luckbat

Hi dre4mer, thanks for remembering me! The "Ebon" project was put on hold due to lack of resources. The test scene I had been working on remains 80% complete or so, but getting that last 20% done proved beyond the limits of the technology I was working with at the time. Although I've moved on to a new celshaded project since then, I'm still strongly considering finishing the "Ebon" scene when I have some more free time, and posting it publicly. At this point, it would probably only require a couple more months' work. Just wanted you to know that I'm still out there, still doing toon-style animation.

Man, you think I'd at least test my own links before posting them. Sheesh. Fixed. Thanks Rodney.

Okay, this is going to be a little weird, animating backwards in chunks like this, but you work with what you have. So, remember shots 4 and 5, posted way back in August? Well, to that pile I add the newly completed shots 1 and 2. Not only is there no lipsync in these shots, making the title of this thread increasingly inaccurate, but since there's no sound in this new clip, I couldn't really cut it together with shots 4-5. So you'll have to do the editing in your head. Watch: Shots 1-2 (1280x720, 10.2MB) You'll notice a bit of shot 4 at the end, there. Shot 3 was removed during the storyboarding stage long ago, so with these last two clips, you now have the first four shots of the scene.

They were slain (offscreen) by an unknown assailant. Ebon lost over 20 of her "people" during the same incident. It's all in the script: http://ebon.org/about/

New (and hopefully final) 720p version of shots 4 and 5: http://ebon.org/images/forForums/Shots4-5_...-2_1280x720.mov Changes in this edition: DOF rack-focus now more visually accurate Slight remodeling of Ebon's lower lip; new "mouth-corners" pose added Laborious keyframe revisions so minor as to be imperceptible to everyone but Robcat Room tone, some SFX added; all dialog replaced with alternate takes for some reason

Oh, they are, but fast is relative when the shot is 25 seconds long, and you're rendering at 1280x720. The toon lines take a little over one minute per frame to render, which is good, but that's still 600 minutes, which definitely makes it an overnight render. The set is rarely a problem to render, because for most shots, it's only a still frame. That, plus the fact that I made sure that all the lights in the set are either Z-buffered or non-shadow-casting. The real time-killer is the raytraced sunlight. I gave up when I started seeing 30-minute-per-frame render times. In the end I went with ambient-light maps on the walls, and a separate volumetrics layer rendered out at quarter-res, scaled up and blurred. Even at quarter-res, the five-second volumetric layer in shot 5 took 36 hours. The set uses true DOF, since I don't have a depth map. The characters are rack-focused in post.

Just for "fun," I decided to render out shots 4 and 5 at 1280x720, the final resolution that this project will be mastered at. It was a demanding test of my entire production workflow, and it forced me to refine many of the techniques I've been using to put this animation together. It also brought my computer to its knees--the 25-second sequence you see here represents many, many overnight renders composited together. Just how big is a 720p animation? Oh, it's pretty big. (I took the liberty of generating a 720x400 version for those of you without the latest hardware--at least you'll be able see what these two shots would look like on DVD...) Download: FULL-RES 1280x720 version (h.264) Download: DVD-RES 720x400 version (divx) NOTE: These clips are out of date--There's a newer one at the bottom of this page...

The line thickness is 0.7, and the bias varies from group to group. I render lines separately at 720p for these test renders, and downscale them in post. The final short will likely be done at 720p, so I'll render the lines at 1080p for that—they'll look a little thicker than they do in this test. No settings for the toon shader; I use regular lighting.

Here is the full 16-second version of the shot. I still have a few tweaks left to make, but this is pretty much it. Three lines of dialog down, eight left to go. http://ebon.org/images/forForums/lipsync_shot11-2.mov

That's correct--you may be thinking of this thread: http://migrate.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=15373 That was a couple of server migrations ago though, so some of those older movie clips are lost to the sands of time...

That wouldn't surprise me. But with keyframes already built for 24 fps, re-optimizing the animation for 12 would be no small undertaking. I promise to do some tests, though, and if 12fps ends up looking better, I'll consider making it my standard on subsequent shorts. Yes, they are. Agreed. I was supposed to do a blink pass, but I forgot!

Hey folks. Just wanted to pop by, in case anyone was wondering where I'd gone, or heard I'd switched to another app, or something. Rest assured I'm still plugging away, spending my nights and weekends in A:M, bringing "Ebon" to life. Here's a new lipsync test, for example: Six-second clip (1.6MB): http://ebon.org/images/forForums/lipsync_shot11-1.mov There are a number of reasons why I haven't been around much lately--one of them is simply that I've been posting my work-in-progress details on my own production blog instead of here. Nothing personal, honest! It's all part of the publicity-building machinery, laying the groundwork for even more ambitious animation projects to come. In the future. If I ever finish this short. Anyway, I hope you're all well, and do let me know if you have any questions...

Sorry folks, the company's making me work over the weekend. Gonna hafta postpone it again. Looks like the response has been pretty sparse anyway, probably because of the holidays. Maybe January would be better. Apologies...

See: Control Point Weights

Hey folks, we're long overdue for another meeting! What say everyone to Saturday, November 18th at noon? Let's vote!