Digital Anthill

BLOG HAS MOVED!!

2010-02-08T18:09:00.000Z

That's right folks.. The all new blog is now up and running. I’ve decided its time to go on to Wordpress. I already find it a lot better than blogger. So update yo links :-)

Click the image below or head to www.digitalanthill.com

Images above is the new header I created with the help of Tony. I’m trying to keep a consistent theme running through out my sites now.

Good bye blogger its been a fun ride…

Artefact one

2010-02-03T18:11:00.001Z

So artefact one for our research project is now done. while I was working on the Tignes DVD I thought I could add some visuals to make the video more interesting and also use as my first artefact for my research project.

I started off with a simple image sequence where the camera was not moving between shots. This makes it easy to add the various images to one background.

I then started to work on some of still shots. I simply cut each of the layers out in Photoshop then layered them in a 3D space in After Effects. This meant I could give these still images the sense of movement and depth.

Here’s a quick video I stuck together showing the various stages and methods I used to create the effects.

Untitled from Rob Antill on Vimeo.

Joe T has kindly let me use his Uni bandwidth to host these Quicktime videos. You can use the bar at the bottom to move the video forward and back. Its easier to see the effect of the layers this way.

Any way feel free to ask any questions :) I haven't really covered all the points in this post.

Tignes 2010 DVD - Done

2010-02-03T15:32:00.001Z

The Trent Snow Sports DVD is now finished. I put the finishing touches to the main section last week and this week me and Kane have been working on the DVD cover and the DVD case cover. Kane has also produced a cool menu with chapters so you can easily select the different sections of the video.

The total length of the main video is 15min, there are 11 music tracks that correlate to the 11 sections

The extra features is roughly 3 minuets long with some raw footage from the valley rally and various things going on..

There is going to be a premiere next week 10/02/10 either in the bar RIDE or Walkabout currently sorting that out.

We need to know how many people are going to want a copy. Because if it isn't too many I might be able to produce them my self but if its loads then we may have to find a company that can print them.

Here is a mock up of the DVD case and DVDs. I have currently burnt 10 but it takes about 5 min per DVD to print and burn and I,m not sure how much it will cost in ink etc..

What ever happens they will be on sale soon for only a £5er :)

Business Card V3

2010-02-03T15:09:00.001Z

My last batch of cards was running low so I thought I would make some more.

I took this opportunity to make some changes to the last version (Here) I got rid the ‘web’ text and replaced it with ‘VFX’ as I think its more relevant. The two images at the end have now changed too. I have also changed the format of the text on the left. I think this makes the text stand out more.

I recently managed to get hold of the Domain www.DigitalAnthill.com so the card now has that on it.

So over all I’m quite pleased with the results.. would be good to know what you think, post a quick comment :) nice one..

This is truly amazing!

2010-01-18T01:35:00.001Z

I would love to apart of this process!

Stargate Studios Virtual Backlot Demo from Stargate Studios on Vimeo.

Nottingham Trent Snowsports 2010 video trailer.

2010-01-15T00:11:00.001Z

Currently spending a lot of time playing around with after effects got some pretty neat clips to go in the final video. I’ve produced this little trailer to get a sense of what the final edit will be like.. although at the moment I'm struggling to think of a structure, I'm sure it will be fine once I get under way!

Nottingham Trent Snowsports 2010 trip to Tignes from Rob Antill on Vimeo.

Track: Stand By - FABRICLIVE 22

Trent Snow Sports 2010 HDR Selection..

2010-01-11T17:26:00.001Z

What better way to celebrate the beginning of 2010 than being 3000 feet above sea level!

Just got back from a wicked week in Tignes with Nottingham Trents finest. It was my role to be in charge of photos and video. Over all I took 2000+ photos and videos equating to nearly 20Gb! I’ve finished sorting thought the photos and here are some of the better ones. next job is the video.. missions.

Click images for higher res versions :)

METZ CT 1 battery and strobe mods

2009-12-27T22:30:00.001Z

Here’s a rough guide on how to modify a Metz CT 1 to: work with a modern day digital camera, use 7.2v RC batteries and be able to use it for strobe photography.

Credit to Joe Templeman for working most of this stuff out and helping along the way.

Note: Try these mods at your own risk, I'm not responsible for you breaking your equipment or blowing your hands of or something like that :)

Firstly here is the flash, Its a little on the large side but for £40 inc delivery of eBay I cant complain. With it being so cheap I don't have to worry about it so much. Its now nearly 20 years old so its lasted well I think!

First thing you need to consider with the CT1 is the high trigger voltage. I read in multiple places online that with this model you shouldn't connect it directly to the camera because there is a chance of frying it! using a multimeter the voltage read 200+ volts! this is huge when the modern day standard is around 6v.

The way to get around this is to use a remote trigger. I picked up a trigger and receiver of eBay for around £8. This not only protects the camera but also means I'm not constrained by a cable.

When I got the flash the old NiCad batteries were dead. I was about to buy a new pack of eBay when Joe stumbled across this article on flickr. He has used a 7.2v RC battery to power the flash.This was great because I have a lot of old RC batteries lying around.

Here’s how we got the RC battery powering the flash.

Note: This was done using the rechargeable pack that came with the flash.

The other AA battery packs connect to the flash with different connectors so there is a danger of over powering it.

Firstly remove the old rechargeable battery compartment from the flash.

Unclip the plastic housing on the case

Then disassemble the device by unscrewing it.

Remove the old NiCad batteries

Now un soldier the the cables and replace them with longer ones. We made a small hole in the bottom of the case and fed the wires through. Then I connected it to a male connector I got off an old charger. Used some shrink tube to neaten the cable. Then put it all back together connect it up to a fully charged battery and tested it out.

This next mod is a little more tricky.

We got the idea for this mod from this guy.

Basically the Metz CT1 Doesn't have a fully manual mode and the automatic mode is pretty limited. when the flash is auto It measures the light of a subject using a simple LDR.

So when its darker the flash is brighter and when its lighter the flash is dimmer.

The Link above explains in detail how to remove the otter casing and make it so you have control over the output. But in his method he has used a 12 stepped switch that is connected to varying resistors that allows him to change the resistance manually. This means having an external box to house all the components. Joe had the Idea of having just one switch that changes between a set resistance and the LDR. This way means there isn't more stuff attached to the outside of the flash.

We got a two way switch and some resistors from Maplins. The circuit is pretty simple, When the switch is up the current flows though the LDR and when its down it flows through set resistor. We found that a Ideal resistance of around 8 ohms meant a balance between flash brightness and number of flashes before the capacitor discharged.

Using a dremel we were able to remove some of the plastic away from where a old external battery pack could be connected. Now there is the perfect slot to fit the switch. Using a glue gun we stuck in the switch made sure there was no exposed wire then reassembled everything back together.

Here’s the switch on the side of the flash. It looks pretty neat and it works great!

Here’s one quick test shot with the flash on full power. I’m really surprised with the power of this flash!

So I think that’s about it, Hope this helps some of you, if you need any more information or have any questions feel free to comment Ill try to answer as soon as possible.

I’M IN NOTTS BITCH

2009-12-18T23:59:00.001Z

During mine and Kane’s trip to the states we came across some T-shirts with the logo I’M IN MIAMI BITCH which I later found out were lyrics from a song. when we got back the song started to become popular and I thought it would be pretty cool to have a customized one.

So today finally got round to making some with the help of Kane and Fiona. We hadn't planned it that well so we didn't have any blank T-shirts Primark was the answer with some cheap T’s to test with.

Any way it was good fun screen printing it was the first time I've done it. First test was a bit of a fail, I forgot to put something between the fabric so the paint seeped through.

here’s the first one.. a lovely red :)

And the second a grey and black.

