Weekend 8


My Godbrother, Raphael passed away at 7.15pm singapore time yesterday...

Aunt Irene, Aunt Debra, Godma Shirley, Raphael...

Watch over me as I will not let you guys down.

I'll make you proud and I'll achieve my dream in becoming a movie director.

Thank you Raphael for our childhood memories.

I love you bro.

Day 35

I'm transferring all my project files into the render farm folder where I can finally start batch rendering my scene with separate geometries, fog, simulation effects etc.

Re-referencing of geometries and textures in progress...

Post will be updated.

Let's hope everything will turn out fine!

-

4.38 pm

I've been doing test renders using the render farm for quite a while now.

So far I've had not much issues (only a little but solved) and I should be able to leave the render farm working on my scene over the weekends.

Here's the geometry separation & render passes setup I'm using to test over the weekend.

Apache01

Micro/ PBR

Direct Diffuse
Direct Reflect (Specular)
Indirect Reflect (Reflection)
Direct Shadow Matte

Apache02

Micro/ PBR

Direct Diffuse
Direct Reflect (Specular)
Indirect Reflect (Reflection)
Direct Shadow Matte

Road

Micro/ PBR

Direct Diffuse
Direct Reflect (Specular)
Indirect Reflect (Reflection)
Direct Shadow Matte

Convoy

Micro/ PBR

Direct Diffuse
Direct Reflect (Specular)
Indirect Reflect (Reflection)
Direct Shadow Matte

Terrain Main

Micro/ PBR

Direct Diffuse
Direct Reflect (Specular)
Indirect Reflect (Reflection)
Direct Shadow Matte

Terrain Background

Micro/ PBR

Direct Diffuse
Direct Reflect (Specular)
Indirect Reflect (Reflection)
Direct Shadow Matte

Sky Sphere

Micropolygon

Beauty

-

Here's the official setup I'm using for final renders.

Apache01


Micro/ PBR


Direct Diffuse
Direct Reflect (Specular)
Indirect Reflect (Reflection)
Direct Shadow Matte
Ambient Occlusion

Apache02


Micro/ PBR



Direct Diffuse
Direct Reflect (Specular)
Indirect Reflect (Reflection)
Direct Shadow Matte
Ambient Occlusion

Road


Micro/ PBR


Direct Diffuse
Direct Reflect (Specular)
Indirect Reflect (Reflection)
Direct Shadow Matte
Ambient Occlusion

Convoy


Micro/ PBR


Direct Diffuse
Direct Reflect (Specular)
Indirect Reflect (Reflection)
Direct Shadow Matte
Ambient Occlusion

Terrain Main


Micro/ PBR

Direct Diffuse
Direct Reflect (Specular)
Indirect Reflect (Reflection)
Direct Shadow Matte
Ambient Occlusion

Terrain Background


Micro/ PBR


Direct Diffuse
Direct Reflect (Specular)
Indirect Reflect (Reflection)
Direct Shadow Matte
Ambient Occlusion

Sky Sphere


Micropolygon



Beauty

Fog

Micropolygon

beauty

-

I'm having problems batch rendering out fog in HD. I'll figure out ways to optimize my fog renders.

I'll add ambient occlusion to the current setup I'm using after the weekend test render.

At the same time I'll watch some nuke tutorials over the weekend since I have to consistantly keep using it to separate out the passes and test composite from the exr image files.

I've decided to use .exr format instead of .png as exr is much easier to use since it compiles all the passes together.

Nuke is a good compositing software for separating out the passes.

-

5.49 pm

Aww crap!

Jia Bao just reminded me that Ariinstructed us to only use the render farm from Tuesdays to Thursdays every week.

I wasn't even supposed to use the render farm earlier oops :P

Anyway I've let the workstation render over the weekend instead.

Let's see how it goes.

Day 34

We've just attended another of Jeff Wagner's weekly houdini class.

He taught us about the usage of geometry fog volumes.

Here are some tests I ran.

The first screenshot was rendered using ray-traced shadows. The time taken to render it was extremely long.

The second screenshot however was rendered without any shadows casting from the fog. The time taken to render was much faster than when rendered using ray-traced shadows.

