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.

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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.

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1:09 pm

Update

Machine gun fire particles emission enabled.

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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.