Steampunk Myths and Legends Entry: Tyson Ibele

#181

Alright, well I’ve got the first draft of the audio done. I’ll be posting the ful video in about an hour-ish :slight_smile: I can’t think of anything I want to change about it now, but I’ll sleep on it and see if there’s anything tommorow. Other than that…tommorow I’ll do the trailer and making-of and that’s it! Damn it’s good to have that sound done…spent like 15 hours straight today working on it. I never want to see another .wav file again :frowning:

#182

Nice will be back in an hour!! I still have to do all my sounds and music, but i only have 30 secs to do instead of 4mins, but 15 hours is quite some time :D. Looking forward to your video, cant wait!! :smiley:

#183 

   edit: eek! there appears to be a problem with the upload :( it's playing back all choppy...I'm re-uploading now....will post update when complete.

edit2: here’s the fixed link…the compression is much higher than the last one, but at least the filesize is a bit smaller and it works :smiley: http://www.tysonibele.com/Main/Animations/Clockwork/comp1_withAudioLg_ProgLg_Prog.mov (50mb with sound)

Hey guys,

     Well...it's been a long journey! And finally I can see the light at the end of the tunnel :D
     
     Here is the finished film. This isn't the final entry posting yet, since I still need to compose the trailer and making-of...and also there are a couple of veeeeerrrry minor tweaks to do to it still (insanely minor...nobody would notice them I'm sure, but they bug me so I can't call it done till theyre fixed).
     
     Hope you like it! It's a hell of a lot different than I had envisioned when I started...I wish I had time to do lots of things I was unable to do (could easily extend it by a minute or two just adding those things in), but I think it's at a good place now.
     
     I'm a bit worried about the filesize, since apparently the final version (including trailer and making-of) needs to be under 50mb....however, just the film alone clocks in at 80mb with lots of compression. That being said...it's rendered here at 960x540, whereas the final only needs to be 640x480...with the letterboxing and the resolution shrinkage, I think that'll shave off quite a bit of filesize.
     
     Anyways, since it's taking a hell of a long time to upload, I'll go into some details while I'm waiting:
     
     For those interested in my computer specs, I created this on two machines. One is a quad core with 4 gigs of ram and an ATI 4950 video card (my main workstation), and the other is a dual core with 2 gigs of ram (my renderslave). It was a challenge because often my scenes were too heavy for my other machine (my workstation is 64-bit, however my other computer is 32-bit...so the large textures would cause crashes on the 32-bit machine)....so I had to cram in a lot of rendering on my workstation to play catch-up, and that took away from some of the extra time I would have had to work on it.
     
     Frametime for any given pass (most shots only had these passes: beauty, AO, hair, sparks, fire) was between 1 minute and 10 minutes. The character's hair was done using max hair & fur, and that usually took the longest to render. Because I would usually render everything overnight, I basically worked out a system where I'd do several shots a day, render them overnight, then composite them in the morning....so on average over the two months that I spent animating (first month was spent doing pre-production stuff...modelling, texturing, rigging, etc), I was able to crank out about 2 shots a day (where a shot is anything from 30-200 frames). In total there are around 90 shots. A little over 90 were created, but not all of them made it in the final edit. If any of you remember my film from the last CGSociety competition ("Matrioshka")...that one had a total of 25 shots....so this year's entry was quite a bit more of a challenge to get done.
     
     Sound design was fun. I found an amazing sound effects site called freesound.org, that has a database of thousands of user-created sounds usable under a creative commons license (ie, free for non-profit use). Although I recorded a good chunk of the sounds myself, I got a huge chunk of the rest of the sounds from there. The music was edited myself, compiled from about a dozen different tracks purchased from partnersinrhyme.com for royalty-free use. One of their music compilations (called "Horror!") was perfect for my animation. None of the songs were cheesy...all the tracks were very moody and atmospheric, and produced with excellent quality...which made it easier to cut them all up and mix-and-match them into my film. 
     
