Again, it’s been a long time since my last update!
Most of it was spent in San Diego, where I interned as a Shader/Lighter/Renderer for Pendulum. It was very cool over there and I sure learned a lot — and the results are pretty stunning as well, though unfortunately I can’t present them yet.
Yesterday I released my newest plug-in for After Effects, Reality. This one was a lot more work than last time, mainly because it is a whole set of plug-ins opposed to only one in Normality.
Reality deals with advanced lighting effects that are normally impossible to achieve in AE:
– specular highlights
– image based illumination (IBI)
– bump/normal mapping
– reflections
– refractions
These are especially useful as they work in near real-time, so there’s no more need to wait for Maya/MentalRay/RenderMan/etc. to finally finish rendering.
I also have a new short film in mind and have a pretty good idea of how I’ll incorporate Normality and Reality into my workflow. Nothing’s been decided story-wise, but it sure looks like there be pirates afoot…