Next term we will be buying some proper T’s and make some more to sell if any body wants them :)

Research document progress update..

2009-12-07T22:02:00.001Z

So ive been working on this now for the past week.. non stop 9am to 9pm (ok I do have a couple of breaks).

I'm really pleased with how it is going I think that the research is done although I do keep looking just to see if there is any think else I can add. Ive purchased some books from amazon if they come in time then that would be a bonus but if not its not a big deal...

Ive also got in contact with Conrad Olson who is a compositior for the VFX company Framestore. He is willing to answer a couple of questions and might even be able to get a couple of the senior compositors to answer as well! this would be double awsome as some first hand research would look good.

Oh yeah the question... well it changed slightly.. again. I know its bad that it keeps changing but Its important that its right! The more Ive researched the clearer Ive become..

So here it is what I think should be the final question:

What are the key techniques that make compositing a fundamental part of the film industry?

I even have it stuck to the light in front of me so I can make sure im answering the question in the discussion
ha!

Any way... Next time I post I should have a draft version available to read..

Its Research document crunch time..

2009-12-04T17:30:00.000Z

So with just over a week to go until the dead line I thought I would write a quick post explaining where I am with it all.

I decided last weekend that trying to do this work at my house in Nottingham was not happening. I'm not going to lie progress on this project has been slow. This is due to the fact I wasn't entirely sure where to start! The thought alone of where to begin with this made me want to do piratically any thing other than the work. But I had to bite the bullet and get a move on because its not going to write its self!

I made the wise decision on Monday to come over to my dads place (which is in the middle of nowhere) so I could work on this without distractions. It has been good, This week Ive been doing a lot of reading and note taking. I have also learnt a great deal about compositing. I find the whole thing fascinating.

My work station..

After discussing with my dad he suggested I change my question, so I did.

How has the art of compositing contributed to the development of film making and animation?

This new question is now only focused on compositing and it allows me to look into the techniques that have come about to shape the way films are made today.

Ive been looking at a lot of different books on the subject. Including these ones below also some books I have managed to download in the form of a pdf of the marvelous interwebs.

The two books in the middle (The art and science of digital compositing and The art of 3D computer animation and effects) I ordered online because they look like they might be usefull in the future not just for this project. The rest are rented from the library.

Any way I cant be bothered to ramble on about it any more Im going to get back to some more reading yippi!

I just hope I have enough time to get it all written up for the 15th!

64 Mega pixel New York pano

2009-11-27T18:19:00.001Z

I was looking though some photos earlier and came across some pics that I hadn’t stitched.

The reason I hadn't done it earlier was because there was a small gap in the images between images 2 and 3. I had to play around with Photoshop a bit to get this to work. But i managed to get it to stitch in the end and the results are pretty cool!

click HERE for the mega 64mp image. warning its a 55mb file.. enjoy.

or you can click the image to view the smaller version.

The ‘ill States Tour video mash up!

2009-11-25T00:53:00.001Z

Ok so its been nearly 3 months since I was State side with Kane :(! Last night Kane reminded me about the footage and said I should edit it! This seemed like a much better idea than doing my final year research project! So I got cracking, firstly sorting thought all the videos,150+ of them and organising them to make life easier in premiere.

I'm really pleased with the result. Its good to have all the good videos/memories in one place so it doesn't just get forgotten about.

Any way here it is a 10 min wonder.. enjoy :)

The 'ill States Tour from Rob Antill on Vimeo.

If your wondering why “‘ill states tour”.. well its because my name is Antill and Kanes is Pickerill…. ill

Anti-Piracy Advert – Updated

2009-11-19T20:06:00.002Z

So after getting some feed back I realized that the text on the previous version was too quick and the colours were pretty nasty in the section with the text. So I spent some time today sorting it out.

It now has some binary 1s and 0s coming towards the camera and the text is a lot easier to read. Enjoy :)

Anit-Piracy Advert Animation re-edit from Rob Antill on Vimeo.

Anti-Piracy – Project complete.. I think?!

2009-11-19T15:13:00.001Z

So the 20 second master piece is complete (kinda)

I've spent the last couple of days modelling, rendering compositing and editing. over all Its been a good project.

Here's a crunch down of the progress of ideas and how it was made..

My original plan was to have a voice over to read out what would be displayed on screen. I even purchased a £5 microphone from Asda ( which works very well). Me and my house mate Tony had good fun recording our voices for the animation, but when I actually put it to the video it didn't really fit, so I decided to scrap that idea.

Firstly here’s a test render I made a couple of days ago to get a sense of length and what sounds if any needed to be in it.

Anti-Piracy advert: With Sounds from Rob Antill on Vimeo.

I found the modem dialling tone somewhere on the net, I think it works well with the concept of file sharing. In this test video I was mainly trying out how the transitions would work between scenes. My ultimate aim was to make the whole video flow seamlessly.

FINAL ANIMATION

Untitled from Rob Antill on Vimeo.

Here are the list of scenes and how they were made.

First scene: Text falls from the sky. pCloud particle effects around the base to give the impression they are heavy. Glow added in after effects.

Camera zooms into text, KILLING gets longer and comes towards the camera. This give the illusion of the camera travelling fast and though a tunnel.

Earth appears at the other end of the tunnel. Soft focus on earth at start of the second scene.

Second scene: Spinning earth. Pixelated to give it a digital feel. Stars rendered separately, this allowed me to ad the glow to the earth. also allowed me to make changes to the earth and not have to re-render the high resolution back drop.

Third scene: Nodes and a network of file sharing starts to grow. This took quite along time to animate. This time I used Matte material for the floor so it would pick up the shadows and ambient occlusion but would allow me to choose the back ground colour in After Effects.

The camera movement moves in time with the network growing until one of the connections comes directly towards the camera. My original plan was to have a shot of the earth with the network spreading all over it but there wasn't enough time in the allocated 20 seconds for this.

Fourth scene: This bit of the animation is meant to represent data flying down the cable. it didn't work out how I wanted it to, but it looks ok.

some large text to get the message across that there are ways to download music for free. I didn't want to add any fancy animation on these bits because it would distract the viewer from reading the text.

Fifth scene: This was one of the first bits of the animation I made, also the the hardest and most time consuming. It doesn't look all that amazing because it had to be sped up to fit in.

Over all I'm pretty pleased with it. I think it meets what the brief was asking and I've learnt quite a lot of new techniques mainly in after effects.

The deadline for this isn't for another week so feedback/ suggested improvements would be great!

Late night skate sesh at the boardroom..

2009-11-14T17:21:00.001Z

Me and Alex headed down to Leicester last night for a skate at the board room skate park. It was really good I haddnt been there for a while and it was good to have a good skate!

I tried getting some pics but I really need to get a good flash because they don't come out all that good.. any way here are some of the better ones..

Quick video I put together…

Sheffield Trip #4

2009-11-12T16:08:00.001Z

The pics this week aren't amazing mainly because it gets dark at 4 and i need to get hold of a decent flash! but any way here are some of the better ones..

If there is a pic on facebook you would like me to send the full res version just send me your email and the pic you want..

I think we need to set up a Flickr account or something so that all the pics are available!

Some Test renders

2009-11-12T15:54:00.001Z

So it was about time to get this project on the go!

Here one idea I had for displaying the logos… took quite a lot of time getting all the objects lined up!

Logo testing from Rob Antill on Vimeo.

Fixie Bike fun..

2009-11-08T22:12:00.001Z

Me Alex just went for a quick ride round Notts, Took these at the top of some random multi story car park.

Stereographic of the sunset and Alex pulling a wheelie

Me doing a little endo… still getting used to this fixie malarkey

Pulling a nice little skid though the water..

