Now that my render machine is spitting out frame by frame, I had some time to work on the movie poster for Ara’s Tale.
Enjoy and spread it !
UPDATE (15.3.2012): I have now added a link to the high res version of the poster.
Render !
Finally I have (virtually) pressed the big RENDER button on my render machine and with this I have started the last part of the visual voyage for Ara’s Tale.
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.
2012 – where it all ends
I am talking about Ara’s Tale of course. For any other visions, apocalyptic and otherwise, I just refer to here.
And that does not imply that there is any apocalypse waiting regarding Ara’s Tale, quite on the contrary.
Continue reading “2012 – where it all ends”
Particles, particulary painful
With this post I want to summarize and share my experiences I had using the particle system in current blender 2.61.
The current production phase calls for a lot of vfx, mostly to be done using dynamic particles. I will not go into detail as to what exactly the shots are, but I think just describing the overall concepts and approaches will give you an enough complete picture.
Glimpses at the Production
Confirmed by comments on my recent post, I will try to refrain as much as possible from displaying potential spoiler images.
As this would mean, to cease showing any images from now on, I thought I could give you some look ‘behind the scenes’ of the type of work I am mainly involved right now concerning Ara’s Tale.
This is especially for you, the small but constant number of followers of this project 😉
Production Ramped up Again
Production of the remaining shots of Ara’s Tale is running under full steam now.
Now with the dragon finished its fun again to do the lighting and compositing for the shots.
I already had the tricks and workflow for all the shots where Ara and the environment is shown. Closeups have a completely different setup than wide shots e.g. For the dragon I had yet to find a good workflow and best practices.
Everything that has a Beginning …
… has an end.
After 180 exciting days working with and exploring Mari, the extended demo license finally expired today.
It was a fantastic experience and helped immensely during the work on Ara’s Tale. The textures would have looked different (and my state of health too), if I hadn’t had the chance to give Mari this extensive testing.
For Ara’s Tale, there is no more texturing work to be done, so I am quite happy with it.
And I also know for sure now, where one of my favorite areas of CG lies.
And finally I like to give a big Thank You to Jack Greasley from the Foundry for supporting me and giving me the chance to work with state of the art tools.
Dragon Ready for Production
After a lot of time texturing and shading this beast, I have now reached a point where I am ready to use the dragon for production.
There will be two shots where additional tweaking will be necessary but for all the other dragon shots I have now reached a usable state.
There are still some issues, but these are mainly visible in still images. I also did a quick test animation to see how the dragon behaves when its moving.
The lighting is basic and there is no SSS used in this animation, but I am quite satisfied with the overall result. It will work very well in the shots I have to do.
And now, finally, I can really work on those remaining shots …
Blender – Mari Diary #5
I apologize for the long delay before uploading the promised bump painting timelapse.
Two events have caused the delay:
- the update to the new kubuntu 11.10 version
- me having a brand new nexus s smartphone
Number 2 obviously and predictably takes away a lot of time :), but number 2 was unexpected and extremely tiresome.