Thiago Costa logging something

Sometime ago Ben Houston’s Exocortex approached me to help on the development of a realtime smoke simulator for Softimage ICE. This is the outcome which I just got permission to show.

SlipstreamRT for Softimage is a proprietary real-time smoke simulator developed for Softimage’s ICE system in collaboration with [exocortex.com/ Exocortex Technologies, Inc.] This video is posted with permission from Exocortex Technologies, Inc. For licensing information please contact [email:info@exocortex.com]

About my participation on this project:
I worked on most of the components of the solver including boundary conditions (laminar flow, turbulent flow, etc), vortex shedding, vorticity equation, particle splitting, etc…
Most of the tests on this video are done by myself, I’ve also implemented all the ICE workflow and some of the controls demoed on the video.

For a complete list of features contact Exocortex.

Just finish working on these series of short films for Assassins Creed 2.
The game looks amazing as well!

This production was done at Hybride and Ubisoft Digital Arts, my work consisted of making workflows/tools and leading the Technical Directors and pipeline people during the project at UDA.

This was quite an experience and I’m happy with the results, although I wish we had more than 5 months to produce the whole thing…
In my opinion (and not because I worked on it :P) this is the first adaptation of a game to a film that makes into the form a short film and doesn’t let me down. It actually leaves that feeling that we could explore more of this universe.

I would be looking forward to work on a full feature film for this brand, with a lot of time to produce it of course

To know more, visit http://www.youtube.com/user/assassinscreed
or  http://www.assassinscreed.com/

There are at least 3 different meshers for ICE particles that can be used with the SPH:

Pwrapper from 3daliens

emPolygonizer

And Guillaume Laforge is doing this pretty cool project that constructs a fast scalar field in ICE and passes to the polygonizer in a grid structure.

The coolest stuff for me is that the distance function on Guillaume’s polygonizer is an ICE compound! So you can play with it right there and manage to change the way the polygonizer will weight the surface.

It’s exciting to see all these people developing these tools and they are all compatible with my SPH solver, have fun!

Mesher by Eric Mootz

I had a blast working with the crew of CafeFX on G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.
I think the release date for the film is fixed to August, I will see you in the movie theaters!

My work was mainly as FX Lead/TD working on shots and also providing some tools for the other artists.
I have to say thanks to: David Ebner, Jeff Barnes, Seth Lippman and all the crew at CafeFX!
For an (incomplete) credit list of the film: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1046173/fullcredits#cast

I produced about 4 hours of training about the new Softimage|ICE platform explaining a lot of the workflow/techniques to create tools that can be used in production.
This series is packed with packed with deep examples and it’s more of a intermediate/advanced thing.
Although if you are a beginner you might find this really exciting and really get into it.

To buy it, visit cmiVFX website

Hello, we are looking for testers to join the SPH fluids simulator for ICE.

This is a free set of nodes for ICE, all you need is register to get access to the testing group, Addon, sample scenes and documentation.

height=26 width=132 alt=”Google Groups”>

Subscribe to ICE SPH Fluids

Email:

Visit this group

I’ve been working on this SPH (Smoothed Particles Hydrodynamics) fluids simulator for XSI’s ICE.
I did my own collisions logic, integration, substeps, all the physics part, etc… using low level ICE nodes, and now some compiled C++ nodes.
The simulator supports pressure, density, viscosity, tension, collisions and some other stuff.

visit my page on Vimeo for some previews:

Visualize the graph of a function is not easy (at least for me), without plotting the function.
It can be really hard to understand what y = x^2 * z^2 looks like.
So I obviously did an ICE compound with these most common graphs.
I couldn’t stop doing functions and playing with it, so I ended up with this list, all in the same compound:
x*z
x^2 + z^2
x^2 - z^2
x^2 * z^2
x^3 + z^3
sin(x)
cos(x) + cos(z) ^ 2
cos(x^2 + z^2)
sin(x^2 + z^2)
-1 / (x^2 + z^2)
|cos(x) + cos(z)| ^ (1/2)
cos(x) + cos(z)
| cos(x^2+z^2) | ^ (1/2)
|cos(x+z)| ^ (10/2)
cos( |x| + |z| ) * ( x + z )
cos( |x| + |z|) * (|x| + |z| )
cos( |x| + |z| )
|sin(x) * ( sin(x) + cos(z) )| ^ 0.2
sin(x^2) * cos(z^2)

Some are very common, others are not. It’s cool how many crazy patters you can get using these functions.

