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.