Rock in the Road

Danger Planet!

2011-08-29T18:06:00.001-04:00

Danger Planet from Justin Burks on Vimeo.

Oahhh... oaaahaha.. almost!

2011-08-28T21:14:00.003-04:00

2011-08-24T17:21:00.002-04:00

Here's a crowd test. There's over 1400 characters in this scene and it renders fairly quickly. The composition of this shot turned out really great.

Plants

2011-08-03T16:04:00.003-04:00

Palace

2011-08-03T04:10:00.000-04:00

Working on the look for palace. Came together in a day.

Dedicated Farm

2011-07-28T16:22:00.002-04:00

In addition to utilizing most of the lab computers, we've added a dedicated render farm. 168 hyperthreaded cores and 336GB of ram. It's already having a huge impact on the images we're making.

So when the entire system (farm+lab stations) is maxed out, we can run 138 frames simultaneously, each with a memory cap of 8gb. If we had less demanding memory requirements, we could split and double or quadruple the concurrent load. So that's 138 times faster than a single machine.

Giant

2011-07-13T11:05:00.001-04:00

Help yourself

2011-07-13T11:02:00.001-04:00

Pluggin Away

2011-07-12T23:52:00.002-04:00

Converted the shaders for the elephant and cheerleader today. As far as major characters, just the other two ladies left.

Progress Meter

2011-06-28T17:16:00.001-04:00

Seq 3 Render

2011-06-24T12:37:00.001-04:00

It has problems galore, but it's a start.

Password. If you worked on it, you should know it.

Seq 3 off the farm

2011-06-23T16:58:00.002-04:00

Put about 30% of the shots back up for fixes or flicker. I think they're all off now. We got 16 more nodes added to the farm. We also got some capital approved for a dedicated farm, so hopefully we can do that this summer.

On to the compositing.

Old man shot

2011-06-17T15:10:00.004-04:00

Fixing a couple issues with flicker in eye. This is with nuke vector blur and zblur.

Inspirational lighting

2011-06-15T14:33:00.003-04:00

Keep going guys! I can't wait to see the final.

Render elements

2011-06-09T02:10:00.005-04:00

Decided pretty early on not to do traditional passes and just try to get the shots close in lighting. This is due to the primarily GI based lighting. Would have to put stand in geo to get color bounce. Plus, the surfaces would still need to be displaced to get proper shadows... This isn't the right project for that workflow. There has been so much crap pushed down the line over the years that it would be nearly impossible to get consistent render layers. I'm going to work on implementing the multimatte functionality in vray for later sequences.

In any case, we're rendering zdepth and velocity to add both effects in nuke. All going into linear tiled exrs.

All Seq 03 on the farm!

2011-06-09T01:55:00.004-04:00

I thought this day would come about 3 years ago. Then 2. Then 1. Then I quit thinking it would happen and just tried to work when I had time. But now...

Thanks to Yannick, Sequence 3 is lit.

AND 15 SHOTS ARE ON THE FARM!

Going on vacation with the fam for a week, but wanted to get this done before I left.

Comments

2011-06-01T21:37:00.003-04:00

I'm to stupid to figure out how to get blogger to lay things out properly, so I'm making a new post because I'm also lazy.

Most of the shots play from a single location in this scene looking up and down the valley. What's a bit scary is the shots were composed in layout without knowing the full frame, so I don't know how much we can/should cheat the backgrounds. Hopefully, they'll just disappear behind the characters for the most part. That's also why the images a 'beat up' a bit with flat contrast and blur stuff. That's so I can preview how much detail will be toast, and not worth worrying about.

I was looking at the first post on this blog. 5 years and counting. Oops. That's what you get when you try to go to school and work on projects. Or teach.

Environment Scouting

2011-06-01T21:26:00.008-04:00

Env Getting Closer

2011-05-27T18:43:00.003-04:00

Been adding vRay fur for grass and vRay proxy objects for trees. Need to do some tweaks on a shot by shot basis, but feeling like we are getting close!

