SETTINGS

We have some huge changes for our film that will definitely affect our production plan.
Philip and I used two days to focus on getting settings ready for both rendering and editing.

We will be usingV-ray, and render in TARGA images and then use Video Post in Max to put these pictures together. This way is very safe in case our render would fail. Then we would still have the images we already rendered!

We will also be using Video Vegas 8.Pro for editing because Philip and me know this program very well.

These are the MAX settings we will be using:

Output Size: 35mm 1.85:1 (cine)
With: 1024
Height: 554

Mov Output file:
DV - PAL
25 FPS.
16:9 (Size difference)

As you see we use PAL to make sure the film don't get as big as 10 GB or something like that. Also gonna use PAL in Video Vegas 8.0 Pro, and we will still get pretty good quality.

Video Vegas settings:

Mode: Bit Rate VBR

Format: Windows Media Video 9

With: 1024 Height: 556

Pixel Ratio: 1,333 (HD 1080)

25 PAL FPS

Average Bit Rate: 2 M

With these settings we will get a cool HD Widescreen look, with the familiar black, thick lines at the top andbottom as illustrated in the image below.



I want to finish this Blog post with a test render of both the cars at the "starting line" to get you exited;P

STYLE AND RENDER (start reading from bottom of the post)

It's great to go from 4 different light sources to just one main source. Much more control over where we want the light to come from, and it looks alot better! Specially the shadows are alot better and more visable now.

We thought by turning down the textures, we would get a better result...but that did not help. Then we turnedto Thorbjørn who had some lectures at school. He deleted all the ligts and adviced us to use V-ray sun! This sun is very simple!

Just place it where you want in the scene and you see a map there you can choose where in theworld, and also time of day! We picked Los Angeles at 5 in the afternoon (17:00). By changing the lights likethis, the render time dramaticly decreased to 2.20! per frame!

Above is how it looks with the V-ray sun.

Style is something that has haunted us through the whole project, because we have had very little tests to showeveryone how we want our style to be. Now that we have the settings ready, we have images to show how the citylooks with the cars in it as well.

The first thing we started out with was V-ray lights. We had a big one over the city, one from behind, side anda 4th one on the sky/invironment plane. When we then tried to render the time was up to 7 minutes per frame.
The image above shows how it turned out.

decisions

Right. So we are into the last 3 weeks. We are almost done with all the modelling and ready to animate. Just so you know;)

Lately we have made many small decisions.

We have som changes to the camera work in some shots. Like in this one we want to make it a EXTREME CLOSEUP to add personality to the characters compared to eachother.

Closeup changed to Extreme closeup.

Gonna add a shot in the hospital scene. Starting from above one character and spinning. To make viewers to wonder where they are.

Also decided: to use planes on each side of the road.

rim texture instead of real geometry when the car is moving

characters

Right now the characters take up most of our time. Alf made the design of the character in the Mustang and I designed the one in the Murcielago.

My inspiration for the character was Elves. With their pointy ears, nose and their eyes make them look like they have a trick up their sleeve. They can also look confident and fit the personality of the character that's gonna challenge the other car.

When I scanned in the drawings, they were too light. I could not see the lines very well so I took it into Photoshop and added the filter called Ink outlines.

I just got home from the movies. I saw the new Fast and Furious and loved it!! (surprise)
But i feel like this was just what I needed now. Great inspiration for the next 6 weeks! A lot of cool cars and big trucks and of course crazy races through the city streets.

I wish I had the movie here to watch some scenes again, but anyway I feel more motivated to work after this:)

New spirit!

So the vacation is over and its back to work. Took a brake from everything in the vacation to feel better when we come back. I also got very sick which was bad, but I'm thankful that i got sick then and not now in the last weeks.

Anyway, we startet off with a hard days work to get in the zone again.

rigging

The cars are rigged using dummies. We had problems moving the cars with the biped sitting inside, but figured this rig out pretty fast. The top dummy moves everything and the four others controlles the wheels.

Still working on the previz!.. We have buildings with textures now and of course the road. The cars in their colours and wheels and rims. Not using any lighting here because we are just going to have regular sunlight. I rendered a picture for you to see how it looks.

previz work

Today I have done some modelling. And I finally remembered to record my work. I recorded myself making some tires and rims which we will be using on the cars.

I also made a hospital room for the hospital scene in the end of our movie. I played around with som cameras in the scene after that. This is just for the previz.