Here's my ‘CREATE’ Bike with the logos removed and some oury handle bar grips.I've now done a fair amount of riding on this bike and I have no complaints as of yet!

Alex doing a wheelie across a mirror

Click images for the high res versions (opens in a new window)

Enjoy..

Fireworks… YAY

2009-11-06T17:12:00.001Z

So it was bonfire night last night which means fireworks time!

I thought it would be a wicked opportunity to get a time lapse of some fireworks because I hadn't really seen it bin done before.

Here it is..

Nottingham Fireworks Timelapse from Rob Antill on Vimeo.

Click the link for the HD version :)

(Vimeo wont let me upload more than one HD video a week so this is only in standard deff. Ill re upload next week)

I'm really pleased with how this turned out some of the photos are wicked. You can watch it again and again because there is so much stuff happening! The music is from the film ‘Moon’(amazing movie) its called ‘Welcome To Lunar Industries – Clint Mansell’

Here are some cropped stills from the Time Lapse.

Enjoy :)

Changes..

2009-11-06T16:56:00.001Z

So I had made some business/contact cards in the summer (Click Here) and although I was happy with the design and the layout I needed to change a few things..

Firstly was the title, It read THE DIGTAL ANTHILL. There was no need for the ‘THE’

I got rid of GRAPHIC and ART, mainly because I don't really do that much any more. Also having just VIDEO, 3D, ANIMATION, WEB and PHOTO correlates with the images on the card.

I also changed the details at the bottom. I had made a mistake with the email address on the last card, it read robertantill.gmail.com should have been a @ sign not a dot.

I have got rid of my name on the card now as well. I think having ANTILL and ANTHILL on the same thing is confusing. Because my website is under the domain robantill.com I decided I would need to change this also. I looked at getting Digitalanthill.com but its taken (nothing on that domain, some one must have just brought all the domains digitalsomething). So I looked for a a bit and found that Digital-Anthill.com wasn't taken!! I got that and Robertantill.com (before another Robert Antill takes it grrr) from godaddy for about £13 for the year.

So here it is..

I think its an improvement over the other. although during writing this post I have noticed a mistake :(. There shouldn't be a www. in front of the digitalanthill.blogspot.com because there isn't one in front of the digital-anthill.com oh well not a massive problem I guess (its just going to bug me forever..)

I have also made changes to my site! changes made mainly made to the video section of it.. feedback would be awesome :)

Check it out from one of these links ;p

www.robertantill.com

www.robantill.com

www.digital-anthill.com

Next thing to do is set up a Html Only site with a super basic portfolio. so it only shows what needs to be shown. My plan is to have a page on digital-anthilll.com with three basic links, one to my blog, one to the flash site, and one to the html portfolio.

Enjoy..

Sheffield Trip Round 3

2009-11-05T13:05:00.001Z

Yet another Wednesday spent in Sheffield ski village.. This week I thought I would take some time lapses and play around with the flash.. Vie decided that if I'm going to get good night pics I will need to invest in a good flash (xmas present?).

Here are the better pics from the trip..

Click for high res..

Another quick edit.. I need to get as much editing practice in for my uni projects and the big trip in the new year!

Recent Sheffield Trip video part 2

2009-11-01T21:14:00.001Z

Put this together in a couple of hours..

The song was from an old skate video (yeah right) its such a wicked tune to edit to.

Enjoy..

Nottingham Snowsports Sheffield trip 28.10.09 from Rob Antill on Vimeo.

Game city Stewarding round up..

2009-11-01T17:08:00.001Z

This week has been incredibly busy with stewarding and Uni projects!!

Day one: Wednesday 28th Nov

This was the first day of stewarding for me. I had to be there for 8 am which is always a horrible time. spent a couple of hours sorting things out and getting ready for the public to arrive at 10.

Here is the tent in market square.

I was working on the Indicade section. It was fun to play the games and help people out.

Day Two: Thursday 29th Nov

The second day I was looking after the Lego Rock band that hasn't been released yet. People were playing and we had to judge them and ask them to come back on the Sat to play in front of a crowd. It was quite fun but got quite boring after 5 hours of doing it!

Day Three: Friday 30th Nov

This was such a good day! I got to the tent for 8 am again this was another very early start for me :p! I was assigned to the Crysis live section of the tent. My job for the day was mainly going to be helping people put on a suit so they could play the game.

Because I was one of the first stewards there Rob the director of Crysis Live came over to me and asked if I wanted to fill in for one of the army cadets that didn't turn up! I instantly said yes! So I got kited up had a quick briefing on what to do etc. we then did some filming for the Crysis website..

Here’s the set. The player came in from the right they then had to make their way across the room to the collect the laptop in the shed then get back.

These were the weapons we were using. They were pretty powerful BB guns. Fully automatic :).

Here I am ready to take some people out :) as you can see I didn't quite have the military grad shoes!

I ended up working 3 and a half hours more than I was meant to which meant I was there till 5.30pm. We only got a 20 min break as well so by then end I was pretty tired. But it was totally worth it!

Day Four: 31st Nov

This was a the last day. they had cleared out the tent and set up a stage at the far end for the Lego rock band.

I was stewarding Indicade again this time it was a little boring. It basically involved stopping members of the public closing down the games and going on internet explorer!

Here Jon is playing the Drums on stage.

After it all finished we then had to start packing it all away. this involved mainly picking up a lot of Lego that was scattered all over the place! me and Jon helped the Lego guy take down one of the big Lego figures. Although it wasn't solid it weighed Loads!!

So that was it! over all I had a really good time even though it wasn't paid and I was doing very long hours :)

Another Trip to Sheffield..

2009-10-29T18:19:00.001Z

Here are some of the pics from this weeks trip to Sheffield. These turned out a lot better than last weeks…. mainly due to the sky being wicked..

click pics for some high res sexiness :)

Simulated Project – Ideas and first story board.

2009-10-26T09:53:00.001Z

Sheffield Snow Sports Trip

2009-10-23T18:10:00.001+01:00

So this Wednesday we spent another afternoon in Sheffield. I thought I would take my camera along this time get some pics. The lighting wasn’t great and I didnt have the Shutter speed high enough but here are some of the better ones. Next time ill get some better ones hopefully :)

Click for the high res versions.

Left For Dead 2

2009-10-23T18:00:00.001+01:00

I cannot wait for this to come out! deferentially going to purchase this one :)

It looks like a huge improvement on the original. looks like they are using a different engine too. Possibly how Half life 3 will look?

Check this out….

Simulated Project – Research Time #2

2009-10-20T15:15:00.001+01:00

Jonathan came across this video which explains how one 6 second drum loop sampled from a tune released in 1969 called Amen Brother. Its so interesting I had to post it up too. The reason I find this interesting is because its back bone to the genre I love the most, Drum n Bass. This guy also makes some very valid point about copy write and how allowing people to sample and take stuff that others have made and rework it you can create whole new genres of music which intern creates whole new areas of income

Here is a good quote from the the video “a society free to borrow and build upon the past is cutlery richer than a controlled one.”

any way check it out. I really need to start looking for stuff that backs up beating piracy…

Simulated Project: Research Time #1

2009-10-19T00:42:00.002+01:00

Ok firstly I'm going to look at some piracy adverts that have already been made this might give me some ideas on what I might want to do.

firstly I would like to show this one because it makes a very good point…

as soon as I knew we were doing a piracy ad this popped into my head.. haha

I also remembered a south park episode about music downloads and it being very funny. I looked to see if there was a clip but I couldn't find one so I put this together my self. Hopefully It wont get taken down….

Good example of the music industry and piracy. from Rob Antill on Vimeo.

ok now ill find some that are actually against piracy.

Here's the first. Done by FA©T many years ago.. I remember this on VHS!! good times.. actually no they were as annoying as hell!

