Guess who’s going to be working on Spiderman 3? Only your friendly neighborhood Cessen.
When I didn’t join up in time for The Shaggy Dog (https://blenderartists.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=37264) I was disappointed, but my disappointment has been more than quelled now that I’ve been brought on board for Spiderman 3.
I’m going to be working on various interfaces and displays that will play on computer monitors etc. in the movie. So none of the big effects, but it will be seen on screen.
We aren’t starting work on it until January so until then I won’t know precisely what aspects of that I’ll be working on. But when we do start I’ll be sure to let you all know what I’m doing.
I’m really excited about all this. Hopefully I can get in the credits…
woo! great to hear! im sure when the movie comes out (man, and i canty wait for Spiderman 3) i’ll be telling everyone i know who those effects were done by 8)
There are people on this forum with much more talent than me (both in art and programming). It’s just a matter of being in the right place at the right time, I guess. For some inexplicable reason I’ve been very fortunate and hit those times/places a lot.
Yes. Me and another student, Gavin, impressed him sufficiently that he decided to bring us on board. Man, next term is going to be really crazy for me. Gavin and I are already doing some work for Boeing, and then Spiderman 3 on top of that, and an independent film project, plus classes, plus spending time with my girlfriend… yeah, it’s going to be crazy. Sleep will probably be the first thing to go.
Hee hee. Well, remember, I’m just doing interfaces and displays. Nothing fancy. Certainly not any of the major effects in the movie. But still, even that level of involvement has got me really excited. And I really wonder what things it might lead to in the future.
Maybe. No promises. I believe we’re going to be using Maya for most of it.
But don’t worry, I’m not leaving Blender behind. Blender is my baby. I just can’t let it go. Hopefully I’ll be able to weasel it into some production pipelines in the future. But I think there are some important features missing cough N-gons cough that might get in the way of convincing studios to start using it. Hopefully the Orange project will take care of some of those. If I had the time I’d take a crack at coding a shader tree, and just generally making the material/texture system more flexible and consistent… but I don’t have the time, unluckily. And it doesn’t look like I’m going to any time in the near future.
i dont know where you need ngons, but that does not sounds like such a big issue…
future works on the material system is quite an interesting area indeed … it has been enlightening to see how shaders are used in the renderman land, and now with pytex there are interesting possibilities in blender from totally different angles
… i guess we dont even know yet where the material system is gonna go (except that layering multiple ones is on the orange list)
but great news, keep us posted if can tell somethings on the way
N-gons are very important for industry acceptance. Box modeling is one of the primary modeling techniques in the industry, and N-gons make the process pleasant instead of hellish. The merits of N-gons can be argued till the cows come home, but in the end they’re something that industry modelers use extensively and they would be loath to change such a fundamental part of their work-flow.
I’ve mentioned the debate about N-gons in the Blender community to several people (including professional 3D artists), and they think it’s absolutely laughable that such a debate could even exist: to them N-gons are just an obviously necessary feature.
I’m not saying (in this post, anyway) that Blender necessarily needs N-gons. Just that Blender needs them if industry acceptance is a goal.
No, we don’t have a custom app, actually. I’m working for a small studio that’s contracting out. I’m not on the ILM team or anything.
We’ll be using Maya (shudder). I’ve been using Maya at my current job, and with the exception of HyperShade and Mel script, I really hate it. It’s really customizable, which is good… but the problem is that it’s one of those programs that you pretty much have to customize lest it be unbearable to use. The default set up is painful beyond words.
Okay, okay… so I’m exagerating a bit. But I really don’t like it. It may be powerful, but its interface was obviously not well thought out. I think Alias sort of assumes that anyone using it must have a dedicated technical director, and have a specific pipeline that requires über customization anyway.
At this point if I were to recommend a high end 3D application to anyone, I’d recommend 3DS MAX. As far as I can tell, it’s very nearly as powerful, but with a fairly well designed interface. The only down side to MAX over Maya is that it’s shading system isn’t as powerful (no node-based shader creation).
Oops… sorry for the long rant. I just get worked up talking about Maya. It has caused me much grief over the past week.
Hopefully I’ll be able to weasel it into some production pipelines in the future. But I think there are some important features missing cough N-gons cough that might get in the way of convincing studios to start using it. Hopefully the Orange project will take care of some of those. If I had the time I’d take a crack at coding a shader tree, and just generally making the material/texture system more flexible and consistent… but I don’t have the time, unluckily. And it doesn’t look like I’m going to any time in the near future.
what kind of software will you guys be using? imagine it will be some kind of custom built 3D programe