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.

Project Overview

I am currently working on lighting and rendering my scene. I need to focus on getting something handed in for the initial submission then focus on getting it better for the degree show.
While waiting for a render, I thought I would quickly summarise all that has gone into the project. (All work is by me unless otherwise specified)

1. Initial Idea of cluedo-esque story through a run down american diner.

2. Concept work created by Amy Callaghan (environment and character experimentation), Hollie Steptoe (enviroment) and Liam Kirkman, Also a character design by Kelly Brookes

3. Storyboarding followed by Animatic created in maya through a scene blockout (playblasted) and some characters based on the standard norman rig (Adapted by others on internet).

4. Modelling stage including the use of: Box modelling, Polygons, Nurbs, High density model meshes, low density model meshes. Majority of modeling with Maya and some in Mudbox. 

5. Texturing all objects. 90-95% of shaders are standard maya/mental ray, other 10-5% are borrowed from various CG royalty free download sites. Textures created in photoshop with some in mudbox aswell.

6. Camera work with fly-through of scene.

7. Environmental animation.

8. Lighting. Mental Ray for Final Gather, Raytraced shadows and Global Illumination. Not yet finished lighting but likely using a combination of physical sun and sky and some point and area lights.

9. Rendering out 1024 by 576 with a device aspect ratio of 1.778. Rendering IFF images.

10. Compositing work in After Effects with PAL/DV1/Widescreen setting for DVD playback. 720 by 576, 25 Frames per second

11. Editing will also be After Effects along with titles and credits.

12. Sound created in Soundbooth and added into the final After Effects composite.

Latest on the lighting

Latest version of the lighting. Maya seems to be handling the normal renderview a little better so far. *Fingers crossed* it stays that way

Should of posted this a while ago, but this is a render of the bathroom so far.

Some of the textures and bump maps have been adjusted slightly since taking this photo. Currently trying to light the rest of the scene which is proving difficult as maya likes to crash alot with so much in the scene. High ish poly count, Plus shaders and high resolution textures bogging it down. Also having a problem where the render frame button on maya produces a different result compared to batch rendering 1 frame which is highly odd

Bloody Glass Murder Weapon #4

Created the bloody glass, Possible murder weapon for the waitress. Used dialect mental ray material for blood and a glass shader. It's quite clean atm but I'm not sure how to go about dirtying it up.





The HDRI is just to show off the glass material.

Tire Iron

Just 2 quick pictures of the Tire iron. The weapon of choice for the out of towner.

I used a custom rusty metal shader from Creative Crash for this:
http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/shaders/c/metalmania-collection

Murder Weapons

Modelled the Meat cleaver today and textured it. The gun I had modelled earlier in the year and textured it yesterday.


Meat Cleaver with Diffuse, Specular, Bump and Reflection Map


Gun with Diffuse, Bump and Specular

More weapons to come, Possibly a tire iron or baseball bat and a broken glass

There are some big changes to my work scheldue. I am NOT doing characters or anymore. Or atleast not 3D models of them. I don't have enough time to finish the project with 3D models (Fully Textured and posed) aswell as rendering, Comping, Editing and sound.

So I have taken them out and placed more emphasis on the murder weapons, However i think i will be having some portraits of the characters in a fitting manor. Such as 'Your Chef' and 'Waitress of the month' On the walls. with a wanted sign for the out of towner and maybe the sheriff on a local magazine

Waitress modelling and general project goings

My apologies for the long-ish post
Thought I would make a post on recent happenings.
So I've recruited the help of a first year to help me with character designs. She is a good drawer from what I've seen so I'm happy to let her help me out in the aspect i suck at. She has already done a turnaround for the waitress but I have asked if she could do a few changes, not too big though.


Image by Kelly Brookes

Because I'm fairly happy with the overall shape and look, I've started to do rough box modelling and then make the changes as I go along. This might be a bad idea from a technical aspect, but I'm starting on this as soon as I can so I'm not too far behind.



Also I've been working more on texturing of the diner. It's fairly close to finished (Even if it should be of been finished by now). I'm in the stage where i want to try get it lit. Problem is, my maya keeps crashing when it comes to rendering. So I am going to have to do a few things to try and clean the scene up. Make sure some shaders are working okay. And convert some of the png textures to a lower Jpeg, which should help a lot with rendering.

As a side note. The chef character i was working on, was sculpted on a base mesh in Mudbox, However I am creating the waitress from scratch, partly because there is no base mesh for a woman and also because I need to properly make one from scratch to demonstrate modeling skills on an organic model.

In all honesty I have no idea if i can get this project done for the looming deadline. However I'm going to try give it my best shot. Should the characters prove too troublesome, I will have to revert back to the plan B, which was to purely show off the environment. Maybe as a bonus include one of the characters I've created.

I have this feeling that in order to fulfill the potential of this project, it really could of been a 2-3 man project. My lack of textures and organic modeling is what is slightly letting me down, However that is also part of the learning curve and hopefully by the end of this i will have become a more confident modeler and Texturer.