Day 14

I woke up today wondering if it's actually possible for me to complete project hellfire in time. To be honest, it's quite a big scale production for me since it's individual work and I'm going for photo-realism quality.

Although I've done some testings with the modeling, sprites/ particles, pyro and lighting, results have shown that it's gonna be a hard time for me. To be able to finish it? That's the question.

Therefore in the morning I sent out an emergency email to Mr Ari, Mr Steven, Mr Michael and Mr Tk. I expressed my worries and issues with the project.

To be continued below...

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So while waiting for anyone to reply to my emergency mail, Zack gave another tutorial, this time going into details about rendering with mantra.

He taught us how to use different rendering engines and also explained their purposes.

Here are some notes.

Micropolygon rendering - Good for motion blur. User needs to create own Global Illumination light.

Physically Based Rendering - Bad for motion blur. PBR uses global illumination already. PBR casts shadows from lights without the need to turn on shadows from the lights settings. It's not Ambient Occlusion which was what I thought at first. PBR somewhat emits shadows using information from the light rays in the scene. Ambient Occlusion however emits shadows based on the physical distance between every object in the scene.

Shading Quality Multiplier - Good for ray-tracing engine.

Tile Size - Pixel size. Smaller amount, smaller chunks of pixels rendered. Larger amount, bigger chunks of pixels rendered.

Noise Level - Controls amount of noise in scene. That's the reason why by default it's set to a very low value of 0.05

Camera Depth of Field - CTRL click on camera and adjust DOF using provided handles or move the translation arrow tool of the DOF manipulator. Little cube controls position of DOG while arrows control F stop, how muchDOF is involved in the area.

Under sampling Tab - xform time samples also controls motion blur.
Just like normal real life DSLR shutter controls, change camera shutter-time for motion blur effect.

Wireframe render - Create a facet node after geometry. Enable check "Unique Points". Create wireframe node in out. Render.

Render Schedular - Just beside the material palette tab, add a render schedular which will show information and time taken for renders.

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After Zack's class on rendering, Mr Ari was already in the office and he wanted to speak to me regarding my project.

After discussions on optimizations like removing certain parts of the sequence and coming up with high poly modeling solutions,

I'm ready to get back in action and finish what I started.

With that, I came up with a rough plan. (which I'll most likely edit along the way)

I have 9 weeks left starting from next monday, Independence Day.

In the plan, next week shall be considered week 1.


Project Hellfire Weekly Plan


Week 1
1) Search for more references.
2) Finalize reconstructed pre-visualization.
3) Replace parts of high-poly apache with low-poly parts: propellers, wheels, nose etc.
4) Remove interior of apache and other parts that are not needed.
5) Paint height map .png file for terrain generator otl.
6) Model low-poly models of convoy.

Week 2
1) Texturing of Apache and Terrain.
2) Animation of Apache and Convoy.

Week 3
1) Touch up texturing and animation.
2) Simulate sprite particles for missile trail.

Week 4
1) Pyrofx test simulations, shaders and renders. with and without scene lighting.
2) Particle waves interact with density points of pyro simulation.
3) Troubleshoot pyrofx problems.

Week 5
1) More tests with pyrofx simulations and shaders.
2) Troubleshoot more pyrofx problems.

Week 6
1) Final tests and simulations of pyrofx with scene.
2) Setup start lighting scene.

Week 7
1) Lighting tests, refer to reference images for photo-realism.
2) Lighting test renders and final renders.
*Important Note: I'm aiming for photo-realism, need more REFERENCES.

Week 8
1) Rendering.
2) Troubleshoot problems.
3) More rendering.

Week 9
1) Rendering and Compositing.


9 more weeks, let's put myself to the test for I'm gonna finish the job.

And it's gonna be a damn fine one.

Day 13

Here are the test renders I mentioned in the previous post.

Testfiles

Environment Light and Spotlight used.

Environment Light and Spotlight used.
Global Illumination added. Caustic Photon Map.

Environment Light and Area Light used.
No Global Illumination.
Physically Based Rendering activated.

Day 12

Before I start the day working my butt off due to my burning passion for cg film production, I'm gonna post these pretty cool references for easy access for myself while I'm working.

