Day 57

Countdown To Departure: 0 day(s)

Tonight is the night we leave L.A. as Champions.

Day 56

Countdown to Departure: 1 day


HAPPY BIRTHDAY MICHAEL JACKSON!


I grew up with your songs and I'll never stop listening.


R.I.P


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We had one last meal at Denny's for lunch today.

I bought a new Tokidoki cap for myself since it kinda fits my Tokidoki skateboard deck.

Time feels really really slow while we wait for our flight back home to Singapore.

Weekend 12


Countdown To Departure: 2 days

12 weeks have officially passed as predicted in our IAP schedule.

We went out with Steven and Shih Peng to Cheesecake factory for lunch today.

The food was AWESOME.

The cheesecake however was AWESOMER!!!

I know there's no such word as awesomer.

However I typed it out so it counts as a word right?

Day 55

Just for the sake of post consistency I shall post something for today.


Nothing happened.


Just kidding, we went back to SESI again to give our colleagues chocolates since every single one of them have been VERY nice to us.

Other than that if you've just visited this blog, please help yourself to viewing my final output of this project in the previous post before this.

Cheers!

The Presentation

Day 54

The presentation was a success!

I spoke with confidence and I had fun presenting to everyone at the office.

Within time limit of 10 minutes, short, sweet and awesome.

Here are the final outputs:

Project Hellfire: Side Effects Software Attachment Project
Artist: Bryan Isaac Emmanuel
Location: Side Effects Software L.A.
Softwares: Houdini, Nuke, Photoshop
Production Duration: 2.5 months
Deadline: 25th August 2011

Project Completion: 87.5%

Improvements will be made when I feel like working again.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYs_BuitEoc

Shot Breakdown
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok7Gyy_o4yI

Apache Turntable
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEmulFFKmdc

Convoy Turntable
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuZZsI9XhSo

Thanks to the people who made this from impossible to possible:

Mentor
Steven Ong

Side Effects Supervisors
Aliza Sorotzkin
Ari Danesh
Ziggy Ostertag

Special Thanks
Charles Trippe
Dan Bodenstein
Eric Araujo
Evan Boucher
Jia Bao
Lu Sheng
Mohamed Ziyaad
Rap Cheng
Tanner Chow
Zack Zhao

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Since last year December we've been working non-stop since our year 3 modules started along with Studio Project, Final Year Project and Side Effects Software Attachment Project SESI with no breaks at all.

Nine and a half months of non-stop CG action creating visual effects and animation.

Not even a single holiday.

Well guess what,

Our flight back to Singapore is next Tuesday.

Our holiday period finally starts next Wednesday!

Day 53

Countdown to Final Presentation: 1 day

1) Prepare presentation slides. [in progress]

2) Sound FX [done]

3) Set up and render turn tables. [done]

4) Composite passes breakdown demo. [done]

5) Final MasterBeauty Composition Render. [in progress]

-

I'm re-rendering the terrain pass because I just realized it had swimming textures.

Yes I may sound calm right now but actually I'm freaking out.

-

I'll show whatever I have tomorrow.

I'll improve on project Hellfire when I return to Singapore?

Day 52

Countdown to Final Presentation: 2 days

1) Prepare presentation slides. [in progress]

2) Sound FX [in progress]

3) Set up and render turn tables. [in progress]

4) Composite passes breakdown demo. [in progress]

5) Final MasterBeauty Composition Render. [in progress]

Just a few more frames to render for my explosions.

Today we're going to visit Sony Image Works at 2pm.

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Master Beauty Test Render

Testing out edge-blurring of explosion footage in progress.

Day 51

Countdown to Final Presentation: 3 days

Here's a recap of what I must complete by this Wednesday:

1) Prepare presentation slides. [in progress]

2) Sound FX [in progress]

3) Set up and render turn tables. [in progress]

4) Composite passes breakdown demo. [pending]

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1:35 pm

Getting my turn tables ready.

Weekend 11


Announcement: Stay tuned for the finalized short film "Operation Hellfire" which I will upload onto this blog on Friday!


Till then I won't upload much pictures which might act as spoilers.


We headed back to the office yesterday and today thanks to Eric for letting us in with his key.

I've checked my renders and all that's left to render are a couple of frames of the main explosions.

