cosmonaut
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Posts posted by cosmonaut
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I must admit I was also tweaking tinman to look better for that shot when I was working on it, he is definately way "too hot" now. Especially that face, I bet you could cook an egg on that thing. Are you rendering multipass or abuffer, Colin? Also, you are rendering that shot larger than it needs to be, I was getting around 17-18 minute render times with 16 passes and soft reflections (could also be a computer perfomance thing).
I'm with Colin, this is a BIIIIIIIIIIIIIGGGGGGGGGGG issue. Lighting across the other sequences probably can vary in quality without too much impact, but these 2 sequences take place in the same exact place under similar conditions, we need to come up with a simliar look.
As far as Martin's comments, yes, I'm using light lists all over the place, but they do have limitations. They're difficult to use when you have lighting in an action (what the heck do I drag in to the light list?). I also think they would be more useful if they didn't (or at least made it opitional) render shadows for lights not in an object's light lists (this is causing me major grief with rendering hair ... shadow generation is still taking into account hair when I don't want it to). I'm not using any raytraced shadows ... still too slow to get decent quality. Zbuffer all the way baby. And I am changing the lighting from scene to scene. I'm somewhat conflicted with that, I know what Colin is trying to do with getting consistent lighting across all the shots, but doing that seems to limit the ability to get creative/artistic/dramatic with the lighting. However, doing it the other way is proving ... difficult. How are these things done in commercial production?
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Cool
... not your problems but the window, looking forward to seeing it.
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Any luck getting your problems resolved Colin? Any chance you'll have the rest of the stained glass window done soon?
Kevin
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I was gonna texture that one tonight since it shows up again in the shot I'm working on right now (1_03_04) and it's bugging me.
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YES! Go for it Jeff. And while you are at it, can you do the same thing to Tin Servent (you did texture him right)?
That was Patason Brooks who did Tin Servant. He's mostly decals now, isn't he?
Shoot, that's right. And no, his shirt and pants are both darktree materials still and are causing some issues.
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I think the hair density on all the Hairy characters is to high. I first noticed it on the green monkey. We should use a thicker hair and go with much less dense hair. It'll look and read better and render much faster. I can play with this until my issue with loading Castle files gets fixed if you want me to.
Go for it, the more experimenting the better ... but what's wrong with my monkey
I agree that it will render faster ... and will probably read better (due to shadowing issues that will hopefully be fixed in version 14) but I'm not sure it will look better. I always had problems whenever the roots are visible with thick hair. What we really need is deep shadow maps (to fix the shadowing issues) and clumping. Anyway, let's see what you come up with.
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YES! Go for it Jeff. And while you are at it, can you do the same thing to Tin Servent (you did texture him right)?
Kevin
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About Woot hair density, This will probably have to be adjusted according to how close the camera is to the subject. For medium shots, the current density is probably too high. But I have a couple close-up shots in 1_02 and the density seemed right in those shots. (And BTW, I still like Woot's red hair)
I think I'm the one who probably set that super high density in the first place ... Just out of curiosity, why can't I animate hair density? In order to do what you are proposing Yves, I tried to go in and adjust the density property in the chor and it wasn't there! I also tried doing the same thing with a pose slider ... no go.
Also, do we have any simcloth experts? Seems like we need some effects TD's to handle that side of things, I don't have time to try and figure out how to make Tin Servant's cape move properly, anyway all my experiments with simcloth have ended badly...
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What kind of errors were you getting Colin? I just updated and saw what appears to be your changes, everything seemed to open fine on my end...
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Coming along nicely Jeff. I say go for some crows feet around her eyes...
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Looks like we've got some more swimming/shimmering textures. The texture on woot's arm and the servant's pants and shirt probably need to be fixed. Also, we might need to lower the hair count on Woot's head, it's so thick right now that you can't make out any individual hairs, it looks like one big blob. Anyway, here's what I've got so far...
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Ah, excellent, that's exactly what I wanted to hear. I'm sure you'll do another great job.
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I started lighting this scene yesterday, just to see how it might look, Didn't get very far at all but I let it render while I was out. Rendering was just abuffer and this is what I got. I think in order to at least get our main characters looking like they belong in the same universe we should all prod Nancy until she agrees to texture scarecrow. What we've got on him now isn't really working, notice the major shimmering in the animation on his face. Granted rendering out a 16 passer with softening on might take care of some of it (and I've got some serious shadowing issues under his hat right now) but next to Woot and Tinwoodsman, Scarecrow is looking a little plain. What da ya say Nancy? Tired of texturing yet? Anyway, I got assigned by Martin to light the beginning of seq 3 so it'll be a while before I return to this shot....
Kevin
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I think the floor already has some reflection, maybe 10%. We could probably bump that up. We need to finalize the texturing of the throne room pretty soon. Wasn't there some talk of adding some chairs/tapestries to the background?
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I also like it...
I like it, Colin. But what do you guys think about having only the upper portions being stained glass, and letting the lower panes look out upon the kingdom?
How about a magic window since this is oz? It can turn transparent so they can look out when they want to?
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Ok Colin, I've checked in my changes (all of them). You can take a look at my lighting setup now.
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That is worth testing. At some point someone is going to need to decide though. We don't want everybody to start modifying Tin Woodman. But seeing the results of different experimentations and approaches will help take a final decision.
I agree, and anyways, all this experimentin is fun...
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Lookin real good Colin. One thing that is really bugging me though is his eyes (I don't think it's related to the lighting) . I can't for the life of me tell where he is looking most of the time and the blinks look really, really odd. Maybe they will look better with the textured version.