Had to blur the image a bunch since the sampling was adding noise, but if you scale it down, it seems to be working. Also, the colors are goofy because I had to take it into photoshop to do a couple paint fixes and it was in sRGB, so I used HDR toning to get the colors back, so it looks over saturated and a bit funky.

Lighting tweak

2011-05-26T14:49:00.002-04:00

Tweaked color space.

Lighting

2011-05-26T00:38:00.004-04:00

Getting closer with lighting. Ran into a bug with maya and our cache system. We had reached the hard coded limit for open files between vRay and maya. The folks at Chaos group were kind enough to include a workaround in their release version.

Yannick Amegan has been working on lighting. Been getting closer to getting a look dialed in.

I've been struggling to get the linear workflow working properly in maya. Vray is set up for it, but it's been a real challenge getting maya to cooperate. If you've done any reading on linear comp/rendering, it's pretty complicated if you didn't plan for it from the beginning. We definitely didn't plan for it, but now it's making a big difference.

A little more inpiration

2011-04-01T18:23:00.005-04:00

Some more lovely things.

Check out this link for more.

Finally Rendering

2011-03-10T02:20:00.008-05:00

It's been a slow and painful process, trying to squeeze the time in to get this rendering. Family is in Australia, so I've been working 14's.

Spent a solid week getting qube running. Total pain. I had to write a custom command template in python to submit the standalone vray jobs. It's like writing out a rib, everything is contained in the file except textures.

These absurdly simple frames are taking 45 minutes on 8core 8gb. There has got to be a way to optimize this stuff. The hair looks pretty great I think. It's just a fractal/bump/trans/ramp/falloff shader. ... got a support ticket in to vray to fix the lack of mip_mapped displacement. It broke in the beta i'm using. (which I'm using because normal maps were broken in another build)

only 18 frames, so don't get your hopes up. (I'm also fixing the SS flicker)

Seq3_2 from Rocky Road on Vimeo.

Inspiration

2011-01-16T23:16:00.006-05:00

Here's some more great pieces of inspiration.

Carl Haag's "Cairo".

Charles Robertson's "Cairo"

Found @ One1more2time3's Weblog

A long night

2010-12-22T17:50:00.003-05:00

Was up until 4am working on this pig. Was getting terrible results. Came back in this afternoon and was able to get the structure of the image working.

Point of focus. Layering. Color and value contrasts. That stuff allowed the tech to work.

So after re-sculpting again, again, and re-

texturing again...

Progress.

Updating Environment

2010-12-20T23:09:00.003-05:00

No matter what I was trying, I couldn't get the environment to render in a reasonable amount of time. MentalRay died. Vray did a bit better, but couldn't handle the textures, even when they were multi level mip map exrs.

Bit the bullet and started this workflow: Combine existing rocks into clusters. Regenerate seamless mesh in topogun. Generate a subdiv in topogun. Create new UV's for the section. Repaint rock textures in mudbox. Export 30k-100k meshes for direct rendering. Getting a SERIOUS speed and memory boost by avoiding subdivs and dynamic tessalation. The memory footprint for the geometry is only 130mb now.

Need to tweak dirt shader, it's too intense, and the grass placement needs some work, but finaly there. Moving on to the wide shot. Cringe!

But the render time is only 5mins. Very doable. Will quadruple with characters and HD. But still in the realm of possibility.

There is a tiled normal map mixed in there and some procedurals to keep it working for the closeups. That way we don't have to swap out maps and have several different versions of the scene.

Progress with VRay

2010-09-28T16:39:00.001-04:00

Still having trouble with displacement, but getting much better look and control with vRay.

Inspiration

2010-08-18T20:49:00.004-04:00

Hope all is well with you guys. Here's a little something to keep you going.

The image above was found here.
Make sure you also check out this great stuff here:

Rendering

2010-05-31T16:49:00.003-04:00

We're finally going to be able to make progress with rendering. The use of the 16 and 32 bpc exrs (even though they were rip mapped) were taking up too much ram and clogging the 8gb. Since disk access are down, we'll also be able to speed up per frame times.

These shots are really rough comps.... be nice.

Inspiration

2010-04-29T18:09:00.008-04:00

Click on the image to see it full size.

By ALEX NINO.

