A Great Sadness - BSG Short Film

[Adalla]

Greetings all,

I am working on a BSG short film consisting only of CG elements (no live action) set in TNS. I saw that TNS creative endeavords are welcome here (I have seen more than a couple threads dedicated to them) and so I thought I'd share.

The animation is planned to be between 3.5 and 4.5 minutes and the storyline revolves around a recon Raptor which is on a recon mission during the attack on the colonies. It follows the story of this raptor and what it experiences. I dont want to give too much away so I dont spoil it :P

So far the material I posted has always been test material, but it should give you a good idea of the ships involved, the environments and the style of animation. I might post a few Teaser shots of the actual finished shots also :)

Currently what I share wont be glamerous, but after all I'm going to be looking for feedback on the work in progress mostly.

Anyways, here are some composition tests to test out the lighting of the battlestar. I have not done any lighting on the ship itself, this is only to test the sunlight and ambient lighting. For the record, I'm very new to CG, so there is a lot of trial and error involved and me trying a lot of different things.


720p no grain (http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm243/Adalla001/ouroborus_comp_test_noresize_nograi.jpg)


720p w/ grain (http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm243/Adalla001/ouroborus_comp_test_noresize_wgrain.jpg)


sized up to 1080p (not rendered at 1080p) with grain (http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm243/Adalla001/ouroborus_comp_test_resize_wgrain.jpg)

Reference Zoic image I'm using as a base. Although that image is not from the show, so doesnt have film grain I dont think, it is a beauty shot I believe.

Zoic (http://www.leestringer.com/Images/BSG_New/BSG_Apr28_007.jpg)

I hope this forum resizes images :P If not I'll have to try something else cause these are 720p and 1080p renders.

EDIT: yeah no resize...I'll have to link then.

To visit the homepage of my CG work go here (http://kobolstudios.wordpress.com)

[gmd3d]

great work and nice site you have .. TNS ART is no problem here :)

[TwoBrainedCylon]

Too much grain. You should also hit it with a stronger key light.

If you modeled it, that's some damn fine work.

All my best,


Sandy

[Adalla]

Those are actually BSG show grain settings and key light settings. But I figured the problem. The surfaces have like 60%^glossiness and it interferes with the specularity. So if I reduce that it'll look good.

And no I am not a modeler. Model is by tan.j

[TwoBrainedCylon]

Really? Out of curiosity, how do you know that? I'm not doubting you but just curious as to how you know the production settings. If they are accurate, are you sure they aren't the settings for the full HD renders. It looks REALLY grainy to me and very different than the production renders I've seen from GINO.

Compliments to tan.j . Really good modeling job.

All my best,


Sandy

[Adalla]

A tutorial by a BSG VFX artist (http://battlestarvfx.com/). Though as I said, I did something wrong somewhere, cause it doesnt look right. Most likely it's because I applied the setting to 32 bit TGA images while those settings are for 128 bit OpenEXR images TGA files cant handle the same settings as OpenEXR. Or my brlightnesss/contrast settings are not good for those grain settings. Either way, it'll take a little work to figure out what went wrong and how to make things look better :) I'll let you guys know how things develop :)

And the way they do it is they render at 720p, resize to 1080p and apply those grain settings. That's what I did, but something went wrong :P

[TwoBrainedCylon]

If I can suggest, pump up the key light so the shadows show the details on the model better. Render it at full HD resolution, add the noise, and then scale down. Then apply something like a 3-10% blur in photoshop and see if you get something that looks close to the production shots. If it looks funky, then do the blur before you scale down and see if that gets you closer to the production look.

GINO doesn't use a lot of strong key lights with the larger ships. I think they do that for matting purposes but I'm not sure. Don would know more on that). They use them with the fighters all the time. However, with this model, I think its a mistake not to amplify the detail.

All my best,


Sandy

[BST]

Ah, you're breathing. This is good.

;) :D

Great hearing from you again, Sandy.

:)

[Adalla]

I'm working on the battlestar engines right now. They are a little tough so it's taking longer than expected. But once those are done the rest of the lighting should go quickly and I'll post final versions of the composited render with new grain settings. I'll make sure it matches the show as close as possible.

Stay tuned :)

[TwoBrainedCylon]

Ah, you're breathing. This is good.

;) :D

Great hearing from you again, Sandy.

:)


Yep, ... breathing and active, ... and heading home in a few weeks. Contract negotiations broke down and the sponser started playing hard-ball trying to get me to take a big cut in pay while taking on more responsibilities over here. I flexed some because I like the mission but things got well beyond the stupid level, so I sent word out and got a job in Tampa. I should start there first week of Feb. Three factions tried really hard to put me in DC to run my own slice of the show there but there isn't enough money in anyone's budget to get me to return there. Tampa is a lot more my style.


I'm working on the battlestar engines right now. They are a little tough so it's taking longer than expected. But once those are done the rest of the lighting should go quickly and I'll post final versions of the composited render with new grain settings. I'll make sure it matches the show as close as possible.

Stay tuned :)

Looking forward to it. If you're striving for a close match to the production shots of this ship, I suspect you'll have to lower the saturation on the ship render by about 70%, which means you'll have to pump it out in layers, especially if you're doing the engine fire because that is a full-color layer.

All my best,


Sandy

[BST]

Yep, ... breathing and active, ... and heading home in a few weeks. Contract negotiations broke down and the sponser started playing hard-ball trying to get me to take a big cut in pay while taking on more responsibilities over here. I flexed some because I like the mission but things got well beyond the stupid level, so I sent word out and got a job in Tampa. I should start there first week of Feb. Three factions tried really hard to put me in DC to run my own slice of the show there but there isn't enough money in anyone's budget to get me to return there. Tampa is a lot more my style.

It's a shame that your mission couldn't continue but, the bright side is that you get to come back to the States .... and with a job awaiting you. Tampa / St. Pete is a nice area .. visited there but, haven't been back since Reagan was president. They have pretty good baseball and football teams, as I hear.

;) :D

Regarding DC, sometimes I think that it's another planet down there. I lived in suburban Maryland for 3 years, back in the 80's and it was nuts .... then. I can't even fathom what it would be like now.

[Adalla]

Ok...the Teaser Trailer got post-poned.

Engine lighting took longer than expected. In fact just about everything took longer than expected. It's really slow going in general, especially as my PC runs out of memory half way through my work and takes forever to render even test renders.

However, work IS progressing slowly but surely. I'm not 100% satisfied with this test render below, but at least I'm getting there. The purpose of this test was to familiarize myself with the breakout and compositing.

The engines still need some tweaking and I made some mistakes. I didnt break out the name-lights so they are brighter than they should be.

I WILL animate someday soon, I swear by the Lords of Kobol lol. I just need to get setup and test some things and make sure stills look ok before I animate.

I'm DYING to animate, so dont worry, even if it's a 10 second shot of the galactica I will do one soon :)

For now...

9 Layer Breakout and Compositing Test (http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm243/Adalla001/ouroborus_breakout_comp_test0001.jpg)

[jewels]

I like that I can see everything. The lights of the ship and the engines is nicely done also.

[Adalla]

Thanx for the feedback. Battlestar lighting is not done yet. Still have to do the Pod lighting. Also gotta fix something on th engines. But yeah, getting close :)

[TwoBrainedCylon]

Looking better. Not sure about the noise in the engine fire. Might work better if you stretch it along the axis.

I still think this needs a stronger key light to show off the details of the model better. Admittedly, that's more of an original series look than a GINO look but it would be interesting to see the difference between the two.

I like the reflect mapping on the model very much.

All my best,


Russell