An extra element that I wish to re-render tomorrow is the fog.

That's about it.

4 things I have to complete by this coming Wednesday.

1) Prepare presentation slides. [in progress]

2) Sound FX [in progress]

3) Set up and render turn tables. [pending]

4) Composite passes breakdown demo. [pending]

Day 50

This project is giving me the goosebumps of epicness as the end draws near.

This is the final run.

Here's a list of my rendering progress:

Particles

Missile Trails (Render Farm: 99%) - Everything rendering according to plan.

Convoy Dust (Render Farm: 99%) - Slight hiccup as opacity changes at mid point, tried to fix twice but didn't work. Can be fixed by just rendering a couple of frames and mixing two layers of dust in nuke.

Damaged Convoy Smoke (Render Farm: pending) - Still deciding whether to send remaining 98 frames to render farm to render due to long queue.

Machine Gun System (Workstation 12: pending) - Frames remaining, 92.

Simulations

Explosions 01, 02, 03, 04 (Render Farm: 45%) - Elapsed Time 3 days 23 hours. ETA 3 days 20 hours.

Explosion 05 (Workstation 12: 97%) - Rendering 1 frame left, frame 650 which was screwed up.

Explosion 06 (Workstation 07: 25%) - 31 frames left.

Shadows

Setting up a new file for rendering remaining explosion shadows and zdepth pass.

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11:50 am

SCREW UP ALERT! SCREW UP ALERT!

Just found this out when compositing the missile trails and convoy dust particles in nuke.

Missile trail particles and convoy dust particles have been screwed up due to wrong intensity.

However if I decrease the intensity I won't receive ANY particles.

Particles

Missile Trails -Setting up

Convoy Dust - Setting up

Damaged Convoy Smoke (Workstation 08: 1%) - Just sent to Workstation 08

Machine Gun System (Workstation 12: pending) - Frames remaining, 92.

Simulations

Explosions 01, 02, 03, 04 (Render Farm: 45%) - Elapsed Time 3 days 23 hours. ETA 3 days 20 hours.

Explosion 05 (Workstation 12: 75%) - Rendering 1 frame left, frame 650 which was screwed up.

Explosion 06 (Workstation 07: 27%) - 31 frames left.

Shadows

Setting up a new file for rendering remaining explosion shadows and zdepth pass.

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3:25 pm

Particles

Missile Trails & Convoy Dust (Workstation 12: 25%) - Everything rendering according to plan.

Damaged Convoy Smoke (Workstation 08: 80%) -Rendering according to plan.

Machine Gun System (Workstation 08: pending) -Waiting for damaged convoy smoke to finish rendering.

Simulations

Explosions 01, 02, 03, 04 (Render Farm: 46%) - Elapsed Time 4 days 03 hours. ETA 4 days 22 hours.

Explosion 05 (Workstation 12: 100%) - done

Explosion 06 (Workstation 07: 25%) - 31 frames left.

Shadows

Setting up a new file for rendering remaining explosion shadows and zdepth pass.

-

3:46 pm

Particles

Missile Trails & Convoy Dust (Workstation 12: 28%) - Rendering according to plan.

Damaged Convoy Smoke (Workstation 08: 100%) - done

Machine Gun System (Workstation 08: 15%) - Rendering according to plan

Simulations

Explosions 01, 02, 03, 04 (Render Farm: 46%) - Elapsed Time 4 days 03 hours. ETA 4 days 22 hours.

Explosion 05 (Workstation 12: 100%) - done

Explosion 06 (Workstation 07: 30%) - 27 frames left.

Shadows

Setting up a new file for rendering remaining explosion shadows and zdepth pass.

-

5:58 pm

Alright things are a little less hectic around here and I've calmed down.

I've fixed up my composited scene and solved several issues in nuke.

Particles

Missile Trails & Convoy Dust (Workstation 12: 50%) - Rendering according to plan.

Damaged Convoy Smoke (Workstation 08: 100%) - done

Machine Gun System (Workstation 08: 100%) - done

Simulations

Explosions 01, 02, 03, 04 (Render Farm: 47%) - Elapsed Time 4 days 06 hours. ETA 5 days 12 hours.

