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Deltarat
02-20-2007, 10:53 PM
Hey guys and gals!

I'm working on an interior set for a film I'm doing. I don't know how many of you are familiar with Joss Whedon's Firefly or the movie Serenity, but I'm building the interior set of a Firefly class transport ship. It, like any other ship, or any other building for that matter, has rooms. Now, I want to build the entire thing, because I want to be able to move from one room to the other if I want to. But, there's no need in wasting time rendering the rooms upstairs if the shot is in a room downstairs.

My idea is to build each room as seperate files, and then just reference the rooms I need for the given shot. I would just have to make sure that each room is in the right space in 3D so that when I turn them on, they are conected to the next room right.

Is there another way to do it, or am I on the right track?
Archvilell
02-21-2007, 03:00 PM
I've never done film-like stuff before, but separate files may make it hard to get the animation to sequence right. I think it may be easier if the program you're using had layers. I know in XSI one can turn the rendering of different layers on or off, and I imagine (again, I don't know for sure) one can animate turning layers on and off. If the program you're using can't do layers or can't animate layers, you could try rendering clips of your animation and stitching them together later. You are right in not rendering the upstairs if the downstairs is where all the action is. Too much useless work.

Hope this helps,
Ben Day
Deltarat
02-21-2007, 09:30 PM
I've never looked into layers. I'm using 3D Studio Max 9. I guess I need to do a little research.
newellteapot
02-22-2007, 10:18 PM
I think you could work more in compositing rather than having a huge file with all the rooms.
Deltarat
02-25-2007, 03:48 PM
How would I do that with compositing? I'm not questioning your suggestion. I'm just wondering how it's done.

For example, if I have a character walk from one room to another, the lighting is gonna change. If I have both rooms and the lights referenced into the scene, the character will be affected by the lights. If I composite the character into the scene later, the lights won't look right.

I must be missing something.
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02-25-2007, 03:48 PM
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