Circadian Cannon - Vladimir Chopine

Fact File Name Vladimir Chopine Product Vue 5 Infinite, Video Editor Sony Vegas, Sonicfire Pro, Poser "Textures and functions in Vue is a can of wonderful worms. Just open the can and you will spend hours and hours playing with it!"

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Vladimir Chopine is an artist living in Utah, in the United States. He is currently working as a programmer and doing GUI design, but dedicates all his free time to animation and films.

Geek for life

"I love creating movies and animation. I started creating animation films when I was around 14 to 16 years old, at the Russian Mosfilm studio. I've done news broadcasting for Russian Television, short films, music videos, design and graphics for commercial projects, and I built my first computer. My first experience with 3D was with 3D Studio v2. After that I was hooked forever. Creating worlds from your imagination - what can be better?"
Then I worked in Lightwave, and was switching to Maya when I discovered Vue Pro and started playing with the trial version. Serious use of Vue began on the release of Vue 5. The learning curve was very short and I did my first animated segment in weeks. "I was lucky to work in Linux Networx (Linux based super computers) before. Their management knows my love of making movies and allows me to use their rendering farm. I am a geek, and I love my geek stuff ;)"

Project's Story

"Sometimes you never know what may lead you to creating an animation. This one is the best example of wonder or imagination, the creation was totally spontaneous. I began experimenting with textures and functions in Vue and applied them to a tree. As long as I was touching trees, I started experimenting with them - and created an old, magical tree. Rendered it - something was missing. I needed to offset the natural look.

Suddenly, the 'bot, "Klank", who I got a long time ago from Daz3D spoke up, telling me that it was the best place for him, to rest under a dead tree. Well do we ever get satisfied? Nope, not me. He was looking so sad there (despite his insistence that this was his place), that I was forced to bring him to life - to add some motion. Unable to go to sleep, I was very excited to complete the project..."

Tips from making this project

"Vue doesn't have particle effects yet, so one challenge was integrate smoke in to the scene. For this I separate rendering on multiple layers. An example is when the robot flew across the screen, with trees located in front of him and behind. It was created by separating it in Vue into three layers. First I included the background and the 'bot itself. Second I added trees in the front. And third - I added general stuff, like camera and light's.

After rendering the first layer, smoke and particle effects were added in another program. The second layer was rendered with an alpha mask. Also, motion blur was turned off. We needed as sharp an image as possible so that in the video editor it would be a clean merge.

In front of the 'bot gun, I added a small light, that would be covered by particle effects, but it gave me needed shadows and light rays. That light was visible also in all rendering. When all the renderings were combined in a video editor (I use Sony Vegas), motion blur was added to the second layer. Color correction and contrast were also adjusted. I finished my last shot at 2 in morning. This is probably why I was looking grumpy on video."

"The whole project took to me about 3 days on weekends. Then it took about one more week to come up with a name. I wasn't clear how it would all end, until I found the perfect sound track in my Sonicfire Pro library."

Natural Power

"The problem with many other 3D applications is that you must spend a lot of time creating environment. This consumes most of your time, leaving you dried out of ideas when you are ready. In Vue, I almost spent no time to set up my scenes, making me able to concentrate on expressing my imagination. I did preorder Vue 5, and greatly anticipating the moment when I would receive it - it was just like kids and Christmas time. And I wasn't disappointed at all. It [Vue] is a solution, not just an additional tool to use. There is a very short learning curve, making it easy for beginners. At the same time it is very in depth if you want get technical."