In terms of visual appeal the fog in the first screenshot seems like it has more volume and density in it. The fog in the second screenshot seems flat, however it still shows difference in distance between the three teapots.

This is what happens when I put a camera within the fog to look at an object.

I was curious whether the positioning of the camera would affect the rendered density of the fog.

Well it didn't, I decreased the smoke density in the billowy smoke volume shader to... well... decrease the smoke density.

The fog volume was created using just a simple sphere, along with an isooffset and setting the output type to Fog Volume.

After that, a billowy smoke volume shader was applied to the sphere obj.

Tweaked a little bit of noise and smoke density in the shader, Volume Filter Width in the sphere obj render settings and that's pretty much the result I got.

I'll apply some fog to my actual scene and see how it goes.

-

2.33 pm

I've done some fog tests in my scene.

First render is without fog. Rendering time extremely fast. (obviously)

Second render has fog with cloud density of 0.01. Rendering took so long I decided to stop it halfway. Thus it's kinda pixelated.

Third render has fog with cloud density of 0.005 Rendering takes just as long as second render.

I'll resume tweaking, post will be updated soon.

-

6.06 pm

Credits once again go to Zack for spending lots of time today teaching me several methods of rendering passes and separate geometries in houdini, such as adding different takes, adding extra image planes in mantra and applying a black constant shader to "unwanted" renderable objects.

Steven also taught me other methods of separating out geometries by going into the mantra objects tab and applying rules for separate object rendering.

Here's a low quality batch render just for testing the new spherical sky ramp.

Project Hellfire: Shot 02 Test Batch Render 09
Artist: Bryan Isaac Emmanuel
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F42HV6RofGA

I'll leave the workstation on overnight again to render out a fog layer.

Once done I'll try compositing it in with the current output I have now.

Day 33

I've updated the production schedule once again.

Today's To Do List:

1) Ask Zack how I should carry out generation of fog in scene.

2) Ask Ziggy what improvements can be made to my current particle system.

3) Resume watching intermediate pyro lectures.

The latest pyro batch render with the secondary particle smoke simulation couldn't be completed due to hard disk memory error.

20 frames were rendered so I don't really see any point in putting up a composited version. Thus, I'll just upload a couple of frames.

Frame 01

Frame 05

Frame 10

Frame 15

Frame 20

Damn,

no where close to my realistic referenced expectations.


-

6:16 pm

Today credits go to Zack for spending most of his time guiding me in lighting.

We spent most of the day practicing the setting up of zdepth passes and discussing final tweaks to be made to the lightings and textures.

For the atmospheric fog effect I'll add it in comp once the zdepth pass is rendered out. Same goes for the depth of field.

Zack also taught me how to render ambient occlusion in houdini.

Charles taught me how to procedurally create a ramp for my spherical sky by creating a ramp parameter in mantra surface. No lights are needed to light up the sphere, the material acts like a constant.

 

I just found out that the price to pay for rendering together with the spherical-sky is that I can't render using PBR. I'll render using separate mantras anyway so it shouldn't be a problem.

Day 32


Yeap, new trick board on the right with 52mm STF wheels . Cruising board is the one with the 60mm ATF wheels and the tokidoki pirata design on the left.

Yeap,

Double awesome.

Before I proceed to any other part of the project plan like applying atmospheric fog surrounding the terrain, setting up bullet spray particles or improving vehicle particle sprite emissions...

I shall spend today watching and analysing intermediate pyro lectures.

Like the previous intro to pyro post, I'll post notes of what I've learnt for anyone interested.

Here I go!

-

Intermediate Pyro


Anyone who has visited my previous project blog Dragon Flood might have come across me mentioning these expressions before.


Scale X Y Z
bbox("../xform_center", D_YSIZE)/3

Center X Y Z
centroid("../xform_center", D_Y) - or + bbox("../xform_center", D_YSIZE)/3

Once again credits go to Mr Ron for teaching me these expressions.

This is a post which talks about the expressions used: http://lghsh202.blogspot.com/2011/05/day-47-48-updating-in-progress.html

Well it's probably quite obvious to most artists but I'll just say it anyway. These expressions can be used to normalize and centralize bounding boxes, including fluid and gas containers.

