Life, Reality, and everything…

Again, it’s been a long time since my last update!

Most of it was spent in San Diego, where I interned as a Shader/Lighter/Renderer for Pendulum. It was very cool over there and I sure learned a lot – and the results are pretty stunning as well, though unfortunately I can’t present them yet.

Yesterday I released my newest plug-in for After Effects, Reality. This one was a lot more work than last time, mainly because it is a whole set of plug-ins opposed to only one in Normality.
Reality deals with advanced lighting effects that are normally impossible to achieve in AE:
- specular highlights
- image based illumination (IBI)
- bump/normal mapping
- reflections
- refractions
These are especially useful as they work in near real-time, so there’s no more need to wait for Maya/MentalRay/RenderMan/etc. to finally finish rendering.

I also have a new short film in mind and have a pretty good idea of how I’ll incorporate Normality and Reality into my workflow. Nothing’s been decided story-wise, but it sure looks like there be pirates afoot…