DON’T COPY THAT FLOPPY!!! now this is more like it! there needs to be more adds like this… One thing I would like to note he talks/raps about how copying games destroys the gaming industry… well that was in 1992 and 15 years later the industry still seems to be going well.. mmmmm.

This is technically not piracy in the form we are doing but its an awesome advert! I think the sounds make this work.

LOL at this one..

I had a real problem with these adverts because they are ignoring the fact that most films you can download these days are DVD quality and recently you can download nearly any HD movie so basically making “quality” a reason not to download is bullshit and they know it!

Now this is more like it! I like this style, finally a different approach making it in to a comedy actually makes it quite good… almost worked on me.. naa who am I kidding.

I have no idea what they are saying but I like the style.

So that's about it for the meanwhile, next thing to do is to look as some hard facts about piracy see if there is any thing I can pick out.

Create Bike Review (UPDATED)

2009-10-19T00:35:00.002+01:00

This summer my friend Alex built a type of bike called a fixie. At first I had the same question as everyone, what is a fixie.. Well a fixie is a bike that doesn't have a freewheel meaning that the pedals are always going round. This also means you don't have gears or a back brake (in some cases no front brake too). The second question that usually follows is “why?” well this Isn't really a question you can answer until you have actually ridden a fixie and and experienced it your self. Some of the benefits are that the bike is lighter than normal (due to it having less stuff on it) you feel like you are in control of the movement in a very different way to that of a normal bike which makes riding fun and exciting. Another plus is that they look pretty cool as well :p

So when I went to the states this summer I realized its the number one place for fixies, They were everywhere! this made me want to get one. So when I got back I looked into building one, but didn't have much luck. I was getting fed up with bidding for old bikes on eBay and I knew it was going to be a hassle to build especially while I was a Uni. I came across this company called Create that specialise in making fixies. I saw that they had a new range coming in at the beginning of Oct so I decided to go ahead and order!
a week later and it arrived!

So far I am very pleased with this bike. I had read some reviews about the last models they made and apparently the quality was very poor. This new model has a lot of new components over the old which explains why they are charging nearly £100 more...
I've been riding this quite a bit over the past 4 days and It has been great! No problems so far! I've nearly worn the back tyre away already because I keep skidding on it :)
Basically if your looking at getting a fixie and don't want the bother of finding all the components and don't want to spend a fortune on a professional track bike then I would highly recommend one of these as a place to start.

To get an Idea of what its all about here is a trailer for the BÖIKZMÖIND video that http://www.xynthetic.co.uk/ are creating.. looks like its going to be a cool video!

BOIKZMOIND Trailer from Xynthetic on Vimeo.

UPDATE:

So its been about a month since I got this bike, Its been used quite a bit and I thought I would share with you what I think.

I got some red oury grips of eBay for about £10 because the ones that come with the bike are quite hard plus the red looks better!

I got some Knog lights because they are super small (only £16 delivered) and actually pretty bright. I've had to change the battery in the rear one already. But you can get replacement batteries of eBay very cheap. I have also removed the back brake as I am riding this fixed geared.

Front brake is very good! it provides plenty of braking power combined with slowing your legs down you can stop very rapidly. One thing to note the pads have nearly worn out already! This is either due to poor quality or that fact that there is just extra stress on it. What ever the case its not a big deal, I still have the pads from the back break and they are not overly expensive to replace.

A problem with having a brake on painted rims it will soon remove the paint! This isn't much of a big deal because the rim will soon turn entirely silver so it wont look to bad. I have also added some metal dust caps that I painted red.

Back tyre is looking a bit worse for ware. This is purely down to me skidding on it. May be also that the tyres are not the best quality but again you have to expect this to happen. I've added a black bolt where the back brake was to stop the frame filling up with water and rusting!

I recently sprayed the bike to get rid of the ‘CREATE’ logo at the front and the ‘CREATEBIKES.COM’ logo on the back frame. You cant tell that its been sprayed.

One important note: The rim tape that protects the inner tube from the rim of the tyre is CRAP! If you pump the tyre up to the recommended 100psi the inner tube will force its way into the rim of the tyre and pop! luckily I wasn't riding when this happened! Its very easy to fix, I just got some size 700 quality rim tape from local bike shop for around £3. The problem hasn't happened since.

Some Tips:

Tighten the spokes. as with any new bike the spokes are usually pretty loose and this will lead to the wheel becoming bent. Its easy to do just go round the wheel tightening each spoke about quarter turn at a time.

Tight chain. Having a tight chain is important. If its loose when you go to slow down you will feel movement in the pedals. Its easy to tighten the chain because there is a bolt that you screw in which forces the wheel back therefore picking up the slack.

Note its impossible to remove the freewheel without destroying it. I’ve had to put a elastic band round it to stop it rattling which is a bit of a bodge fix but its not noticeable.

So that's about it hope this helps some one make the choice. If you have any questions just leave a comment and ill reply soon as possible..

HERE WE GOOOOO…. The third and final round :(

2009-10-18T21:18:00.001+01:00

So the third year is here and it couldn't have come any quicker! It doesn't seem long ago at all since we were starting this course and thinking that the third year seemed a long way away, but time has caught up with us and we are HERE!

So its time to stop faffing about and get some serious work down!

We had the project briefs last week and to say the least it was quite scary.. this year is going to be mega in terms of work load..

So first thing I've done is go thought the NOW (which I had forgot how bloody hard it was to navigate!!!) and looked at all the bits I need.

The first priority is the Simulated Brief which is as follows..

Simulated Brief
Copyright protection society is starting a public information campaign that illustrates and explains what file sharing is, when and why it’s illegal and the consequences of being involved in this illegal activity. They want you to produce a piece of Multimedia that will address these points for a public information campaign.

I've copied the other key dates from Kaneo who had written them out on his blog, thought it would be a good idea to have a record too!

Client Live Project
Simulated Brief: 12 Oct > 28 Nov
Live Brief: 27 Nov > 23 April

27th Nov… Submit agreement form
30th Jan… Submit 1000-1200 word proposal
26th March… Submit agreed Multimedia Project
30th April… Submit a 3000 word evaluation

Personal Research Project
Term 1… Written Report
Term 2… Artefacts

15th Dec… Write Research Document
18th May… Final Presentation

SPP3
Term 2… Post Graduate Development

So yea now time to get cracker lackin….

Microsoft Windows 7 – Windows Live Writer test

2009-10-09T14:46:00.001+01:00

Well I've finally got Windows 7 x64 up and running all thanks to my friend Joe.

The install was very straight forward just stick the DVD in and off you go.

I had a problem with the boot loader. basically 7 had put its boot info on another HDD which meant xp would still boot up. ( I'm dual booting xp and 7 until I'm fully happy with 7 then ill move over) after a bit of tweaking I got it so it would come up with the choice.

First impressions of 7 are very good. I had no problems installing the drivers for 64 bit system. I had to use drivers designed for vista on my Trust sound card but no problems yet.

I've spent the last couple of days just fiddling with the various settings, The main difference is the task bar, which now has a much simpler way to view programs.

other improvements include a facelift to ms paint and word pad (about time) it now has a layout familiar to that of MS Office and a few more features.

Here's a screen shot of the desktop. as you can see from this its fairly the same to vista.

The feature that appeals to me most is a program called Windows Live Writer. This along with movie maker, live messenger, photo view and more are all free to download from the Microsoft site.

This program allows you to create blog entries on the pc and then upload them to various blogging sites. why is this so good??.. well it makes editing and creating entries a whole lot easier!

something I've been wanting to do for a long time now is find a easy way to add drop shadows to images I upload. With this there is a selection of options to make images a little more interesting.