They're useful so that when you need to change the sop path the simulation is reading data from, you don't need to adjust the size of the container.

That probably can be solved using the [gas resize field + sopsolver] method which resizes the container based on the scale of the running simulation too.

Sopgeo Node: Reads data from sop path output node. Must have data name just like gas resize field node.

Details View: Spreadsheet is good for viewing pyro data in a list. Can be used to check if SOPs data has been pulled into DOPs.

To Be Continued...

Day 31

Counting this week, I have 3 weeks left to complete Project Hellfire.

Let's start off with what I plan to do today.

1) Pyro - particles test simulations.

2) Atmospheric fog test.

3) Texturing and Shaders upgrade.

This post will be continued.

-

6:06 pm

I spent today working on the secondary smoke blast simulation using particles to drive the pyro simulation. It worked out pretty okay as a start but I'm planning to ask Mr Ziggy for more guidance regarding the motion of particles to make my simulation more realistic.

Thus I have not touched any lightings or textures in my scene yet.

I'll head home soon to composite and post the flipbook and pyro batch render tests.

-

10:11 pm

Project Hellfire: Pyro Test Batch Render 03
Artist: Bryan Isaac Emmanuel
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AG1cwB7-mEQ

Primary pyro simulation.

Project Hellfire: Pyro Flipbook Test Render 02
Artist: Bryan Isaac Emmanuel
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYt5rUIBrIk

Secondary smoke blast test.

This is a flipbook test. Shaders have been tweaked. Scene has been left on workstation overnight to test batch render. We'll see the final outcome of this flipbook tomorrow.

Weekend 7

On Saturday, I went over to Rip City Skate once again and got myself another skateboard customized for tricks.

On Sunday, we went to Dreamworld to shop for figurines and I got myself a nice looking catwoman model.

Other than that the rest of the weekend were spent skating to and fro grocery markets to do our mundane shopping activities.

The weekends are getting more and more boring.

At least the weekdays' office hours would compensate that, I will make sure project hellfire is a success.

Oh!

Forgot to mention, we watched Captain America and it was awesome!

Day 30

Mr Michael! I have a question for you at the end of this post!

This is another new batch render test 08 which was completed a couple of hours after the previous batch render 07.

Thus no changes were made to the camera movements yet based on Mr Michael's advice.

Project Hellfire: Shot 02 Batch Render Test 08
Artist: Bryan Isaac Emmanuel
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsKpm6odXlQ

I'll let Evan take a look at this sequence and get some advice about adding human imperfection to the camera motions.

Today's production plan also consists of testing out a secondary smoke simulation for my explosion.

----

Camera Shake Solutions

Animation of camera shakes and focus

Evan reviewed my overall animation and thinks it's alright, despite of a few slight hiccups in the first apache animation as it takes off after firing the missiles.

When I brought up Mr Michael's advice to him about camera shakes and focus randomness, Evan's solution was to add a node above the camera obj and add some motion effects noise in it.

One advantage: Animating camera shakes in the scene would give it a more realistic feel than post-production since it's in 3D space.

Post-production camera tweak

Steven came over to the office to review our work in the evening.

He felt the overall animation was alright for now. Any touch ups or slight tweaks can be added towards the end just before batch rendering.

For the textures, the terrain still looks kinda plastic and he approved of me editing and painting textures for the terrain.

As for the pyro simulation I couldn't come up with satisfying results for the secondary smoke blast emitting from the explosion. Steven suggested I use particles to emit and drive the pyro simulation.

Lastly, I brought up the issue of realistic camera movements and Steven suggested rendering the frames slightly larger in resolution than what I have now. (HD720)

With that I can apply camera shakes in post-production.

One advantage: It will save me batch rendering time.

Regarding depth of field, Steven suggested rendering out a depth pass in houdini.

-

Hmm Mr Michael, both ideas have advantages and disadvantages.

What's your opinion?

Day 29

Check out my latest batch render test.

Project Hellfire: Shot 02 Test Batch Render 07
Artist: Bryan Isaac Emmanuel
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qu9dCRY5UHA

I'll resume textures and lighting touch ups soon.

For now I'll take a break and test run some pyro simulations and machine gun particle effects.

