New website!

New website is up! Reel is still wip, final one to come soon...Check it out:

http://www.mikezhangvfx.com/

Thanks for visiting!

The Arrival

The Arrival from Mike Zhang on Vimeo.

Matchmoving/Dynamics/Look Dev final at Gnomon

The idea was to create an action shot that has CG elements integrated into a live action plate. This was my first attempt at matchmoving onto a back plate and also first attempt at rendering with Solidangle's Arnold. It really is a great brute force renderer, allowing the user to focus on more artistic tasks. The helicopter was rendered in Arnold while the effects were rendered in Mental Ray. We shot the footage on a Canon 5D, graded in Nuke, and tracked in Boujou. The entire process took around 10 weeks while rendering took one week.

Special thanks to Daniel Kho for the beautiful Pavelow model, Katerina Berezhnova for being an awesome actor, and Stephen Delalla & Stephen McClure for putting up with my endless questions regarding Arnold and everything.

Softwares Used: Maya, Mudbox, Photoshop, Mari, Nuke, Boujou, Arnold and Mental Ray

Mike Zhang - Responsible for all aspects except for Modelling
Daniel Kho - Responsible for Modelling

Music: Hans Zimmer - I Will Find Him

Thanks for watching!

Mercedes AMG SLS

Mercedes AMG SLS from Mike Zhang on Vimeo.

So term 5 here at Gnomon is ending and time is still flying by. This is a little piece I did for my commercial productions class with Chris Eckardt. Great guy, great class, learned a lot in the last 10 weeks. Either way, I'm a sucker for cool shiny things, so I couldn't resist doing a car commercial...

Biweekly 7

Another cg study with a spanking new Chrysler Sebring. Model provided, hdri from www.hdri-locations.com, responsible for all other aspects. Rendered out of Maya with V-Ray, comped in Nuke. Where would I be without you Nuke...

Biweekly 6

A couple more cg studies lighting studies. Head model and textures provided by Chris Eckardt, responsible for look development, lighting, and compositing. Rendered with VRay, comped in Nuke.

Biweekly 5

Mixing in some cg lighting studies this time...

The Showdown

The Showdown from Mike Zhang on Vimeo.

Vray final, collab with my amazing modeler friend Daniel Kho (http://daniorrr.blogspot.com/), finally finished! It's been a long 10 weeks and we learned a lot from this project. Basically, we were inspired by the work of Ashley Wood and his line of toy robots. So we chose two of them: Bramble, the green robot, and Bertie, the black one. Then we thumbnailed, concepted, and boarded a few variations of the shots. After that, we modelled, textured, lit, and simmed the effects in Maya, rendering most of the scene with Vray except for the effects which was done in Mental Ray. We also used ZBrush to sculpt some of the details, Mudbox and Photoshop to texture the robots and the scene, and Nuke and After Effects to composite it all together in the end. All in all, it was a great learning experience and a lot of midnight snacks...

 Update: And here's the breakdown!

Making of The Showdown from Mike Zhang on Vimeo.