There are also a selection of other options like adding video, maps, tables and you are also able to add plug-ins which will mean other options will be available in the future.

Over all I'm really pleased with 7 so far it hasn't pissed me off so much that I want to uninstall it and go back to xp… like Vista did!

When it comes out on the 22nd I would highly recommend getting your hands on a copy :)

The 'ill States Tour 2009

2009-10-07T22:08:00.005+01:00

Click the Image or click HERE to download the diary I made of the trip.

So the last month I have spent across the pond traveling the United Stated of America.

I headed out there on the 3rd of Sept with my dad. We first went to NY, Philly then to Washington DC. My dad then flew home and I flew to Vegas where I met Kane . we then traveled to LA, San Fransisco, Fort Lauderdale and finally back to New York.

Here are some of the most interesting pics I took while on the trip. Over all I took around 2000!!
check out the PDF diary above for more photos and some more information on what we did.

Click the images for the high res version.

This was my travel route.
looking back over New York from Liberty Island
Golden Gate Bridge. Incoming mist
British Airways 747
Sterographic image of the 'Friends' Building
Miami beach at 3am
NY Central Park sunset
Lower Manhattan sunset

Falcon 8mm Fish eye lens...

2009-08-31T15:35:00.006+01:00

In preparation for my trip to America I decided to go all out and buy a fish eye lens for my Nikon D90. The Peleng lens I have been using for the past couple of months has raised in price by about £110 since my friend bought it 3 years ago. I wasn't really prepared to spend the £260 so I looked at other 8mm fish-eye lens's that are on the market.

I came across this lens on eBay though a seller called mike-s-photo. I hadn't herd of the brand name Falcon and it was quite hard to find any information on it. I did find out that the actual lens is distributed under the following company names Vivitar, Bower, Polar, Falcon and Samyang. So with this I was able to find a few sites that review and rate the lens. In comparison with the peleng there isn't really much difference in terms of image quality. The main difference with this lens is that it has a higher crop factor meaning you don't get vignetting (the dark bits in the corners).

so here it is.. another good feature with this is the lens hood around the front, this provides bit of protection against things scratching the glass and will help with lens flare from bright light sources.

This is the first decent picture I took the other day. Location is Old John, Leicestershire.

UPDATE:

If anybody is interested to see what this lens looks like when using it for video check out my Vimeo channel Here

Here are some examples.

Nottingham Fireworks Timelapse from Rob Antill on Vimeo.

The 'ill States Tour from Rob Antill on Vimeo.

Thanks for looking..

Some HDR using the casio ex-s10 + iPhone down :-(

2009-08-26T18:13:00.003+01:00

Went on another 50 mile bike ride yesterday. I took my little Casio point n shoot and took some pics then stitched them together using Hugin. I then used photoshop to produce three different levels of exposure then used Photomatix to produce the 'HDR'. This is a bit of a cheat method but it still produces some pretty impressive results!

Rainbow over Leicester

The switch on my iPhone broke the other day so I ordered a new one off eBay and I thought while the phone is open I would replace the battery to give it a bit more juice! well It was a real mission to get the switch out and replace the battery because they are at the very back of the phone under a load gubbins! But I managed to do that no problem and I was just about to put it back together when I thought I would try and remove a bit of dust that had got inbetween the screen and LCD. I Broke the LCD pannel when trying to remove it :-(! so now Ive had to order a new one of eBay. Luckily its fairly cheep at £17.

Unhappy iPhone screen...

Timelapse project (Complete)

2009-08-17T20:02:00.004+01:00

Timelapse Project finally finished! last couple of days been going timelapse crazy taking loads of piccies some of them being the best photos Ive taken so far.. well in my opinion :-)

Here are some stills form the video..

note the shooting star in this photo!
We had a BBQ next door and I though it would be pretty cool to set up the projector and watch some movies.. so that's what we did! Pretty strange though felt like you were inside in a way! this section of the timelpase video is my favorite I think, probably because the colours are so nice and you can see the stars moving across the sky!
so here it is, click the link under the video for the HD version! you can see all the pretty stars :-)

Timelapse Compilation from Rob Antill on Vimeo.

Thoughts for future timelapse projects:

I want to look into generating some HDR sequences because I think that could look quite epic.

also want to look into some more tilt shift stuff because that also looks pretty damn cool!

But for a start I'm quite pleased with the results of this video.

Timelapse project (In progress)

2009-08-13T19:56:00.013+01:00

My cousin invited me to art showcase thing in couple weeks giving people a chance to show off there films art work etc.. so I was thinking what could I put up on the screen... It occured to me that my timelapse stuff might be a good start.. so recently Ive been taking quite a piccies..

Here is a panorama over Loughborough one recent eve..

This is one of my favorite stills from a timelapse I did last night of the M1 motor way.
Video will be up soon as its done :-)

Business card thingy

2009-08-13T19:56:00.012+01:00

Quick post..

Decided to make a contact card because its good to have one to give out when the opportunity my arise!

Here is the first version of it.. I might make some changes but over all I'm pretty pleased with it.

Motion x DIY bike mount

2009-08-12T22:00:00.009+01:00

So recently Ive been going on quite a lot of bike rides on my own and with Josh ,the battery on my speedometer had died so instead of doing the easy thing and getting a new battery I looked into getting some gps tracking software for the iPhone. I came across an app called Motion x (which I had used once about a year ago). First few tests using the app were successful but I wanted a way to hold the phone on the handle bar(for visability and good gps siginal).

I sore that there are some solutions online cheapest on ebay for about £5 but I thought I would give making one my self ago..

I found an old car holder I purchased for my N75 a couple of years ago and got to work moding it to fit the handle bars.

First I cut the flexible cable and the sucker pad from the back of the holder. I then took the mounting clip off an old bike light drilled some new holes and cut a bot to the right size screwed it all together.. it was still a bit wobbly so I added some padding and a magnet at the top so it keeps it stable against the bolts on the bike stem.

Here it is attached to the bike. Yeah I know it looks propper lame but its pretty cool to see where your goin while your goin! and other stuff like speed, average speed, max speed, distance, blabla..
So with all that said here is an example of what the track looks like. This was a route we went on to day.. it was 42 miles but unfortunately the app crashed in the last couple of miles so it reads 27 miles... the max speed is right though 38mph :-p

View Larger Map

New Skatepark. Southglade Nottingham mini review.

2009-08-08T22:14:00.007+01:00

So today me and Pone shot up to Notts to check out the new park at Bulwell/Southglade or where ever it is..

Here is a HDR pano of the park.

The park its self is really good! the build quality is excellent and the layout is pretty much spot on... however there are a few problems with this park main one being the lack of concrete around the actual park. Like most skateparks Ive been to, they build the park on a load of mud and only have a little bit surrounding it so mud, rocks and any other crap ends up all over the park!

Another problem is the kids there! If you skate/BMX/Inline at a skatepark there are some unwritten rules you need to learn... mainly get some fucking manors and wait your turn, if some one is half way though their run don't bother dropping in in front of them there is going to be a collision! as Pone had to find out when some little kid dropped in on his BMX right in front of him and ended up busting him up pretty bad!

Another thing don't use a skatepark as a playground! A skatepark isn't some where to play tag! grr go do that on the huge field behind the park! There are a lot of other things that pissed me off about the kids there but cant be arsed to ramble on about it!