Hopefully this will work as a “educational” resource, so you can see what these functions look when applied to a 3d shape and understand how Sin, Cos, Absolute values, etc, can affect the function.

Here is what these equations look like when applied to a grid:

What’s even more cool in ICE is that after I had all the functions done, I could apply this as a force, a weightmap… basically anything that reads a 3d vector or a scalar.

Visit the page in the Softimage Community

Package of 6 animations done at Nervo.tv for Zune.
My participation on this project started on RnD, and how we would make the simulation work on the cube shape, then how to animate it. I also did most of the lighting work and the final compositing/color grading.

Few interesting things from this project:
The “Boxes” animation was done simulating rigid bodies in XSI, and a lot of layered animation on top.
The “Liquids” one I had to write a little script to allow me import a sequence of meshes, that came from a standard particle simulation. To then enable people to tweak it later, in a mesh state and apply relax operations etc.
The “Sweets” one was very tricky too, each frame of the animation is a different object. Like a 3d stop motion technique.

This project was fun and challenging at the same time, I’m pretty happy how it turned out.

To see some original sketches/concepts just follow Fabiana’s website

Hope you enjoy it!

Quicktime video

Credits - project page http://nervo.tv/index.html?sect=5&proj=zune
Creative Director: Nando Costa
3D Artists: Thiago Costa, Jeff Norombaba, Joshua Cox, Catherine Langevin, Gabriel Beauvais
Compositing: Thiago Costa, Jeff Norombaba, Alphonse Swineheart, Robbie Johnstone
Storyboard Artist: Fabiana Fortes
Music: Darrin Wiener

I’ve uploaded my Obj Sequencer in the community site.
This tool was used during the Zune project to import sequences of animated liquids. This saved us a lot of time during the production.

Download addon from the Softimage Community

Based on the number of neighboring particles, this compound can adjust the color around the boundaries of a particle cloud.
The range is calculated based on the number of points in the island, so a gradient is smoothly blended to the particle color.

This can be used in any region of the stack. Plug the Execute Color in one ICEtree port and you are good to go.
However if you want the color to update with the simulation, you must use this in the simulation region.

Visit the page in the Softimage Community

Here is the representation of an acceleration graph:

* Open video on Vimeo to see in High Definition.


 

acceleration = F/m
This compound gives you the Acceleration vector (direction the particle is accelerating), a scalar value that is the magnitude of this vector, and IsAccelerating which returns a boolean value.

Acceleration can be used in many different things, play with it the way you want.
Visit the page in the Softimage Community

Here is the representation of an acceleration graph:

* Open video on Vimeo to see in High Definition.

The Company was nominated in the category Main Title Design for the 60^th Primetime Emmy Awards!
I was lucky enough to be on this project with Digital Kitchen - Seattle.

Watch The Company on DK’s website http://www.d-kitchen.com/projects/the-company-main-title

The Company • TNT
Studio: Digital Kitchen
Creative Director: Matt Mulder
Lead Designers: Cody Cobb, Ryan Gagnier, Noah Conopask
Animatiors: Ryan Gagnier, David Holm, Pete Kallstrom, Matt LaVoy, Dayvd Chan
3D: Cody Cobb, Igor Choromanski, Gordana Fersini, Thiago Costa
Editor: Dave Molloy
Producer: Jill Johns, Colin Davis
Executive Producer: Mark Bashore

My participation here was on the last scene, from the transition to the mushroom to the end. The guys at DK and Cody Cobb specially worked really hard to give all the styling on the final frame, with lot’s of render passes and even drawing things by hand over the 3d render.