Explosion 05 (Workstation 12: 100%) - done

Explosion 06 (Workstation 07: 40%) - 26 frames left.

Shadows

Rendering beauty.EXR with Direct Shadow Matte Pass (Workstation 08: 2%) - 147 frames left.

Day 49

Updates:
1) Mini explosions for destruction of last 2 tanks. [done : monday]
2) Finalize machine gun particle system, including sprites. (Requesting help from Ziggy) [done : tuesday]
3) Fix missile trail rendering problem. [done : monday]
4) Re-render all particle simulations. [in progress : thursday]
5) Re-render shadow matte pass for whole scene. [in progress : thursday]
6) Re-render fog & ambient occlusion passes. [done : wednesday]
7) Composite rendered shadow matte, fog and ambient occlusion passes. [done : wednesday]
8) Colour correct scene in comp. [in progress : thursday]
9) Check and finalize all simulations. [done : monday]
10) Batch render all remaining simulations. [in progress : thursday]
11) Batch render zdepth [pending]

An "Intro to Houdini" class was conducted at 12pm today and just ended.

So I had to interrupt the renders on several workstations.

Now the renderings are back online and rolling.

Right now I'm still documenting my stuff and getting ready for the presentation.

Everything is going according to plan. Yeah I know I tell myself that in this blog all the time.

Why? Positive attitude man. Positive, positive, positive!

Without it nobody's gonna go home with any accomplishment.

Mr Douglas just sent in an email giving us yet another motivational push.

Thank you all who have been supporting us since Final Year Project started, followed by Project SESI.

It's a race against time and I know I can do it.

We'll all come home as champions.

Day 48

Today we received an email from our best ol' friend back in Singapore, Rap.

Thanks to him I've regained one last burst of motivational energy to finish Project Hellfire with success.

Updates:

1) Mini explosions for destruction of last 2 tanks. [done : monday]

2) Finalize machine gun particle system, including sprites. (Requesting help from Ziggy) [done : tuesday]

3) Fix missile trail rendering problem. [done : monday]

4) Re-render all particle simulations. [in progress : wednesday]

5) Re-render shadow matte pass for whole scene. [in progress : wednesday]

6) Re-render fog & ambient occlusion passes. [done : wednesday]

7) Composite rendered shadow matte, fog and ambient occlusion passes. [done : wednesday]

8) Colour correct scene in comp. [in progress : wednesday]

9) Check and finalize all simulations. [done : monday]

10) Batch render all remaining simulations. [in progress : wednesday]

11) Batch render zdepth [pending]

When I came into the office and checked the completed renders, I was like half YAY and half WTF.

My ambient occlusion and fog passes have successfully completed rendering.

That's the yay part.

The WTF part however...

My 2 small scale explosions failed to render in the render farm and the image sequence showed nothing.

BUT

I've setup the explosions to render on a machine this time and it's working out pretty well so everything is back on track.

All that's left to do now is to maintain order and stability in my rendering files and composite the completed renders that consistently come in.

At the same time, I'm documenting all my files, finding sound fx and preparing for the final presentation.

-

5:34 pm

Dan taught us the basics of using nuke today.

I'm still documenting my files.

The explosions are still being rendered in the farm at 25%.

The missile trail and convoy dust particles too at 90%.

I've been making sure the renders are stable and they are so far.

Day 47

Here's a recap of what I'll have to accomplish by tomorrow.

1) Mini explosions for destruction of last 2 tanks. [done : monday]

2) Finalize machine gun particle system, including sprites. (Requesting help from Ziggy) [done : tuesday]

3) Fix missile trail rendering problem. [done : monday]

4) Re-render all particle simulations. [in progress : tuesday]

5) Re-render shadow matte pass for whole scene. [in progress : tuesday]

6) Re-render fog & ambient occlusion passes. [in progress : tuesday]

7) Composite rendered shadow matte, fog and ambient occlusion passes. [pending]

8) Colour correct scene in comp. [in progress : tuesday]

9) Check and finalize all simulations. [done : monday]

10) Batch render all remaining simulations. [in progress : tuesday]

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11:44 am

I've just realized that once I finalize my machine gun particle system, I'm only left with rendering all my remaining stuff, sound fx and compositing!