Meanwhile Philip has worked on the city outside.
We have both cars in the previz and he placed them on a simple road texture with some buildings with texture of a city landscape behind them.

details

Today I decided to do the final touches on my car model. Since we modelled the cars differently (Philip with many pieces, and I in one piece), I wanted to add some lines on the hood, door and back of the car like you can see on the picture. I did this to make it look more real and like philip's style of modelling, because I feel that it's important that the cars have the same style.

The cars look less plain and also add the feeling of reality instead of toy cars with these lines to separate the pieces. I made them by using chamfer twice on the edges and extrude the second chamfer in.

I also tried to find a good texture to the car and for the rims that would look good and also not have a lot of render time. The picture above took about 2 minutes and 30 seconds, and I think I captured the look I had in my head at least.

Floter help

Today me and Alf wrote a contract to Nicklas who is a floter this semester. We heard that he is very skilled when it comes to research, and decided to send him a contract.

In the contract we wrote that we wanted at least 8 images of different types of styles within the genre out short animation film, which is car racing. We have not discussed style alot, and need to focus on the previz this week because the deadline is near.

If everything goes well we will have different styles to choose from a week from now!

Modelling

In our film we have 3 vehicles. Philip is working on the Murcielago, Alf Ivar on the truck, and I have been working on the Mustang. Both me and Philip work in planes, but we did model the carsdifferently. Philip made his car in many parts, while I did the whole car in one piece.

This is my first time modelling a car, so I am pleased with the result. But I think making the car in many pieces is a better and easier way to model, because the mesh is harder to get clean in one piece.

I also made som tires and rims to see what it would look like, and also maybe include in the previz with the cars. I also made som lights to make it more alive and played around with textures

Meeting

On tuesday we had a meeting with Paul. He liked our animatic, but also said it was too long.

I will explain how.

The film of course have a start, middel and an ending. What we need to do is get some more shots in the beginning,and have fewer shots in the middel which is the car race. We need something like 5 more in the beginning tointroduce the characters more. Build op to the race and the tension. he also said we have too much beat in the songat the beginning.

For the middel part we need to shorten the film with about 30-40 sek. which I think is alot! But I also know thatsome of the shots in the animatic won't last as long in the previz we are about to make. During the storyboardprosess we had too few shots, so we added mostly in the middel. I guess we will get a much bigger perspective inthe previz.

Final Animatic

The final animatic- Check it out!

changes

When we showed our story we got som comments on some things to change. The banana peel one of them weresupposed to throw out of the car window is gone. it just don't fit with the style of the movie.We have replaced the banana peel with a hole in the ground that the car-tire drives into and the driver lose control.

We also had a discussion about the truck that they crash into at the end of the movie. Paul said we maybe couldreplace it with something more funny like an icecream truck. But in the discussion we still wanted to stay withthe truck we had.

Inspiration

I started to search for some 3d animated car films. I came over a movie that just blew my mind! I thought was perfect in so many ways. The reason I say I think it's perfect is because I can watch it again and again and talk about it alot. Which I have done with Alf and Philip, and they seemed to like it alot too!

It's about 2 years old now, but you wouldn't be able to tell! It's done by a Visual Effects company called Fxnine, and the animation itself is called Overdrive.

Chech it out! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uiz7pfuCayM

What I love the most about this film is the camera angles and movements. They are the main focus and i love it.We have not talked much about style yet, but I am a big fan of the textures on these cars because they shineand reflect so nice. That's also the main reason I wanted the race to be during daytime! So the cars can shinebeautifully in the sunlight!

That film is very straight forward with racing. No special story or funny moments. So I guess I can say that wewant a movie like that! Only with characters and some humour;)

Starting scene inspiration:

We ended up having our starting scene in a road cross instead of the bar where the two friends would startcompeting by playing dart and have some dialog. We went away from that idea because it was too much to model really.
The road cross idea came to me through a short movie I saw.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNMCu8J7iCA

I really like the idea that one of them just shows up and wants to race. I think just by filming them lookingat eachother with different facial expressions is a great way to get to know the characters and their differences.The car that pulls up is superpsyched about racing while the other one is more calm and tries to ignore but can'tresist when the light turn green.

Since the first animatic I have thought about coloring all the shots. Mostly because it can be confusing to look at or recognize details.

Like the two pictures above. As you can see its the same picture. The cars have very bright colors with contrast compared to eachother. We picked these colors so you can easily see which car you are looking at. I think this is inportant because some of our shots are very fast.

The new animatic will be uploaded soon:)

Here it is- The animatic.. FIRST animatic. This is not the finished version.