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.