thread reboot : glade 2012 meteor and pyromid mapping project

[jamesamcpherson]

i wanted to re-boot this thread because i got off on the wrong foot starting it and some of the things i posted were a bit disrespectful and rude to the people here who make a living out of VJ'ing , so i thought id re-boot it in an informative and measured way being more concise and hopefully helpful to anybody who wants to undertake a similar project. so with that in mind heres what we wanted to achieve - what we actually achieved, the problems we encountered and what we'd do differently given the time / opportunity again.


the whole thing started off as the brain child of a Mr Andy Ellis ( head of state ) the promoter of Uppercut, dj , stage builder and all round awesome party organiser and nice bloke. we'd just been to a sgp night put on in battersea power station called lost lovers ball , and bumped into each other and he mentioned he would like to get some videomapping going on one of his projects sometime and how he'd wanted to do it for ages. i at the time had work commitments on Inception , the whole VFX crew were extremely busy working tirelessly on that and although i had expressed interest in doing it, it ended up getting shelved and put on the back burner and forgotten about until Inception was over (we ended up winning an oscar for our work on it and a BAFTA )
a year or 2 later i was working on Jon Carter struggling along with learning nuke around october / november 2011 (i was a shake artist previously) learning to composite in full stereo on the ape fight sequence , and the subject raised its head again and we decided to give it a go , so i did a bit of research into how the tobin gig was done, they didnt give too many secrets away in their interviews and press releases, but by a bit of research i was able to work out which software they used because you see their computer monitors in the background while they are talking in interviews etc and they do mention a little bit about the keystoning processes involved etc etc so i used that as a basis, basically wanting to do something like the ISAM gig, but for no money, with no high production value, and proove that we have the talent here in the UK to do stuff like that here in London, and that there was no need to go to the states and pay a bunch of guys over there ( think it was the same people who did the skrillex cell ) because we have a world class computer animation university at bournemouth and we have an industry leading VFX crew here too.
so with that in mind i wanted to spend 99% of my time making some breathtaking content to blow people away, and worry less about the performance delivery method and more about the content. after all a 3day festival was going to need a shit load of content to avoid playing the same tired old loop over and over again and bore peoples socks off. and what stood the amon gig apart from the crowd is that they had some pretty nice stuff going, although it was very diluted down with glowing edges on black and nothing else, with intermittent transitions using full blown content.

so anyway i made a pitch video to help my friend secure some funding and use as a kind of presentation of the research i was doing, it mainly included things like playing around with a kinect, the whole rutt etra thing, and showing examples of other peoples stuff and taklingabout what id liek to do. that impressed the SGP lot enough to get me in and ask me to do some extra work for them as well as my friend, so before i knew it i was split accross 2 stages doing something id never done before , not really knowing what i was doing and being totally out of my depth. i told them there were 3 main limitations that would stop me doing what i wanted to do - time, money , and crew. i told them id need all the stage dimensions locked down (not to change) and given to me in orthographic projections by january, so i had al the measurements and id need to know what types of projectors / lenses we were using and that theyd obv have to provide those, and i said i could only do it if i had a big crew behind me which i would put together with fellow VFX artists from work/friends etc, and i hinted that i wanted some payment or funding if they wanted me to do something special and worth my time.

i was promised stage measurements by end of january at the latest, and a lot of people at work were very interested in helping when i told them about it. i had about 15 people lined up to help, all mainly proffesional VFX artists, but one by one they all dropped out , and it turned out i never got the stage dimensions i needed until march , and even then the pyromid kept changing.

the meteor design was locked down and didnt change since march, and i was able to put about 1000 hours of my own spare time in, in between working on total recall ( the new one ). the pyromid was a different story they kept changing the design and i kept modelling it in maya and having to throw away my model and re-model it again and again, about 4 times in total, the last update coming 1/2 weeks before the festival.

i had wanted to quit several times because i knew rushing all this work out at the last minute, and with no crew or friends to help was going to be a nightmare, but one guy stuck with me throughout and wanted to help, so we agreed to do the work together and i supplied him with the maya geo and render camera settings he needed to be able to do some work in C4d. he was in switzerland and had no professional or VFX background so it was quite a learning gap between us, i was attempting to do something quite high level and all he wanted to do was the most basic easiest way possible to make sure we got something out. so i felt it was good haivng his stuff as a backup incase mine went wrong, and the two contrasting styles would compliment each other well

[jamesamcpherson]