Oh but that doesn't mean I can slack off and not improve my scene...

but well... what the heck

YEEEHAAAAAW!

Let's just pray that the renderings will be fast as I've put them into the render farm.

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3:09 pm

I've finalized the machine gun particle simulation, bullet casing drops AND smoke emission from the damaged convoy.

We've just received an email from Mr Ari stating that our presentation is next thursday and we must get everything ready by then.

Date: Thursday, August 25th.

Time: 10:00 am

1. Duration of each presentation no longer then 10 minutes.

2. Each student display their final rendered shot.

3. Show break downs of the shot.

4. Walk us through your networks and explain what were your technical challenges and how you solved them.

Now, time to setup the last few mantra nodes for batchrendering the remaining particle systems.

-

3:37 pm

Done

Alright, now it's time to make sure that everything is rendering accordingly.

This has been the longest 3 months in my life, the most worth it too.

Let's finish this.

Day 46

My simulations are somewhat done batch rendering.

However there are a couple of errors in some frames that I'll need to fix by re-rendering.

Here's a list of stuff I aim to accomplish by Wednesday.

1) Mini explosions for destruction of last 2 tanks. [done : monday]

2) Finalize machine gun particle system, including sprites. (Requesting help from Ziggy)

3) Fix missile trail rendering problem. [done : monday]

4) Re-render all particle simulations. [in progress : monday]

4) Re-render shadow matte pass for whole scene. [in progress : monday]

5) Composite rendered fog and ambient occlusion.

6) Colour correct scene in comp. [in progress : monday]

7) Check and finalize all simulations. [done : monday]

8) Batch render all remaining simulations. [in progress : monday]

-

4:28 pm

I've put in the last two smaller scale explosions for the convoy victims of the machine gun spray.

As for the composition, I have the temptation to follow Gears of War lighting style closely.

-

I've just realized why my missile trails were not showing up.

I had to bump up my keylight intensity to 250 so that the particles would finally show themselves.

Things are going according to plan and it better stay that way.

The end of Project Hellfire is near.

Weekend 10

Post reserved for 4th visitation to Hollywood.

Day 45

So we're back in the office.

After a week of crazy adventures in Vegas, Grand Canyon, Beverly Hills and Knott's Berry Farm.

I'll post my trip experiences in the post below when I have time over the weekends.

For now let's get to work.

My pyro caches are 90% complete. Just a little bit more rendering and I'll be on my way to working on the pyro shaders.

Things to accomplish today:

1) Finalize particle system for machine gun fire and shell casings.

2) Finalize pyro simulations in lighted scene.

3) Fix terrain fog.

4) Test pyro shaders.

-

7:08 pm

I've got a couple of issues in which I need to approach Ziggy for solutions next week before I can pronounce it finalized.

The fog has also been fixed thanks to Steven. I've finally managed to batch render it out.

All pyro explosion simulations in the scene has been cached out and I'm leaving them to batch render over the weekends. The shaders seem fine at their defaults. I'll tweak them if needed.

Also I'm leaving a workstation to re-render the ambient occlusion for the scene because the previous render screwed up by giving me 22 missing frames.

Screenshots and a latest flipbook sequence will be uploaded in this post soon.

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12:12 am


Project Hellfire: Final Scene Lighting/Simulation Flipbook Test 01
Artist: Bryan Isaac Emmanuel
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5l9e2rQPSk

I've planned out a list of what I have to accomplish by next wednesday:

1) Mini explosions for destruction of last 2 tanks.

2) Finalize machine gun particle system, including sprites. (Requesting help from Ziggy)

3) Fix missile trail rendering problem.

4) Re-render shadow matte pass for whole scene.

5) Composite rendered fog and ambient occlusion.

6) Check and finalize all simulations.

7) Batch render all remaining simulations.

It's gonna be a hell of a week.

Well since this is project hellfire, why the hell not?

LET'S FINISH THIS!

Post reserved for trip to Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, Beverly Hills, Hollywood and Knott's Berry Farm.

Day 40

Today's plan is to finally get the whole scene finalized with simulations and particles inside.

I didn't get the chance to explain what I did in yesterday's post so I'll explain it in today's post.

Oh and we're leaving for vegas tomorrow.

I'm feeling pumped and excited.

