Position:
Viewing Media of Jon Tojek
Demo Reels
Jon Tojek VFX Reel 2016 - Lighting, Look Development, and VR
Images
Happy Feet 01
Description:
Academy award nominated Happy Feet was in production for Warner Brothers here for years and near the end of production I was hired as a lighter to push shots through the already built pipeline using Maya, Mayaman, Renderman, and Fusion to composite. Here I finalled many shots for the film, approved daily by director George Miller in a high intensity environment of productivity and successfully achieved deadlines.
Ford Mercury Attraction 01
Description:
For this job I led a team of five VFX artists working on a series of four high-end Ford Mercury television commercials. These were live action spots with a variety of effects that build a car. I personally did particle effects, xfrog modeling, animation, and all types of Mental Ray lighting, texture painting, shader network building, rendering, and Shake compositing.
Bedtime Stories
Description:
Maya, Paint Effects, Fluids, and Mental Ray for rendering. For this sequence I started with using Fluid pond to get a nicely animated water surface to interact with crocodiles and shore. After the water was approved I did all rendering, built the paint effects plants, look dev shaders for crocs, water, land and shoe, placed lights and did slap comps and final renders.
Meet Dave
Description:
For this film I worked for many months on the 30 shot long sequence. My responsibility was all plastic bag cloth simulations, look development on the translucent bag shaders, then lighting and rendering each shot.
Description:
I have to admit this is a little embarrassing to post my small contribution to the film Avatar, but here it is and in the movie theater this shot was the first with strong obvious stereoscopic effect. My task was to create and animate drops of water floating and combining in zero-gravity with RealFlow, then light and render out through Maya and Mental Ray.
2012 Destruction of Hawaii sequence
Description:
For the destruction of Hawaii sequence (5 shots) I used Maya for Look-dev, lighting, and matte-painting camera projections of the Waikiki skyline, then fluids and dynamics for adding smoke, lava, and water splashes to destroy the city.
2012 - Destruction of Hawaii sequence
Description:
For the destruction of Hawaii sequence (5 shots) I used Maya for Look-dev, lighting, and matte-painting camera projections of the Waikiki skyline, then fluids and dynamics for adding smoke, lava, and water splashes to destroy the city.
Lexus Commercial - Milestone
Description:
For this job I worked with the esteemed Mathew Lamb to animate, look develop, and light 7 shots of photorealistic 3D Lexus automobiles driving over a large CG concrete area in precise, iconic, synchronized motions. We used IBL lighting from HDR images taken on set and rendered out with Mental Ray, Maya, and slap comps in Toxic.
NFL Gameday commercial
Description:
For this series of four distinct commercials I was hired to manage a team of new lighters learning the Hydraulx pipeline. These spots directed by GoodFear followed 5 filmed football stars as they drive past all the different famous NFL stadiums and cities that we built in 3D. Our team of 8 CG artists modeled, made shaders, animated, and lit the large scenes with Mental Ray and Maya.
Knight and Day
Description:
This Tom Cruise with Cameron Diaz comedy action film turned out to be a very fun big Hollywood movie with great Visual Effects and some humor as it makes fun of Action genre. I worked on the plane crash sequence in the beginning of the film with lighting and Look Development for the airplane as it was flying as well as crashing into the corn field. Dynamic Animation here means modeling and sculpting an animated growing ground trench for the plane to crash into. Once I have the ground animated with blend shapes I constrain 1000's or corn stalks to pivot and fly up in the air as the ground mounds up, as well as dirt and earth chunks that fly up from this same trench motion.
Jonah Hex
Description:
For this film we had a great collection of on set Spheron HDR images that capture all the color and light details of the ship interior. They handed me the full inside gunship fighting sequence with John Malkovich and Josh Brolin and asked me to make all the shaders, do the simple animations, supervise the camera tracks, light, and final the 20 plus shots. Using the best HDR image out of the collection I created linear color workflow shaders and matched the lighting on set with roughly 30 scaled and placed area lights, which allows Mental Ray with Maya rendering to do the magic.
Super 8 - Cave sequence
Description:
On this film I worked in the LA pod of Industrial Light and Magic. It was a remote office with about 80 of us VFX workers linked up to the San Francisco ILM headquarters, and finishing shots as fast as possible. We would speak with supervisors two times every day over Skype, and review shots together in real time over the network. This was a great learning experience for me as Dennis Muren was our direct contact, and every day he gave comments that were very perceptive and helpful which made me understand more about what it means to have a great eye and give effective comments. Here I did lighting in the ILM proprietary software Lux with Renderman, and slap comps in Nuke finaling about 20 shots of the monster in the cave and the construction of the spaceship by flying debris.
Super 8 - Cave sequence
Description:
This creature Look Development was completely done by people in the San Francisco office, then sent to us in LA for individual shot lighting. These face close ups took some time to make good, they were usually a collection of 4-7 lights placed for rim, fill, and key lighting. Most of the lights were HDR texture mapped for good movie lighting feel.
Transamerica - Anthem
Description:
This set of four majority CG commercials for Transamerica kept myself and a team of 6 to 10 people working for months creating the fantastic fantasy interior of the iconic SF Trans building and all the flying and delivery machines within. I was responsible to lead the lighting, and look development team as well as approve and verify all models and rigging so we could get these huge files efficiently through the render farm at Hydraulx. To get our look of big sun streaming through the windows of the building, we went with a final gather render in Maya and Mental Ray, with a big direct sunlight as our main source, in addition to many detail, pin, and extra fills to brighten up the darker corners.
Websites
Description: Personal URL
Description: This website contains my latest Lighting Look Dev reel, resume, and shotlist. In addition it has a listing of all my latest movie and commercial jobs with brief description and stills.
Description: @Tojek_VFX blog covering Maya, 3D, Rendering, Panos, Photogrammetry, and VR.