Rendering 0.4 - The Breakdown

I think I can wrap this project up and finish few more little bits. I have a week to finish my report where I just need to word few things better and link the paragraphs and then render 2-3 different views. Final thing didn't come out as I planned at first, but I still plan to do it that one over summer, I was just really slacking on the fire research unfortunately. Here is my render breakdown.

Also picture of my Nuke script tree. I did no editing to the images because it came out good out of Maya I think, so basically I just connected all the passes so I could show each one in the video. It took a while to figure out how I want to do it and if I knew how to make one image overlap the last one liek gradient from a side I would have, but I wanted to get this done, and actually am happy with the results.

 P.S. I dont like the new editing page for blogger, its stupid, old was better. If it aint broken dont fix it...

Technical Animation 0.3 - Fire Frei!

Not much on this because I just didn't want to do it... but now I have project in mind and enough time to finish it I believe. I will combine this with my other project. I need the xmas tree on fire, so I will make it a simulation, I sure hope it will work. For this I will also make the room shatter, collapse or explode to have more stuff, will have less objects in it of course.

VFX 0.6 - Nuke trees

Had some trouble at first putting together the rendered passes in Nuke, but after actually looking into one of my tutorial files I saw there was a video on it too, after that it went quickly, almost too easily, which kinda worried me. But then had some trouble with showing both object over the background, either one object didn't show fully or the plate was too bright or one object was missing shadows, eventually I managed to figure out how to fix it. Instead of having two Copy nodes connected to the plate, I connected one at the bottom of the tree for first object and that seemed to fix my problems so far, will see if it still works when I start with colour correcting.

I am ready to do it with that scene, but I would like to catch up with other two projects. The extinguisher is ready to be rendered, which I am going to do overnight and the notice board is almost ready, just need to add few more bits. It makes it easier on those two that the scene is very bright, so almost no shadows to speak of and don't need to mess with lights too much. I think thats about it for now.

 While uploading I found interesting thing, when saving renders as PNG the Use Background shader fucks it over lol  it makes an Alpha and the image format makes it empty.

Rendering 0.3 - Half way there

Been a while I made update on this. I started adding more objects into the scene once I was happy with the lights. Because of rendering time I decided to take away lots of photons and global illumination, instead I made sure I have enough to have smooth lighting across the room and then added area light to the ceiling to make it bit brighter, I think it works well so far.

I have about half of the objects done, since each time I bring something I have to create textures for it, which can take a while but I am enjoying it. I need to add and texture gift boxes, a drawer, some bottles and other decoration. This is my render so far:

Render time is around 1:30 minutes without shadows (those from ceiling) and spot lights for the tree lights, with them its under 4 minutes, I forgot to check it before posting this. So far I am pleased with how its coming out, potential changes include the chimney texture, I might make it just look like a stone instead of paint over them. Also the wall texture is too flat, I tried to add little bit of noise but there is too  much of it when rendered in hull HD, so I might make textures for sections of the wall, like a dirt somewhere, bumps and peeled off wallpaper/paint to make it bit more random, but only if I have time after I finish with all object.

After some feedback and looking around the scene I noticed that the windows were hollow and had gaps between them, so photons were getting stuck between the frames and it was making them glow strangely, but it should be fixed now. Also the floor I had to change a little, some of the boards were too far from each another, making it look unrealistic, it wasn't fun moving almost each of them individually.

VFX 0.5 - Nuke start

So since last post, finished rendering the planter and barrier on full HD and all passes as TARGA, it took 14 hours. Next time I will render everything as EXR already or half resolution and TIFF and less frames. It had 250 frames and I ended up with 3000 files, 60GB. In Nuke I built my EXR out of it and it went down to 1GB, so all good. In Nuke I started putting it together and got myself confused with some passes and how they need to be merged together because I didn't manage to make it look like beauty pass, but will have to sort it out soon. Other two objects are almost done, the Extinguisher needs specular map and be rendered. The notice board needs lights set up, specular map and be rendered.

Render test of the barrier and planter:

VFX 0.4 - Alpha Bumps

Due to lack of time today I only had time to work on bump maps for the models. I wanted to do Normals maps as well but they always came out kind of blurry and didn't look good on the models at all, and I am not sure why. I don't think I have the time to learn everything about normal maps so I will stick with Bump maps that I know and can get the look I want. Tomorrow hopefully I can finish specular maps as well and sort out the models in the scenes, so I can start rendering and working in Nuke.

VFX 0.3 - Alpha textures

Seems like the more work I want to do the less time I have do it, but started texturing and so far seems okay. The extinguisher was taking bit too long and still needs few more maps, but its almost ready. Only thing I am mostly worried is how long multi-pass rendering will take, but fortunately I don't have many things in the scenes, so should be okay. Starting to be confident I can finish this in good quality on time.

I made a test render with the extingusher where I am using the HDR image as lighting source and it seems good, just need to add shadows, fix the brightness of the sign and of course remove the reflecting wall.

The concentrate planter and barrier shouldn't take long, from quick texture test I can see everything matches up all right, just need to play with the textures more to fix them up. The planter needs to be bit more cleaner, as does the barrier. And then needs fixing on the inside faces that can be seen above the dirt. The barrier needs the sides match the front and back where they connect, right now it can been seen, but that will be fixed with less dirt on it. I will also add some small cracks to it, with bump/normals map. I placed them over the actual footage to compare colours and I think if I make the grey little brighter I will have no trouble setting up in Maya/Nuke to match it to the scene.

The notice board was kinda easy, only two pieces, but also disappointing because it doesn't look like the notice board in the footage. But it should be okay. I might make the wood texture more random, like so its not all orange, but I think it can be done with soft bump map. I will also add some images and papers onto the board itself. I think the texture might have to be little brighter to match with the scene, but shouldn't be too hard to do with lights and in Nuke.