Max Steel Episode 09 - Year 2000 via Sony - at Netter DIgital
Check out my Film Credits here -
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0698473
Max Steel episode 09 Saber Station
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(sorry for the poor footage i never did get clean footage of the final)
I was brought on board at Netter Digital to work on the television show Max Steel. With episode 01 under my belt, and a bunch of models and sets built for several episodes I switched gears and was now in full episodic mode. For episode 09 of max steel my job was to Layout the shots, bring in the motion capture and for this episode figure out how to fly space ships around convincingly. Sony's style of shot was the close up and most of the shots were shot with pretty tight closeups. This made it challenging creating movement as the obvious issue is that the vehicle would quickly be OUT of frame with even a little movement. Interpreting the storyboard is actually something that takes a little bit of talent as well because you have to think on your feet how to transcribe a storyboard or animatic into actual footage.
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Most of the shots were vehicle shots with some explosions. At the time i was just using lightwave 5.6, i want to say i used lw in camera polygons explosions (a polygon with an image sequence for an explosion). After effects was our compositing program for the show and I wasn't really using it for my shots, but they did get handed off to the supervisor Philip who ran them through compositing and did some post effects or whatever else was needed. He was quite good at it and could finish shots quickly using composting to solve issues.
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My shots were mostly of the station satellite approaching and scientists reacting in the beginning. I also created that entire space fight sequence starting with the sparrow vehicle leaving the shuttle craft and all the pursuits of the enemy shuttle craft. Blowing off the wing was the most challenging thing I did in those shots beside coming up with decent vehicle movements. All the character shots for me were Max steel in the cockpit and the two scientists for this episode. I had to position the characters, hand animate the head and eyes, and apply a lipsync file to the lips. At some point during the show we had too much lipsync and were drafted to help the two people devoted to all lip sync generation.
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This was my Star Wars. I got to fly ships around and blow them up. For a digital artist that is some of the best fun you can have. It's not a job when its so fun to do.
I worked on something around 40 shots in two main sequences. Our team was 7 individuals with 1 supervisor making 8 in total.
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Check out my Film Credits here -
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0698473
Max Steel - Ep 09 - All the screen shots were created in lightwave using image sequences and rendered in camera.
Max Steel - Ep 09 - Netter digital had a huge motion capture area. In max steel it was typical to have 2 or 3 motion captured characters in our shots. We had to import them and smooth out any Mocap issues.
Max Steel - Ep 09 - This episode was mostly a vehicular episode for me with a lot of moving of vehicles around.
Max Steel - Ep 09 - I forgot how i generated the images - Probably put together in after effects. I'm not sure if i was the one how put all the graphics for it together -
Max Steel - Ep 09 - I think we used after effects to put the graphics into the image sequence which we then projected onto the poly as an image sequence in camera
Max Steel - Ep 09 - Lots of vehicle movement to work out smoothly . I came up with a truck null so that motion was isolated to the null and rotation to the object.
Max Steel - Ep 09 - I had to hand animate the head and eyes. lipsync gets applied and previewd to see if it lines up.
Max Steel - Ep 09 - we had a render farm so things like motion blur were ok to use.
Max Steel - Ep 09 - Modelers usually rigged the vehicles with animation so that all we had to do was timing issues.
Max Steel - Ep 09 - The arms were all hand animated. Everything is done in camera so that there is little comp work for most of these shots
Max Steel - Ep 09 - creating interesting parenting using nulls allowed barrel rolls that look alot more fluid. Getting fluid movements was key to making these shots look good
Max Steel - Ep 09 - The earth was a still image on a polygon that was in the background of the shots. Because it was on a polygon the camera could move around a little.
Max Steel - Ep 09 - there were a few hero shots were it was just a zoom in
Max Steel - Ep 09 - Had to come up with clever ways to move the vehicle in sonys propensity for closeup shots
Max Steel - Ep 09 - we had quite a few character reaction shots which made up alot of this fight sequence
Max Steel - Ep 09 - Shots like this were fun to do becuase they would be regarded VFX shots. The light is just a flare i belive
Max Steel - Ep 09 - Again with the explosion polys. They have a alpha on the edge so that there is no clipping of the image
Max Steel - Ep 09 - more flying around. The smooth move required some interesting rigging strategys for the vehicles motion.
Max Steel - Ep 09 - More vehicle shots
Max Steel - Ep 09 - They called for a laser to come out of the shuttle but they didn't build any canon so i just made it come out of its nose. =)
Max Steel - Ep 09 - The nice thing about using explosion polys is that a few well placed lights also help integrate it into the shot
Max Steel - Ep 09 - More smooth movement and fun with lasers.
Max Steel - Ep 09 - The most complex shot of the whole series - had to model the break, and come up with the glowing steel (i used flares)
Max Steel - Ep 09 - This used more flares and particles and some creative placement of explosion polys. Definately the most complex shot - took me a whole day to figure out.