Thursday 4 June 2009

SERVUS - DEPARTURE CLIP

Here we go. I'm going to do a sequence that will be inserted before this point in the film. This is the big travelling section. The dirt / eroded layer was being very difficult and frustrating so it's not on this.

Servus - Departure Clip from Michael J. Dowswell on Vimeo.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Michael, I think this is one of the most beautiful sequences I've seen in a long time. The music, the timing and the aspect ratio (yes, I notice these things now!). What I really like about your film is that it relies purely on light and shade. Texture is conveyed through objects and the shadows they cast, and not UV maps. The film treatment will be a nice touch, especially for the more barren dune scenes, but don't overdo it.

BTW - How did you get the 2.85:1 AR to show up in Vimeo? Was it automatic or did you letterbox?

Michael J. Dowswell said...

Hey Paul,

Thanks!

Yeah, the major problem and ever present battle for me is...getting what’s in my head onto the screen...I can imagine a miniature version of this with giant rocky terrain and huge chasms, but of course whenever I’ve tried to do that in 3D, it’s been put to death by horrendous render times. However, I do love desert scenery too.

Vimeo seemed to put in the black bars for in here, but on its own page over at Vimeo it’s not got any.

Anonymous said...

I've experienced the same thing with vimeo. It shows the incorrect AR there, but correct on the linkthru. Well, the linkthru works heaps better, for sure. Re: Chasms, which program are you using? I have a quick tute on creating organic terrains over on the process diary. It's from two months ago. It may help. I can only imagine the render times for slow, sweeping (yet beautiful!) shots.

Michael J. Dowswell said...

Well you’ve hit the nail on the head there…(and it’s a great, great tutorial video too by the way...I would have never have thought about using Blender (which is a free program I believe?) for something like this) I’ve been doing it with relief maps in Cinema 4D (which are a lot of fun) but are not the same programming and take a very long time to render out / kill your computer...the control that I’ve just witnessed on your video there is pretty incredible.

My main problem is that I work in ancient software and have never upgraded / learned the new techniques that revolutionised things when Lord of the Rings arrived on the scene with Zbrush and its normal maps (which have made huge, huge advances to the way things are done by the looks of things)...It’s very apparent in the computer gaming world too...its incredible to say the least.

I just have to really say that I am a terrible, terrible technical director and I did attempt to work in Blender a while back and got so very, very frustrated…(it was like this at art college too) people (not talking about you here) never understood that I struggle greatly with the understanding of how to make the computer do what I want it to do...how a new interface works for me seems to be very hard to grasp...but a lot of people jumpy across the three big ones (3DStudio Max, Softimage and Maya) with no problems at all….I however found 3D Studio Max and Softimage extremely difficult to work with and had to say goodbye to them.

When the art college started me off on the German software Cinema 4D GO they didn’t realise what they had done...and I was embedded very firmly into that software one year and, and the crossover to Softimage was like when you drop your toast (with honey on it) onto a very dusty gritty floor. I was a Cinema 4D man and this was not going to change.

I think really it’s all very self reflective and means that I must be a bit inpatient with regards to teaching myself new things (not good at all)...it was so, so slow moving (my progress at college) and in the end I had (thankfully, god!!...thank christ this happened!...had some one to one tuition that really was the most important thing that has ever happened to me...because I was on the verge of jacking in 3d altogether...I still hate it to this day...ok ok, I love / hate it)

Its important though (incredibly important) for the artist to learn new stuff and embrace new methods and push forward to become / make better art. *hits head off the wall like his old lecturer did* (that’s not a joke there, he actually would hit his head off the wall in front of a class of 25 people!)