By Alan Lee.

Never give up!

2010-03-31T12:40:00.002-04:00

You guys are amazing! Never give up.

Inspiration

2010-03-02T00:53:00.008-05:00

Hey everybody! Hope things are going well. I just wanted to share some images. Hopefully they give some inspiration.

Here are a couple of pieces from Thomas Scholes.

This one is from Pixar artist, Sanjay Patel; from his new book "Ramayana: Divine Loophole".

Test Render

2010-02-02T16:32:00.004-05:00

Character - Crowd Characters Preview 2

2009-10-04T11:25:00.005-04:00

Here's preview no. 2 for the automatic crowd character generator. Some face rigging experiments, and the body rig works! The rig is automatically generated from the mesh. All the body meshes shown have identical topologies. Clothing and hair coming soon!

Here are the original body designs for the crowd characters by Cassidy Stone.

Environment - Palace Interior Update

2009-10-04T11:20:00.005-04:00

Here is an update on the Palace Interior. Ben Munoz has been optimizing and embellishing the design of the palace. The initial layout for the palace was done by Yannick Amegan, Nicky Weston, and Melissa Caldwell.

Link to the old Palace Interior

Environment - Steve Encounter

2009-10-04T11:10:00.002-04:00

Here is the part of the path environment we are calling the "Steve Encounter". This is where the boy zooms past Steve and almost makes him drop his pottery! Drake Logan is modeling this section. Andrew Lopez did the initial layout.

Character - Boy Textured

2009-10-04T11:04:00.003-04:00

The Boy character is completely textured now! By Stephanie Miranda.

Environment - Balcony Props

2009-10-04T11:01:00.002-04:00

Here are the props for the King's balcony. They were all designed and modeled by Nicky Weston.

Environment - Path Wall and Lantern

2009-10-04T10:58:00.002-04:00

The brick walls and lanterns that will be placed along the mountain path. Modeled and normal mapped by Stephen Milota.

Character - Crowd Characters Preview 1

2009-09-19T22:55:00.007-04:00

A preview of the crowd characters. The changing faces share identical topology to allow automatic face rigging. Soon they will have hair! They were modeled from the original designs by Cassidy Stone (posted below movie).

Environment - Path Sculpt Progress

2009-06-23T14:59:00.003-04:00

Andrew Lopez has been sculpting on the path this week. Here's an update.

Character - King's Clothing Designs

2009-06-23T14:16:00.005-04:00

Here are some recent digital paint-overs for the King's clothing by Cassidy Stone.

Character - King's Beard

2009-06-17T12:32:00.003-04:00

Here is an update on the King's beard by Zach Goldstein.

Environment - Palace Exterior

2009-06-17T12:18:00.004-04:00

Here is a quick progress playblast of the palace exterior by Nicky Weston and Melissa Caldwell.

Characters - New Illustrations

2009-06-17T12:09:00.010-04:00

Here are some new digital paintovers from Cassidy Stone. Cheerleader, What's Her Face, The Ugly One, and Steve.

Environment - Kingdom

2009-06-10T17:27:00.004-04:00

This is an occlusion render of the latest pass on the environment for Rock in the Road, done by Andrew Lopez.

Characters - Giant and Elephant UPDATES

2009-06-07T13:56:00.009-04:00

Digital paint-overs for the elephant and the Giant by Cassidy Stone. Also a little something extra from Brandon Bailie!

Songs that also work:
Black Eyed Peas - My Humps
Nadiah Oh - N.A.D.I.A. Oh

Environment - Modeling Progress

2009-06-01T13:03:00.005-04:00

Here is our current version of the palace environment. It will be filled with crowds for shots, but right now it looks very wide open.

Story Reel - 2nd Release

2009-05-28T14:57:00.012-04:00

Here is our most recent story reel. There are quite a few new shots that are fully animated or just starting to get animated. Sequences 2, 3, and 4 are starting to come together nicely. There is still a lot of story work and animation to do.

Environment - Modeling and Texturing Progress

2009-05-28T14:31:00.003-04:00

Here are some stills of progrss on the local environemnt. Andrew Lopez modeled, textured, and lit these render tests. There is still a lot more work to do on this set including more sculpting, modeling, adding gravel, grasses and other plants.

