itsjustme

Thanks!

I got a great grin out of this one, John. Very cool.

I don't remember the render times for each AO setting, but (using 16 passes), AO at 70 percent quality with the three sun lights was about 1 hour and 45 minutes (of course, the time gets faster as you reduce the quality), with the 17 bulb light rig and the three suns was close to 1 hour and just the three sun lights without any ambient light was about 18 minutes. I'm not too concerned about the render times since I'll be compositing Bertram into the scene. Also, my render times are pretty high due to the underpowered laptop I'm currently using.

I think I didn't write that very clearly...the test images start at 30 percent and go to 70 percent in increments of 5 (I'll tweak the original wording).

I rendered the smoking area with AO only with a white Ambiance Color to better see the AO grain. The quality settings (for these test images) go from 30 percent to 70 percent in increments of 5. If I were to stay with AO, the lowest setting I like is 65, but I still prefer 70. I've added the renders in the attached ZIP file as individual images and as layers in a GIMP XCF file for comparison (you can just hide layers in GIMP to A/B each setting). I then set up a 17 light hemisphere of blue bulbs to replace the AO and the render time was reduced considerably. I also reduced the saturation of the yellow sun light and put the present version of Bertram in the shade to see what it would look like...attached is that test as well. There is still a lot to work on...it needs bounce lights, possibly a couple of fill lights, etc. I'll also need to finish Bertram so that I can see how he will really look in a closeup in the shade (texturing will help). So, I'll have to start making some decisions about how the final Bertram will look. AO_quality_percentage_tests_10_16_2014.zip

Looks great, Robert!

You could use bones.

70% has given me great results with purely AO renders, but it could probably be reduced...I haven't experimented with turning it down for this scene yet.

I'm doing some borrowing of methods used by Rodger Reynolds, Stian and Yves...in combination. There are three kliegs that make up the sun, the yellowish shadow casting sun, a blue non-shadowcasting sun and a negative blue shadowcasting sun. The yellowish sun is positioned 140,000 inches (about 2.2 miles) above the ground and the other two sun kliegs are set to "translate to" and "orient like" it. Then, the Choreography has the "Global Ambiance Type" set to "Global Color" set to the same blue color and the AO is set to "70% Occlusion Sampling" in the render settings. I've added captures of the settings at the end of this post. I still haven't added bounce lights, so it's lacking that for now. To possibly decrease render time, you could try a blue skylight rig to replace AO. Hope that helps, Steve.

It's been a few weeks, so I posted what little I have to show on the smoking area here: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=38232&p=399990

I started messing with the lighting for the smoking area...not much to look at yet, but it will hopefully get better.

His blog is one of the many in my newsreader: http://www.tomrichmond.com/blog/ Love his work.

Looks great!

Yessir.

I use a modified "T" pose like Robert suggested. The arms are raised as high as they can go without raising the shoulders. For me, it makes weighting the shoulders easier. Just my preference.

I'm guessing that you could get less jittering using some tweaking of frames...manually slowing frames down (go from 24 fps to 1 fps gradually). I haven't tried it, but it makes sense in my head.

Life has gotten in the way quite a bit, but some of the delay is me. I'm going to make an effort to speed this up...I should have been done a long time ago.

It's not central to the story, but the dishwasher will be opened. The intent is to have the break room contrast the smoking area (which I'm going to dirty up quite a bit).

I added a dishwasher to the break room here: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=39819&p=399758

I added a dishwasher to the break room.

Sounds great and is a fantastic start! Good luck, guys!

I like the top one better than the bottom...so I'll guess the top one is AO.

Looks great!

It should just be a matter of importing the model into the new installation rig, opening the Action you have been working on and continue from where you left off.

I import the model into the installation rig, Jeff. I'm not sure if that will cure the problem, but that is the way I do it. I don't remember ever having that happen. Hope that helps.