Timelock !

Finally the long awaited major milestone is here !

All major visual development is done and I have edited the movie to a final cut. This is not yet a picture lock, but what I call a timelock. Now the path is clear for Mikkel and Phil to do their magic and add sound and music to this movie.

And to all visitors from Inzing, a deeply heartfelt ‘Hello’ to you

Now that the edit is done I have exact numbers on the running time of the movie. Without the credits it runs 7:23 min or 11339 frames at 25fps, which is quite a good match to my estimates from 2010.

Speaking of numbers, here is the actual table of hours spent so far on the project:

----------------------------------------------
   5:34    01-Script
  43:54    02-Storyboard
  73:54    03-Concept Art
  14:48    04-Animatics
 152:45    05-Modeling
  76:57    06-Rigging
 189:17    07-Animation
 261:00    08-Texturing
 228:11    09-Simulation
  51:48    10-Project Management
 131:54    11-Research
  16:29    Editing
 290:46    Lighting/Compositing
----------------------------------------------
1537:17 Total

Now a lot of tedious little bits of work still has to be done. Apart from a lot of fixing, I plan to spend some time on developing a proper logo, movie poster and finally give the official movie site a long needed overhaul. And not to forget, I am reallylooking forward to the song recording with Julia Schaller for Ara’s Song.

For the technically interested and maybe as a small glimpse at the various bits of work ahead of me, I give you an extract from my current todo list:

*** !!!! ALL shots !!!! ****
- reimport camera and make sure that the camera when made local only
  has the object and NOT data made local
  doing this will result in the focus control not working any more
  ( all shots currently have no focus control !!! )
- in case there is an 'all' renderlayer used, check if z buffer is
  correct in all major camera angles. sc02.shot18 had weird
  z values for later angles. If this is the case use manual
  z-combine (math minimum) from individual layers

*** all shots with closeup hair ***
- try to use same settings as in shot sc02.shot11b

*** all shots with sss extra layers ***
- check if new approach used in sc02.shot12 is better suited 

*** !!!!! All compositing shots !!!!!!
- check if camera has the same focus as in the animation blend
file. it seems that the lens control does not import
correctly from 2.49 to 2.6x

*** Scene 1 ***

sc01.shtot3a, sc01.shtot3c, sc01.shtot3g, sc01.shtot5b
    - add nose lamps

sc01.shot03a, sc01.shot04a, sc01.shot05a
    - try to add rays and more depth mist to shot

sc01.shot03c, sc01.shot03c:
    - use reflection for the eyes ( see sc02.shot12 for how todo it)

*** Scene 2 ***

all main scene shots:
    - use particle edit mode to draw loose rocks instead of
      weight painting
    - use noise modifier for back glow compositing
    - probably use noise modifier for main/cage light
    
sc02.shtot2a
    - add nose lamps

sc02.shot03,sc02.shot05,sc02.shot06:
    - use mist animation instead of smoke simulation for mist
      ascending above ledge

sc02.shot06:
    - fix alpha issues with hair and cage in compositing
    
sc02.shot08:
    - add more rocks to the mouth of the canyon. Now it does not
      correspond to the shot in sc02.shot05

sc02.shot08a:
    - fix strange cloth deformation at left foot
        --> make left foot collider a bit longer to prevent
            collision with edge, which seems to cause this problem

sc02.shot17:
    - make dragon appear a bit later -> remove this ghosting effect
    - use sss on dragon
    
sc02.shot18:
    - fix dragon's tongue. It vanishes sometimes into the gums.
    - use sss on dragon
    - cage light is too strong on dragon -> has too articfical
      lighting feel to it
    
sc02.shot21b:
    - maybe use wind setup for hair from shot sc02.shot21d

sc02.shot28a:
    - flickering hair shadow problem -> probably have to use
      separate hair layer to get proper hair mask
    
sc02.shot28d:
    - make eyes a bit darker
    
sc02.shot28f:
    - cage material is too dark and flat -> revert to original
      light cage material but with normal maps subdued to avoid
      flicker