Arif Saeed

Back To Life Documentary Animation

admin — Sat, 24 Nov 2012 06:54:59 +0000

Visuals created for documentary “Back to Life” by Media Voice Films

Back To Life Documentary Animation from Arif Saeed | Visual Artist

Mega Failure Documentary Animation

admin — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 18:14:04 +0000

Mega Failure Documentary – 3d animation from Arif Saeed | Visual Artist on Vimeo.

Mega Failure - This project was a bit challenging, when MediaVoice approached me with the map for animation, it was quite confusing mainly because of various changes in structure of LBOD project after its competition. After thinking and discussion we decided to

go for iconic look, also we started late than schedule, so it also needed to be done on quick bases.

Title Animation

We started with the title design and used plates of images with alpha masked to use the pics taken during shooting.

(3D Setup for title scene, the vertical planes are placeholders for images.)

Content Animation

Content included 9 scene with duration from 10 seconds to 21 second each. The chellange was to get render as quick as possible with the time passing rapidly.

(wireframe of LBOD structure)

(wireframe of LBOD structure along with simulated water animation mesh from real flow in maya)

Land texture was one of the issues, to work from different distances as well as avoid texture tilling I used layered texture, and made different masks to reveal lower layer with different texture. This all to give it look with no or least texture tiling visible as well as high quality visual where camera is close to ground.

( one layered shader and 2 layered textures as well as ocean (water) shader )

After a lot of rendering and messing up with image sequences came the part of compositing, which lead to the final output.

So, this is the story of Mega Failure. Let me know of your comments.

Food Show Ident

admin — Mon, 21 May 2012 09:03:04 +0000

Late Night Food Show Introduction animation. Task was to create design and animation as per director’s vision. He wanted to go for a sleek clean and white look with a rather straight camera movement.

IFRAME Embed for Youtube

Unknown Place

admin — Tue, 15 May 2012 09:36:08 +0000

Drew this concept few days ago while I was bored with out pc, later on decided to finish it. The idea basically revolved around a cute creature that is in an unknown location and facing his fears for unknown, as we all know fear on something can be greater than the thing itself.

Enjoy

(Arif Saeed | Visual Artist)

Behind the Scenes

Arif Saeed in Impressions magazine

admin — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 09:15:04 +0000

Arif Saeed in Impressions magazine:

I was honored to contribute in the first magazine of College of Media & Arts named ” Impressions”, two of my articles Idea vs Execution and Approaches to better 3d design got published along with news of 3d contest I won and a brief spotlight. Thanks to the admin of magazine who gave me opportunity.

Arif Saeed | Visual Artist | www.arifsaeed.com

Bug City – Making

admin — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:29:43 +0000

This was a personal fun project we (me and my friend Ali Xahidi) did. He drew me a concept for 3d city for bugs and also assisted me in setting up the mood + textures. Later started my work and I took the concept and modeled, textured and rendered it. Most of time was consumed in making textures, but thanks to photoshop skills, finally we created the desired look.

Sketch

3D City Model Composition

Textures

We used photoshop to layout and composit our textures using many elements and pictures to extract textures according to visual in our mind.

Same and more layers were there in many texture files to make custom building textures.

Milk bottle was given a pinkish tone for a soft appearence

The stadium with a pizza top

and a building in trash can

It was an quick educational project, so we used textures from CG textures and manipulated images to make some desired new. Our ideas were a bit inspired by Bugs Life movie too.

This all comes to this (textured wire frame of city model)

Enjoy and share if you like it

Arif Saeed

3d Showreel – making

admin — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 05:53:06 +0000

I have compiled all my 3d work in my first showreel.

IFRAME Embed for Youtube

Snaps of scenes from showreel

Pachelbel Canon in D animation

admin — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 21:22:51 +0000

Animation, personal fun project.

have a look at behind the scenes

BEHIND THE SCENES

Nominated in “Hall of Fame – Animations” in The 3d Artists Club here LINK

Some Motivating Comments:

Jamshed Butt (Dean: College of Media & Arts)

Beautifully done. I LIKE the lighting + shading. Its not easy to play with ‘em if you haven’t got intelligence embedded in you. Very GOOD, be more perfect & be a part of PGA team in future

Cymae (3d artist on deviantart.com)

Hi there!
I really like your intro picture, you’ve done a beautiful job of lighting it (though it’s a little blown out in the bottom left hand corner). Unfortunately some of the shots in the video need a bit more work. For example, the close-up of the violin has it all in shadow, and it actually looks 2D because the body is hidden in the shadows.
After watching your video, my main critique is that your animation is really really floaty. When you look at people playing instruments, they have sharp, jerky movements. It can be sharp and long, or sharp and short, and it is controlled, but it is always sharp. Check out some videos of people playing instruments and maybe sharpen up the animation to give it a more realistic look.

Muhammad Junaid Baig (TD lighting, H20 Animation Studio)

Choudry, this is really a different thing i’ve seen in a while. very beautifully done and very nice theme to present. i can see that you really have a nice sense of lighting and shading + texturing.very beautiful efforts, my favorite from your side till now and by the way, i love the lighting and shading in your cover image ) thanks for sharing and best regards,

Ahsan Jabbar (Director Global.pk)

Impressive stuff ! I’m sure your work will improve even further with time and hard-work that you put in (not to forget the talent).

