davepreciado – Page 3 – Where CG, photography, food, movies, music, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and my personal project short animation are fused into a bouquet of bytes.

Dec 04

by Dave in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu 0 comments tags: BJJ, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Carlson Gracie, fight, fight club, Gracie, jiu jitsu, martial arts, mma, new zealand, purple belt, Rey Diogo, submission, Vanderson

8 1/2 years later…

I received my Brazilian Jiu Jitsu purple belt from Professor Vanderson Pires at Combat Room, New Zealand on November 28th, 2015. Why is that a big deal? Let’s start with a general statistic – most people quit training after blue belt. Only 25% of people who begin BJJ make it to purple belt. I think it’s something like 8-10% make it to black belt. I’ve been a blue belt for 7 years. When I still lived in Los Angeles, there was a period of about a year that my training was inconsistent – almost non existent. Life demanded other priorities, so I had to give up training to save some money. Other than that dark time, I’ve been training a lot. Never in my life had I intended to be a martial artist until one day at the gym, I ran into a very large and scary looking individual who invited me to come down to his gym. To begin my BJJ days, I had the privilege to train 5 1/2 years in Los Angeles with a legendary Carlson Gracie black belt, my friend Rey Diogo. In 2009 I got to go to Brazil with Rey and train at the […]

Nov 13

by Dave in CG 0 comments tags: animation, cg, Compositing, Massey, maya, mocap, motion builder, motion capture, music, music video, new zealand, nuke, NZ, Pacific Heights, VFX, virtual production

Pacific Heights – Airborne

Here it is! I’ve been working on this in my spare time since the beginning of May 2015. Working on a feature film while doing a music video…oy! We finished a week ago and it premiered today, Friday November 13th! I’ll post a more thorough update soon – stay tuned!

Nov 04

by Dave in Uncategorized 0 comments tags: cyber crime, false, fraud, hack, hacked, hackers, reputation repair scam, Ripoff Report, ROR, scam, victim

Rip Off Report & “Reputation Repair” extortion scheme – GFY

Greetings to those who have found me on ROR, and greetings to everyone else! I initially was not going to engage but I felt compelled to expose people trying to take advantage of those who are less interwebs savvy. Evidently I’ve become targeted by a group of “hackers” trying to extort money via an “online reputation” company. I put “hackers” in quotes because real hackers are quite intelligent and slick. These guys clearly went to the Laurel and Hardy School of Hacking. Silly little “hackers”, you kids are adorable. I received an email from 2 agencies based in India this past week. On Oct 26 “someone” made 2 bogus reports about me, and around the same time, 2 companies offered their services to remove these complaints. What was most clear is, these complaints were forged from using keywords gathered from my website and my most commonly used Twitter hashtags such as “storyteller” and “motion capture”. It’s not that difficult to connect those dots. The 1st “claim” states that I “take photos professional, but [he] can not.” Um…yeah well that’s like…your opinion man…. Anyone can take a look at my photos and decide for themselves. Liking my photography is subjective, and unfortunately your […]

Jul 07

by Dave in CG 0 comments tags: 3d, animation, cg, Disney, keyframe, practice, reference, Tangled

Mike vs the Zombies – Tangled reference animation test

Been ages since I’ve done any keyframe animation. Brushing out the cob webs – using a scene from Tangled as reference for some animation practice. Start to finish this was about a 1 1/2 weeks of full time work broken up over 2 months while I was at my day job. Used the Mike free rig on CreativeCrash and the free Maya World Zombination Character Rig by Proletariat Inc.. Looking at reference is something animators have been doing since the 9 Old Men days – Disney’s Snow White is a perfect example. What I do in the performance capture world is no different. We look at reference footage of what the actor did, and make our timing and pose adjustments accordingly. Keeping close eye on arcs, pops, etc – no different than adjusting your base layer animation. For this keyframe example, I took the Tangled reference and got my key poses down first. Adjusted keys in the graph editor for timing, then did all the in between fixes so I got cleaner arcs. This isn’t perfect, but for not doing any pure keyframe in several years it’s not too bad.

May 17

by Dave in CG 0 comments tags: 3d, 3Delight, cg, HDR, HDR shop, IBL, maya, panoramic, VFX

New light probe Updated

Here’s my new light probe for on set light ref. I ordered a 10″ gazing globe from Amazon. With shipping, the cost was about $80NZD. I went down to a place in town called Metalworx to have the ball drilled and threaded. Everything was custom milled. I had them make a removable dowel as well. A custom spud handle locks onto the dowel with a screw and can easily be removed and clamped onto a c-stand or a tripod or inserted into a long piece of pipe. This custom milling cost around $230NZD but is well worth it. This seemed to be the most robust way to shoot light probes on set. You can have someone stand behind the ball and shoot your brackets, rotate 90 degrees and bracket again. If you have more time, then obviously you can set up a c-stand and shoot your 10-12 exposures for a complete and ideal HDR light probe. Optically, the 10″ ball isn’t the greatest. There are some bumps on the surface and the weld between the 2 hemispheres is visible, but through the camera is on the edge of the ball. I snapped a few photos of it and […]

