the count down for the end of this journey has begun, with only 3 weeks left, the tension is rising and the excitement of finally putting the film has taken over the team. 17 shots have been fully post produced, and 4 shots are currently rendering, which means we finished the film with time to spare for errors and re-renders, which is better than we hoped.
for the most part, the shots i have rendered came out spectacular, with barely any errors to mention, but there were the exceptions.
this was a picture i took of one of the shots that was rendering in the campus farm, for some, they wouldn't notice that the bone controllers are rendering here, when they shouldn't be. the pink lines over the leaf are never meant to show in the final renders, which sent me into a panic state, as i had a deadline to meet and i couldn't afford getting a strike for it. what occurred to me at the time was contacting my professor, but he doesn't answer during the weekend, so i had to improvise, and that improvisation saved me a lot of time and stress.
i resulted to using an online farm by the name of Fox Render farm https://www.foxrenderfarm.com/ , it is a great service that offers students a discount that helps them go through their renders at a cheaper price, as well as providing however many nodes (rendering elements, each node renders a frame) when asked to.
i found this farm last year, during one of my other projects that urgently needed rendering, and they never fail to provide the best help there is. i stay in contact with the team on Skype and from there we discuss each shot that is submitted, if there are any errors or missing factors, and the occasional technical difficulties which their IT team always handles with care.
the shot that was previously faulty was rendered in a matter of minutes, as all the frames were rendering at once, so the shot was done in about 20 minutes. the cost of shots like these is usually high, but with the settings we put into the shots, it only cost me $30 to render, which is a blessing. needless to say, Fox is a great alternative for shots that need to be rendered quickly.
apart from the happenings with online cloud rendering, i also came across another issue that i tackled mess-free. one of the shots i rendered had a missing texture, and i had to submit it on that night, so i had to act fast, and what better way to do it than manually masking the area and inserting the texture in.
the chair in this shot is missing a dark oak wood texture, which i hadn't noticed when doing the test renders. now this would have been an issue if the shot wasn't as short as it was done, which is about 50 frames, with that, i proceeded to manually mask the area out and inserted a texture underneath.
With that done, the shot was rendered, and in motion looks like this -
the texture can barely be made out, especially with the movement of the trolley in front of the chair, so i am happy with this final result!
in terms of new knowledge i have acquired this week, i stumbled upon a site that provided some great knowledge in terms of lighting a CG environment, as our shots needed to reflect a specific mood, which is romantic and warm. "some lighting options are best used in outdoor scenes while others look better in indoor scenes. There are light options that are suitable for studio lighting and others that should be used for 3D animations." (Lee,2019) our environment is a blend of indoor and outdoor lighting, which didn't only mean we needed lights inside the lobby, but we needed the sun to come into play. the way we set up the sun was a sunset position, so the area was golden and warm, just as we intended it, with the sun positioned, we also inserted some yellow and orange lights int he shot as bulbs on the ceiling, which helped us reach the result seen in the shot above.
we used an array of different lights for each shot, some shots required the characters to have a rim light of their own to help them stand out from the dense environment, and shot required lights to be turned off in order to achieve the right ambience, this all depends on the position of the camera. when the camera is facing the sun's direction, the exposure had to be bumped up to prevent burning in the scene, and when the camera was facing away, the exposure was toned down to allow more light to bleed through.
non of the shots had similar settings, each one needed testing of it's own and adjustments that follow, which is why rendering is a big step of the production pipeline. i would dedicate a whole day for each shot, making sure the settings are good, the lights are on, shadows are being cast and nothing burned, when all that is done, it's a matter of minutes to submit it to render in the campus farm.
in terms of extra work, i have been contacted by my previous professor about a collaboration with a team he is teaching, they needed a concept artist and i was happy to oblige, here is the concepts we are working on
they asked for a wisp design, i did some sketches and sent them over, they didn't want eyes on these guys so i will be refining them and i should be able to start on the model sheet!
that is about what I've been up to, testing, rendering, adjustment and submission, which sounds like a tedious cycle but is actually quite relaxing. we estimate our remaining shots to be done by the end of this week, so until then, i shall keep working.
REFERENCES
Lee, T. (2019, March 17). Lights and Shadows: CG Lighting Types for 3D Animation [Online forum post]. Academy of Animated Art. https://academyofanimatedart.com/lights-and-shadows-cg-lighting-types-for-3d-animation/