Max Bickley - Lighting Reel 2008

[nmcelmury]

Fantastic reel man, the first scene with the empty garage was great, keep up the good work :D

[SheepFactory]

Great reel Max. I love the outdoor shot, amazing lighting there.

Plugging this to the front page in a sec.

[MaxBickley]

Thanks guys!

[Teriander]

It wont load for me, I think your page is getting hits hard now that you're on the homepage :) So it must be really good work ;)

[ElecHeadMatt]

Look at you, Mr. Max, with your plugged reel and your flowing locks of hair.

Its beautiful dude. Absolutely beautiful. But you don't need me to tell you that.

[MaxBickley]

I'm working on getting a mirror on vimeo. Sorry if the movie isn't loading!

[RockinAkin]

Fantastic Environment / Lighting reel... One of the best I've seen.

Congrats on the great work.
You should have no probs finding a gig with a reel like this. :)

[southernboy]

Awesome reel Max! Great composition and of course the lighting is on point! I could do without the nail clipper piece though...Cheers

[BColbourn]

what an inspiring demo reel, fantastic work!

[phuziun]

Suppose I outta give my public congrats as well. Great job max! I've only watched the start of the reel about 20 times now.

[DimitrisLiatsos]

.....
You should have no probs finding a gig with a reel like this. :)


Indeed, :thumbsup:

[MatthiasM]

wow realy realy photorealistic :) where did you study ?

[MaxBickley]

wow realy realy photorealistic :) where did you study ?

Just finished my BFA in Visual Effects at the Savannah College of Art and Design.

[TAVO]

amazing lighting scenes dude !!! i really love your work. Which software was used for light and comp ?? Congrats !! :beer:

[MaxBickley]

amazing lighting scenes dude !!! i really love your work. Which software was used for light and comp ?? Congrats !! :beer:

Primarily Maya, mental ray and Shake.

[AdrianLazar]

very nice work man!

[MF3dream]

Great Lighting job...you did it pretty well and even with mental ray! Wow
I like the last sequence...its really nice...
Did you use costume shaders?

Keep up the good work man.

[Ceetwo]

Hey Max great demo reel glad to see great work coming from SCAD. Keep up the great work

Aldrichtorres
Lighter at Digital Domain
www.Aldrichtorres.com

[anandpg]

Awesome work, dude!! Truly impressive!!:applause:

[MAV4d]

good looks!

the only thing i would try to work on is getting layers split up, having beauty occ and zdepth is good, and i know its a pain to split layers in MR (esp using mia_X and tone mapping) but it can be done.

-Mike

[Maph]

That was great, man! A well deserved front pager and one hell of a job! ;)

[degstenk]

Awsome! Keep it up! :)

[gaggle]

Wow that was really cool, beautiful work. The weakest part is the last sequence I feel. Oh it's not ugly, far from it, but just weakest. It stood out as this slightly odd clip that didn't really bring home the point that you can do tracking as well. I only mention this because the rest of your reel was absolutely gobsmacktastically beautiful, so even the good and solid tracking sequence stands out :)

[Nydendarin]

Great job Max. Congrats on getting top row!
I like the changes you made to the garage scene, keep up the great work.

[TheMiyamotoMusashi]

Wow amazing reel?

Anyways why do you render so many passes separately? And how do you then combine them ? Do you set them all with Multiply mode or else?

[McLeon]

Holy crap, this is beautiful! I saw the alleyway on the renderfarm (at SCAD) ;) Great work, especially like the camera movement in the parking garage. Great job, man!

[aesis412]

amazing reel, I loved the second shot, just beautiful.

[nellement]

Amazing reel man,I love it,everything is realistic,but only thing that i think could be better is nail-cutter,music is great too ,great job again!!!

[mistasam02]

That was amazing :beer: great job!

[SanjayChand]

bad-ass dude!

:buttrock:

[RedXR]

Beautiful work. If you don't mind me asking, what's the name of the song?

Thanks.

[Pitipongp]

stunning! :surprised

great reel!?! :thumbsup:

[Victariand]

Good show.

[MaxBickley]

Thanks for the overwhelming compliments everyone! Truly appreciated!

...
Did you use costume shaders? .....
Everything mostly consists of the MIA material and Blinns. Maybe a couple lamberts here and there. I use Phong for all my plants, don't really know why either, I just like it.
....the only thing i would try to work on is getting layers split up, having beauty occ and zdepth is good, and i know its a pain to split layers in MR (esp using mia_X and tone mapping) but it can be done...
Agreed! What makes it even tougher is that some of the light rigs I came up with really don't like to be split into layers, and at the end of the day would nearly quadruple rendering efforts. This is mostly inherent in how FG, translucency, and the physical light shader work. I haven't had much time to play with splitting the mia_material out, but I hear it has issues with clipping above 8-bit?
Anyways why do you render so many passes separately? And how do you then combine them ? Do you set them all with Multiply mode or else?
The passes give a lot of added control when compositing, but the amount I use and how I use them differ from project to project. Sometimes you simply don't need a lot of layers to get the look you want. I composite in Shake, and use ColorCorrect nodes quite a bit, as well as the usual multiply, screen, etc.
If you don't mind me asking, what's the name of the song?
The song is Fractales Pt. 1, by Apparat off the album Walls. You can purchase it through iTunes, here. (http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?id=252648393&s=143441)

[meyers3d]

Very nice work, I especially love the outdoor alley scene. Great work on the camera work as well in each of your shots, they are all smooth and subtle.

[RenegadeWang]

Seriously, wow... Incredible work.

