RFX Design: DESIGN • ENERGY • MOTION: August 2013

8/22/13

NASA: Asteroid Redirect Manned Mission

So for the past few months I have been working hard with the concept analysis team here at NASA JSC, helping them visualize the recently announced asteroid redirect and utilization mission. It has been quite the brain-opening experience, learning about all that goes into planning a mission of this caliber.

One of the main things that we have been hard at work at here is an animation representing the manned portion of the mission, which is what the JSC team has been focusing on. This animation was presented at a mission formulation review up at NASA headquarters:

It was very well received, which was good news for us. We spent a lot of time this go-around making things look realistic and getting everything we could technically accurate. (We had gotten a lot operationally wrong the first time we did an animation of this mission).

If you're wondering what I personally did in the video, it was pretty much the part from when the two spaceships dock to when they separate. All of the modeling and animation was done in Modo while we did the compositing. To save render time on some of the less complicated vehicle shots, we wound up using Video CoPilot's Element 3D plugin for After Effects. It took a lot to set up, especially since it doesn't cast shadows, but we wound up getting it in the end. We also got to do our own J.J. Abrams-style lens flares for it, which was a nice touch in the end. We used SonicFire Pro for mixing together the music, which helped out a bunch in the long haul. It's a handy piece of software that anyone who regularly does videos needs to pick up.

Overall, I am pleased with the results. It's a good blend of artistic interpretation with real engineering planning behind it. Here are a few more still images that I created that were used in the review:

8/11/13

AMA Declassified: Mark 3 Surface Suit

Here's another peek into my work. We recently got connected to the group here at NASA JSC who are working on the Mark 3 surface suit. We showed them a few things that we could do and they were interested in how that could apply to their work.

As a bit of a test run, they gave us a 3D laser-scan of the Mark 3 surface suit. We quickly did a quick texturing and rendering of the raw file, which was well into the millions of polygons.

I am in the process of creating a low-resolution version of the suit, after which I'll project all the details of the high-resolution into a normal map. It should be a good asset to have, once I finish it. It certainly will be hard to create a usable rig for the legs, though, looking at the joints in the hips. I'm still scratching my head about how to tackle that one.

8/2/13

ZBrush - Lunar Surface

I have been meaning to do a lunar surface ZBrush sculpt for work, and I finally got some time to work at home today. This was knocked out in about three hours. If I was doing it right, I would have split up the UV map into four or more tiles, but as it currently sits, the final texture maps were around 8192x8192 pixels.

What is this all about?

I was only nine years old when my brother brought the game Myst into our house. I remember vividly delving into it's surreal world and being mesmerized by the groundbreaking visuals that it held. It was at that moment that a seed of fascination had been planted inside me which continued to grow and grow and grow.

It has been many years since that day when I was introduced to the world of 3D computer animation, but I have had an increasingly strong desire to learn more and more about it. I remember the first computer animation I created as a teenager using Strata Studio Pro: a simple car driving around a corner and into a garage with the door closing behind it. The modeling was crude, there were no textures, the animation itself did not look realistic at all, the resulting movie took up a significant portion of our hard drive space, and the rendering time tied up the family computer for over a day. Despite all those things, I realized that there was something in my future involving this new developing medium.

My interest in 3D computer animation grew exponentially over the years and I have never been able to get enough of it. I am continually fascinated by the challenging visuals that are continually being achieved in the entertainment industry. I'm the type of person who will buy the special edition of the movie just so I can see all of the "Making Of" featurettes. I think I enjoy them more than the movie sometimes. Although I had this strong interest in 3D computer animation, I chose to do my undergraduate work in industrial design. I have no regrets about my decision to pursue that path, however, because I learned a great deal about proper proportions, composition, form, color theory, and how people's perception of things can be influenced by visual cues. I recognize that many of these principles translate very easily into visual entertainment.

I graduated from Brigham Young University in 2007 and was hired by Pride Mobility Products in Scranton, Pennsylvania. While there I was responsible for designing various mobility products such as powered wheelchairs, scooters, and other accessories. Oddly enough, however, I found my duties in the design team being focused more towards tasks that were closely related to what a technical director or render wrangler would do. I was often chosen to do the renderings for the products we designed because I understood how to program shaders and how to create HDR studio lighting setups. In addition, during our regular meetings, I found myself doodling little cartoon characters that I had dreamed up or dreaming up ways of how our products could transform into robots, etc. Eventually the itch returned and I realized that my ultimate goals and professional desired wouldn't be fully satisfied in my current career path.

In the spring of 2009 I decided that I wanted to pursue 3D computer modeling and animation as a profession and applied for the MFA program at Academy of Art University. I recently moved to Provo, Utah, and am currently taking classes online while I pursue some other personal goals. I am eager to collaborate on projects and am excited to get involved with the other graduate students. Feel free to check out my web site www.rfxdesign.com and give me any critiques on my work. I'm always looking for a chance to improve my knowledge and skills.