So yea good park go check it out but preferably on a school day (that's if any of the kids there actually go to school :-p)

BOSE Quiet Comfort 2 and Over Ear Review kinda thing

2009-08-05T01:41:00.007+01:00

Ive been looking at getting a decent pair of headphones now for quite a long time. there is quite a lot of choice out there which makes things even harder. My first choice was the Nixon Nomadic Mic iPhone headphones because they look really nice and they have the built in mic and button for control over your music. I decided I wouldn't get these after reading lots of reviews online the general trend being that these didn't sound that great apparently lacking in bass which was a big nono for me considering I would be listening to mainly DnB and dubstep (very bass orientated!) My dad has a pair of Bose Quiet comforts 2's for awhile now and I have probably used them more than he has, ha! I love the sound of Bose and decided that might be the way to go.

The Quiet Comfort 2's are about £270 which is well out my budget! but luckily Bose do a cheaper version the Over-ear (really going all out with the product names there Bose!) at £99.99 these are by no means cheap! but I thought instead of wasting more money on crappy headphones that don't deliver the sound, I'd go for these!

So yeah I can say I am thoroughly pleased with my purchase!

I thought I would compare the two headphones side by side by plugging them both into my laptop. I'm no sound expert but I really couldn't tell the difference between the two! certainly not a £170 difference! I'm sure the Quiet comforts would be more suitable for plain journeys etc but still cant justify that price.

so here they are.. my over ear's on the left and the quiet's on the right. If your looking at getting a good pair of headphones I would highly recommend getting a pair of these!

lets just hope they'll last!

Whats been happening...

2009-07-24T14:38:00.007+01:00

Was in Notts last weekend to meet with friends and do a bit of ice skating, we had some time to kill so we went on a wonder around Notts and came across this sculpture at the play house. Its a huge polished metal dish which reflects the sky on one side and the ground on the other. So I took this Stereographic image of it and it looks pretty cool because it looks like there is bubble growing out the floor.

The actual stitch is pretty poor at the top but it was only a quick go to get an idea of what it might look like.
HDR image from Nottingham Castle looking towards Derby
Panorama from Nottingham Castle.

I was thinking about Upgrading to the new IPhone 3G s but when I found out that it was going to cost about £400 (because I would have to out buy my contract) it was a no deal. The one I have at the moment has a crack in the case so I thought I would look into getting a Gela skin to cover it. I found one I liked and purchased it off eBay for £8 delivered. It took a few goes to get it on straight but that's the great thing with them you can take them off again and again and it will still stick. So once I got it right you can barley see the crack and it should stop it getting any bigger, it looks pretty cool too!

Another good eBay purchase I got recently was this, a Timer remote or intervalometer. Ive been looking for something like this since I got my camera, the reason its so hard to find them is because there isn't really universal a name for them. I came across this one by accident. I did a search in eBay for "Timer remote Nikon D90" and they only sell them in Japan! I got this one for £20 delivered which I think is very reasonable! Ive only had time to test it once but from what I can tell it works perfectly! It allows you to set a delay before taking a picture, set the exposure when the camera is bulb mode, set the interval between photos, and the amount of photos to take (0-399 or infinity) it also has a two step button that allows you to focus then take the picture. you can also lock the shutter open by pushing the shutter button up.

Over all I'm really please with this, it means I can take time lapses anywhere and I don't need a my laptop.

NASS Festival 09

2009-07-14T23:32:00.008+01:00

I spent last weekend at the NASS festival near Shepton Mallet, Somerset.
I had a really good time although I lost my sleeping bag so sleeping on a wet towel was my only option :-(. weather was pretty crappy although the sun did come out on the Sunday.

Any who here are some pics and a video...

equirectangular panoramic shot of the Goliath Ramp
My friend joe sneeking in to the area to get a better pic :-)

wtf... he did land this! Backflip tailwhip.. I think

Huge bunny hop!
Chase & Status... Sick
Stereographic of my car Luke and Joe
Seq. seat grab superman on the Goliath
Huge backflip

NASS 09 Festival Highlights from Rob Antill on Vimeo.

6 hours in just a few seconds

2009-07-03T13:07:00.004+01:00

with the weather being so nice I thought its time for another time lapse this time over a long period of time. I set the camera up and left it recording every 15 sec for about 2 hours then I changed to take the photo every min because I realized it was going to be a lot of photos!

There is also so footage I took from one of the windows at Hotknife. once I have a bit more Ill put all the videos together.

6 hour Nikon D90 Time lapse from Rob Antill on Vimeo.

blog updatings

2009-07-01T17:34:00.004+01:00

So now that another year has finished at Trent and that Im now back home I thought it was about time to update the style of the blog once again! I was thinking about moving over to Wordpress but that was only because I thought at the time that I coupldnt make blogger look any good. But I found a site called http://www.deluxetemplates.net/ they had a big collection so I picked out some I liked.

I chose one called point space because the layout and style was nice.

I have done alot of my own changes to personalize it.

Here are some images of the preiviouse Blog styles. would you agree that new one is the best?

Blog Under Construction

2009-06-30T19:50:00.002+01:00

Last skate at Carlton...

2009-06-24T21:04:00.009+01:00

Some more HDR Stereographics and a video I cut together also a little experiment to embed Quicktime into my blog..

HDR image of Alex blasting it up the Vert

HDR Stereographic image of the park

backetball court..

Video demonstrating the Fisheye lens

Skate session at Carlton Skate park Nottingham from Rob Antill on Vimeo.

Use the scroll bar at the bottom of the quicktime player to rotate the image around.

Bulwell Breakfast meeting...

2009-06-24T15:16:00.003+01:00

So a super early start today woke up at 6.30! Then had a nice Bike ride to the school thats curently on the same site as the new Bulwell Academy.

The presentation was in the school Hall there were quite a few people there most of them looked very business like ( probably because they were).

The presentation was about the plans for the Bulwell Academy and how they are going to teach the kids.

Our fly through went down a treat! everyone seemed to really like it and we even got a around of applause which was nice! There were a few people who came up to us at the end to say they thought it was good and all that....

so while me and Simon were there I thought It would be a good Opportunity to get some pics of the developing site. This pic was taken from one of the math classrooms (luckily unoccupied, prob would have got my camera nicked ha!)

we then went to the site management to see if it was okay to take some pics from the top of the site. at first they were a dubious of us prob thought we were terrorists! perhaps not.. but any way once we explained who we were and sat them down to watch the fly through in one of the portacabins it was all cool!

They also really liked it. Because I dont think any one other than the architects had a good idea of what the place will finally look like in 3D!
So yeah over all I think it was worth the early start! makes me keen to work on this project so more in future!

Bulwell Project / Work Expirence At Hot Knife Digital Media

2009-06-20T14:32:00.008+01:00

So Ive finished at Hot knife and the first Bulwell fly through is complete!

The labels above the building took quite a lot of head scratching to get them to face the camera all the time but only on one axis. but managed it in the end by setting a dummy to look at the camera and then get the label to only inherit the z axis of the dummy.
this was one of the rooms I added more detail like the notice board, lights, fire extinguishers switches, and textures. I also animated the Label thing in the lower right corner.

I also made the animated Bulwell logo with help from Simon to produce the particle effect.

Bulwell Logo 3d animation from Rob Antill on Vimeo.

This was one of the most complicated scenes mainly because there is so much going on! I used the slice tool to make the chairs dissapear like that. I remodeled the seats at the back of the hall to show that the hall can be used for an exam room as well.

Any way here is the full video... enjoy :-)

Bulwell Academy - Site Visualisation 2009 from Rob Antill on Vimeo.

Nikon Fisheye video test

2009-06-19T01:05:00.002+01:00

Just a quick video testing the fisheye lens. Works really well although the frame rate is a bit of a let down but its not all bad...

Nikon D90 Fisheye Video skate Test from Rob Antill on Vimeo.

HDR funtime

2009-06-19T00:57:00.008+01:00

So after another day at HotKnife I decided to go out on my bike to get some fresh air and take some pics while I was at it. I thought I would give some HDR (High Dynamic Rage) images a try. I also wanted to try making some of my own stereographic images coz they is awsome!