Mar 22

by Dave in Uncategorized 0 comments

Short on hold

It’s been over a month with no updates on my short – Peter Jackson is to blame 😉 I’m working at Park Road Post as a colorist on a personal/government funded project for PJ. Unbeknownst to me, PJ has the largest WW1 collection in the world, and is an avid historian on the subject. This year marks the centennial anniversary of the Battle of Gallipoli, and the New Zealand government, along with Peter Jackson, have commissioned a huge new Memorial and Gallipoli exhibit in Wellington. On opening day, I heard rumors that the Royal family will be here, as well as a brigade of soldiers adorned in the WW1 uniforms marching down closed roads. I’m really looking forward to seeing everything completed! Working at PRP has been amazing! I LOVE this studio! It feels like what everyone film/production/post studios SHOULD be. Some of PJ’s academy awards are on display, there is a cafe and the entire place has vintage New Zealand mid century artwork or vintage film posters. It’s a beautiful place to work, everyone is friendly and I couldn’t be happier! Hopefully I can come back after this project for other projects – I’m very fortunate to have this experience!

Feb 10

by Dave in Get Out 0 comments tags: 3d, animation, cg, character, dog, maya, mudbox, sculpt, turntable

Mugs model, UVsets, & sculpt

Once I had Mugs’ design finalized, he was ready to model in Maya. Using image planes for my model reference, I was able to shape my character to look exactly like my design. I started with a low poly version, and used this as my base for everything. At this stage if was easiest to lay out the UV’s. I’m not using ptex just yet as some applications I may be using are not ptex friendly. I do love the idea of not having to fuss with UV’s but I’m a bit old school in that area at the moment. I added a collar with a buckle, similar to the one my dog had. After some tweaks and a smoothing pass, Mugs was ready to go into Mudbox for some sculpting. In Mudbox, I tried my best to sculpt out muscle groups and shapes according to canine anatomy. Since Mugs is heavily characterized, and I still want him to be cartoony, this was a delicate exercise. At the end I felt I had accomplished a nice balance of believable muscles, but still feeling toon like. I also painted some color as his base texture in Mudbox. Exporting maps from […]

Feb 09

by Dave in Get Out 0 comments tags: anatomy, character, drawing, model, model sheet, poses, sketching, studies

Dog poses to model sheet

The next step was to do some quick pose studies on canine anatomy. I started drawing the more recognizable and common movements dogs tend to make. The classic stretching downward dog pose, the purest of all happiness leaping run, the “that hurts my feelings” look, and so on. I was starting to have a better understanding of canine movement, although the shoulder area is one of the most complex of all joints I’ve studied. I’ll worry about that later 😉 Looking forward, I wanted to test different mannerisms I may find Mugs in. He’s very characterized so I anticipate hitting certain poses is going to be a challenge with the rig. Once I felt I had a few I was happy with, I drew several sketches to develop Mugs’ model sheet, and this is the final: Maya time.

Feb 09

by Dave in Uncategorized 0 comments tags: boy, cartoon, concept, dog, doodle, drawing, ideas, night, sketch

4am weirdness

It was 4 a.m. and I could hear rhythmically thumping 4/4 bass from the nightclub downstairs. At the time, I lived right in the CBD (for you North Americans, that means City Business District) next to Cuba street, in the middle of everything. Could it have been the club music keeping me up? Perhaps. It was more likely that coffee I had at 3:30 that afternoon that was just kicking in. I got up, grabbed my sketchbook, and put pencil on paper. Just a middle of the night doodle. After a couple pages of grotesque nonsensical middle-of-the-night depictions, I wanted to push out more ideas for the dog character in my story. I poorly attempted some perspective type industrial design drawings of a dog and failed. It’s 5am and my hands are doing that caffeine trembling thing, whaddya want? These certainly did help me zero in on some shapes for the canine, and I providentially developed an idea I fancied for the boy. Getting there I wasn’t sure if this were the direction I wanted to go, but at the end of the day I wanted my character to look like my old dog Droopy (named after ). He was a […]

Feb 08

by Dave in Get Out 0 comments tags: animation, film, James Cameron, production, screenplay, script, short film

The locked script

Getting to work on many large and small films, I have seen a variety of methods employed in story telling over the years. The person whom I most identify with in his process is James Cameron. I worked on Avatar for 2 1/2 years and witnessed how he developed a film from a script. Out of the other big name directors whose films I’ve had the privilege to be a part of – Spielberg and Peter Jackson specifically – Jim made the most sense to me. He told me once “make the films YOU want to see”, and that stuck ever since. My entire career has been helping other story tellers dreams come true, so I decided it is my turn. From the time I was a kid visiting my dad on movie sets, to college, to my 1st job in “the industry” doing storyboards on League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, I have been grooming myself for this moment. But what did I want to say? What is the message of this first story of mine? I poured myself a modest glass of Glenfarclas 105 single malt whiskey, put on the Morhpine station on Pandora, sat on my couch and began to labor […]