davidmlally.com

Striking is an animated short that was completed as part of my graduate thesis. The project featured a study of lighting and offered both traditional and unique opportunities for light and shadow throughout the animation. On Striking, I was responsible for all of the character and environment modeling, texture painting, and shading, using a combination of Maya, ZBrush, Photoshop, and Renderman. The light trail and hero vine growth effect were achieved in Houdini, using a variety of surface operators and l-system rule sets. Some of the vine growth effects were handled in Maya through curve extrusion, where I also had a chance to use point-based color bleeding in Renderman, allowing the vines to more naturally contribute light to the scene. Lighting and rendering took place heavily in Maya and Renderman, with some PRMan passes coming out of Houdini for effects, later to be composited in Nuke.

Software: Maya, ZBrush, Photoshop, Houdini, Renderman, Nuke, After Effects