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„Chicory and Coffee“


kikiriki

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These images ... are easily some of the most beautiful, lifelike 3D art I've ever seen! :)

 

Every picture looks like photo of handcarved figurines and objects. The characters' designs have the power to bring laughter and tears. Those designs are then faithfully rendered in three dimensions with skill and impeccable taste. It's A+ quality work all the way down the pipeline.

 

Also, it's a tribute to the creators of the magnificent 3D tool A:M and the skilled users who make the best use of it.

 

Somebody needs to be paying you gobs of money to make this happen. :lol: Awesome work!

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I like the cat in that last image! Did you use hair?

 

Okay just STOP IT now. The gig is up, the cat's out of the bag, these are carved wooden figures right? You've got some studio set up with a bunch of tiny sets and figures carved by local craftsmen? I know that bread on the table is real... I could smell it when I loaded the image!

 

;)

 

p.s. By the way the guy reflected in the shop window looks exactly like me when I had hair... you've been snooping through my old photo albums haven't you?

 

-vern

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the chair is not on the ground...

 

That is a result of too many layers of polyurethane and floor wax build up. It is just an illusion. Or it's a layer of Plexiglas to protect the set while posing the stop motion figures.

 

;)

 

Okay, I've taken that whole thing way to far now. I'll stop... although... I was going to explain how wireframes were projected on to the unpainted carvings...

 

I've said it before... stylistically this goes beyond ANY 3D rendering done in ANY application. It's more than the tools folks... having the best tool really helps of course. ;)

 

I will go and sob quietly in the corner now.

 

-vern

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the chair is not on the ground...

 

That is a result of too many layers of polyurethane and floor wax build up. It is just an illusion. Or it's a layer of Plexiglas to protect the set while posing the stop motion figures.

 

;)

 

Okay, I've taken that whole thing way to far now. I'll stop... although... I was going to explain how wireframes were projected on to the unpainted carvings...

 

I've said it before... stylistically this goes beyond ANY 3D rendering done in ANY application. It's more than the tools folks... having the best tool really helps of course. ;)

 

I will go and sob quietly in the corner now.

 

-vern

 

because the chair is lopsided? or he's putting weight on the front of the chair? i dunno, it looks ok to me.

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Thank you very much for all that nice compliments!

I really needed that to give me a little push to continue.

 

All those renderings are just for test and I'm aware that there are still quite a few problems. So it is official- it is an error! The chair in this image is lifted off the ground and this was not a common for a Slovenian chair at the beginning of 20th century :-)

But none of those pictures won't be on the final movie anyway. Last couple of weeks I'm mostly testing lights (Which is something I really don't like to do). I would like to get a specific “mood”, which is actually relatively easy if you are using Ambient Occlusion and IBL! But rendertimes are just to high! For the image above it took almost 4 hours to render (1600x900pix)! And there are still a lot of props and characters missing (and the exterior with a cat is for now just a photo of some barnyard I found on the Internet. So Vern- yes the cat has a real fur :-)). Means that the whole 7 minutes of movie would render almost 5 years on my computer. OK- I'm planning to get a small render-farm, but I will still have to make a lot of compromises to render the film in a couple of months (I will probably use AO only for the characters and not for the static objects in the scene). So (unfortunately) the final images probably won't look as good as this one :-(

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If the story and animation are half as good as the models and renders, then it would be a serious contender for an Oscar in the short animated series.

 

Excellent work, and look to seeing much, much more...

Al

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Man!

 

I would hate to think this project will not be "as good" because Dusan doesn't have enough rendering power... I wonder if there would be anything that the AM community could do to help out?

 

Just imagine this rendered with all the bells and whistles!

 

-vern

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I happen to have a render farm of 10 systems i'd be willing to donate some time, maybe for a render farm credit at the end? Vern is right there is no reason the visuals should have to suffer due to render constraints for something like this. The AM community has the resources.

 

If he's interested we could probably arrange something, also unless he's planning to take it to theaters isn't 1600x900 a bit unneccesary?

 

-Ethan

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You guys are the greatest! Really! :-)

Thank you for offering me your help- specially to you Ethan for services of your renderfarm! I really appreciate that! And I might really use it! :-) I got the similar offer from the Martin a while ago to use Hash renderfarm. But I'm not sure if this is technicaly possible, since I'm kind of a control-freak and I like to constantly inspect the progress of every image :-) I'm very often stopping the rendering process in the middle, and change a small detail and start rendering all over again...

 

I think I would drive you nuts if I will ask you to re-render the whole scene because of some minor thing that you won't even noticed (after a weeks of rendering) :-)

 

About a Hi-res images. This film is intended for film festivals and I'm planning to transfer it to 35mm film. In next week or two I will make couple of tests on 35mm film with different resolutions. Then I will go to the local cinema and ask the operator to project them on the big screen so that I could see if there is actually a visible difference between 1600x900pix or 1200x675pix (which is exactly 50% smaller). Or maybe I can go even lower than that! (Perk was transferred to 35mm and it didn't look bad on a big screen even though it was only 720x576 pix. Far from Pixar quality, but still decent). At the same time I will also test the difference between the COLORS on my LCD monitor and on the big screen.

