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| Milestone: |
Final Image |
| Date Submitted: |
Saturday, 17 January 2004 |
| Title: |
Submerged ballet |
| Notes: |
I can't think of anything more to fix now - so I guess it's done. This is the final final.
Umm... Viola! Cha-cha-cha.
A lot of the tweaks I've done for the last two days are unfortunately impossible to see in a low-res JPG... |
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| Milestone: |
Post Effects and Compositing |
| Date Submitted: |
Thursday, 15 January 2004 |
| Title: |
Final-final compo (release candidate X) |
| Notes: |
...or this... This particular minute, I'm leaning towards this last one.... Oh, the confusion. Like The Tick said: "It's the pain that hurts the most." :D
Help! |
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| Milestone: |
Post Effects and Compositing |
| Date Submitted: |
Thursday, 15 January 2004 |
| Title: |
Color balancing, noisy streaks... |
| Notes: |
... or maybe this one. Changed color balance and adding some noisy streaks in overlay mode. I quite like this version.
So, whaddaya say? |
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| Milestone: |
Post Effects and Compositing |
| Date Submitted: |
Thursday, 15 January 2004 |
| Title: |
Final-final Full Image compo (release candidate 2) |
| Notes: |
This might be the final result. I'll probably let it rest for a day or two before submitting - it would be rather embarrasing having to upload a [i]third[/i] full resolution TIF :D
Feel free to comment. |
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| Milestone: |
Post Effects and Compositing |
| Date Submitted: |
Thursday, 15 January 2004 |
| Title: |
Final-final compo (release candidate 2) full-res cutouts |
| Notes: |
... full image coming up in a little while... |
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| Milestone: |
Post Effects and Compositing |
| Date Submitted: |
Thursday, 15 January 2004 |
| Title: |
Final-final compo (release candidate 2) full-res cutouts |
| Notes: |
.... more to follow... |
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| Milestone: |
Post Effects and Compositing |
| Date Submitted: |
Wednesday, 14 January 2004 |
| Title: |
New reworked background |
| Notes: |
Added some more background elements and remade the post-processing.
Several reasons for this:
1. I wanted to emphasize the diagonal feeling from top-left to right, as well as the ballet theme I imagined after watching the last render a few times, so I added a second structure (upper left) and rotated it to fit the flow.
2. Looking for some more drama, so I went for a stronger contrast tweak and went wild with the dodge tool for a while.
3. Needed a bit more color, so I've enhanced a few areas with rather clean primary colors. |
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| Milestone: |
Post Effects and Compositing |
| Date Submitted: |
Sunday, 11 January 2004 |
| Title: |
Final composite -> Full res cutout |
| Notes: |
And a final full-res cutout, this one from the exploded area of the main structure.
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| Milestone: |
Post Effects and Compositing |
| Date Submitted: |
Sunday, 11 January 2004 |
| Title: |
Final composite -> Full res cutout |
| Notes: |
A full-res detailed view of the "foot" |
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| Milestone: |
Post Effects and Compositing |
| Date Submitted: |
Sunday, 11 January 2004 |
| Title: |
Final composite -> Full res cutout |
| Notes: |
Here's the "head" at full print resolution. |
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| Milestone: |
Final Image |
| Date Submitted: |
Sunday, 11 January 2004 |
| Title: |
Submerged ballet |
| Notes: |
Lets see if I come up with something more. It's final today anyways. |
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| Milestone: |
Post Effects and Compositing |
| Date Submitted: |
Sunday, 11 January 2004 |
| Title: |
Final composite -> Full res cutout |
| Notes: |
Part of the backdrop structure explosion. |
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| Milestone: |
Rendering |
| Date Submitted: |
Saturday, 10 January 2004 |
| Title: |
Background cutout - middle right section |
| Notes: |
A cutout from the full-size (almost) background.
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| Milestone: |
Rendering |
| Date Submitted: |
Saturday, 10 January 2004 |
| Title: |
Background cutout - bottom right section |
| Notes: |
A cutout from the full-size (almost) background. |
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| Milestone: |
Rendering |
| Date Submitted: |
Saturday, 10 January 2004 |
| Title: |
Background cutout - top right section |
| Notes: |
A cutout from the full-size (almost) background. |
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| Milestone: |
Rendering |
| Date Submitted: |
Thursday, 08 January 2004 |
| Title: |
Final 1st level background |
| Notes: |
Rendered out the final background image at full resolution after having put a gigazillion of buildings in place.
Rendered at 2700 px width in 2 hours.
I ended up using billboards/sprites because I simply couldn't render more than around 10 buildings with real geometry... Not enough RAM + swapspace... And as you can see I wanted a lot more than 10 of these...
