"The Climax!" My Finished CGC XXIV Entry

[toontje]

I like the scene a lot. It speaks for itself. The self indulged megalomaniac gloating at how clever she is and he's gonna dominate the world while the secret agent is cutting himself loose with his gadget and stop the countdown at T minus 1 second.

My only crit is that the rendering looks kind of like those cheesy 80's renders. I think a technicolor feel and lighting from when James Bond was about to be cut by laser in Gold Finger would match this scene better. Apart from that, I see that a lot of hard work went into this. Congratulations.

[sundialsvc4]

You're darn right... it's pure 80's cheese. Well, I remember the 80's quite well :rolleyes: and I, for one, like cheese. It's fun to look at a picture with so much going on that you keep looking for new stuff you didn't see. Terrific. Needs to be in the Gallery over at BlenderArtists.Org (nee Elysiun.com) ASAP.

[CGIPadawan]

Thank god the story comes across!

You know when you work on something for a certain amount of time, you're not sure anymore if the original concept, theme, or story is being communicated by the time you're done.

It's like that feeling after you've made a piece of lettering and part of you doubts the spelling of the words, even if you know they are spelled correctly. :surprised

I would love to have "The Climax!" in the blenderartists gallery, but I'll probably have to wait until CGC XXIV officially ends since the organizers are very particular about re-published work.

=====

Some musings and learnings:

One thing I have learned is that I really need to learn how to layer shots/images piece by piece. I did do that in the early going on this one. But then I veered towards "natural light" and ended up trying to protect the shadows that came up (very visible on the roof and cylindrical walls).... It forced me to render 3/4ths of the scene full-on resulting in an 8 hour render and limited flexibility to play with lighting and color corrections.

The self-lit monitors, for example, were not on a separate layer, and making them self-lit and correcting the placement of its elements required the creation of a "mask". If this were animated, it would have resulted in a roto-scoping task worth many hundred frames..... It was either that or sit through another loooooong render to change just one part. It would have been a disaster. :drool:

Now I'm thinking... :lightbulb if I did control the lighting and avoided "cross-casting shadows" that occur in Blender's world...that would cause concerns about natural shadows, natural light... but I'm starting to think the idea should have been "controlled" light.... Use of 3-point light setups that allow for the "natural isolation" of elements. Anyone ever noticed if Jude Law casts shadows on the walls in "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow"? Perhaps he only cast shadows where the Director wanted them?

I'm just thinking the scale of finished work in Blender (upping this scale has been a near obssession of mine right now) can really be increased by forming the scale of the scenes through various renders created with masks (renders with whole sections blotted out as Alpha Channels) and that would be feasible by asserting absolute control on EVERY lighting condition, eliminate shadow casting on elements intended to be separate.... then combine them, and add shadows (only the ones I'd want) in post.

Is there any word though if Blender's node-based compositor will soon match the capabilities of Adobe AfterEffects? :shrug:


P.S.: Hopefully someone like Dave Edwards will pop up to tell me if I'm really on the right track or if I'm driving myself in circles. :p :D

[danielHinton]

Is there any word though if Blender's node-based compositor will soon match the capabilities of Adobe AfterEffects? :shrug:


unlikely. perhaps Shake or Nuke would be more appropriate?

I think we'd need something like an "in image-editor" roto-tool, tracking tools and geometry nodes; not to mention better/any integration with the sequence editor before we got anywhere near a pro compositing tool.

And while we're on the subject, why not recode the particles/dynamics system into a node-based interface so we can really head into pro-vfx territory :lol:

*Great* image by the way- the story comes across loud and clear. Excellent work!

Dan

[CGIPadawan]

Thanks Dan. :wavey:

And yes, I agree the Nodes compositor should probably be linked to the Timeline to approach something not just "professional".. but also "intuitive".

It's what people have come to expect when you say "video editor" or "video compositor".

Maybe they should allow for Blender to produce certain node setups on its own if you applied things like transitions and other effects on a timeline? :scream:

I did try Jahshaka last year... I was massively disappointed. Unstable, HARD to use, and frequently crashed or slowed down.

But in my current state as a hobbyist animator/director I must say that has been the struggle working in an Open Source environment: To do things "live/for real" (since it's all CG) therefore simplifying to a brute force result that cannot really be edited easily, or to modularize things as layers and do something more "controlled".

I really have a feeling the latter would be better (even if it means MORE planning than the previous), but as you have noted we don't exactly have THAT part yet in Blender's environment.

Is Cinerella any good? :curious:

[danielHinton]

never tried it!

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