Characters - Modeling and Render Tests

2009-05-28T13:44:00.015-04:00

Here are a few progress turnarounds of hair rendering and clothing modeling. Hair renders are for the Boy, the Old Man, the Nobleman, the Scribe, the Giant, and Steve. All hair modeling and texturing was done by Stephanie Miranda. Steve and the King have some new clothing models by Zach Goldstein.

Digital Paint-Overs

2009-05-28T12:50:00.012-04:00

Here are some of the main characters for the film. The Boy, Old Man, Nobleman, Scribe, and Giant. These are digital paint-overs by Cassidy Stone.

Animatic - 1st Release

2008-11-14T15:47:00.003-05:00

Animation Tests

2008-07-21T16:46:00.004-04:00

Here is a humble post from the work done this summer. Some animation tests! Yeah!

allday_MattKidd.avi
canepain_MattKidd.avi
cartrun_MattKidd.avi
fee_MattKidd_ThomasGreer.avi
first_MattKidd_JackHarkleroad.avi
flipturn_MattKidd.avi
gallstone_JustinBurks_WalterMatthau.avi
Giant_dude_BrandonBailie_RusselAtkins.mov
gonnado_DanielCooper.avi
helpme_BrandonBailie_JosephOsborne.avi
huevos_MattKidd.avi
hup_MattKidd.avi
icant_BrandonBailie_JosephOsborne.mov
jump_BrandonBailie.mov
livingforce_JustinBurks_LiamNeeson.avi
looseygoosey_MattKidd.avi
motherlovin_MattKidd.avi
oldmanwalk_BrandonBailie.avi
onlythought_DanielCooper_PatrickStewart.avi
payment_BrandonBailie_BarryBradford.avi
possessions_JustinBurks_JackHarkleroad.avi
scissorkick_BrandonBailie.avi
signthisform_JustinBurks_JosephOsborne.avi
sixAs_MattKidd_JohnNixon.avi
snatch_BeauSherman.avi
stop_BrandonBailie_DanielCooper.mov
stretchy_MattKidd.avi
thedoo_BrandonBailie_JimCarrey.avi
thisrock_MattKidd_JohnHammonds.avi
whateveritis_MattKidd_PhillipGraham.avi
whatwasit_DanielCooper_AaronAdams.avi
withmyfist_DanielCooper_MickeyRooney.avi

Character Lineup

2008-04-08T11:06:00.001-04:00

Color Concepts

2008-02-05T14:05:00.001-05:00

Cart

2008-01-27T13:47:00.000-05:00

The boys cart.

The Wall

2008-01-26T23:01:00.001-05:00

Here is the front gate to the city.

Market

2008-01-26T23:00:00.000-05:00

The market in all its glory.

Palace

2008-01-26T22:59:00.000-05:00

Here is the palace where the king lives.

Side View

2008-01-26T22:58:00.000-05:00

This is the side view of the road to the kingdom.

Establishing Shot

2008-01-26T22:51:00.000-05:00

So here is the final drawing of the Establishing shot. I hope.

Old Lady?

2007-12-17T14:47:00.001-05:00

Old Lady?

2007-12-17T14:45:00.000-05:00

Environment Designs

2007-12-16T21:47:00.000-05:00

Here's a top view of the Rock'n'Road Scene. Trees aren't great I know, but they will probably look better painted anyway.

Environment Design

2007-12-16T16:29:00.000-05:00

The establishing shot is drawn up.

more crowd?

2007-11-30T14:30:00.000-05:00

2007-11-30T14:29:00.000-05:00

Nobleman?

2007-11-30T14:24:00.000-05:00

Giant?

2007-11-30T14:23:00.001-05:00

king?

2007-11-30T14:16:00.001-05:00

Adding authors is easy

2007-11-29T12:52:00.000-05:00

Boom. Just like that.

Just starting up

2007-11-29T12:40:00.000-05:00

Hey folks. We're making some progress with the storyboards and the character designs. Keep up the good work.