----

Thanks to the pyro lectures and the notes which I've gathered, I understand what I'm doing when I go about tweaking stuff in the pyrosolver.

The previous post includes all my pyro notes I've written down yesterday.

Here are some current test renders.

These are unfinished renders as they're taking quite long to render this much already.

I'm just testing out the overall look of the simulation, no tweaking of shaders yet.

One important factor which I had to keep taking note of is the amount of time each hellfire missile strike explosion is limited to.

At the same time I'm referring to a collection of reference videos which I've posted in previous posts.

That's when I realized that I might need a secondary pyro simulation to create a volume of fierce, fast spiky smoke shooting outwards (they're flying debris actually) as seen in most explosions.

1 - 8 frames the ignition shall be the most vigorous.

9 - 25 frames smoke take over 85% of the simulation at accelerating speed.

These simulation tests are not close to perfect or realistic.

I'll have to ask Steven how he feels about my simulation test results tomorrow.

Day 28

Scroll down to see intro to pyro notes.

When I came into the office, opened firefox on a workstation and visited this blog. The first thing I saw was the schedule and took note of the remaining weeks I have.

That's when I went omgwtfbbq.

I'm wasting no time today perfecting animations and texturing stuff. I can do that whenever where ever.

Okay not really where ever but you get what I mean.

Today I shall start off my pyro simulation tests and also I shall add some upgrades to my sprite particles.

I'll get Evan to look at my finalized animation one last time to officially announce it finalized.

-----

It's 5.48pm now.

I've just spent the whole day watching recorded pyro fx lectures.

Even though I roughly know the basics of pyro, it's just roughly and not thorough.

Thus I took down as much notes as I could while grasping all the awesome knowledge like a greedy cg grunt.

For anyone who is interested in learning pyro in houdini for the first time, feel free to take a look at this.

-

INTRO TO PYRO

Software: Houdini 11

TIP: Turn off all noise for beginners in pyro to see how the fundamentals actually work.

Voxels - 2D pixels that store colour information on a 2D image or 3D cubes that store colour data within a fluid/ gas/ pyro container in 3D space.

Field - The data that is being stored at the voxel locations.

Uniform Divisions - Decides the resolution of the simulation. Default value 50 is very low, 100 is good enough for prototyping.

Visualization Tab

Density - Renders out as smoke.

Heat - Renders out as fire.

Fuel - Needed for combustion to occur and has ignition threshold temperature.

If temperature at a voxel of fuel is higher than ignition temperature, combustion will occur and it will emit smoke. It will also release heat, gas and density. Basically the whole simulation will occur due to fuel thus making fuel very important!

Difference between Hurn and Heat

Burn - Fuel that is combusting at the current moment.

Heat - Product of the combustion releasing heat into the simulation. Based on buoyancy, heat is being advected into the scene.

Fuel => Burn => Heat

To get the good looks

Make sure the heat and density look good in simulation. If heat and density look good in simulation but not in renders, it means the shader must be tweaked.

The simulation data is always the look you want, once fields look good, it's good.

AutoDopNetwork - Pyrosolver

3 main tabs - Sources, Simulation & Advanced.

AutoDopNetwork - Pyrosolver - Sources

Emitters

Emit Fuel - Object is emitter for fuel. Value of fuel amount = multiplication of original fuel amount. More fuel, bigger explosion!

Emit Smoke- Turned off because combustion is already emitting smoke. Turning this on would cause smoke to be emitted from object.

Scale Temperature - Controls how fast fire will rise. Hotter = faster. (It multiplies the original temperature value located in apply-source.)

Noise

Has a 4th dimension - Time.

Prevents pyro simulation from looking too uniformed and makes fire look more chaotic like how it should be.

Gives more variation in fire simulations.

Noise is being emitted from the object. (Can be visualized by checking source in visualization tab)

Ramp can be adjusted and remapped to change noise adjustments and shape.

Note: Candle flames don't need noise since the candle light is calm.

AutoDopNetwork - Pyrosolver - Simulation

Limit Speed - Limits speed of simulation. Use if simulation is going too fast.

Viscosity - Thick volumes of stuff. Not really needed for fire.

