This time we are trying to stream with Google+ / Youtube. Chances are it might not work. But we are trying!! Computers are just so hard to use…
Final Shots!
So- this last week has by far been one of the most rewarding! We’ve finally primed the pump, and renders are coming out of the farm in a steady flow. We have about 140 seconds of ‘finished-ish’ film- stuff that’s come out of the farm, and more or less works (though in a lot of cases we may through it through the farm again, just to fix something small). Meaning- we’re actually on schedule! For now….
For time-based effects and problems, we can’t see if they work or not till we send them through the farm- and sometimes the farm itself introduces glitches- so we’ve been doing lots of re-renders. But the farm’s keeping up!
I think it’s kind of amazing, actually- all of our posts have been showing the same old stuff over and over (even now I’m just kinda reposting some things you’ve seen before), but we have a ton of new finished stuff sitting around. I should upload some of that. Later!
That said: So many cool final shots! So I’m gonna do a super lazy blog post and just put up some framegrabs!
ALSO: Teaser next week?
Robots climb the church tower! Check out the eyes Kjartan painted on the back of one of em. We’re making all of the robots a bit more individualized.
xiph.org: F65 RAW, Linear EXR, cleaned, and finals!
I’m very happy that our friends at xiph.org have agreed on hosting all of the files we’re producing now and in the next months. In total we expect to have 2 TB of material;
- RAW files from the Sony F65 camera (4k)
- Linear OpenEXR files in Rec709 gamut (4k, half float), converted from the Linear OpenEXR ACES gamut files as is output from the Sony F65 player/converter software (closed sw).
- Cleaned OpenEXR files with alpha (4k)
- Final renders in OpenEXR – before grading (HD 1920 x 800)
- Final graded files, in OpenEXR, PNG, etc (HD 1920 x 800)
Here’s already the RAW and OpenEXR from two shots in the film (60 GB)! Everything will be released (entirely!) after the film went to premiere. The files then can also be used to complete the DVDs we’ll make for our sponsors; that way they can fully recreate the pipeline with originals!
Mango VFX pipeline – part 1
In this brief post I will illustrate an important part of our pipeline: the shot creation and development. The process described happens for every shot in the movie and appears slightly simplified (footage input and simulations are not taken into account). Here we have a picture of the process, plus a few notes about how production files are organized (on which layers objects should be placed on, and some naming conventions).
Everything starts with a blendfile where the shot is tracked and solved (the track file). This file is then duplicated and used as a starting point for keying and masking (masking file) and also for the main file, where layout, simulations, effects, light and compositing will be used. As soon as the main file is created, all the required libraries are linked in from environment and charachter files, so that the tracked camera can be placed in the right place in the scene. Once that the layout is approved it is possible to proceed with basic lighting and compositing, by creating the proper renderlayer setup. If simulation or effects like gun blasts, explosions or haze are needed, they are added to the same file, but in separate scenes. This system allows us even to use both blender internal render engine and cycles at the same time!
Given the size of our team it makes sense to keep workflow steps as compact as possible, since we can cohordinate on which shot everyone is working. A separate file for animation is created only when needed and it contains mostly liked libraries or objects, such as the camera, from the main file. At the same time, the main file links in masks and actions, so that they can be used in the compositor and on rig proxies.
This system allows a good degree of freedom and flexibility and its proving itself quite reliable.
Other posts about how we deal with footage, simulations and editing will come in the future:)
Weekly – June 15
Here’s my random pick of this week’s weekly presentation. Good progress, we’re having our first shots final… but oh dear, so many details to solve yet! :)
Weekly Meeting 15.06.2012
Weekly Meeting 15.06.2012
Face Grabbin’
Yesterday I spent the afternoon seeing if i could get some facegrabbing done (as seen in the screengrab from yesterday).
It involved my first try at tracking for the hand which gave me a placement for the robohand and my first try at masking with parenting mask point to tracking markers (very useful for when he talks). Then with a nice backplate and alot of scrubbing, i hand animated the hand and fingers to match the hand and fingers of our lovely actress.
I let it render overnight but it didnt bring the background with it, so i set it to go locally this morning (with v.low samples so it would be quick) to get something to show.
Looking like i’ll need to animate the back finger, but overall its looking promising**!
**I did nothing for lights and comp work (save layering), its all about the movement!
Screenshots
Last week we’ve captured for everyone in the studio for a whole week every minute a screenshot! That’s going to be a great video! Needs time to process, so it’ll be published later (or as DVD extra ;)
Just for fun, here’s the capture of today 18.00. From left to right, top to bottom: Sebastian, Jeremy, Campbell, Ian, Andy, Roman, Francesco and Kjartan.
Blessing .blend files
Today I will demonstrate what we do when something goes wrong or has to be fixed inside a blendfile! Recently we changed the way the armguns file works in order to make it more efficient (long story short: there used to be multiple proxies referring to multiple armatures, which were automatically generated with a script, and now the armature is the same and it is shared by the proxies).
Weekly – June 8
The previous blog posts already show our weekly progress well, so here’s some additions to this – like an evidence we have a full shotlist now!
This weekly I spoiled the fun a bit by ringing the alarm bells; if we want 9 minutes of film to be done in 10 weeks, we need to start delivering finals now… and not only a few shots, but more like 10-15 shots per week, 50 seconds every week! The two main bottlenecks to overcome urgently;