There is now a new version of Hugin ( the program used to stich the images) which makes it loads easier. I have used a program called Photomatix to produce the HDRs.

so without further ado here are my first little experiments...

What Ive been up to...

2009-06-14T23:53:00.003+01:00

Well over the past week I have been working at HotKnife In nottingham helping Simon Finish off the Bulwell Academy Project. Its going really well I have learnt loads of new things and Bulwell is finally looking pretty sexy. Ill post some video and a screen shots up when I get the chance.

Also my friend Joe Templeman Has lent me his fisheye lense so Ive been having fun all day playing around with it. Its so much fun and takes some pretty nice piccies. Only problem is that its totally manual so you have to get the apature and shutter speed all correct.

Anywho here are some pics ive taken recently...

For more pics please head here..

End of year mini holiday

2009-06-03T20:07:00.003+01:00

soo with all our work done for a second year me Kane and our friend Keith thought what better way to celebrate it than going down to Cornwall for some sun sea and surf... etc. we had a wicked time and the weather couldn't have been better really! It was a perfect opportunity for me to get more familiar with my new toy as well.. here are some of the pics I took over the four days or so.

Huge waves, clearest British sea Ive ever seen!

Veiw along watergate bay
fire smoke, Lasers and long exposure
little birdy tweeting away on a rock
more laser fun
Nice little box fire right next to the tents!
This is only afew of the hundreds of pics I took for some more please click here

Animation version 2.0

2009-05-27T15:01:00.001+01:00

I decided last night that I would change the animation a bit so it would make more sense. here it is...

Malvin and Washbot. Animation Version two from Rob Antill on Vimeo.

Done Done And Done , Malvin and Washbot :)

2009-05-26T15:01:00.004+01:00

Soo after another very long night and I finally finished rendering my last scene! I think I was cutting it a little fine this time, it took much longer than I originally thought and having three monster projects all in at the same time doesnt help.

Ive worked out for both projects I have rendered nearly over 10,000 frames used over 53 different camera angles and spent roughly 100 hours rendering! not to mention the hundreds of hours animating rigging and modeling... uugghh

any who here is my animation... its pretty random as you will see at the end.. I didnt have the time to add the few extra things in I wanted so it would make a little more sense but o well..

Malvin and washbot animation from Rob Antill on Vimeo.

It was a shame I didn't get the opportunity to have some match moving in this. I realized that it wasn't really that relevant to the brief but I still had fun doing it any way.

Stats:
number of png images rendered = 5,048
number of cameras used = 45
animation length = 2.58
time taken to render = around 50 hours
average time to render one frame = 30 sec
time taken to model and animate = sooo many

playing with my new camera

2009-05-25T11:53:00.005+01:00

here are some images Ive taken with my new Nikon D90. I haven't really had the time to do loads but here are some of the better pics Ive taken.

click images to get a higher res.

end of our street at 4 in the morning. 20 sec exposure

Ollie to nose slide on sketchy ledge

Pretty big tweaked air..
Mr Frog chillin while we had a BBQ

Another project done. Visulalisation finished...

2009-05-25T00:57:00.002+01:00

Well here is my final piece for the visualisation project 'visualising and exploring virtual worlds'. I'm pretty happy with the result although the lighting isn't great its the best I could get it with out render times flying through the roof!

I have enjoyed this project because I have learnt quite a few new things when it come to modeling in max.

any way here it is...

finished visulalisation project .. 3D Skatepark tour from Rob Antill on Vimeo.

Stats:
Time modeling = roughly 7 days
Number of unique objects = 65+
Average time to render one frame = 40 sec
Total time to render = approx 52 hours
Total frames rendered = 4755
Rendered using vRay
Total number of polys = 102708

AAARRRGGGGHHH round two...

2009-05-21T23:50:00.004+01:00

Well I don't feel I leave things to the last minute any more because I enjoy the work and don't really see it as work but it always seems to catch up on me and the last 2-3 weeks leading up to the deadline.. these weeks are the most work intensive weeks of the year!

at the moment my days consist of the following.. wake up around 9.am turn on computer eat some breakfast get ready etc... sit at comp working till about 1.pm get some more food go back to comp till about 3.pm then I have to go out side and jump around to loose some energy or Ill go insane! then work again till about 6.pm get some more food then guess what.. more work till about 1.am then by this time my eyes feel like they are bleeding and its time for bed only to wake up and do it all again.... BUT I LOVE IT :-) hopefully it will be worth it in the end!

O yea Ive got a good little routine going on atm I'm working on animation on the comp then when that's rendering I work on visualization on my laptop! no precious seconds lost! woop.

any way as it stands im about 1.40 min through animation... biggest mission ever! character animation is a bitch...

modeling of my in door skatepark is getting on its way and when its done should look pretty swell!

heres some shots of recent progress...

skatepark under construction... ramps all in place now need to add things like wall roof and more detail then texture the whole thing!

here are some shots from my animation. little pea head alien cruzin in his ship..

random fuel station in the middle of gray land lol!

first successful walk cycle!

so yea there you have it. next time I post on here it will hopefully be the video of these two projects!

Job Done!..... well almost.

2009-05-08T18:43:00.011+01:00

so after nearly a second week of working on this level every waking hour of every day I think I have come to the end. I think once people have had a play I might have to make some tweaks but that's all good.

Heres a vid of the features of my level...

Finished Unreal Torunament level from Rob Antill on Vimeo.

If you could please download the map and give some feedback that would be super helpful!

UPDATE:
http://rapidshare.com/files/234781951/CTF_The_Two_Bunkers_Rob_Antill_14.ut2

Here are some screen shots of various things I have changed and added in the level

I originally set the doors up so bot paths would run though them this meant bots would run in to the door then the door would open.. this worked some of the time but the bots would usually just run into the door and stop! so I set up an door controller that makes the door open as the bots approach it!

I had some serious problems with my skybox when I looked below 45 degrees the skybow would start showing some static meshes from another section of the level. But they would dissapear when you look at the sky directly.. In the image you can see part of the fence and the raido mast in the sky?!?!?..After remaking the skybox completely I still had the same problem so I came up with a different idea. I simply added the moving clouds texture directly to the top of the box that acted like the outside area. Then to hide the fact it is a box I only lit two areas of the roof to make it look like it is the spot lights that are lighting the sky. Looking at it now I think I actually prefer how is looks now.

I have added portal zones to the level to make it run more efficently. this basically sections off areas of the level to render.

I realized that I didnt have enough room in my level to meet the required 8 so I added this room that links the hanger and the two corridoors that lead from the flag room.
I also added a control style room in the main hannger to break up the space and to increase the room count.
I created signs for the bases to help people navigate their way around the map.

I have added steam vents comming out the various pipes to give the level more character.

so yea over all im really pleased with this. I have really enjoyed learning to use unreal ed and applying what Ive learnt to my own design....

Level Design..

2009-05-03T12:27:00.012+01:00

well I think this is the first post I have done on this topic and that's because Ive been spending too much time on the other projects! I have spent every day in the past week on Unreal Ed and now quite familiar with the program.

From the start of this project I have had the idea that I would base my level on some hangers at a disused RAF base in Wales that I have been to. I thought because the place is interesting in real life it would make for a good level. This was not the case as I realized when I started creating it.

looking down one of the workshop corridors
one of the aircraft hangers.
my First attempt at a level in Unreal Ed.

From the picture above you can see my attempt at recreating the level. This is as far as i got until I realized that it would actually make a very good level. I think it wasn't totally wasted though because this became a little level to test out techniques such as a sky box and setting up the level for capture the flag mode.

To get some inspiration I played a few of the official Unreal CTF maps to see how they set them out. One level in particular got my attention was grassyknoll.