Cooling Rate: After 1 second, temperature or voxel field that has a value of 1, after 1 second, it will drop to a value of 90% of that value.

Higher cooling rate gives you more detail on fire. Very high cooling rate example value is 0.01, opposite of what you think. So lower value means higher rate.

Buoyancy: When you have a fluid or gas that has decent high temperature, it looks at the ambient temperature around itself and notices that if it is hotter than the ambient temperature, it will rise.

Buoyancy Lift - Lifts up the simulation process much faster.

Why not just crank up temperature? Because they all work together.

Temperature gives you an initial boost in the beginning.

Buoyancy however is the way gas reacts in reference to the voxel container. (surrounding environment)

Buoyancy Direction - Direction of Buoyancy Lift.

Vortex Confinement - Does the same thing as vorticles but in a slightly different way. It causes simulation to have a little more turbulence in the parts that have turbulence. Always use this as it's good for huge explosions.

Note: Too high vortex confinement will make simulation unstable.

Velocity Damp - Damps velocity field. Use if velocity is going too fast.

Fuel Tab

Advect or don't advect fuel.

If it's turned on, fuel travels along with density and rest of the fields like how it should. Always use for fire.

Fuel Speed -  Value of 1 would emit fuel almost exactly like density. 1 is normally too much of a value.

Combustion Tab

One of the most important tabs in the whole pyrosolver. This is where combustion occurs.

Ignition Temperature: Decides at which temperature simulation is allowed to ignite. It looks at a voxel and if there's fuel in the voxel, it checks if the temperature is higher than the ignition temperature at the voxel. If it is, go into combustion. This occurs at each voxel.

Note: If ignition temperature value is negative, all fuel will instantly ignite.

Burn Rate - The amount of fuel to burn per second. It's a ratio, meaning that at value 0.9, after 1 second, 90% of the fuel will be burnt, leaving 0.1 fuel as leftover.

Burn Rate controls Burn Field, rate at which it burns. Value = amount of fuel to burn per second.

Inefficiency - Gives randomness to the Burning Rate, an uneven sense of fuel burning.

Soot Smoke Rate - Rate of smoke emission. Higher value, more smoke emitted.

Temperature Output - Amount to increase temperature field by. Temperature will go up to the value when combustion is occurring.

Gas Released - Causes density to push out, equivalent to gas pressure.

Heat Source - Burn default recommended.

Heat Cool Time - Time in seconds taken for temperature at voxel to go from value of 1 to 0.

Diffusion Tab

Applies Gaussian blur to the field data (temperature, fuel, density) of a radius of whatever value is in this tab.

Turbulence Tab

Turbulence: Turbulence within whole container domain, manipulating fire simulation. Gives simulation curvy wavy looks.

Scale - Controls how much or little turbulence is affecting simulation. Control differs on how big simulation is.

Bigger simulation = bigger turbulence scale

4th Dimension = Time

Mappings - Remap where turbulence is in turbulence fields.


Forces Tab

Global forces controller for all forces in pyro simulation including gravity.

This applies more force to all force attributes.

Can be remapped like turbulence for more artistic control.

AutoDopNetwork - Apply_source


Sets up some basic source relationships for emitter.

Also has it's own visualization - Guide => Density & SDF

SOP Path & OBJ Path - Object which simulation is emitted from.

Noise - Noise in apply_source multiplies noise from simulation tab. Not recommended for test simulations due to confusion.

Feathering - Blurs out the emitter.

Attribute - For intermediate attribute creation or modifications.

Physical - Temperature: Original temperature value.

Override Velocity - For velocity modifications. Customize using motion effects or others. Controls initial velocity & emission boost time.

SDF Generation

SDF: Signed Distance Field

Value of 1 inside sphere, -1 outside sphere, 0 directly at the surface of the sphere.

Kinda like the distance of the surface which calculates the volume of the geometry.

Note: If source object is moving, check use deforming geometry.

Check Build From Particles - Emit simulation using particle system by using particles as source. Each particles will have fuel, density, heat etc emitting from it. Emission amount can be controlled using Particle to Field (Scale by Voxel Volume) tab.

UPRES PYRO

Use for finer details.

UPRES - Takes low resolution simulation motion and converts it to high resolution. Simulation performs way faster than when increasing the amount of uniform divisions.

