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General => Terragen Animation => Topic started by: cyphyr on July 02, 2012, 05:40:01 PM

Title: DeepGreen story board final (well pretty much)
Post by: cyphyr on July 02, 2012, 05:40:01 PM
Well here it is. This is pretty much the final iteration of the storyboard. I have a new version of the ship that I'll drop in at render time and a few tweaks on the lighting. Rendertimes are wildly vairable due to the cameras movement; sometimes it's pointing at a render intensive area, sometimes not,but they're ranging between 1h20m to 2h. Not as good as I'd hope for and I know I'll need to get rid of some noise and grain in post. There will be a LOT of post.
Comments, crits and any bright ideas very welcome.
Cheers
Richard
Title: Re: DeepGreen story board final (well pretty much)
Post by: Oshyan on July 02, 2012, 08:15:43 PM
This looks pretty incredible! As others have mentioned before, the color will need a bit of work in post, but with the EXRs that won't be a problem (though I'm curious how hard it would be in TG). Also I'm a little concerned about rendering of such complex objects, including humanoid, in a native TG animation. Will the characters be moving, and are you then using object sequences?

Regarding render times, I've just spent a while doing a lot of tests on a complex, challenging render time problem for Tangled-Universe. I'd be happy to check out your scene and see if I can bring down render times further, if you'd like. Of course you would need to Gather the entire project and archive it for any such optimizations to be done correctly. I'm sure you've done plenty of your own work on finding optimal settings as well.

- Oshyan
Title: Re: DeepGreen story board final (well pretty much)
Post by: cyphyr on July 02, 2012, 11:02:29 PM
Hi Oshyan and thanks, I'll take you up on that offer :) Later in the week maybe once I nail a few more things down. (err its a nearly 300mb rar, ook!)
I was initially considering/intending to render the ship out in Lightwave and comp it in post but I figured that there were so many volumetric interactions going on (the ship passing through shadows cast by the bridges and being directly in front of the sun) that the comp would be too complex. I would need to render a hold out any way so I may as well render it all in TG. The guy is in shot for just over a second so I'm hoping he'll be ok as is (it's not the model in the storyboards). He's not moving, just steering his ship looking into the distance.
Thanks
Richard
Title: Re: DeepGreen story board final (well pretty much)
Post by: TheBadger on July 03, 2012, 02:35:17 AM
This already looks like its going to be worth the effort. I really wish it was mine. :o Great follow through, cyphyr!

Nice offer Oshyan!  8)
Title: Re: DeepGreen story board final (well pretty much)
Post by: Dune on July 03, 2012, 02:38:12 AM
Incredible indeed, Richard. Must have been a 'hell' of a job. I really like the mystery in the sequence, I only hope the close-up of the ship and guy don't take away the mystique of the strange ship gliding through that unfamiliar, strange landscape.
Title: Re: DeepGreen story board final (well pretty much)
Post by: Hannes on July 03, 2012, 04:43:48 AM
Wow, that really looks beautiful!
Regarding rendering objects in another 3D app it would really be helpful, if it would be possible in TG to make objects invisible to the camera but make them cast shadows and reflections. If we could then find a way to import the animation of the object 100% into TG (probably this can already be done by using obj-sequences?) and by the use of an athmosphere render pass (that's hopefully implemented into the possible 23 render passes of the next version) everything could be comped together.
Since there is no object motion blur yet in TG, objects need to be rendered externally sometimes.
Title: Re: DeepGreen story board final (well pretty much)
Post by: cyphyr on July 03, 2012, 07:42:36 AM
Quote from: Hannes on July 03, 2012, 04:43:48 AM
...
Regarding rendering objects in another 3D app it would really be helpful, if it would be possible in TG to make objects invisible to the camera but make them cast shadows and reflections.
...
Sometimes I miss the most obvious things ! ::)
In the object node un-check visible to camera. Just did a quick text and indeed the ship is invisible but it's still casting shadows (including volumetric). Well that's useful. I'm still unsure how I would comp a layer that is both behind and in front of the object being comped. I'll make some high res tests.
Cheers
Richard
Title: Re: DeepGreen story board final (well pretty much)
Post by: Hannes on July 03, 2012, 09:21:35 AM
Hey, that's great! I really didn't know that it's already possible.
If you want to comp the TG image together with the object rendered somewhere else you need the extra atmosphere layer rendered as render pass on top of it. If this will be possible with the new version, and the invisible object is not only casting shadows but also cutting out the volumetrics correctly, then this should work.
Title: Re: DeepGreen story board final (well pretty much)
Post by: rcallicotte on July 03, 2012, 11:10:04 AM
Nice.  I've been thinking along the same lines and you're doing the work - good looking!