Mike Allen's Digital Archive

 

  Digital content created from 2000 to 2004. Kirlian image of my right hand taken in 1998. Kirlian photography was developed by Russian scientists Semyon and Valentina Kirlian in 1939-1940. Spooky ain't it.

P51 Mustang  Wing Gun Fire

A few shorts frames of my recent tests to simulate wing guns firing while a P51 Mustang banks. Click on the image to view a short clip (QuickTime, 256KB).

The image below was created using Maya 4.5 and its Fluid Effects. Oceans can be created with the click of a button.  

Jeremy Birn Discusses Lightprobes

The author of "Digital Lighting and Rendering" answers my questions  about lighting and the common use of lightprobes in CG lighting. 
More >>.

Habib Zargarpour & the Land Master Vehicle from "Damnation Alley" 

Yes, that's right Habib Zargarpour (ex-ILM associate visual effects supervisor) enjoys looking over an interesting piece of mechanical engineering down at Dean Jeffries Designs in Burbank, California.  
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Troubleshooting

I have added more of my Questions & Answer material on my Trouble page. Learn from my mistakes!  

• Maya: "Why are asteroid texture references showing up in the lightFog?

• Commotion Pro: Why does frame 178 go black in my composition?

• MatchMover: Why does my character slide all over my Maya scene? More >>

Character Animation Using T.I.T.A.N

Titan is a new TIming Tool for Maya ANimators. You first create a rough animation, scrub through it and Titan times your animation based on how fast or slow you scrub the Timeslider....stay tuned.

Work-In-Progress

Two or three new scenes require some characters that are fast moving. This screen capture shows the progress on a polygonal "Pegasus" using an IK bone setup. 

This screen capture shows a render of a dragon created by Craig Daughtery. I plan to animate it for one of my scenes against a Terragen background of Scotland.

Maya 4 (Fake) Global Illumination Renders 

As always, I am continually working on improving existing scenes or creating new scenes based on my newly acquired skills. Here are some sample Maya 4 renders using the GI_Joe  global illumination (G.I.) MEL script:

Okay, I put this one in for a bit of variety. This image  uses the environmentFog rendering feature. The blue gas cloud in the background is a digital matte painting.

I also had to experiment with different motion blur settings for propellers. I eventually used a transparent disk with the image of a blurred prop. 

The ME 109 plane was the second polygonal model I textured mapped. What I learned while creating and applying texture maps is being distilled into a task-based tutorial called "Maya Production Notes: Texturing Polygonal Models."