Switch_simulationmode

Low Res: Low Res

Both : Does low res than high res afterward, 1 frame at a time.

Up Res : Up Res

What's the best way to up res pyro?

Go into low res pyro obj

Export to File (Just like rendering)

1) Cache, cooks & exports out low res pyro simulation.

2) Once done, check load from disk.

3) Turn off low res obj, turn on up res obj.

4) Go into up res pyro obj - Render & cache up res simulation. Use this for final rendering. (Note: Rename output files to prevent overwrite issues.)

Note: In AutoDopNetwork, go to upres pyro visualization & crank up uniform divisions. Usually recommended use values of low res divisions multiplied by 2 to 3 times.

e.g. low res divisions = 50 thus, high res divisions = 100 or 150

Rendering

Depth Map Shadows

Crank up pixel samples if pyro simulation shadows screw up.

Mantra Node

Sampling Tab - Volume Step Size controls quality of render for volumed simulations.

Day 27

New explosion references I found for the project:

Javelin Missile In Action
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6_JpPvWCAQ&feature=related

Hellfire Missile
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU1ukWWOFqg

Tomahawk Missile Variants
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19XXTArAGaM



'NATO' missile strike caught on video, Libya rebels targeted
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKtuegVouaI

Terrifying Air Strike in Brega Libya
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK7dT0wO4CM&feature=related

North American F86D Sabre Dog bombed with napalm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJzb2xysvtg&feature=fvwrel

Republic F-105 Thunderchief guns down QF-80 Drone
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKxz4koY9RE&feature=relmfu

Rocket Explosion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gL1xUWgBlFw


Nuclear Underground Detonation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca4D0-s8OsI&feature=related

I've starting doing some shader building tests.

The batch render I mentioned in the previous post is still going on as it crashed at frame 480 in the middle of the night.

-----

Right now I'm playing around with the lighting setup of the scene.

That's when I realized I might need to add in ambient occlusion after much test renders and observations of the shadows on the apache

Also I might need to tweak the amount of xform time samples, increasing the "roundness" of the motion blurred propellers. I've already set the value to 25 but it seems like it's not really enough.

Okay looks like when I enable the sprite particles under these lighting settings they become over-exposed.

Looks like some plans have been changed due to that. I'll finalize the overall lighting by this week before I tweak and edit particles and simulations.

In other words I won't touch any particles or simulation effects until next week when my lighting is done.

----

Okay now for the rendering of the terrain. So far the renders seem to be looking good but the terrain hasn't reached the realistic stage yet.

Now I shall continue doing more test lightings and textures while I'm waiting for the work station to finish batch rendering my test sequence.

Day 26

Today started off with us being caught on camera.

We're not supposed to park bikes at that area!

I think we look like celebrities.

-----

Anyway back in the office...

Evan took a look at my overall animations. I've been editing the curves for a while now.

He gave me advice to tweak a little more before it's qualified as a finalized animation.

Most of the curves are smoother than before.

Now that's an achievement.

I'll continue perfecting the overall animation.

Hopefully I can get it finalized by today.

New animation notes:
Frame 615 - 625 (1st machineGun victim boom)
Frame 635 - 645 (2nd machineGun victim boom)

----

The animation is almost finalized.

I'll ask Evan to check it out tomorrow whenever he's free.

I've proceeded on to a little bit of lighting.

I've left the work station on overnight to batch render another fresh sequence with new lightings and textures..

 

Weekend 6


Once again this weekend is yet another weekend filled with thrilling physical activities. Skated, fell, got injured, skated some more and fell some more.

Skateboarding is FUN!

We taught Tanner how to ride a bicycle for about 10 minutes and he got it immediately. So we cycled and skated around the neighbourhood and went on further to ralph's and marukai.

After having much enriching experience in skating around Santa Monica for a couple of weeks, I've decided to get another customized skate deck for tricks. The one which I have now has it's 52mm trick wheels replaced with 60mm cruising ones.

I'm gonna spend my free time in L.A. practicing ollies and 180s.

Getting ready for another grueling week ahead.

Things are gonna get ugly but I'll make sure that I'll get through till the end...

