Best Buy Advertisement Series
Responsible for lighting, look dev, texturing, rendering
Rendered in Mental Ray

This series of spots for Best Buy consisted of miniature sets and CG characters. I started early in the project doing texturing/look dev on Santa, the Head Elf, the fat elf at the end of spot four, and a lot of the products. The lighting was given an initial look from the plates, but we kept it stylized and had some creative freedom with it. Shots were all rendered using final gather with multiple passes, and then handed off to compositors.

Air Force Advertisement
Responsible for lighting, techincal rendering aspects
Rendered in Mental Ray

I came on board to this project towards the end as added help in the lighting and rendering phase. A lot of what we were doing was just working with the compositors and making sure they had every pass they needed. A main light rig and workflow was established by the lead and we just worked to get everything handed over to comp. The lighting set up consisted of simple a key for the Sun, an HDRI for bounce, and an added kick if needed.

Marvel Universe: The Heroes are Coming
Lead Lighter, responsible for lighting direction, rendering technical direction, lighting/compositing
Rendered in Mental Ray
Composited in Nuke/After Effects

The second in a series of two promotional shorts for Marvel. I was responsible for the successful delivery of the piece, as well as leading the lighting team. As the lead, I created light rigs and built upon the workflow from the previous marvel short. I worked closely with the director for look, and with the leads of other departments to insure proper integration of elements into final shots. Shots were rendered using Final Gather, rendered into multiple passes, and composited with Nuke and After Effects. Lighters were responsible for comping their own shots.

Additional Responsibilities: Shader look development and planning of project.

Marvel Super Hero Squad: Heroes For Peace
Lead Lighter, responsible for lighting direction, rendering technical direction, lighting/compositing
Rendered in Mental Ray
Composited in After Effects

The first in a series of two promotional shorts for Marvel. I was responsible for the successful delivery of the piece, as well as leading the lighting team. As the Lead Lighter, I created light rigs and set up initial work-flow for lighting artists to follow. I worked closely with the director, and with the leads of other departments to insure proper integration of elements into final shots. Shots were rendered using Final Gather, rendered into multiple passes, and composited with After Effects. Lighters were responsible for comping their own shots.

Additional Responsibilities: Shader look development, rough modeling/texturing, and initial planning of project.

El Dorado
Responsible for all lighting, setting up passes, rendering
Rendered in Mental Ray

The El Dorado puma sequence was a series of 53 vfx shots. I lit and rendered around 20 of these shots. I was the only lighter on the team at the end of the project, and eventually went back to modify all of the shots regarding client feedback. I was also responsible for working with the compositor to establish the render passes needed for the sequence.

Additional Responsibilities: Animated twelve shots, as well as worked with the Dynamics artist for proper implementation of Houdini rigid body effects, and Maya fluid simulations.

TCM 31 Days of Oscars Promotion
Lead Lighter, Responsible for Lighting, rendering, shader look development
Rendered in Mental Ray

The project was a 90 second promotion that the team had less than two months to complete. An initial light rig was created by myself that was established for the overall look of the piece and then propagated throughout the shots and tuned shot by shot. As Lead I also placed key lights and established the lighting to compositing pipeline.

Worked closely with a team of three compositors to provide them with passes needed to finalize shots. The render for the pieces in the machine was broken up into shadow, reflection, diffuse, indirect, and occlusion. The film was rendered separately, and additional passes were set up for depth, world and object space normals, motion vectors, matte IDs, and any FX in the shots.

Additional Responsibilities: Look development of machine shaders, as wells as look development of the film and the method to animate the film moving across the rollers.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Smash Up Trailer Cruise Ship Shots
Responsible for all lighting, setting up passes, rendering, and compositing
Rendered in Mental Ray
Composited in After Effects

No Global Illumination or Final Gather was used. Passes included multiple RGB matte passes, dynamic simulations, depth, occlusion, and background elements being rendered seperately.

Additional Responsibilities: Worked closely with director on look of shots, assisted with shader developement for turtles and robot, provided technical animation support

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Smash Up Trailer Rooftop Shots
Responsible for all lighting, setting up passes, rendering, and compositing
Rendered in Mental Ray
Composited in After Effects

No Global Illumination or Final Gather was used. Passes included multiple RGB matte passes, dynamics passes (layers of sparks and debri for sign, steam coming from vents, dust from ground), volumetric fog, depth, occlusion, shadows, and multiple background elements rendered.

Additional Responsibilities: Worked closely with director on look of shots, assisted with turtle shaders, proper implementation of dynamic simulation, provided technical animation support

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Smash Up Trailer Train Shots
Responsible for all lighting, setting up passes, rendering, and compositing
Rendered in Mental Ray
Composited in After Effects

No Global Illumination or Final Gather was used. Passes included multiple RGB matte passes, dynamics passes (dust coming from train, dust from turtle hitting train), shadows, depth, occlusion, characters rendered seperately.

Additional Responsibilities: Worked closely with director on look of shots, worked on turtle look dev, and provided rigging/technical animation support

Character Lighting Study
Responsible for all lighting, texturing, compositing
Rendered in Mental Ray
Composited in Nuke

Created by a hand placing all key and bounce lights and rendered with final gather. Final gather settings were tuned very low to manage render times. Passes included depth, occlusion, volumetric light rays, additional character lighting, and multiple RGB mattes for foreground, middle ground, background, different groups of lights, and the robot.

Model by Juan Carlos Silva.

Photoreal Lighting Study
Responsible for all lighting, texturing, modeling, compositing
Rendered in Mental Ray
Composited in Nuke

A 3D Study of creating photorealistic lighting using new mental ray techniques including the mia_portal_light combined with physical sun/sky and final gather. Background, glass panels, and reflections rendered seperately for compositing.