Here are a bunch of Shaderballs for XSI
Visit the page in the Softimage Community

For this Timex spot done at Nervo.tv, I worked mostly in the runner, but also in some background elements.
The runner rig/animation/cloth simulation was pretty fun, I worked with Syflex, used Refmodels to manage the versions of the runner and also developed the look of this guy in 3d.

  Quicktime video

Like the grease pencil tool for Maya, this tool allows you to draw with the sketch tool for 2d animation/per frame annotation, directly in the XSI viewport.
Changes V1.1

Download addon from the Softimage Community

Here is a video showing this tool

This was fun to do, unfortunatelly I didn’t had the time to do more than Model, rig and animate the bird!
To see more: Nervo.tv,

  Quicktime video

This is my sketchbook.
Most part of the work here was done in digital (photoshop, open canvas, painter, artrage). But I also work on paper and I really like life drawing sessions.
I’ve used photographs as a reference for some images on this section.

I will post my OC painting sessions with my friend Mario Ucci, don’t forget to check out his amazing 2d portfolio.
I would say it’s better then the 3d one. But don’t tell him

Little animation for Nike. Did simulation, rendering, everything in XSI.
Compositing and creative direction by Nervo.tv

Simulation was really fun to do, the rigid body solver worked perfectly with a bunch of groups, two environments and animated RB constraints.

  Quicktime video

This simple Addon can save you a lot of time if you have multiple channels to add to passes.
It allows you to select channels and add it all at once.

Download addon from the Softimage Community

I was the Lead 3d for this project with Adam Gault and Carlo Vega.
Marcelo Souza helped me a lot to deliver a bunch of animations of the bull.

One thing I can say is that Carlo and Adam are really great people to work with!
If you have the chance, don’t miss it!
They did saved my 3d renders adding a lot of nice colors and style to it.

Quicktime video

Got very good feedback to my demo Reel. Thanks everyone!
After some very nice job offers/interviews (and all the work to get an US visa), I’ve finally moved to Portland-Oregon.
Pacific Northwest looks awesome, if you are around here and know something fun to do… just send me a message!

Worked with my friends Chris Bahry and Alexandre Torres from Tendril doing texturing, lighting and some animation on this piece.
Texturing done in Photoshop and composition in After Effects, all the 3d work was produced using 3ds Max.
I’ve cut the best shots and previews I did, and worked on this small clip.

  Quicktime video

H2oh! is a flavored water type of thing that called for animated fishes inside of the aquarium.
At Conspiração Filmes filmes I had the opportunity to work in the modeling, animation and was the lead texturer/shading artist.
Our pipeline was based on Maya, Renderman and Photoshop.

I worked in two spots, the one for the launch of the product and the other for the new flavor Tangerine:

  Quicktime video - Lemon

  Quicktime video - Tangerine

Low poly game model done as a test for the Amsterdam based game studio Guerrilla Games
I did it using Maya, Zbrush|Mudbox and Photoshop.

Mudbox/Zbrush details, later baked into textures.

XSI-Brasil, the Brazilian website about the 3d software Softimage|XSI is back online.
There you will find videos showing XSI features and production techniques. Part of my work with tools development is also being posted in there.
(*site is in Portuguese)

Pepsi campaign in Brazil is marked by these series of spots featuring two talking Lemons.
Here I have two of the spots I had worked on during my experience at Conspira filmes

Quicktime video - Yoga

Quicktime video - Promo

My reel is online! This is a compilation of my work done between 2006 and 2007.
A shot breakdown is in the end of the reel, enjoy it:

  Quicktime video - 320×240

  Quicktime video - 640×480

This is a study of a 3d creature. Most of the work to finish this project was done in a month in my spare time.

  Quicktime video