[saks27]

Beautiful man. Very inspiring.
Textures are really nice too.

how are render times? what computer are u rendering on?

[lazzhar]

Amazing work !!
Keep it up.

[candyapple68]

Wow! You're famous now!!! Great reel as always ;-)~!!!

[Noggy]

Hey man, great job on making the front page! I saw that street scene and I knew it looked familar then I remembered seeing it from the render farm!

Good work and congratulations!

[rockmetalray]

Very cool work! Materials and lighting are awesome, except the nail cutter which was not that good IMO. I'd leave it out if I were u...

good luck!

[Grrrrrrr]

Very cool. Good job!

[hakanpersson]

Superb work. Especially the garage, looks almost photorealistic! The reel is nice too, not too long or short.
The nailcutter scene should stay imo, its pretty good but maybe not as good as the others. But it shows that you handle cameratracking and composite with more than 2 layers;)

[dyna-mic]

this looks awsome!
what was your adjuctional background?

[criminal]

awesome reel man. i love your work. 5 stars!!

[maxspider3000]

that was superb for a high level of awesomeness :surprised

the first scene was so amazing, I thought it might be real ad you did some lighting on plattes or something ... but man, you really did it alllllllllll :D

I wanna ask you about the lighting techniques ... how to achive a good looking lighting ??? I mean any books, dvds, websites ... etc ??? or just the steps you are taking when simulating a light system ...

thanks for sharing ... :)

-Yusuf

[Scob]

Wow man kick @#$ !!

Congrats !

[Stefan-Morrell]

very nice reel..well done!

[Gal]

hey max! great stuff man. i dont remember the elevaor nor the parking lot..or atleast not at this stage? have you reworked it?
really like the mood you got on that street as light falls. how you been otherwise? still in sav? or off to R&H soon? :)

[oilB]

Absolutely AMAZINB JOB, if you could post some tutorials, would be great...

amazing, amazing

[vvkonline]

Great work great representation in Reel man congrats.
Good luck.

[Cimpy]

Hi Max.

Congrats on the internship!

[firstsingle]

Awesome man. 'The environments you bring to life' with Light!

[kiboSVK]

firtst and second scene are coooooool:applause:

[kanooshka]

Excellent job Max Bickley! I'm really into lighting and use MR and I was wondering what techniques you use for your lighting setups. I read you use FG but on top of that did you use GI? Raytracing or depthmaps? Area lights, spotlights, pointlights etc...? Especially on that first sequence inside. Amazing work again!

[drewisgenki]

congrats i'm so proud of you ^_^

[zasid]

Hey Man,

That is some really lovely work for a liting artist showreel.

I would like to ask wat kind of liting setup u used for that garage scene.I would love to know.
is where their only 3 passes u took for that .Looking forward to hearing from you.

regards,

zasid

[rubenmontecinos]

congratulations. Your work is great.

[Carina]

First reel in ages that has inspired me to actually write a comment. The outdoor bits are stunning. :thumbsup:

[Anil-Kapoor]

Great Looking Reel. Awesome. Outdoors are just Fantastic.

[Intervain]

great job, especially the second scene!

[MaxBickley]

Thanks again everyone for the feedback. I agree with most of you about the nail clippers, they are the oldest project on my reel and I'm currently working to replace them with something more complex/interesting.

how are render times? what computer are u rendering on?
The renderfarm we have at school limits rendertimes to under 2 hours a frame, and this is on mostly Xeon/Dual Xeon workstations, but also some older Opterons. For the sake of quality, a lot of the projects on my reel are pushed right up to the two hour mark. No sense in dialing back the quality settings if you can keep it under two hours.
what was your adjuctional background?
I assume you mean what is my artistic background? I've been doing 3D for some time, but also come from a pretty heavy graphic design/web design and photography background. The last four years have been very focused on 3D, Film and Photography.
... how to achive a good looking lighting ??? I mean any books, dvds, websites ... etc ??? or just the steps you are taking when simulating a light system ...
I tend to start with something relatively physically accurate(mental ray physical light, HDRs, etc) and work backwards from there to fine tune things to the look I want. For almost all of these projects I've invested quite a bit of time into developing decent working light rigs, so it would take too long for me to get into them here.
.. if you could post some tutorials, would be great...
I hope to have some write ups detailing some projects on my website, so check back in the next few weeks on my blog.
...I would like to ask wat kind of liting setup u used for that garage scene....
Maya point lights with physical light shaders attached, as well as a few area lights and "regular" Maya point lights.

[Carlos84]

hey max awesome reel I love it. Just one thing i noticed was in the garage bottom left straight after the z-depth wipe, there is a noisy patch on the floor. But apart from that you should be proud congrats!

[madmanatframeboxx]

hey max.... awesome reel..... i don know how many times i watched ur reel..... as a student thts really inspiring me.... like ur texturing & modeling, camera is really fantastic....:applause::love:

[Larry_g1s]

Great work Max. The garage scene is fantastic. I love the slight movement in the camera, that plus the quality of the lighting setup, really "sell" it.

[Apollo05]

fantastic

isnt it a paradox that in order to be a good lighter, you also have to be exceptional at modeling and shading....it somewhat disturbs me when modelers can just show off complicated models with half-ass lighting, no texture, and they can get jobs with that, but not lighting artists.

I would like to follow in your steps as a compositor and lighting artist. where should i start?
book/dvd suggestions would be a good start...?

[time]

amazing work!perferct lighting and texture

[Flewda]

Very nice work. Very inspiring!

[Raul-Reznek]

great work dude!
i love the music. didn't have time to read all of the thread, could u tell us who plays the track? thanks

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