CONTACT INFO: ollie.y.yao@gmail.com | ollieyao.com
BREAKDOWN:
1. Rainy Day
Created in Houdini, rendered with Solaris and Karma. I wanted to tackle photorealism with a simpler simulation I'd be able to polish, and so I chose to do raindrops beading on a window. Raindrops were created with POP simulations, with additional splashes generated using FLIP fluids. This project marked my first foray into Solaris, Karma, and USD workflow, something I'm very excited to learn more about in the future! Window sill was modeled in Maya and textured in Substance Painter.
2. We Are Chrome For Developers:
Created at HOPR Studios. I was responsible for set modeling, shading, and lighting throughout the short. Additionally, I was responsible for the UI design for the computer screen, as well as the designs on the corkboard. The project was rendered in Redshift.
3. Caterpillar’s Day Out
Modeled in Maya, fur simulation done in Houdini with Vellum, then exported back into Maya for render with Redshift. The project was inspired by a Dr. Seuss look, but rendered in 3D. Fur simulation is something I’ve been meaning to tackle for a while - the pipeline is difficult to figure out at first but once I got it ironed out everything went pretty smoothly!
4. "Luca Lighting Week":
Lit in Katana, rendered in Renderman. Pixar Undergraduate Program lighting week assignment. Lighting Luca was a challenge because of the lack of planes on his model, but was fun to tackle nonetheless. Through guidance from the lighting week mentors my lighting improved with every pass!
5. "Twin Sparks" Short Film
Twin Sparks is Heather Yun and I's SVA senior thesis film set to come out in Spring 2023! I've always been inspired by stylized 3D, and am super excited show off all I've learned about the medium in this film! I'm responsible for the shading, lighting, and FX in this shot, which was done in a combination of Houdini, Blender, and Nuke. Animation is done by my thesis partner Heather. Learn more here! https://www.ollieyao.com/twin-sparks
6. "Bad Apple!!" On An Apple
FX Animation and source images for texturing generated in Houdini. Texturing, lighting, and rendering done in Blender Cycles. A loving recreation of the Bad Apple!! animated music video originally created in 2012, which has spawned countless reimaginings. I wanted to create a carved apple look, and so I used Houdini to generate a set of displacement maps automatically sourced from the black and white images in the original music video, then projected it onto a series of randomized apples to give a stop motion look.
7. "Bootybot":
Pixar Undergraduate Program individual final project. With this project I wanted to use the Pixar pipeline to create a stylized render. The final look was achieved through various hand-painted AOVs piped through Flow into Katana, as well as some custom Nuke nodes to create the desired effect.
Music is "I Lost All My Eggs" by Shawn Wasabi.