Next step is to add more stuff to the main mineral structure, work some more of the lighting and finally figure out something to add to the foreground. |
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| Milestone: |
Rendering |
| Date Submitted: |
Wednesday, 07 January 2004 |
| Title: |
Background cities |
| Notes: |
Been working on the backdrop... The size of the scene is now starting to turn my P.O.S. PC into something slow and crawly, so in order to populate the background with a huge number of buildings, I had to resort to billboards.
I'm far from done with this particular feature, so there are not a lot of houses yet... I've only rendered out two different billboard textures yet, so I have to do a lot of that too in order to get a decent amount of variation.
I've also used big one-poly planes on different Z-distances, facing the camera, frontal-mapped with a copy of the background gradient, lowered the opacity and used them to create a fake mist. I find this is better than ordinary fog because it gives more control. It also renders a lot faster than volumetric fog shaders. |
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| Milestone: |
Lighting |
| Date Submitted: |
Wednesday, 07 January 2004 |
| Title: |
Those rays from above |
| Notes: |
Testing the imaginary caustics from above. Didn't crank up the sample quality enough, so there are some artifacts...
I also messed up the alpha a bit, so the "old" volume lights look really weird. I'll be fixing that later on - just wanted you to see the intended atmospheric feel here... |
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| Milestone: |
Lighting |
| Date Submitted: |
Monday, 05 January 2004 |
| Title: |
Reworked lighting + buildings in place |
| Notes: |
Changed the lighting a bit... don't know if I like it better than the old setup yet. For the finals I'll do a multipass render anyway, so the individual lighting levels don't really matter...
On top you'll see the friendly alien neighbourhood... Slightly twisted, but I'm sure they've got really tidy lawns. If we only could see them. Good thing I didn't make any. |
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| Milestone: |
Texturing |
| Date Submitted: |
Monday, 05 January 2004 |
| Title: |
Shaders for the buildings |
| Notes: |
Only procedurals here (too, I might add. My box couldn't handle any bitmaps large enough at print resolution, so I'll have to stick to procedural shading all the way). This is mainly a few tons of Buya algorithmic noise in color, diffusion, specular and bump channels, plus some more noise multiplied with a falloff gradient in the luminance channel - incidently more or less the same setup as the shader for the rest of the structure. |
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| Milestone: |
Modeling |
| Date Submitted: |
Monday, 05 January 2004 |
| Title: |
Alien alta vista |
| Notes: |
Something for them poor aliens to live in... If they ever come home that is. Haven't seen them around so far. |
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| Milestone: |
Rendering |
| Date Submitted: |
Saturday, 03 January 2004 |
| Title: |
Almost done with the main structure |
| Notes: |
Getting closer to the finished mineral structure here. When designing characters I usually enjoy giving them a large potbelly.... Though this is technically NOT a character, the structure has a certain intentional antropomorphic appearance, so I automatically gave it a potbelly too.... Then I blew it up. I usually don't do THAT. |
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| Milestone: |
Modeling |
| Date Submitted: |
Saturday, 03 January 2004 |
| Title: |
Viewport inferno! |
| Notes: |
Once my viewports start looking like Stalingrad around 1943 I know that things are starting to get detailed enough... Some more stuff, then a clean start to build the backdrop and foreground elements. |
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| Milestone: |
Concept Sketch |
| Date Submitted: |
Saturday, 03 January 2004 |
| Title: |
Backdrop experiment |
| Notes: |
Just doodling a backdrop concept... |
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| Milestone: |
Rendering |
| Date Submitted: |
Saturday, 03 January 2004 |
| Title: |
Lower structure - testrender |
| Notes: |
My favourite visible parallel spots from previous experiments. A preliminary procedural texture (but I'm pretty happy about it anyway) - one keylight and one fill. |
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| Milestone: |
Modeling |
| Date Submitted: |
Saturday, 03 January 2004 |
| Title: |
Lower structure completed |
| Notes: |
So far only 4500 polys - 30 000 at rendertime with expanded instances and subdivisions. |
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| Milestone: |
Modeling |
| Date Submitted: |
Friday, 02 January 2004 |
| Title: |
Alien corals on skewer |
| Notes: |
Building some various biotech-coral kind of things, applying them along splines arranged to match the intended "pose" of the entire structure.... This particular image matches the "thigh" so to speak - So far it's a little bit like putting small pieces of meat and vegetables on a skewer. BBQ anyone? |
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| Milestone: |
Concept Sketch |
| Date Submitted: |
Wednesday, 31 December 2003 |
| Title: |
Posed mineral structure |
| Notes: |
OK, starting over! New concept that feels a bit more promising... I'm thinking something like an alien coral reef, underwater setting - the structure is possibly inhabited by parasite alien beings (which we won't see of course)... 20 days left - this will be an interesting start of the new year.. |
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| Milestone: |
Modeling |
| Date Submitted: |
Monday, 01 December 2003 |
| Title: |
Your average alien mountain scenery |
| Notes: |
Some weird mountains to go as a backdrop in a hole in the wall of the upper left corner of the previous renders. Probably. |
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| Milestone: |
Lighting |
| Date Submitted: |
Sunday, 30 November 2003 |
| Title: |
Painting with light |
| Notes: |
Testing testing... It looks a bit busy right now, but I'm happily using a lot of saturated lights. I'm a bit of a coward usually, going for desaturated yellows most of the time, so this is a lot of fun. I think I'm approaching a state of 'immediate impact' - - - |
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| Milestone: |
Rendering |
| Date Submitted: |
Friday, 28 November 2003 |
| Title: |
The Escheresque twist |
| Notes: |
Trying another scene/layout (draft)... |
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| Milestone: |
Rendering |
| Date Submitted: |
Tuesday, 25 November 2003 |
| Title: |
Minor arrangement and lighting test |
| Notes: |
A bunch of small buildings on cliffs arranged (in mid air for the time being, the ground to be connected later) together with one of the main pipe thingies. Trying out some small foggy lights and wondering if not blue might be better than green. Who knows.
