Bruce Del Porte

Getting further along on this scene. I could probably spend a couple of more weeks on this one but I'm running short on time. I'll spend the weekend polishing and probably making the whip vanishing a little smoother. Maybe even quicken the whip moving forward a frame or two if I have time. I need to move on. Scene 9 WIP

Really nice job Dhar, Shaggy has never been a more cool cat. Bravo!

He is in controlled flight, not really sledding. I tried a pass making it more randomly bumpy but it would have been a nightmare polishing secondary action. It isn't a real story point and my animating staff of me, myself, and I am already very nervous about the Christmas deadline. This is one of those cost and schedule compromises I'm just going to have to be OK with. You are right though, it would probably be cooler, maybe in the 2008 version.

What compression codec did you use and what setting for that codec? It looks like compression artifacting. Try rendering it as a TGA and see if you are still getting the pixilation.

I blocked in some of the basic poses and actions. I also blocked the jaw movement of the lip sync. I had thought of going with a sprite magic whip and included a non-animated sample to see if it looked Santa’s-Magicie enough. Sprites are always time consuming and I may have to just go with a normal whip. I’m also trying to come up with a big finish final gesture. There is still plenty to polish and I want to get the whip arm action timing closer before I start animating the whip pass itself. Critiques if you got them. blocking pass

Very cool scene Rusty, well done!

Usually the muzzle clears the stock. Is is supposed to be a flintlock? maybe give us a close-up of the action. Good start.

The buildings and street models are all of the CD. I changed the color of the window glows and added a snow material to the street. I did the shot in two passes, one with the camera moving through the canyon or buildings and borrowing a trick from a ride at Universal Studios, I shot with the sled and camera both stationary, using secondary motion and a moving background to give the sense of a flying sled. The sled is the red spot near the middle. The only 2D matte is the static stars field. In the original I did it as one shot and the camera tracked the sled through the buildings. I don't think I lose much with this simplification.

After a month long hiatus for a trip home and to do a short for the Mini-Movie Contest, I’m back on this project. The schedule took a hit but that’s show biz. Here I am testing the basic staging layout. This is a shot to introduce Santa to the audience. The mood changes from a sleeping house to the chaos of piloting a loaded flying sled, pulled by eight reindeer. Since this is the first look at Santa, the sequence is fairly long, 21 seconds. We will see Santa’s sense of urgency for the task but that he is in control like the pro he is. Santa doesn't really have a mood change himself so I think I can keep it as a medium shot the whole time. He will get his close-ups later. This is the only sequence with lip sync, the narrator will deliver his line. Next I will start to add Santa’s basic body poses and breakdowns. I will do the lip sync and facial expressions last. Sequence Nine

What is the patch count? Have to tried switching to wireframe mode?

Very cool!

What fun! Doing is the best way to learn.

Excellent character!

Thanks, I'll try it. The snow is three different passes, small, medium and large and I stagger when the are faded in. Then I stack them . This gives two visual clues for depth perception, size and stacking. I stagger them fading in trying to give the perception of it spreading from the sled, moving toward the viewer. I’ll see how it looks on the big screen. The blur is just transparency. Edit: Nancy, That edit seems to work, maybe a little more tweaking to keep it on beat. Also it shortens the scene a little. Thanks. edit

Here I've added some of Santa's magic dust turning into a Christmas eve snow, even on a clear night. This is a first pass and I've still got a bit of tweaking to do, but you get the effect I am after. Let me know what you think! With snow

After a brief hiatus I’m back at it. Sometimes life intervenes. I’m a couple of weeks behind schedule now and will have to kick it up a notch to make the end date, I’ve blocked out the rest of the POV shot where Dad first sees Santa whizzing by. I’ve still got to loosen up the reindeer a little and maybe add some magic sprite sparkle trailing the sled. I want Dad/audience to be seeing/feel the magic that even though he is in “wondering” what he is seeing, the magic tells him this is something special, this has to be Santa. In the original I shot this as a complete scene. Here I am compositing Santa and the sled onto the background. This allows me more flexibility in lighting the sled of it can be seen clearly, a problem in the last version. For the run on the ground, I mask off the sled at the edges of the buildings in Combustion. I just painted the runner marks in the snow. The stars and gradient blue sky are separate layers so I can come from behind a building against the sky. Spotting Santa

Thanks, a second check is why I post here. Does the sound level seem unusually low? One is always the last to know when their own equipment is fading. It may well be time to finish up, the dog, I'm not sure I am improving the background anymore. I like the moon better but I may go back the the first one, the sense of snow on the street seems less here. Scene Six Tweaked

Hmmmm, The line is supposed to sound like "The moon on the breast of a new fallen snow..." I don't know, can we say breast here? Sorry for the confusion. Thanks Nancy The sodium light brownish-yellow is maybe a little too urban edgy, I'm trying to add a little more Santa magic so I think I will stick with the mysterious blue. I'm still experimenting. Since I am now compositing the scene, tweaking a fixed background isn't a big time hit. I seem to be tweaking within the error band of the technology, it looks a little different on each screen I have. Thank god for deadlines. I left the shadow pass for the dog until the very end so it will track precisely.

A very cool project

No, just drag and drop the .mdl file into AM. It should show up in the objcts folder of the PWS and the model window should open. Drop it in the chor and you should be ready to go.

How absolutely Frankensteinian!

This scene is a point of view (POV) showing what a restless Dad sees as he gets up to investigate a noise outside. Already in the Christmas spirit, he is awestruck by a full moon illuminating freshly fallen snow. The noise turns out to be a stray dog. I gave AO a try and changed from the urban sodium street lighting look to a more surreal blue glow with the vanishing point taking you to the infinity of the stars. I’m not sure I completely understand AO and will experiment with it some more. Like a lot of the new features of the past couple of years (hair comes to mind), you take a big render time hit. I broke the scene up and rendered the background as a singe frame and composited the dog in. I haven’t added a shadow pass yet, I will add it in once I get the dog’s crossing finished. Scene Six

All the photos/video of the Bismarck I have seen have been B&W and I assumed it was an all battleship grey ship, I never knew it was so colorful. Nice job.

The lips and the mouth area are a big improvement. Nice job!

The music fits the drama of climbing through a window, I assume he is sneaking in. I love the look and the lighting too. Toward the end of the clip his chin seems a little too reflective, you can see I think the window strut mirrored off his face skin. Overall, a great night look.