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Nancy, it's possible I had screwed the should pad material somewhere (though I don't think so). Not sure why it looks so orange, could it be because it has and env around it to reflect now?
Yves, I'll play around with those values tonight (unless someone beats me to it). Is it just me or do those strong reflections all over make him look less tin-manly and a lot skinnier? Maybe we could turn off or reduce the reflection on his torso (except for the heart door), upper arms, and shoulder pads? Again, I'll play around tonight.
Colin, I'll try to upload the changes tonight so you can take a look at what I've done. I somehow need to transfer the lighting to an action but I can do that later on I think. I just need to do some clean up and try to properly name my lights (not very uselful when all lights are named light<#>). 3.5 minutes? Is that with 16 multipass? That ain't half bad
I'm anxious to see how those faked reflections turn out. I assume you are going to upload a fixed version of the throne with the bump maps? And oh yeah, lots of gas now 
DeeJay, thanks. I agree the carpet needs something. I'm not too fond of the color and I'm not sure it has anything besides diffuse on it. In fact, we are still making lots of texture changes to the set, The columns in the background still need work as well along with that axe. Still lots of work to do but things are starting to come together...
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Thanks Colin, already downloaded and played with. Below is my latest attempt (no reflections for now).
Actually, after looking at the three again, I think you are right about the soft reflections being the best, except for the beard like Colin said. In fact, I think it was the beard (and the rest of the face to a lesser degree) that was distracting me the most. The rest of the reflections do look quite nice. I tried another render (which I unfortunately am redoing right now) with multipass at 16 and soft reflections at 30% and it only took 17 minutes, which really isn't too bad. Couple that with multithreaded renders in V14 and the renderfarm and it might actually be doable. Closeups would probably be quite a bit longer, but I guess we'll just have to see. Are you still doing that closeup shot Colin? Maybe those large reflections are what is taking so much time? As far as the rest of my render settings go, I'm only using kliegs and zbuffered shadows with a 512 maps size and probably a 10% blur in most cases (I think I have one light that is using a 1024 map). ABuffer renderer final - shadows and plugin shaders on, all other settings off. There's no hair in the throne room set is there?
Oh yeah, go ahead and finish the rest of the window, I haven't done anything on it.
update, here's a 9x9 soften-multipass rendering with soft reflections, only took about 12 minutes. Not bad, and it got rid of some of the jaggies on the throne and axe. Now, if we can only do something about that beard and face...
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No idea what happened to the sound. I don't hear munchkins still but it does sound different than the wav. I'm assuming quicktime did that when it compressed everything. I'll see if I can improve that next time.
So I did a few test renders last night with the new Tinwoodsman. I fixed the banding on the carpet (shadow bias), added a fill light for his shadows, and made a few other tweaks as well. For comparison I rendered 3 versions, one with reflections, one with soft reflections, and one with no reflections. To be honest, I prefer the 1onewith no reflections (except for maybe the arms and boots) and I don't really see much difference with the soft reflections (except for taking the render time from 2-1/2 minutes to 30 minutes @ 40%!). Anyway, just my opinion. BTW, what happened to his eyes? They are just tin balls now...not very appealing, maybe they were lost in that problem Noel fixed?
Kevin
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Ok, here's a fixed version with the proper sound. Still no idea why you would be getting Munchkin voices. I checked and everything was done at 24 fps.
I'm working on some tests with the Tinman Nancy uploaded, should have something soon. Did you ever upload the throne, Colin?
Kevin
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Thanks Dhar, Paul and Martin.
Paul, I was pulling things in with quicktime pro to create the movie, I must've just linked the wav file instead of actually embedding the sound, whoops, I'll try to fix that tonight .... no PS work on the animation, never got around to it, those are the frames straight from AM.
The sound is sped up Martin? not sure about that, maybe I screwed up the frame rate, it should just be the current sound track.
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Quite a few comments, thanks for the feedback. Finished rendering out the animated scene ... ignore the camera move for now, I screwed that up at the end...
Ken and Jim, Colin is lighting scene 5, I'm lighting scene 3, both of which take place in the throne room.
Jim, thanks. You are right about the tinman's shadow, it's getting no light whatsoever right now, it was on my todo list. Good suggestion on rendering large and scaling back down, I might give that a try later to see if fixes some of the aliasing issues on the throne/axe. I think the softness you are talking about is the subtle bloom I tried to add in photoshop after it was done rendering (just experimenting).
Colin, this scene takes place at dusk. There is a lot of light coming in from the windows, notice the bluish hue on the columns. I might need to make it brighter though. I'm also not sure why the windows are so dark (I've had more trouble with those windows...maybe your changes will help), it's got the same skydome behind it that yves used for scene 2 I believe. I also think I added that monochromatic warm tone when playing around in post (though some of my lights probably could be cooler). Not sure what's causing the banding, could be the shadow bias (doesn't appear to cause too much trouble in the animation does it???). Also, the tinman I'm using has a very strong fresnel effect right now from my experimenting earlier. I'd really like to see how Nancy's finished Tinman looks.
Thanks Yves, I'll have to see if I can work on getting Tinman more prominent. Part of the problem might be that really strong red color on the throne really catches your eye. Might have to dial that back a bit...
Thanks Martin
Al, where do you want the torch light? Down that hallway? I already have a really strong rim light on Tinman and I know it doesn't really show up... this is why I hate reflective materials, they are so dang hard to light properly. I'll play around with it some more to see what I can do. Do we really want that much Tin? I like the carpet idea but I think Colin may have already made some changes (?).
The Goose
in TWO Texturing
Posted
That's one fine looking goose....