Warehouse Bay Pic!

Alright. I rendered this pic of the bay area of the warehouse for 7 hours today and this is what I got. I have to say, I'm a little unhappy as I don't see much of a difference from yesterday's break room pic.

I don't know if the difference is that the break room has more texture than the bay of the warehouse, but the conversion of the rendered image to .jpg caused a lot of the detail to be lost. Perhaps it is because I am still using the trial version of the software. I'm going to have to look into that before I decide to purchase this rendering software.

Anyway, I'd hate to have spent (or should I say run my computer all day doing nothing but this) without having anything to show for it so here is the rendered pic of the warehouse bay.

Stay tuned to see what improvements can be made.

Warehouse Break Room Pic!

Well, I've spent the last couple days working on various parts of the warehouse. I spent about 2 1/2 hours rendering the break room and thought I'd share it with you!

First, a couple of things about this pic. It is a backdrop for later in the movie. Obviously, when Xam, Power Dog and Willow move into the warehouse it is abandoned. Willow, who's power is extreme intelligence, eventually purchases the warehouse (from money gained in the stock market) and fixes it up. This picture is what the break room becomes. You can see her "Cat Computer" and a small kitchen in the background. What you don't see is a huge server room just behind the Cat Computer.

Now, this picture was only rendering for 2 1/2 hours before I stopped it. It was just at the half way point when I stopped the render. The finished picture should look twice as good as this! That said, 5 hours to render just one pic means I am going to be spending a lot of time in post rendering the back drops. I think the time will be worth the wait but we're gonna have to wait and see. Plus, I am hoping that as I use the rendering software more I will learn different ways to speed the rendering process up. I've already picked up on some tricks. Here's to hoping I find more!

And now, the pic. Again, this is not a completely rendered backdrop. This is just a hint of where I am hoping to take this idea.

Enjoy

Still Building Sets Very, Very Slowly!

Well, I wish I can say I'm moving forward with great speed on the sets but the truth is I am not. In my wildest dreams I never thought I'd spend more time on building the sets than figuring out the special effects for this movie.

And yet, here I am still building sets. The warehouse set was getting so big it was slowing my computer down to an absolute crawl. Then I got the idea of building an outside set and and inside set. That actually cut the file size by two-thirds, which is quite a lot!

So, now I'm working on the inside of the warehouse and then will work on the outside. It's still a slow process but I finally think I'm on the right track.

I also found a pretty good rendering software called iRender. It hit the budget pretty good, but I think it's worth it. As you can see below, it does a pretty good job.

The first picture is a picture of the alley. By the time I get done lighting it I think it will look pretty realistic. The blue background is where I'll add some buildings later on.


The second picture is a picture of the Brooklyn Bridge. I didn't build this model and after trying to build my own my hat is off to the person that made this one. I hope to one day have the patience and ability to do such a detailed model.


So, as you can see, I am moving forward. I wish I could say I'll be done soon but I still have a couple of sets to build after the warehouse. One thing I think I can safely say is that once I have all the sets built I will be ready to start filming the movie.

I am really looking forward to that!

Still Working on Sets!

Wow! This set building is taking almost as long as it would to literally build the freaking sets! Then, to slow things down even more, I can't find a decent rendering software that doesn't cost and arm and a leg. The rendering software is what would take my backdrops from Sketchup model to photo realistic image. So, lately, I feel as though I am at a dead crawl instead of moving forward.

That said, I have been working my butt of these last few weeks. I believe I finished the alley set. I say "believe" because I've learned not to declare victory on the backdrop department until I now for a fact I am good to go and like I said, I still haven't found a rendering software.

So, what is taking so long? It's kind of a long story and I don't want to bore anyone with the details so I will try to sum it up. The alley only took me about 4 hours to construct because it was only an external set. So, much like a real Hollywood set, I only had to decorate the exterior of the buildings. If you were to walk inside, you would see nothing but thin walls and empty space.

The set that has been taking up so much of my time is the warehouse. Now, I know you haven't seen the script (and I won't post it out here until the movie is finished) but a lot happens at that warehouse. Xam, Power Dog and Willow all have scenes outside and inside the warehouse. That means that I can't just create an exterior set like the alley (which would have taken several hours just doing that). I also have to create the interior and doing both is taking me forever! There are a lot of windows in a warehouse!

Anyway, since the warehouse is only 50% done I will not show any of those pics yet. I will, however, give you a glimpse of the un-rendered alley. Like I said, these are not rendered images. They do not look photo realistic and baring some unforeseen event where I can't acquire rendering software these look nothing like what I hope the finished product will look like. Still, I don't want you to think I haven't been working hard these last couple of weeks, so...

Enjoy.