 

If someone is interested I will post my findings here. (I strongly believe that TWO movie should be rendered in a bigger resolution than NTSC. If the movie will become a hit it could be easily transferred to film).

 

About the story- I believe that we have a very strong story. Otherwise I wouldn't even start the whole project! And we also have a great music. (You will see the animatik on our webpage).

I'm not so sure about my animation skills (last couple of years I was mostly playing a role of director and organiser in our studio- others were doing the fun things like animating. So I hope I'm not to rusty... :-))

 

Thank you all again- I is a great feeling to inspire someone who also inspire me!

 

I have just finished one more test. I think I'm pretty close to the lighting mood I want in the movie...

(credits: modeling: Uros Hohkraut, texturing: Uros, Dusan, Lighting: Dusan)

stove_edited_.JPG

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Where can we learn more about this 'environment shader'???

 

I don't know if it is part of the A:M yet, but I'm beta testing it for almost a year.

 

Please look at the Models Surface properties- under the Ambiance Shader you should have a Environment option. This Environment Shader works similar as Environment material, except it shows over the decals and doesn't fade out with transparency (which means it could be usefull for faking reflections in glass).

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-QUESTION: The overall grainy appearance to the renders this is entirely done in A:M?

 

Grainy look is because of low AO sampling rate (10%). I like that- it gives a real "film-look" :-)

 

Yes- it is entirely done in A:M. But with a little help of EXR images and A:M composite (exosure adjustments, bloom post-effect...)

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man i am completely in love with the lighting, care to give any tips?

 

Huh... tips... I don't know... just tweak the lights, materials etc... for hours, days... weeks... until they look as you imagine them in your head. :-)

 

Open EXR and A:M composite could help a lot! I don't know how to work without them anymore. If you are not yet familiar with them, then I suggest you to start reading Yves tutorials in the forum.

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Take good notes and sell us a 'Behind the Scenes' DVD. ;)

 

You are living the dream Dusan... living the dream.

It would be quite cool to be a fly on your studio's wall.

 

 

I should mention...

I posted your image in the Renderosity forum gallery.

Not a lot of traffic over there but so far a very supportive (and unanimous) response from non-A:M Users.

They want to know when 'Chicory and Coffee' is released so I'll keep them advised.

Your work speaks for itself!

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 months later...

Ken has already made an announcement about our new "Chicory & Coffee" website:

Www.bugbrain.com/ck

 

The site still needs a little tweaking and bug fixing before we could promote it more widely.

So I would like to ask you Hashers for a favour. I'm a little unsure if I should keep the Animatic (and storyboard) on the website (under "About the project" menu. A lot of "beta-viewers" were puzzled and thought that this Animatic is the final product).

 

-Please watch the Animatic and then think very carefully! Now that you know the story; are you any less interested to see the final result? (or maybe you are interested even more?)

 

-about the subtitles: as far as I know folks from the USA (or other large countries like France, Italy...) are not accustomed to read the subtitles. Is that very annoying to you? Can you follow the story despite the subtitles? First I was planning to make an English version right after we'll finish the Slovenian version. But, to be honest, I'm already a little tired of this project and I would rather move to something new instead of working for additional couple of months on English version. So what is your opinion: subtitles or English synchronisation?

 

Thank you all in advance! :-)

 

P.S. The Guest-book is still almost empty ;-)

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Click on the flags at the front page to change the language to English.

 

Perhaps it might be an idea to switch the language under the flags or have it in both languages.

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Even if I had not read your post, I would never have thought the animatic was the final version. If visitors to this site are not knowledgable about the computer animation workflow, you could overlay a banner in the top left of the whole animatic that says "preproduction" or "storyboard" or even "animatic" to make it obvious.

 

That said, I think you shoud not show the whole story in animatic form. Although I really enjoyed it, I think part of the fun of viewing your project is the mystery about what it will finally be. Instead, you could show a few clips of the animatic to whet everyone's appetite.

 

I personally think the subtitles are fine, but I bet if you took a poll, my guess is most people prefer a direct english translation so they can keep their eyes on the beautiful renders.

 

-Jim

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Yipeee! The guest-book is no longer empty and sad :-)

Also thank you for the tips. I will remove the script, storyboard and the animatic in the next update. I will return them online when the movie will be finished.

Thank you all for your kind words and support :-)

 

(I will try to make an update soon- so check the site from time to time...)

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  • 6 months later...

Long time no post :-)

 

I made a little animation from the sequence of my movie as a new year congratulation for the Hashers. :)

 

en2008.gif

 

The animation is coming along quite nicely- though painfully slowly.

All the characters and models are finished and about 2 minutes of animations is rendered. I'm planning to make an update to the Chicory website first thing next year, where you could read (and see) more about the progress.

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