frosteternal

Yep. One town had a better solution.. They put a spike in the coffin lids...once the casket closed, there was no chance of being buried alive. That is efficiency - it gets right to the heart of the problem. =)

Okay, my Senior Project is done! I developed this story over 8 years ago, and then went back into preproduction ~6 months ago. I'm finally proud of how the project has turned out! =) You can view the final version on my vimeo account... http://www.vimeo.com/20595638

Thanks! I'm very proud of this one. Just wait until you all see the final cut with sound fixes and everything! I can't release it just yet but it is much, much better than this rough cut =) Thanks for the feedback!

DONE! Well, mostly. The main stuff is complete, just some extra finesse and sound work left to be completed. The animation, however is 99% complete. Altering the too-drastic focus pull at the end, it is too abrupt, also changing the lighting on that end shot to be more yellowy. Also re-rendering a high-quality opening shot (I've been using a proxy video file to save time) week7.mov

The optimism and cheer continues! Week 6 saw the wrap up of the gun sequence, and the next attempt : bleach. This project should have all the main shots completed over the next two weeks, and then it's just audio, edit, and some re-render & cleanup tweaks. Hooray for tight production schedules. =/ week6.mov

The models are of 'actual' size. The female is like 5' 10". All of the rest is in relative proportion. Now that you mentioned it I remember doing something with the SSS and comped it out in photoshop. I wasn't excited with the result though because I've seen render marquees of the actual SSS and it much much much better. It's just that once I see something I really liked I HAD to attain it again no matter what and render it to final and not settle for something less. I tried rendering it separately with the other models turned off and SSS turned on and it doesn't take that much time at all so I'm thinking I'm missing a lot. To me SSS is like a reward for my hard work. I'll definitely look into rendering separate AO for animation. But for still I defintely want to go with the real SSS or none at all which I'm not that excited and feel less rewarded. The "actual size" model is what's killing your sss renders. I am 99% certain. Sss uses the physical size of your model in the calculations and needs more memory for a physically larger model. This may have been accomodatwd in later versions of am...sss was brand new. Def see about rendering on someone else's machine .. Your work is gorgeously detailed and would be a shame to skimp on rendering. In the future, I recommend building at smaller scalws...am will be happier and your renders will often be quicker too. I learned that the hard way.Best of luck to you!

The problem was stabilized in later versions of the program, but the actual model - NOT the choreography instance, had to be scaled down. That was a pain but that's the only way "The Mountain" got rendered. =) (and I added more ram too.)

Exception #10 is an out of memory problem. Back with v14 it often was related to SSS. The biggest problem I was having was that my models with SSS were "huge" - I had built them to life-sized scale within the program (my character was literally several meters tall in the program's units), and since SSS is physically based, it was sending the memory and render requirements through the roof. Your character is VERY patch-heavy. You can sort of render SSS separately by rendering elements that contain it apart from the rest of the scene. Another thing your could try is render one without SSS, and another with SSS with very high half-extinction values - this will make a very waxy and soft render, but it renders with less memory and time and you can comp that translucently on top of the non-sss render to find a happy medium between the two. And you can definitely render AO separately, that's done all the time in the pro world. The best solution for your specs would be multiple layers to composite.

...and Week 5, just finished rendering last night. =) Off to class today for weekly critiques. Week5.mov

It really sounds like it could be related to a low memory issue. I remember 14c or so gave me a similar problem, using SSS. Or it could be an internal patch + memory issue. If indeed you can render out parts of the scene separately, render them with an Alpha channel. This will make it easy to composite back together in AfterEffects. The pros do this all the time, even Pixar and such. Sorry it's been so frustrating!

Okie-dokie, this is the Week 4 addition... tonight I'm finishing up the shots for week 5. Almost caught up (although I did build some padding into my schedule anyhow.) Week4.mov

I came down with my once-a-year cold last week, and was unable to work. Boo. This put me lightly behind, so last week's scene (the noose attempt) will be posted as soon as the renders are done. (SSS runs sllllloooooowwww on extreme close-ups but looks soooo good!) Then on to the next suicide attempt. So ideally, they'll be two updates this week. In other news - my little sister gets married this Saturday!! I'm excited but working like a madman on my classes to get ahead so the out of town festivities don't put me further behind! This is week 5 of classes, out of only 11 weeks. Almost graduated...

That reminds me, I have to re-record the narration. It's from ten years ago and I used kinda crappy equipment. =P Thanks!

Okay, Week Three is done, I'll probably work ahead of schedule rather than fall behind. I've included the Week 1& 2 parts as well. Thanks for all the encouraging compliments, I'm under a ton of pressure with this project. =) roughWeek3.mov

Back to class, LAST QUARTER EVER!!! I'm on a tight schedule for wrapping up this project. =) This is good, I thrive under pressure. Each Thursday I show a work-in-progress to my class/instructor. This is this weeks'...a combo of week 1 and week 2. Except some rough sound, this is pretty much final render stuff, visually. I've decided to render piecemeal to help keep on schedule, so no long week of rendering at the end of it all. Note: for some reason Quicktime ignores my pixel aspect ratio settings, so it may be squished horizontally. edit: fixed the aspect ratio problem roughWeek2.mov

Nice, Nancy. (I always thought those "lion cuts" are ridiculous.) This is a fun, very "you" sort of character. Can't wait to see the animation =)

I like that one very much... nice looking character, nice storyline and even in this pre-finished state it is looking great. Polish it a little bit up and it will be extremly well received. Keep on rocking! See you *Fuchur* Thanks! My instructor described it as "taking this really morbid subject and making it cute...which makes it even more creepy" I take that as a compliment. =) Thanks for your encouraging words!

This is the first rough cut. For class, by um...one week ago, I had to piece together a rough version of the film for review. The sound is 80% there, the timing is 75% and the narration is going to be re-recorded. The backgrounds aren't all done, and the animation is obviously at like 10%. (I have about 4 months to have it done and polished and beautiful. I LOVE deadlines.) roughcut1.mov Enjoy.

Thanks! I'll have to check out your film suggestion, never saw that one.

Been busy working on this and my portfolio for school, so I haven't had a terrible amount of extra time to post. Here's Garret in his library, just finished the chair and library set. Most sets are 2.5-D with Photoshop and AE but the library/fireplace shot requires a drastically rotating camera and thus needs a full 3D set.

So, I am now in my last two quarters, and for my Senior Project (a 2 quarter course) I have been given the green light to re-make a very old animation I did years ago. The original piece (keep in mind, I was working on borrowed computers and living on a friend's couch at the time) is posted below: garrett.mov My original poem will remain the same, but I was never happy with the way this one turned out. My instructor is very excited about the piece. I'll be doing all the character work in A:M and building sets in Photoshop to composite in AE. My major is Visual Effects & Motion Graphics, so I do want to keep the animation somewhat stylized, but not quite so...um...crappy. Yay. The first order of business was to re-model the main character. Pic below... I also drew all new storyboards, which have more interesting actions and expressions on the part of the main character. Hooray for progress.

These are the "breakdowns" showing how the film was generally accomplished (required for our class) Great fun, kind of a behind-the-scenes montage. breakDowns.mov

Okay, done with most of the project, just fine-tuning here and there. =) Yay. lowres.mov

Okay, bedtime! Here's the so-far: lowres.mov

Thanks for all the comments, WD40tini LOL =) Chugging along here, rendered out a low-res of the work so far, with compositing, proper shading etc. Working on the next scene now... lowres.mov