With the success of project Hellfire of course!

Day 25


Evan provided great help today.

He taught me proper animating of cameras and characters using curves.

He gave me a lot of tips and advices on how camera movements should go about in the scene.

Animation tips to take note of:

1) Always imagine the camera is being hand-held by an actual person.

2) Switch between using curves and camera lock translation & rotations.

Looks like I'm slightly behind schedule.

Well in every adventure there's a twist right?

Looks like I've got myself a busy week next week.

Day 24


It's about 12 midnight now so I figured I might as well get ready today's post.

Here's a batch render sneak preview, my flipbook test render. No batch render for now, gotta wait till I get back to the office later in the morning to collect the sequence I left to batch render overnight.

 

-----

It's about 2.10pm in Santa Monica now.

Things are pretty hectic for me.

All positive attitude aside, I have absolutely no bloody idea where to start.

With a usual positive attitude however I'll tell myself all the project issues I'm facing now will be solved soon.

Well it HAS TO BE SOLVED BY THE END OF THIS WEEK!!!

Anyway here are a couple of issues I've found in the latest batch render test 3:

1) Raytrace shadows still didn't have motion blur.

2) Dust sprites still not showing up from the back of the convoy.

3) Finalization of apache and camera animation still uncertain.

With that, I've currently started another batch render with these solutions...

Solutions:

1) Raytrace motion blur checked and enabled in mantra render node.

2) Sprites for convoy dust particles test rendered and fixed.

3) Animation still uncertain, I'll discuss this issue with Steven and Mr Ari. I'll get animation advice from Evan too.

Alright so I'm gonna approach Steven and Mr Ari regarding my final camera and animation.

Also I can't render out the composited png sequence from after effects because apparently there's something wrong with my png sequence even though I don't see any problem when viewing the frames individually!

Day 23

Looks like I have to re-edit my production schedule once again due to unforseen circumstances.

Firstly, Side Effects will be going over to SIGRAPH in august.

At the same time, we're planning to go to vegas during that week.

Thus I'm gonna cut off 1 week from the production schedule.

So I'm left with about less than 5 weeks to complete project hellfire.

Damn.

Let's DO IT!

Here's a 2nd test batch render sequence rendered overnight.

Project Hellfire: Shot 02 Test Batch Render 02
Artist: Bryan Isaac Emmanuel

It's a slight improvement, I'm gonna tweak the overall animation (apache and camera) one last time. After that it'll be finalized.

The previous batch render took 17hours 30minutes to render believe it or not. Furthermore I had to interrupt the rendering at frame 770 since it was taking too long.

This batch render however finished rendering by the time I came into the office this morning.

Why the time difference?

In the previous sequence I rendered using ray-traced shadows.

In the 2nd batch render I used depth map shadows. However the depth map shadows are screwing around in the scene if you notice that huge shadow box casted randomly in the center of nowhere.

Issues to solve today:

1) That big square patch of shadow in the scene is getting on my nerves, I'm so gonna remove it.

2) Get a geometry road up and running for the convoy to sit their asses on.

3) Create a network of particles emission from machine gun turret.

4) Dust particles emission from the back of the convoy.

5) Secondary heightmap for "matte painting" background.

That's kinda what I plan to finish by today.

Followed by another test batch render overnight tonight.

Day 22

The overnight test batch render has been completed.

Here's the final output.

Project Hellfire: Shot 02 Test Batch Render 01
Artist: Bryan Isaac Emmanuel

After viewing the output a couple of times, I've found a couple of issues with the scene.

Issues to solve:

1) Animation frame 1 to 500, apache movement too slow. Refine overall animation.

2) Particles too thick, sprite scale? Oversampling?

3) Unnecessary particles being cooked after frame 680. Limit particles rendering frame range during separate pass? Hide particles?

4) Hide 2nd apache when not in camera view.

5) UV unwrap apache? Finalize texture.

6) Machine gun bullet spray particle network not done.

7) Create curve road geometry for convoy.

8) Dust particles emission from back of convoy.

The animation of both apache seem bloody crappy in my opinion.

Animation still needs perfection.

I'll solve these issues and test render again tonight.

-----

Alright I've made some major changes to the overall animation and added in missing textures, explosions etc.