-

1:09 pm

Update

Machine gun fire particles emission enabled.

-

Saturday
1:11 am

I've just finished packing up my stuff for vegas and grand canyon.

We're leaving early in the morning for Universal Studios.

I'm feeling damn excited.

Here are two videos showing some new elements I've added into the scene.

1) Pyro Simulated Explosions

Note: I cached out a few frames of each simulations for testing. I've left 2 workstations to rop out the bgeo sequence of all 4 pyro simulations over the weekend. I'll see to it once I'm back from Vegas.

Project Hellfire: Simulation/ Scene
Artist: Bryan Isaac Emmanuel
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsq5bpJLFSI

2) Particle Simulated/ Driven Bullets Impact

Note: The bullet particle system is still in construction. No finalization yet till next week.

Project Hellfire: Particle Collision/ Scene
Artist: Bryan Isaac Emmanuel
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX1oFGmow-0

Thanks to Mr Ari for lending his account over to me for the basics bullets tutorial. I had to resort to some improvisations and upgrades for it to work in this scene.

Alright I'm gonna take a nap now.

VEGAS HERE I COME!!!

Day 39

I'm gonna check out the simulation file Steven provided now.

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6:52 pm

Leaving the office now, I'll talk about what I've done today when I reach home.

Day 38

A couple of things to do today:

1) Composite my render passes.

2) Set up ambient occlusion pass.

3) Test offset timing of simulation in scene.

4) Ask Ziggy for guidance in machine gun shooting particles.

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3:01 pm

I'm currently compositing my passes in nuke.

Still trying to get used to the software, mostly resorting to trial and errors.

Things are going pretty well so far.

I've managed to finally get the passes composited together for each object.

I'm still setting up the ambient occlusion scene for render.

All other objects can be rendered separately with ambient occlusion.

Both apaches however are being as stubborn as hell.

Their ambient occlusion passes refuse to be rendered out for some reason.

So if there's no other solution I'll resort to rendering out the whole scene with all objects together for one ambient occlusion pass.

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5:42 pm

I've sent the scene to the renderfarm to render out an object casted shadow layer and an ambient occlusion layer.

In the meantime, I've finally setup my compositing nuke file with all the render passes nicely in place.

Thanks to Zack for guiding me in learning nuke basics.

I've received an email from Steven which consisted of a solution to my simulation offset timing problem.

I'll check out the hip file he did tomorrow. Also, I'll proceed to doing the machine gun particles with a tutorial Ari agreed to provide using his account.

Day 37

Let's get back into action.

I've given myself sudden motivation by setting a goal and a reward.

After the success of Project Hellfire, I'll look forward to hanging out with all my childhood friends as much as I want back in Singapore.

For now, let's finish what I started.

Ziggy left for his meetings and said he'll be back to review my particle simulations.

So while waiting I'll do a couple of pyro test renders using the render farm and make some improvements to the particles myself before Ziggy comes back.

This is one of the best references I've found so far:

Apache Rocket Show
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2zx502RHCA

I'm still thinking if it's a good idea to over exaggerate the explosions from the hellfire missiles.

For the sake of awesome visual effects hmm?

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4:01 pm

Ziggy gave me some cool tips and guidance to doing a missile trail.

He showed me some references from his demo reel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0soc8xV-WA

Ziggy mentioned that when using sprites and particles to simulate smoke, always control the simulation using color, alpha and scale ramps.

Here's an important factor Ziggy asked me to take note of when working with sprites/ particles.

Sprite Alpha: Starts Transparent => Almost Opaque => Translucent => Transparent

Sprite Scale: Starts 0 => Medium => Big => Bigger

I'm still working on it and adding improvements.

I tried the method on the convoy dust emission too.

Ziggy is busy having a conference meeting with dreamworks.

I'll ask him for more advice when he's free.

Day 36

Tweaked and improved the stone shader a little.

Tanner assisted me in adding more bump and roughness to the shader.

I've made new adjustments to the pyro secondary smoke simulation.

Re-rendering main terrain overnight in the meantime.

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5.36 pm

I'll be honest.

My godbrother's passing is affecting me quite badly.

I can't concentrate that well today.

Give me till tomorrow.

I will be back to normal to ace project hellfire.