This is cropped and shows only the lower 1/2 (approx) of the intended final render. |
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| Milestone: |
Concept Sketch |
| Date Submitted: |
Tuesday, 25 November 2003 |
| Title: |
Some sort of building |
| Notes: |
A bunch of these will be scattered around the area. |
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| Milestone: |
Texturing |
| Date Submitted: |
Sunday, 23 November 2003 |
| Title: |
Improving the gel |
| Notes: |
Some tweaks concerning the gel shader for the eyes/spheres and an environment color test. |
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| Milestone: |
Concept Sketch |
| Date Submitted: |
Sunday, 23 November 2003 |
| Title: |
Finally a sketch =) |
| Notes: |
Most likely the ugliest concept ever seen by unprotected eyes. Put on peril sensitive shades. I managed to scan a few of my doodles and colored them up a bit just to show what I'm thinking here. You're probably thinking "what the hell is he thinking?" - Well, the 3D will look slightly better :D
Anyway, the overall layout is more or less clear here. We've got your average sea of whirly green goo at the bottom, a huge organic structure fixed in mid-air between the north pole and the vortex. Everything will fit into the inside of a spherical landscape.
Since I always want a background story, here's the
.:: BACKGROUND STORY ::.
What we are looking at is presumably an alien mining site. These guys travel through the galaxy searching for small planetoids with reasonable amounts of valuable minarals. Once they find a good target, they drill a couple of really big holes into the core of the body, insert large pipes that serve as a transportation conduit as well as habitat for the workforce. The weird organic structure, the origin of which isn't even known to the aliens themselves, somehow digests the planetoid matter and turns it into a powerful source of energy - the green goo [insert scary orchestra hit here].
As time goes by, more and more of the matter gets transformed into go as the planetoid turns into a thin shell. The advantage is camouflage. Possible enemies will not see anything unusual on the surface of the planet.
Regardless of how silly all this sounds, it will at least provide me with ideas for what details and structures to add.
The place "seems to be unpopulated" because the aliens are all on vacation for the moment. It is "neither rusting or decaying" because it's really a well maintained workplace. They're just not there. |
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| Milestone: |
Modeling |
| Date Submitted: |
Sunday, 23 November 2003 |
| Title: |
Gel spheres |
| Notes: |
Just testing the gel-filled spheres for the central organic structure/entity. I thought it could be fun making them look a little bit like eyes, so I'm in the process of covering the "head" of this thingy with eyelids. Pretty tricksy to model, and I have to admit that the topology isn't entirely pretty... The look is sort of what I was going for though, so I'm happy so far. |
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| Milestone: |
Lighting |
| Date Submitted: |
Saturday, 22 November 2003 |
| Title: |
Light FX experiment |
| Notes: |
Just trying out some different tricks with lights here. Turns out that volumetrics and colored edge fall-off on round parallel spots is a good thing for those sharp beamy rays of light. Might be useful later on. |
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| Milestone: |
Texturing |
| Date Submitted: |
Tuesday, 18 November 2003 |
| Title: |
Swirly green alien goo vortex |
| Notes: |
Just playing a bit with the sea of goo that's supposed to cover the lower part of the depicted area. This is a magnet tool edited disc with a serious amount of subdivisions, and 16 tons of various noise shaders in just about all available material channels including displacement.
The top image shows the result when the mesh has been put through a spherical warp modifier to give it some curvature. |
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| Milestone: |
Modeling |
| Date Submitted: |
Thursday, 13 November 2003 |
| Title: |
Tunnel entrance |
| Notes: |
This is the entrance to one of the tunnels leading from the outside into the core of the complex. |
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