Magical Mini Planet

admin — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 21:20:10 +0000

Magical Mini Planet – Arif Saeed – Visual Artist

My idea for mini planet was to show a magical workshop, with some dramatic lighting and mysterious feel. That will urge viewer to fantasize. Wizards and magic was my inspiration.

Secured 1st prize in Mini Planet contest. News: LINK 1 & LINK 2, Going to be in December Issue of “3d Hobby Magazine”

Day 0:

Thought of an idea to show a magical plant workshop, with some dramatic lighting. The image was clear in my mind. As usual I delayed on next day and played some games.

Day 1:

Time: 6 Hours approx.

After the initial idea I started to give the project some shape and started from the most important thing THE PLANET

making-magical-mini-planet-choudry-arif-saeed (3)

Day 2:

Time: 6 Hours approx.

Adding and tweaking textures. Used many psd networks which increased rendering time very much, so reduced the resolutions to acceptable sizes and merged unnecessary layers in Photoshop. Going to work more on city by adding more details and buildings.

making-magical-mini-planet-choudry-arif-saeed (1)

Day 3:

Time: 3 Hours + approx.

Tweaking lights and composition and placements. Experimented with PSD network textures glows.

Day 4:

Time: 3 Hours approx.

The tweaking is killing me, there is a lot going in mind, and I am changing things accordingly. Going to tweak textures and lights along with addition and composition of things.

Day 4:

Time: 9 Hours +

Sometimes small tweaks and changes in setting can be a nightmare ( I mean seriously, I woke up 6:30 in morning). Today’s rendering was much painful. Long render times, Maya running out of memory and not to mention dozens of crashes. Then I had to go back to basics and reduced settings, lowered Shadow rays, changed many bumpy materials to Lambert from Blinn Shader to save reflection calculations. It seems that lowering settings paid off, I can see rendering process speeding up. I must mention that I am not patient enough to wait for hours of rendering, so I reduced resolution to acceptable sizes, minimized light rays and other expensive (reflection counts ) stuff.

Depth Pass

OCC pass

So , with drum roll !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This the the final outcome.

Final 3d Render

(click picture to download large size image )

Problems and Solutions

Rendering time insanely increased: Check lights shadow rays (reduce and fine sweet spot)

Maya Out of Memory: Check texture files, reduce resolution if too high, try to prefer jpegs rather then bulky Psd files

Maya Crashing a lot: Hide different / delete different objects step by step to reach to the problem. In my case tree uncached Maya fluids (fire) caused problems, so if you have Maya fluids in your scene always play from start to help Maya correctly display fluids (smoke, fire etc.)

SUMMARY:

Modeling / Lighting / Texturing time: 27 hours

Rendering time: 1 Hour approx.

Compositing time: 1 Hour approx.

Maya / Mentalray.

Textures from www.cgtextures.com ( I manipulated most textures to my taste)

NOTE: All models are my own work. This is a non commercial / fun project. You are NOT ALLOWED! to use any of my image or part of image without my permission.

Things to add / avoid in 3d projects

admin — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 21:18:25 +0000

This is a list of things I concluded from some experience with 3d modeling and rendering. don’t forget to comment your thoughts:

1) PLAN!

You know you got all in head and when you will sit on pc, it will all be done in snap, but sadly that’s not the case, so plan in any following or other way

a) make doodles

b) make notes

c) make a complete map or procedure how you will do it.

2) Don’t Play Blind folded

Just because your friend or teacher used XYZ setting, you should do same for rest of your life without knowing what actually it is for?. Be curious and always know the history and purpose of features, it will make you able to tweak things as you wish giving more command over your work, who knows that blindly followed setting is the main cause of all your rendering frustration or errors.

3) Get observer’s eye

I very much emphasize on this .look around and believe me when you will look from observers eye you will find very amusing jokes and incidents around you. and those are the ones that used wisely will make your work worthy of comment “Awesome!“

Example:

Just today travelling in bus, bus conductor repeatedly asked 2 children to sit closer, because he wanted to FORCEFULLY FIT IN another man, and when the conductor saw that man is hesitating to sit there, he demanded those under 13 kids to give full fare. See, I was just sitting there and was noticing the tension of conductor and his aim to pack every one tightly.

4) Great! another cliché

Browse some forums about 3d and you will nearly find same things again and again and again (yup! that much repetition ), though its good to polish your skills, and make things realistic, but after making a dozen of clichés try asking yourself “where’s my creativity” if you can copy the environment exactly , good very good, may be in near future computer will be able to that for us, you are no machine so go break something’s (strictly talking about rules not room furniture), say ok lets make it this way or lets say try fantasy mood try adding ideas in render , don’t just make models like machine.

View this awesome render, it got everything , lights modeling and most of all strong idea that inspires.

LINK

5) just don’t throw it, PRESENT IT!

yup! presentation is very important in 3d just like in everything else. browse some still life compositions do some photography, observe lights and arrangements in nature and man made so when you model something new, you should be able to present it or say Sell it to others.

NOTE: All above mentioned thoughts are my concluded by personal and group experiences. You are free to disagree with them if you wish too. they might or might not be visible in my work so dont just try to judge me . I try my best to get ahead of myself every time.

Written by: Choudry Arif Saeed