CTF Map grassyknoll

I liked this level because there is two bunker style buildings with terrain between them.

This level gave me the idea of having two underground bunkers that the two teams would occupy then would have to cross a valley to get to the other teams base.

anyway best way to explain it is to watch this video. I made this a few days ago so its not the latest layout.

Unreal tournament 2004 level rev.1 from Rob Antill on Vimeo.

There is still loads of work to do on this but I think its finally taking shape!

This the two bases the flags are so close together but you have to go on a mission to retrieve the opposing teams flag!

Map from above. still a lot of work to be done to the out side valley. mainly terrain.

map from below. you can see the how the level is set out.

Level out side showing the blue teams bunker door and the moving clouds in the sky...

Video Trace

2009-04-26T18:33:00.002+01:00

I stumbled across this last night and found it pretty interesting. This is a program called video trace, it allows you to easily create a 3d model from video. its different to a video tracking program like boujou because boujou only allows you to track point on a video but this program does that but also builds a model from that data.

any way check this video to get a better idea of what can be achieved with this software.

Video Trace
by RobGreen

unfortunately this program is still being developed and not available. but im looking forward to giving it a try wen it comes out!

Amazing effect!

2009-04-19T10:32:00.003+01:00

Came across this on stumbleupon I think its pretty cool! I cant find any information about it like how it was made or by who? but check it out...

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Update: I found some information about the clip and also found the original source. Its a advert for a new range of Panasonic screens that have a 21:9 aspect ratio.

check the orgiginal source as well its one of the best flash players Ive seen. http://www.cinema.philips.com/?ls=gb_en

Latest matchmove test

2009-04-16T14:24:00.002+01:00

Did this a few days ago only just got round to posting it on here. I think Im finally getting my head around this camera tracking business! this is my latest one and its pretty much perfect in terms of the track. Animation and rendering needs improvement but that's not so hard!

Camera track on quarry edge from Rob Antill on Vimeo.

updates on some recent panos

2009-04-13T23:42:00.005+01:00

so Ive been at home for the past week and a bit, been pretty bored but here are some of the things Ive been up to. I got a new application for the iPhone called Panorama which is better than the other one i used because it allows you to take more than 6 photos!

To day went longboarding and filming with my cousin Mat and two friends Tim and Josh. Took this quick pano at the top of the hill while they were setting up for a shot.

The other day went to see how the abandoned nursing home was doing... well as you can see since the last time I was there its pretty destroyed! people had started setting the place on fire in side as well.. not so cool!

View of the local reservoir when I went on a bike ride with my mate Josh C.

This is my favorite pic ive taken so far with the application! This is of the local granite quarry about a mile from my house! as you can see its a larger than average sized hole in the ground. They dig out over five million tonnes of granite each year!

In the bottom left corner of the image above you can see a dumper truck well to get a scale of the size of that here is an image to two kids from the local school standing next to it!

tomorrow im heading there again to hopefully film an explosion!

2009-04-09T13:44:00.003+01:00

I realize that the deadline is getting ever closer and I have a lot of work to do! here is another camera track with slightly more advanced animation. I'm now trying out different ways I can animate my character and how it could interact with the environment.

The camera track needs improvement on this piece. There are some bits where the 3D stuff moves around a bit...

alien characters meet from Rob Antill on Vimeo.

More work oh yeah!

2009-04-02T15:17:00.007+01:00

Ive been working on my character pretty non stop for the past week just making adjustments and tweaking the envelopes to stop any skin deformations.

Little tip to any one having problems with skin envelopes use the Paint Weights tool under edit envelopes roll out. This way you can make fine adjustments to the areas that the bones effect..

Ive also been working my my second character. He is gonna be the evil low polly version of the main character. I think this will work well with the story but it might be seen as a cop out because I'm basically using the same character twice?!

so I think I'm going to work on another character like a little robot dog or something like that to come along with the main character..

here are some high res images of the two current characters..

I made this video to test all the movements of my character to see if envelopes are working correctly.. conclusion yes they are! one little snap in the arm as he leans back didn't see that as I was animating. least Ill know to look out for that in the future :-)!

Alien character envelope ans skin test from Rob Antill on Vimeo.

Another Boujou Matchmove Test

2009-03-19T01:35:00.003Z

Yeah I know im making alot of post about matchmoving but its pretty interesting and fun so here is my latest.. This time its out side so i used a spot light to create shadows and highlights.. The guy in the video is Alex aka Pone

Quick outdoor matchmovie from Rob Antill on Vimeo.

Fully Rigged Character! woop!

2009-03-18T20:38:00.002Z

soo after much fun with bone tools my character is finally rigged up bless him! im really pleased with how he is working I still need to play with the Envelopes on the bones because there is some mesh deformation going on in places, could be down to him being quite chunky!

so here is the video... for some reason his mouth doesn't move in the first section,I might have deleted the key frames by mistake!

Alien character fully rigged and animated. from Rob Antill on Vimeo.

Over all Im really pleased with the result I think he looks pretty nifty on the desk moving around! should be fun when it comes to making my actual animation!

Wow! Amazing animation!

2009-03-17T22:32:00.003Z

I downloaded the tune 'Printer Jam -mistabishi' the other day and love it! Phil today told me about the music video to it and its pretty damn cool! works really well with the music...

here it is on vimeo...

Mistabishi - Printer Jam from Hospital Records on Vimeo.

I also found this interview talking with the guy who made it (kenny Frankland) about how it was made!

Alien quick matchmove

2009-03-14T02:07:00.003Z

Just thought I would stick the alien dude on already made matchmove to see if the transparency works in the helmet.. conclusion yes! it does! His eyes are also following the camera which I think its nifty!There's the other two matchmoves I made on here too... Dominoes!!

Alien character matchmove from Rob Antill on Vimeo.

2009-03-13T23:34:00.004Z

little video to show my fist character for the project "things that go bump on screen"The texureing isnt anything special just wacked a few colours on but I'm pretty pleased with this because its the first successful human like character Ive created :-) yay!

yea the camera work is pretty sketch but I didn't but much effort into it...

any way check it!!

Alien Character from Rob Antill on Vimeo.

More recent pano's

2009-03-12T20:32:00.003Z

More pano's Ive taken recently...

View from the nottingham wheel.

Another shot from the wheel. The frame of the wheel looks pretty cool in this pic!

DJ zinc playing at Brownes Nottingham

Nottingham Uni and Nottingham Trent Varsity Hockey match. we lost :-(
Another shot this one is wider but the contrast is too high!

how its done..

2009-03-05T11:35:00.004Z

I made this little video to show the process of matchmoving. Im quite pleased with the outcome of this one. I'm really looking forward to making the full animation now!

Matchmoving with Boujou from Rob Antill on Vimeo.

AAARRRGGGGHHH!!

2009-03-03T20:53:00.005Z

Well I was thinking the other day how cool it would be to try and incorpriate my animation in to real world video.. I didnt know what the techincal term for this was so i did some reaserch and found its called Matchmoving...

I also found out that the best program to use for this is Boujou but with a price tag of $10000 i dont think ill be buying it any time soon!!

becuase this program is so exclusive tutorials on how to use it are very hard to come across! I spent around 7 hours last night playing with it and getting very frustrated!! decided to go to bed and start afresh today, after taking a new video to work with and finding a better tutorial I went about giving it another go.

Ive spent today playing around with different settings and stuff to get a okish result.

heres my first successful motion map and render...

Ive had to start learning the basics of Aftereffects because you have to composite the 3d stuff with the video! That's why its a bit sketchy!

here is a better test render.. Im pretty pleased with this one.

watch the high quality version by clicking on the bottom corner thingy then select HQ