Dead Bunny Shot Update

What you guys think so far? Like ze carrot?

Deglossed around the edges

Here's a new version: better reflections, slightly dodgy AE comp instead of Shake... Animation isn't quite as embarrassing this time...


Refined rendertest...

Shadows need to be tweaked to an agreed level. This is much less on the stylized purple, more to a darker blue.

Bugger'd hand and dodgy textures fixed too. Reflection now only on the outer gloss at about 0.2 reflectivity. Shiny.


H264 compression washes out the colour something fierce.

Rendertests engaged...

Prepare to be marginally amazed:


Shot 32 rendertest.

Whatcha think?

This render took about an hour and a half for 130 frames, split into:
1 background beauty pass
1 background amb occlusion pass
1 sky texture a la Brad
130 character beauty pass frames
130 character amb occlusion frames

There's 1 directional light for key (colour white, intensity 1,) fill (80% grey,) rim, shadows (raytraced, 1 degree, 5 depth)... and 1 omni for a little face detail (0.2 intensity, specular on, shadows off).

I don't have any clever naming conventions or path structures yet, but in theory this is gonna work quickly and painlessly. Comp'd in Shake with a bit of blur and distance fog.

W00t!

ALSO!!
Watching this at the proper framerate, I realise this particular animation sucks some serious testicles. I'll be redoing a lot of animation and religiously playblasting - just to get it absolutely perfect.

And Neil, check out his wrist. We'll need to repaint those weights a little, I know Orange has something with his finger too...

Textures are GO!

Hokay! We can render now! I figured out what was causing the Vram to spak out every time we tried to render a scene with more than one character in place.

2 things:
Texture size
Texture location

As fantastic as the ARNE server is for centralizing everything, it can't quite handle being used as a texture cache as well as a computer can by itself. The solution is dragging the project across to the scratch and rendering locally. The trick to making this work is making sure we move any updated files back to ARNE when we're done, and double checking the project settings each time we start up - which we do anyway...

I've resized all the textures down by an average of 50%. In some cases, even more. Now that the computer doesn't have to Unwrap, filter, light, layer and render 4 4096px square textures per character at 2 characters per screen, it can actually render a frame without crashing!

Here's a bit of maths for scale - an average scene before would calculate about 201326592 bytes of information per frame. That's 0.2 gigabytes (200Mb) of data streamed over a network into random access memory for textures only. Not including lighting, shadows, geometry or visibility calculations. All that cache data is processed to make the single .tga file, which is barely 7Mb...

Now, the same looking thing is only 12582912 bytes. That's only 12Mb (0.012gb) of information to play with for a render. Much easier. The only difference is the texture dimensions.

To prove my point, this is what a production render looks like. Ignore the dodgy reflections...

planks in a trench

Refer-a-Ninja

Remember Mini Ninjas? I can recall being quite excited about it, maybe some time last year. Then it was forgotten...

...Then I found it for $30. It is so freakin' awesome!! You should definitely play it, but more relevant to this - have a look at the art style. This is very much the rendering style I think we should be aiming for. I'll bring it in to uni some day, so we can play and have a good look at it.

Trench Post Final

I do 3D good!:P

Barber Dwyer

One last prop for today. Well... 2, really. Some barbed wire, available in 2 lengths! The shadow is retarded, but hopefully it won't be noticeable when we use it.

Completely stumped

Another short prop post. This time it's a dead tree. And no external maps for this one, no sirree, this is all procedural texturing. (That means it's faster to render and a smaller file size!)

I thought it would be funny to blow a hole in it too.

Dead tree...

Brick wall prop

I did this at home on ye olde maya 2009. It should go into 2010 with no worries. Procedural texture with a targa bump.

Brick wall.

Modelling to be done

We're a little behind on this modelling thing so far. We need props. This is just a list of the first things that come to my mind. Feel free to add or edit! We only really need one of each of these props. They will be so dispersed across the landscape, we can just duplicate and spin them around.

Each prop must be a stand alone object. Character props will need locators for constraining for animation.

Environment:
-Rocks
-Broken fences
-Tree stumps
-Barbed wire
-Half brick wall
-Corpsified hand

Animated:
-Bouncing helmet
-Closed wallet
-Open wallet
-Dynamic wallet
-Photo (texture & rig)
-Guns (need to be textured and finished)
-Legs (Yikes! Totally forgot about these!)

All the above needs to be modelled, textured and rigged asap! I'll be starting with the legs today.

Environment Start

Early beginnings of our environment, never did a custom bump map so I tested it out and it seems ok. Needs SHITLOADS of more details, props and textures but I see it slowly coming together.

Rough Test of Sky for Next Previz

Ok, trying to tie up the loose ends and get a start on everything. This time its the sky. Ive got the TIFF files with different layers of clouds on them. Im sure after we put them in after effects they will need to be scaled down, but in general I can only get an idea after we shove it behind the characters (aka: previz). So ill bring in the TIFF files and add them to the Crosshares folder.

Its POOP, but at least its a start!! There will be so much improvement to come!!

Also the original TIFF files are 4096x2304 so we have breathing room.

Environment Concepts

Ground to a certain extent will be modelled. 2D planes will be placed into after effects for hills, clouds and sky. Basic modelling will be done for ground plane and detail will mosty likely be done as normals in zbrush.

Had a little time to slap down some colour...

Your thoughts on the stages of colour through the film?? Just did a quick colour layout before bed. God damn im tired!

First Render Test

I thought I'd better back up those lofty claims I made today about how easy it will be to work with 3D characters and 2.5D backgrounds. Here's an experiment with my emotional walk cycle from last year and a roughly chopped up version of Brad's story beat thing:

Click here to see it @ Vimeo.

His feet slip a little, and the picture will have to be planned better for the shadows to work properly, but I remain confident. Not a bad first shot at all.

GAZE INTO THE LENS FLARE!!

Quickly, before my bed eats my soul.

A quick one before bed. Trying to rationalise why there's 2 rabbits fighting alone. It made sense to me that there may be a guard tower. It also made sense that it should look like a rabbit.

... I mean, how many human guard posts are shaped like the freakin' Easter Island Heads? Really? More sketches to come soon.

Re-beat

Woo! Fiddling with colours! This is kind of what I was picturing in my head, but then again I love the sort of greenish sky Brad had.

As for our aesthetic, should we be aiming for dark messy and grungy, or something cleaner? Maybe faux TF2 clean. It may be better in some ways, but I think I like the grungy look. What do you guys think?

Storybeat

Hey guys just wiped up a quick storybeat from the head of brad. This is when O rabbit first sees B rabbit in the distance. Wanted to really go for majestic and almost patriotic in a way, it will help build up the hilarity in the gags later on (i need to do some segments of storyboards so I dont lose sight of what I first saw when I read Tom's outline). Not happy about the colours, I made them mudding but I hope you guys kinda get the idea. If we go ahead with this Ill use reference:P

Also feel free to paint over any of my stuff and repost it, it helps alot what you guys are thinkin visually:D