Elemental Piano

[photoman]

I decided to start another animation project. I am basing this off a bunch of minor projects I have done in the past.

 

I will be adding my piano model to some of them and adding some sweet camera angles and shots...

 

Here are a few test frames:

 

Render time is going to be murder! Most scenes have AO (the desert scene etc) and I managed to optimize those to keep them under 20 minutes a frame.

 

The pool scene I took AO out so I could render faster (about 2 hours a frame with AO!!) Most shots are down under 20 minutes a frame now.

 

 

I have plans to hopefully finish this comletly including rendering in the next 2 weeks to enter in a contest at my school.

 

Off to do some more work!!

 

 

Photoman

[TheSpleen]

I like the desert scene alot.

Great composition.

[robcat2075]

I wish there was a way to bake AO shading onto objects.

[photoman]

@Robcat

That would save me probably 50 hours of render time.

 

Though the 18min test frame on v14.0c OXS renders at 6min on v13 XP!

(Same computer)

Interesting

 

 

Photoman

[robcat2075]

Render time is going to be murder!

 

Have you read Jeremy Birn's book? I bet with careful conventional lighting you could cut that way down.

[photoman]

I am using conventional lighting! Just a sun light and global ambience, (Though i use AO with global ambience in the desert which renders fast enough).

 

Another note. The 10 minute frame on OSX v14 renders at about 9 minutes on a 1.8ghz pent4 XP v13 PC.

 

Photoman

[HomeSlice]

I wish there was a way to bake AO shading onto objects.

If you can figure out the UV wrapping/Unwrapping, then xNormal will generate AO maps for your model. I believe you would apply them in AM as Diffuse maps.

xNormal imports .X models.

http://www.xnormal.net/1.aspx

[robcat2075]

If you can figure out the UV wrapping/Unwrapping,

 

Has someone done this? Or is this yet-to-be-achieved?

 

 

I am using conventional lighting! Just a sun light and global ambience,

 

GA is a bit unconventional.

 

Another note. The 10 minute frame on OSX v14 renders at about 9 minutes on a 1.8ghz pent4 XP v13 PC.

10 minutes... that's not bad. That's not going to kill you.

[photoman]

10 minutes is fine, im just making an observation. Also I have 2 more pc's to add to my render farm, to total it up to 4! Though I can only use them at night.

 

On another note, I may try to add a skylight rig in and see if thats better than AO for the ambience/indirect light.

 

 

Photoman

[photoman]

Hot off the CPU:

Res_Pool_Cam_03_A_.mov

Took 6 hours on the dot!

 

 

Photoman

[HomeSlice]

If you can figure out the UV wrapping/Unwrapping,

 

Has someone done this? Or is this yet-to-be-achieved?

As far as I know, it is yet to be achieved. I didn't try very hard. But with all the UV tests you have done lately, you could probably get it working.

[robcat2075]

If you can figure out the UV wrapping/Unwrapping,

 

Has someone done this? Or is this yet-to-be-achieved?

As far as I know, it is yet to be achieved. I didn't try very hard. But with all the UV tests you have done lately, you could probably get it working.

 

My tests were all aimed at making it a simple as possible in A:M.

 

Exporting something to polygons and figuring out how an external app maps it, and then figuring out how to get that remapped back onto A:M... my enthusiam flags a bit.

[TheSpleen]

nowhere near as good as photmans great piano but here is mine I made from scratch lastnight.

piano.mov

[mtpeak2]

I like the piano and pool shot alot.

[pixelplucker]

Nice looking piano Spleen, just need to add some claw and ball feet and 50,000 patch scroll work for some trim to spaz it up some

[photoman]

Been a while since Ive updated this... The project is on the backburner right now. Ive become quite busy with school and swimming so I get to this whenever I am not tired and have time (which isnt as often as I like). So to keep y'all in the loop here is a quick studio clip:

 

E_Piano_Studioshot_A_.mov

 

Photoman

[TheSpleen]

That looked very good!

[steve392]

Man thats good ,not just the piano and stall but the lighting is great ,very nice

[John Bigboote]

Looks great! That may be a good place to try volumetric lighting out. Makes me want to play piano...

[robcat2075]

Beautiful shot!

[photoman]

Thanks for the good comments! If anyone is wondering about the lighting setup, it is really simple, and... there is no AO!

 

 

First thing I wanted was the dark room spotlight look so I placed the first kleig light up top aimed right down at the piano.

 

Then I realized that that looked quite plain and didn't have any "pop" to it, so I placed 3 more kleigs at strategic points around the piano and set each of them to be just specular.

 

Then I wanted the reflection of the "guts" of the piano brighter so I placed a low powered bulb light inside it.

 

After I had all this done I went through each light and tweaked it, I changed the Top kleig to have 25% softness and 100% shadow darkness. Next I set the bulb to have 100% shadows with 3 rays distributed in passes to give more detail inside.

 

 

SO... that was my setup and for information I had each frame averaging about 1min 20sec over 240 frames @ 1024x435

 

Also that shiny look is from an environment map material of a studio HDR image, which needs to be upscaled...

 

Photoman

[Eric2575]

Beauty, eh?!