3d stuff
today I spent the morning at an Autodesk press event. Taking time out to go to these things is always worthwhile, but I could have done without it today – with the pre-holiday rush and the fact that I got very little done yesterday.

I really must make an effort to get some writing work about the 3d packages – otherwise my position as a journalist writing about 3d is going to drift… Don’t quite know where I’ll find the time, but it’s well worth doing.

What I got from this event was a chat with one of the 3d guys who pointed me at the value of normal mapping and the importance of render passes. Neither of which I’d really understood before….

Normal mapping, by the way is creating a kind of fake painted on bump effect which can make simple 3d models look like much more complex shapes without slowing your computer down.

Using Render passes on the other hand means getting the computer to produce separate pictures for the colour, shadows, reflections, lighting, etc. in a scene instead of putting them all together. The advantage being that you can go in later on in After Effects and adjust the effect of each element of your scene without having to go back and do it all again. If someone tells you they’d like the same thing in a different colour, it takes 10 seconds to change instead of 48 hours….


Anyway, one thing worth noting is that even though the company is absolutely right at the cutting edge of technology, they still couldn’t get either their coffee machine or their TV to work… it’s not just me, then.


Work on the safety video is going well – and I’m very nearly at the stage where I can see it actually being possible to finish it. There are a few shots that are taking their time to render, and a few others that will need re-doing, but now everything is in place, and I can see the project coming to a close.

After my holiday next week, I’m going to jump straight in and get the narration recorded, and then there are only a couple of shots to do before I can present a preliminary edit to the client.

Just in time too – as the trilobite animation is really hotting up and I just know, if I’m going to get it all rendered in time, I’ll need to stick hard and fast to my deadlines.

The images are looking good, and I’m really discovering in these projects just how valuable a firm shot-list is. It lets me know exactly where I am at any point and allows me to see where the tricky shots are likely to be. Even if I end up leaving shots out or adding others in, it’s at least a framework I can depend on.

It’s also something that I tend to leave out when I don’t think I have time – and it’s always a false economy.