First visit to JP, Kyoto, Osaka, Nara and the neighborhood. Learning a lot of differences between Taiwan and Japan, also a real visit enlightens my previous cultural preconceptions of JP (like from anime) and subcultures.

If you’re into fashion (I’m not quite), it’s nice to observe how traditionally the Kansai citizens wear in greytones, compared to the more kiddie colorful Taiwan–more influenced by American jeans, or the classy leather, sunglasses, thick-layered New York. Within the black,grey,white scheme, Kyoto wear has more expression in elaborate patterns, clouds, squares, Chinese classic shapes. Same goes with the temples, though there are bright orange facades (開?) and well groomed gardens with color to accompany.

Click the pic for my 14 tourist albums:

After much encoder wrangling, the screencap cam out.

BIRD RIG: wing & leg

Shows parts of the rig, wings & legs. The challenge was the character required more cartoonish flexibility, and while working non of my colleagues made a bird rig before so I was left exploring whatever problems I’d find.
Im quite surprised why I made 60+ shelf scripts (mostly MEL) just for the BIRD. And a few arent just short tool scripts. I’d need to organize and improve the scripts/rig into a better package as usual.
An “industry standard” is often to rig/animate in Maya, but keep the feathers and its complex motions to Houdini particles. Here I’m just attempting a simple & fast maya feather method. But because most renderers slow down with numerous transparent geometries, the sw isn’t too fast. I can try tweaking the renderer if feathers can look good enough for the bird.

Next up is the facial rig, which used the majority of script tools.

VineGrowth fixed

Also fixed the vineGrowth presentation, pardon if the previous vine video caused more seizures than Pokemon!

At the same time I’m trying to focus on a career path, and learning a wider range of CG/web. I don’t get my oxymoron situation. It’s something in the realm of null, 0.? and 1+. I’ve too many 0.? or half-baked skills, and some have a negative apparent value. So I’m planning to level up my website to acceptable levels, since it’s a required part of either CS or CG. And at least know how to create cloth (on character) & hair, basics of effects. Then coding and houdini could be worth training for ++ levels.

I forgot about modeling…ok maybe some more of everything…

Recent Houdini learning dailies:
playlist
lastest video:

The fx|script demoreel is updated. As previous reels had apparent errors, I believe this is my first presentable reel.

It’s on http://www.gophercg.com.

I’ve made two demoreels so far, both work in progress. There’s some clips to fix and rerender.
You’ll see it on my site: http://www.gophercg.com

Or here:
demoreel – fx|script on blip.tv
demoreel – animation on blip.tv