A mid-shot... shock horror!

Figured I'd show you guys a shot that isn't a ridiculous close-up/lens flare and explosions... so here's a couple! We'll probably use one of these as one of the 4 still frames we need to submit for assessment.

The time machine effect looks pretty cool when it's all moving, but we'll probably keep it on the DL for the time being.

Some of the colour grading might be slightly off between these 2... still tweaking that, things like the sunlight etc. I reckon I prefer the 2nd one with the golden tint, any feedback on that actually?

Anyway, enjoy!

Kieran

More explosions, huzzah!

Finished the other main disintegration shot today, this one was a lot more challenging because I had a camera move to deal with... but it was good fun. Plenty of flares and blur to keep me entertained. The camera dolly gives you a much nicer view of the colour bleed effect which you don't really get from the pillars shot, which is nice.

I'm becoming increasingly concerned at the After Effects render time on my deteriorating laptop, I estimate it'll take around 2 days to render the final film. Poor little guy. So again, some stills will need to do for now. Sadly you don't really get the direction of all the shards form the stills, so it's a bit messy... but in the video it makes a bit more sense.

Here's the flowchart for this comp, which'll help explain how much is going on. Each node represents a layer, all of which have various active effects. I count 190 layers.

In other news, we're slowly losing our minds.

Enjoy,
Kieran

Eye candy!

Greetings, we're far too busy to update the blog properly these days... so here's some pretty stills to keep you interested. We're keeping most of the finished renders under wraps until the degree show.

We've started with a lot of the close up shots, now moving onto animating the wide shots.

Second Shot Completed!

2 down... 43 to go.

I can only post up some stills again, as the final 8 second render is going to take around 6 hours to render from After Effects :( It's got around 80-odd layers in total, my poor laptop just about melted.

This'll give you a rough idea of the disintegration effect, the bleed effect is animated which doesn't come across in the stills so well... but we'll probably save the final render for the Degree Show.

Enjoy,

Kieran.

Blendshapes! Woo!

Whilst blowing stuff up and adding lens flare I've been working on the character blend shapes, I don't think I've actually posted up any. So here's some quick facial poses, I've still got some more to fix up as well as adding in corrective blend shapes for the jaw joint.

We're almost ready to animate, which is exciting. Here's hoping the expressions all blend together nicely.

EDIT: should be noted, the actual lighting/rendering of this image isn't anything like the final thing. There's no ambient occlusion or anything, just a quick 3-point light set up. 

Rendering, Finlay Pearston

hey guys here the latest in the way of documentary videos that give you an insight into the drudgery of making our short film. this particular upload covers the rendering process's used, the different layers and why we chose them.

hope you all find this clear and interesting, and if you have any questions or comments please leave a comment bellow the footsge as we are always in need of useful feed-back.



Cheers

Newest Comp Test

Greetings!

Here's the latest frame from the film, not quite final yet. We still need to add in some props, the upper books and tweak some textures... but we've got the new and improved final final master new project V2 all set up, and I don't think we've actually uploaded any images of the room with the textures applied.

The comping is a bit mental on this one, tried out pretty much every effect and technique we'll be using, but the final comp will be much more selective. Not quite as crazy sci-fi as this one. Still, gives you lot an idea of how things are going, I included the old comp test too so we could compare how they look next to each other. 

In other news, we're rendering our first ever finished scene right this second! We've not started character animation yet, we're just starting with the few scenes that don't have him in it such as watch close ups and jazz. Exciting times. 

Peace!

EDIT: Here's the first final frame of Ticked Off, Huzzah! I was going to do a comp breakdown, but I'll just do a before pimpage/after pimpage instead. 

Before pimpage:

After pimpage:

The joys (read; cheap tricks) of compositing.