Another Term, Another Project

Big changes on the way for Creative Crisps, but for now, heres the blog for my current project:

wrightroa.blogspot.com

New Blog

Follow my current project work over at this address

Last day, but little need to celebrate really

Well, its the end of the project... I came in this morning at 8 to edit everything together, and surprise, the batch render had only completed about a third of most of the 200 frames set, while a few completed completely. Because Im leaving tomorrow and the rendering wouldnt finish before the new year at this rate, Ive edited together everything we've got and playblasted a full version of what it sohuld look like... At the end of the day, Im very happy with the project, just slightly dissappointed in the rendering process. I wish Id allocated more time, but I didnt think it would take this long or we would run into any serious prolbems iwth the render farm(like the fact it didnt work for us). Ill post later the two versions of the movie, and Ill keep posting over break with some photos I took recently or some sketches... To see some final rendered stills, check Jac's blog from the roll on the right.. Merry Christmas!!

Qualms with the Farm

Im in college today(saturday) checknig up on the renders... yesterday we spent the whole day tryng to get the render farm to work, but in the end to no avail. Alex could see anything wrong with the setup or file, but the farm just wouldnt render the images, just spat them back as failed. in the morning, i set 3 computers upstairs batch rendering 200 frames of the 1st camera each, hoping theyd be just a back up, but by 5pm it was obvious that they were going to be our only way to render, so i set the second camera rednering on 4 different computers doing 200 frames each as well. i came in today to chekc that they were still rendering, and while they are, they are only about a third of the way through the whole process. with any luck, theyll be odne by 8am monday when im in to edit it together(which should only take an hour), so we will see then... anyway, ehres a still from the opening shot just after the cmaera has come through hte mist( which i mentioned in another post) im really pleased with my lighting and the camera movements that i worked on over the past few days, they arent exactly as i had hoped when i wrote the shot list, but they are as good as could be done without hiding sections fo the models and whatnot. the render settings are looking pretty good to, i used motion blur and fiddled with mental ray until i got what i thought looked good. hopefully ill be able to post the full thing if the render happens on time...

nearly done

!!

Deadline Looming

Today was spent in the worst way, rendering and reloading crashed copies of the final Maya file. I spent alot of the day working on dynamic effects, getting a good steam to come out of the vents, adn a good looking cigarette somke. By the end of the day, now about 9, Ive got the steam and cigarette smoke down, but for some reason they wont duplicate which means Ill have to redo each one individually tomorrow which is a massive pain. Jac came in in the afternoon and worked on animating the enviroment, the fans spinning look excellent and make the diner feel slightly more alive... Other than that, I was hoping to get the cameras animated today sicne the moves are pretty straight forward, but it looks like that will have to wiat until tomorrow.... Below are a few images of the steam from today, Ive no idea why the diner sign has suddenly gone blue, it keeps happening, along with teh lights on teh jukebox.

Steam still looks a little blotchy from the top, but fixing that can wiat until tomorrow

moar lighting

today I got in at about 1, and started lighting right away. through the course of the day, i finished up some loose texturing ends here and there as well and think that those aspects are pretty much wrapped up now. In terms of lighting, its all pretty straightforward, the hardest part was to try and get lights on the floor as if they were shining from the diner windows. i tried putting a series of spotlights inside the diner adn changing the shadow settings nad light linking them all with the diner frame, but in the end, it proved easier to move them to just above the roof, and using the barn door settings to give the illusion that it was coming from iside. Inside the diner, the setup is extremly simple, three point lights with quite low intensitys and not casting shadwows, and then a small area light over each table which provide a bit more brightness and also cast the shadows of the objects on the table. other than that, the only trying part was to try adn get a nice decay effect from the bottom fo the buildings up to the tops, which is currently proving harder than i thought it would be. I initially had a large area light over teh whole scene, but have sicne moved it to the ground to try and get the effect. Ill work on that more tomorrow... Below are some render tests and a screen grab to show the lighting setup...

~The table setup, something is still wrong with the floor and the glow on the jukebox is insanely strong for some reason~

~The outside of the diner, the street still seems a litlte brights, but Im happy with the glow from the windows~