The Good, The Bad and the Test Renders

So this week coming might be slightly hectic yet also relief. Hectic to get something in for Wednesday that is decent and shows exactly what I am doing with my project. Relief that i have another 2 weeks to finish properly.

But currently I do not have the render time to do the whole thing before wednesday. I estimate on my machine alone(Running 2.4ghz Quad core CPU, with 3.5gb of ram) that it will take a possible 100-125 hours to render all frames. That is without seperate render passes.

Good news is that I can utilise the studio computers in mass to render this scene out. Which if using at great capacity, could have this render done in less than a day. (Due to new systems, Higher specs and many computers to render on).

The bad news is that from what I have heard, seen and experienced, the studio systems are extremely unreliable in handling large scenes with lots of shaders and textures, this is even before lighting. So it might be extremely tight for the odeon submission. I am worried about how this may affect my project, because realistically I won't physically be able to render everything from my computer. I have heard from other people that their maya projects are also experiencing difficulties with the computers in the studio. I'm hoping this problem can be sorted extremely soon, as it doesn't seem to be down to an individual user having a messy scene. I find it really weird also how my home desktop of lower spec handles my scene better.

Enough of my mini rant. I'm gonna post a test shot I've been working on. I aim to get quite a few more ready for wednesday. As I think I will be handing in a playblast of my scene (with sound), with test renders just because I can't physically render in time without sacrificing resolution, format and quality.

The gun has been edited in photoshop to emulate a look to how it will finally be. However it may still be changed more. The records in the jukebox have not been edited and are straight render from Maya. I am quite excited to see how this beginning shot will work out once rendered.