This week, I did a lot of advising. I helped advise on heightfields and what Team Trail Blazers could use different approaches for their VP backgrounds. I talked about using Gaea and Houdini and what methods they could use in both. I also spoke about how they could texture the landscape in houdini, bake the textures, or create masks using VOPs in houdini and then bake those out into unreal for texturing. “You may also want to look at extracting actual height data of a canyon that looks like that, then bring that data into Houdini or Gaea to further develop it. You could also do the look dev in Houdini using VOPS, then bake out the textures and bring it into unreal or just procedural texture in unreal. You could also make masks in Houdini, then bake those out and use them in unreal.” I also asked about their unreal pipeline and what assets they are using for vegetation. I got them thinking about using real-world locations as a reference and their unreal pipeline.

Another team I helped this week was Kernel. They needed some advice on how they should go about filming their actor placing a bowl in the microwave. My suggestion to them was to make a cardboard box that fits the dimensions of a microwave and then have your actor place the product in the cardboard box as the microwave, making sure you have a photo of the bowl. Then, go through and roto out the hand and replace everything else with CG. Also, the hand reflections could be remade using a mixamo animation and a super basic skin texture.

I also came to the end of there shot to help with capturing a HDRI.

I also gave drew my 360 camera so he would have a back up just incase Team Sopranos needed it.

I also helped with some Team bonding for Team KESS. One of our mutual friends was having a birthday party, so we spent a lot of time discussing their ideas about how they should present their work and themselves. This also wasn’t the only time we had this conversation. We also discussed film shoot planning and how they felt during their first meeting with the mentors. What they did right and wrong, and what they can do next time. The biggest takeaway from those conversations was to always keep in mind that mentors are human, and they do not overanalyze everything you do like they are robots; instead, they see that you are someone who they would want to grab a beer with and also that were gonna be more stressed when your thinking about all these little things, like what am I doing with my hands, am I being personable enough, am I being too loud or talking too much, am I rambling. YOU know what you should be doing, so do it. You are more likely not to make those mistakes if you’re not thinking about it than if you were. But what I’m saying doesn’t mean don’t practice, you 100% SHOULD, but don’t kill yourself over thinking about things that are taking you away from the moment cause then your brain spends more time thinking than doing when it matters most.

As for my project. I need to rent a camera this week from the cage. I also want to possably film at the SCAD backlot but I’m not sure yet. This Wednesday I plan to go to river street and start looking for location for shooting.

I also spent alot of time playing pickle this week with Drew, Zach, Storm, Ty and many more. I hope to get Kulin on the court this week and maybe some more form the class. Here are some cool photos taken by Zach and Storm.