unfortunately as the deadline and glade creeped ever closer, it slowly became apperent how massively behind i was when it was like april and i hadnt done any tests with projectors , i hadnt bought any of the software i needed yet, i had spent all my time creating photorealistic UV mapped textures and cool animations in maya, and i wasnt even close to a finished rendered, lit, composited result. it was at that point i joined this forum and thought i could save myself some time by asking for tips on the kind of hardware to use/ reliable tried and tested methods , and start trying to configure a rig/setup approach to delivering the beauitiful content i was working so hard on because to be honest i was begining to get a bit panicked and stressed that i didnt have enough time ( i was about 3 months behind where i had originally wanted to be) upon the advice of one or two friendly people here, i decided to find someone to help me build a pc, so i searched ebay high and low for people how build custom made machines, and recruited a nice guy to help me build one and configure a decent set up, i wanted a hackintosh and he advised me to use a 5870 card, but i went with the eyefinity 6 version just to be on the safe side and have maximum GPU outputs.
so that arrived in early may, but still i hadnt practiced any kind of mapping at all, my mate had done some tests in switzerland by using a cardboard box and some data projectors but he didnt really know what he was doing and the tests were pretty inconclusive/uninspiring. it was pretty daunting but id come so far making all this beautiful content and i was nearly on the home straight so i continued pouring all my time into that.
eventually by end of may i started seeing some results, began getting renders out of maya i was happy with using my new machine, and left it rendering for a period of about 2 weeks solid by setting up batch render scripts in mental ray.
by june i finally had the money spare to buy an educational copy of resolume, and buy all the last minute cables, mini display port adaptors, and hard drives i needed to backup files and transport them, but i ran out of time to finish the UFO content. if id had the time i needed, the maya CGI i made wouldve got about 200/300 hours comp time, but instead it got about 20/30 , but i had no choice i just had to rush it out or it wouldnt of been finished. so in the end i produced about 120 seperate shots, rendered out from maya, then composited in nuke and again rendered out from that, then finally encoded to DXV.
it was really annoying because i constantly had it in the back of my mind if id got the measurements i needed in january i wouldve had the extra 2/3 months i needed to give the time and attention all my beautiful CG needed in comp, but it couldnt be helped, my friend was putting in a super human effort building the meteor all by himself in a ditch in a forest in the middle of nowhere and in his workshop and we all just did the best we could.
the pyromid stuff had about 200/300 hours of my time put into it, but most of that was thrown away each time they changed the design, so in the end most of it was rushed out in the few weeks leading up to it where i had the final design, so i took an easier approach, making 3d geo in maya and projecting footage via a render camera in Nukes 2.5d workspace, which allowed me to knock stuff out relatively fast, and juxtaposed this with still frames of CG i made using various random shaders i downloaded, like black ice, platinum, iridescent glass etc etc

because glade was actually on at the same time we had our final delivery deadline on total recall, i was extremely busy and couldnt get the time off work to go up there early , my friend however , took all the stuff he'd made in C4d using my maya geometry and render camera settings, drove over from switzerland YES SWITZERLAND!!! and set up by himself without me a few days before the festival, so he ended up doing the majority of the mapping , most of the press releases you will see and articles show his stuff not mine. i actually missed my train up there on friday night and only got there saturday, and went home sunday morning because of a health problem.
the original plan was that we would go up together, he would drive me up there and we'd set everything up together as a team , but he changed over the course of the project, from wanting to do it as a fun kind of hobby thing into wanting to turn it into a commercial venture, which i was keen to avoid and not associate myself with. if id known he was going to turn it into that i wouldve never wanted to work with him in the first place, but i think he knew i couldnt get it all done on my own because i took on too much work thinking id have a big team with me to help. in the end none of my individual content stuff even got played on the pyromid because the other guy was in charge of it and didnt co-operate and only set it up in a way that his stuff would play and not mine.


i turned up on saturday night, the projectors were already set up, all i had to do was turn on my computer, get the output working and start mixing really, it was pretty simple. the gridwarp in resolume is really simple to get the hang off so it was all quite easy for me. in the end i got to do a set for freq nasty which was pretty kick ass, and of course the man who made it all possible by building the meteor himself the head of state. i did a set from 10pm till dawn, it all went really well, only one crash when i tried to trigger a column of about 15 clips, didnt try that again just kept it quite simple after that layering up about 4/5 at a time with simple filters on like goo and ripples etc. the main thing was boosting the exposure up on all my clips as the projector was quite dull, but luckily resolume has a cool plugin for that in the filters section.


things i would do differently next time

a) charge them some money - i put 1200/1300 hours of my time in and got nothing back, not even a crew breakfast or meal , had to even pay for my own travel up there, was pretty disgusted
b) work alone - dont rely on others
c) stick to my guns and refuse to do the work unless i got the whole 6 months to prepare i needed.
d) if i go on forums and ask for help, be a bit more careful about the way i word things so people dont think your some corporate shit head

things i enjoyed about it
this was hands down the coolest thing i have ever got to do or will probably ever get to do again and i had the most fun ever doing it and looking back i was just glad i got a chance to do something fun like this, money didnt really come into it.


im going to post some photos and maybe a video of my raw content, unmapped, uncomposited, just as it looks coming out of maya , to give you an idea of the level i was trying to work to, and i will update this thread with more photos , press articles video and anything else i can get my hands on and i hope it will serve as useful advice to anyone interested in doing something similar

all the best
jamie

[jamesamcpherson]

this is one of my favourites, made in a kind of sputnik rusty soviet style

[PCProject]

Welcome to the forum. Good to see you have had an opportunity to reflect and make a fresh start. Had you have told us you were working for 'hippies' we could have told you about the pitfalls of 'we havent got any money maaaan'!!!!!!

[vanakaru]

Very cool report. And a warm welcome from me too.

[jimmyogenic]

nice work

we are a friendly bunch round here (sometimes )

welcome!

[dashiell]

Hi James,

Well done. I've only seen a bit of the footage from Glade, but it looked like you did an amazing job.

Me and my company (Mad Ferret Productions) conceptualised, designed and physically built the Pyromid for this years Glade.

Firstly, sorry that there were changes to the design. Although I wasn't aware there were changes that close to the time. (I was working on a different build at the time though, so didn't get to even see my concept!). I know that I didn't even come up with the concept until February at the earliest, and we didn't know we had the gig until April at the earliest.

Completely understand your point on money, we we're out of pocket by the end of it! Not to even mention the insane amount of time we put in.

Would have been good to have worked closer with you on the mapping side of things, as I do a little myself.

Anyway, well done again. It'd be good to catch up with you and maybe plan and work on a new build together. Hopefully my partner Jack met you and got your details if not, would be grateful if you PM me them.

Looking forward to seeing Total Recall.