Apache Kills Terrorists
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMEmSoi07a4&feature=related


Apache Helicopter Kill Cam
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIxvzD9k_SI&feature=related


Apache Helicopter kills 7 terrorists
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2ZV1wUNwEk&feature=related


Boeing AH-64 Apache Destroys Tank
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snubx4tkxRY&feature=fvsr


Lockheed Martin Hellfire Missile Test
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFGMBrCuyXI

Umm if you're a terrorist and you're reading this, please don't get the wrong idea.
If you understand english, this is for my project. >.<

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In the meantime, I'm working on test renders for the missile explosions.

Pyro is being used if anyone is wondering.

I plan to create a system where particles will somewhat be emitted from the end points of the density of the pyrofields to achieve a dusty shockwave effect surrounding the explosion.

These are not complete renders, they were kinda rendering halfway to about 4% - 6% and I stopped the renders since they were taking too long to process.
Thus you can see it's a little pixelated.

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In the afternoon, Zack gave us a class on lighting and rendering.

He taught us how to render using mantra ipr.

He also taught us how to use the lights in houdini to create a 3 point lighting setup.

Most importantly, he taught how to control the lights, especially spotlights.

(cone angle, delta, light types etc)

Some cool new notes about lighting in houdini:

Key light - Spotlight

Fill light - Environment light

Rim light - Spotlight

Bounce light - Distance light

With the new knowledge he gave us, I spent the rest of the day setting up my scene making use of spotlight, environment light and global illumination light.

Oh and I also added a sphere surrounding the whole terrain which is meant to act as a constant "hdri" for the scene.

Test Renders Without Caustics

Oh! Guess what...

Stupid blogger won't allow me to upload files again...

I'll show my renders in the next post hopefully.

Day 11

It's day 11 and I'm filled with super awesome adrenaline rush to produce this short film.

Here are the latest videos that failed to upload a couple of posts back.

There were other outdated renders like the second edited first version of the previz which is right at the bottom of this post.


Project Hellfire: Pre-Visualization Version 02

Latest previz version, followed a couple of Mr Steven's advice after the review.

Changes made:
Shortened intro time.
Different title opening. (Call of Duty style)
Time-stretched whole sequence. (30 seconds)

Apache: Propeller Animation Test Version 01

Tested propellers' rotation animation.
750 frames, 25 frames per second.
Rotated -30000 Degrees from frame 1 to 750.
Warning: There was some slight problems with the compositing as after effects couldn't read 11 frames. If you are capable of having seizures due to flashing of lights please DO NOT watch this.
I'll re-render out the flipbook and see if I can fix it.

Hellfire Missile Trail: Test Render

Particles/ sprites test render.
Thanks to Rap's odforce thread and Jia Bao for the expression.
Expression used:
fit01(smooth($LIFE, 0, 0.3) - smooth($LIFE, 0.5, 1), 1.5, 5)
Applied expression to both x and y axis of sprite scale.

Previous Pre-Visualization Version:

This was the edited version where I followed Mr Michael's advice to edit the camera movements and animation.

I'm currently working on some pyro fx small scale test explosion simulations.

I'll update with simulation flipbooks and renders soon!

Weekend 3

I think I'm officially able to post videos and pictures finally.

Alright I'll post whatever work I've done so far tomorrow.

Now I'm gonna share my experience for this weeked.

Yesterday on Saturday we followed Mr Ari and Miss Aliza to Visual Effects Society event.
Many companies were there including Digitl Domain, MPC, Disney Animation Studios, Legacy and many more.

SideEffects were supposed to be there to demo and promote Houdini software. Jia Bao, Tanner, Lu Sheng and I tagged along to assist a little, altough we weren't realy much of an assistance as we spent most of the day approaching the different company stations there.

Oh and Autodesk and Adobe were there too.

We also took a walk and explored around Hollywood!

VES pictures:

Hollywood Pictures:

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Today our metor Mr Steven and Mrs Shih Peng (his wife) took us to Premium Outlets somewhere in the desert of America where everywhere was filled with beautiful mountains and stuff.

Over there were many factory outlets like Guess, Levi's, Converse, Vans, QuickSilver etc.

Basiclly we splashed our cash on lots of fashion stuff there.

After that we were treated to a wonderful meal of penang malaysian food and we're so full right now.

Thank you Mr Steven!

My camera bat went flat yesterday so I'll have to get pictures and videos from Tanner's camera.

Thus resulting in no pictures for today.

Awesome, it's 11.37pm in Santa Monica now and I'm pretty tired.

Oh wells, looking forward to going to work tomorrow!