I'm leaving this work station to render overnight once again.

In the meantime here's a single frame test render, there was another nicer one but blogger wouldn't let me post it...

Day 21


First, I wanna say...

AWESOME!

I'm slightly ahead of my own production schedule which is a good thing,
very good thing.

Still I ain't letting my guard down, always better to be ahead of schedule than lag behind based on past experiences!

Today is week 2 according to the schedule by the way.

Oh and if you haven't noticed, I have my production schedule set up at the side of this blog for my reference.

Anyway,

Things I've completed today:

1) All low-poly convoy models.

2) Overall animation.

3) Basic texturing and lighting.

4) Basic particle sprite emission from hellfire missiles.

I left a station to test batch render over night at the office.

I'll post the sequence tomorrow.

Weekend 5


Nothing really interesting in particular that happened this weekend.

Spent most of the time skating around santa monica, from home to rip city skate, ralph's to saint anne's church and marukai to home.

We went over to downtown earlier and explored little tokyo more than our previous visitation.

I'd really love to blabber more in this post but sadly I can't think of anything to type now due to exhaustion.

Oh well I'm gonna sleep since it's pretty late.

Tomorrow, it's WORK TIME!

Day 20

At 1pm, we were involved in a webcam conference with the guys in the main SideEffects headquarters over at torronto.

Well... Once again some things are not meant to be discussed. All I can say is they shared new interesting updates and information with us. Evan also shared information on the project he's working on here which is a cg parody of a classic horror movie back in the 70s.

I've edited the current height map and increased the resolution from 2500 x 2500 pixels to 4000 x 4000 pixels.

I'm planning to build my own shader for the terrain since low-poly geometry with hardcore shaders are much more efficient than high-poly detailed geometry with simple shaders.

With that, I've placed the terrain into the previz to match the scale of the previz apache and convoy.

Project Hellfire: Pre-visualization shot 1, terrain added.

More adjustments might need to be made though due to a slight difference in the scale of the actual apache and convoy themselves. Also, there is an issue with the road. In the png height map I've painted out a road however it's curved unlike the straight road in the original previz.

I'll solve it soon, positive.

I've also modeled a low-poly military apc which is part of the convoy. I'm planning to add in more military vehicles like tanks and humvees.

Here are some new notes for animation which I plan to start working on next week:

Total number of frames will be cut from 1500 to about 800 - 900 frames.

1 - 250 frames: Apache scout with slow strafing.

250 - 500 frames: Apache pair swoop down, moving in for the kill.

500 - 575 frames: 1st Apache launches a barrage of hellfire missiles. Bombardment sequence.

575 - 680 frames: 2nd Apache strikes with machine gun turret.

680 - 800 frames: Apache pair fly off.

I'm still thinking about the introduction, how I should introduce both apache to the audience and which camera angles to use.

Day 19


Today I've started painting my terrain height map using photoshop.

I don't have any renders or screenshots to show now so I'll upload them tomorrow.
I have to finalize the height map soon.

Once again I've gotta edit my project schedule plan.

Steven came over today to review our progress.

Things for me to take note of:

1) Instead of using a bezier curve to rotate the propellers, use a linear curve to enable rotations starting with constant velocity at the first frame.

2) Finalize the terrain model asap so that I can proceed to texturing.

3) Render out separate terrain geometry in background. Different environment light can be used for this terrain to produce atmospheric effect.

4)Apache, convoy, terrains and simulations should be rendered separately for faster production.

Day 18

References for today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMGP6nQMXYg

-----

Here are some test textures of the apache as starters.

Mantra Shaders applied, a fair amount of tweaking done.

Simple metal texture applied.

Oh and I've finally modeled most of the apache with low-poly parts already.
Tried blending in with the minor high-poly parts as much as possible.

Although I've separated the geometries for material assignment, I'll need to split them up a little more for more details.

A motion blur test video will be uploaded soon after I composite the png sequences together tonight...

---

Alright here it is.

Propeller Motion Blur Test Render 01

So far things are kinda going according to plan so...

Plans for tomorrow:
1) Start painting height map for terrain generator.
2) Model low-poly convoy geometry.
3) Continue test texturing of apache.