3D for beginners « I Design Your Eyes

‘Another Day at the Office in the VFX Industry’: A Film By The Zoic Interns

Posted by Erik Even in I Design Your Eyes on November 6, 2009

Another Day at the Office in the VFX industry

Zoic has posted an excellent short video created by members of its 2009 Internship Program: Another Day at the Office in the VFX Industry.

Here’s the press release:

Zoic Studios is proud to host the Zoic Internship Program, an innovative course of study that combines real-world experience with professional mentoring. The program, based out of Zoic’s Culver City production facility, has been training the next generation of aspiring VFX artists for the last seven years.

Interns receive the same kind of instruction they would from a college curriculum, but in an actual digital production studio with weekly lectures by top industry talent and lessons that include hands-on experience. During the course of the curriculum each intern is assigned a mentor: an experienced Zoic staff member who provides professional advice and guidance.

Zoic interns will produce projects using the latest in equipment, software and production facilities. Each project is supervised by Zoic professionals who guide interns and the project from start to finish, exposing interns to real-life production issues.

The Zoic Internship Program allows each participant to produce professional work to anchor their demo reel; experience working on client projects; and mentoring by some of the top-talent in the entertainment industry, including producers, supervisors and lead artists.

This video, Another Day at the Office in the VFX Industry, was produced by a team from the most recent Zoic Internship class. It features live-action mixed with CG effects, and humorously presents a typical day at the Zoic offices – a train passing through the hallway, black lava flooding down the stairs, hologram keypads, hover seats, and armies of cloned interns.

The Zoic Internship Program is an unpaid, 16-week commitment held three times a year: January-April, May-August, and September-December. College credit may be available.

For further information or for application information, contact Brooke Brigham by email or fax: 310-838-1169; or visit the Zoic Studios Website.

For more info: Watch the video on the Zoic web site.

Share/Save

3D for beginners, Brooke Brigham, internships, press release, video, Zoic Internship Program, Zoic Studios

No Comments

Google Crowdsources 3D Work with ‘Building Maker’

Posted by Erik Even in I Design Your Eyes on October 19, 2009

Google wants to enhance its Google Earth global mapping product with three-dimensional representations of pretty much every building on Earth. But how can even the $32 billion web search daikaiju manage such a feat?

Outsource the work to Indonesian orphanages?
Use Google Nuclear Arsenal to flatten all existing buildings, allowing Google to create 3D models as the new buildings are constructed?
Turn the creation of Google Maps models into a puzzle game, and cloudsource it?

The correct answer is (c).

Google Building Maker is a browser-based web app (based in Google SketchUp; Google Earth installation required) that lets you build 3D representations of buildings around the globe, using image resources provided by Google. Your work will be eyeballed by a Google staffer, and if approved will become a permanent part of Google Earth.

The app works by showing you several photos of a building (one you choose or one chosen for you), taken from various angles. You manipulate and resize a 3D bounding box to show Google Building Maker what image elements will go where on the 3D model — a task that will undoubtedly be automated within the next few years, but which right now requires a wetware engine (that’s you). The app assembles the model, which can be composed of a number of rectangular or triangular shapes, each skinned with a portion of a photo.

I can’t currently play with Google Building Maker, because I can’t install Google Earth at work. But let me know how you enjoyed it in the comments.

Some people think Google Building Maker will help the “terrorists.” I would call such people “brain-impaired Philistines,” but that’s unfair to the brain-impaired. And Philistines.

Via Google’s Lat Long Blog (with video); via CG Society.