums.vwvortex.com/zerothread?id=4468726&page=1

Then something funny happened that we didn’t expect, someone created a render of our render. Taking our video and the Forza still, they photoshopped what the finished car would look like.
http://www.0-60mag.com/online/?p=15169
http://www.carzi.com/2009/07/13/porsche-cayman-shooting-brake-photo-video/

The last part of our hoax was a fake flickr gallery of a supposed intern at a German photography firm. I created and posted a bunch of images, of myself, a friend, a road and two of the Cayman.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/40860189@N04/3770157784/in/photostream/

The reactions:
http://www.autoblog.com/2009/08/07/spy-shot-porsche-cayman-shooting-brake-revealed/
http://jalopnik.com/5331445/porsche-cayman-shooting-brake-uncovered

From there the NY Times automotive blog revealed the whole shebang.
http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/porsche-shooting-brake-is-a-fake/index.html?ref=automobiles

Our producer, Jared Holstein, arranged a little behind the scenes with Jalopnik.
http://jalopnik.com/5336892/how-to-dupe-the-automotive-media

This was a great little reminisce, but not the reason I sat down to write this. The past few weeks I re-textured, relit, re-rendered and re-composited the Porsche, giving it the proper attention it deserved. I tried not to look at the original and just go from what I felt was right now, but every time I would google “Porsche Mule” for reference, the damned thing would pop up in the results.

Here’s some side by sides to illustrate how much a years knowledge, about $30,000 SCAD tuition, and correct compositing software really accounts for:

New:

Old:

It’s interesting to see that previously I desaturated and grained the background plate to match the car, cheap move 2009 Matt. . . cheap move.

And here is my very first render of the project, when I was still honing in on the shape. Simple HDR-lit renders of shiny objects will always make me smile.