     Data storage was a bit tight the whole time. The final project folder is 131 gigs, containing 40,000 files. It's stored on a 1TB drive....but the problem is that it's not a RAID array...so I was always worried about drive corruption. I backed up everything once a day, but my backup drive is full to the brim so I'd be constantly trying to find things to delete to make extra space. A dumb thing I did throughout the project was failing to use XREFs for the environment...which means each scene file for each shot contains all of the environment models (facepalm)...bringing the size of each .max file for any given scene to around 150megs (lol). Ah well, you live you learn I guess!

http://www.tysonibele.com/Main/Animations/Clockwork/comp1_withAudioLg_ProgLg_Prog.mov (50mb with sound)

#184

Its REALLY NICE as allways! But I can t play it real time,I think is the compression.

GREAT JOB!:slight_smile:

#185

Yea…heh…just before I was about to go to sleep, I double-check that the file is OK and find out that for some random reason the version that I uploaded plays back choppy :frowning: I’m recompressing/reuploading now…hopefully I can fix it :open_mouth:

-t

#186

that explains why my download stops running… ; )
looking forward to see it!

BTW im very glad you got it in time.
best luck with making of and the final entry!

#187

Congrats!!!
Im downloading to see it myself, excited am I !!!

#188

Good luck man for the last upload…

I read your interesting explanation about your process… for the PCs,
you make exactly the inverse than me…
I prefer to work of the Dualcore with 2go… and the calcul machine the Quad 4go…

why ? working of the little machine oblige me to optimise more the scenes… and of course, use the stronger permit me to reduce a lot the render time…
…but of course, when I’m at job… the both are running at home :beer:

#189

Hey guys:

The FIXED download is up! (Checked it…it works, although the compression is much higher than the previous one). Here’s the link:

http://www.tysonibele.com/Main/Animations/Clockwork/comp1_withAudioLg_ProgLg_Prog.mov (50mb, with sound)

#190

You did an amazing job… I hope you win this thing

#191

WOW! just AWESOME!

100 stars : )

#192

WOAW AGAIN! Nice work!

#193

Well… well… well…

what can I add… under the charm of your creation of course Tyson… you have made an huge work on this… incredible… no soucy for you with judging time…
I vote vote for you :beer:

no… sincerly… your skills are incredibles… :buttrock:

#194

Wooaaa! That was MASSIVE!
Amazing work, mate.
Simply fantastic. You can feel very good about this project.
Can’t believe that was made in two and a half month. Crazy work speed you’ve got.

Good luck with judging. I’m sure it’ll go well :slight_smile:

#195

Awesome work (and that in such a short time)! congratulations on finishing and goodluck with the judging!

#196

hey tyson,
we were just sitting here, drinking massive amounts of coffee and finising our compositing, when we discovered your movie.

we were stunned for the full 3,49 min :slight_smile:
man, congratulations to this awesome piece work, very very impressive!

#197

Sorry for the caps, but i have to say WOW!
That was brilliant!
You really did a hell of a job there.
Just stunning, as my team mates already said before! :slight_smile:

#198

Just saw it and was really shocked.
I just so would like to know how you pulled this off in such a short time. 4 months and getting this result?! Damn.
I feel such a noob compared to this. I’m not an animator and not a rigger, neither a lighter or a renderer. Come to think about it, not a texturer either. But i think i have spend way too much time on my modeling part.
So i guess i’ll need a second computer to get to be able to pull off this much rendering cause now i’m already stuck for days cause of it. And i got an octo-core with 8 gigs.

Don’t get this wrong, but i hope if you win - and i think you will - you won’t be able to do the next challenge cause then you’ll have 3 computers :banghead:
Imagine what you’ll do then.

cheers

#199

WOW, that is a really nice piece dude, love the composition of the story and the video that you’ve made, and the robot dude, he is really2 good, i love the animation that make him look like a clockwork, and then the last piece when he finally become a robot too, nice job man… as always :slight_smile:

#200

Incredible work!! Great Job!