Progress... sort of.

Ok so technically I have animated 12 seconds of animation since my last post, which is a good amount. The bad thing about this is that 11 of those seconds were animated pretty much right after I made the last post, and I've not made much progress since then. If I worked as hard as I did that day, I might have been able to do a few seconds of animation per day. As it is, I've only added about 1 second, for a grand total of 12 since my last post.

Besides the disappointing amount of work that I just described, I did get a ton of awesome hardware for Christmas. I got a 24 inch, 16x9 1080p monitor (now I can view my editing projects in fullscreen as I work on them!), a pair of pretty awesome speakers for said monitor, as well as a wireless, solar-powered keyboard. When I am not using both screens, I set up my huge monitor in front of my laptop, and along with the separate keyboard and speakers, I feel like I am on an entirely new system. It's pretty darn cool.

I still have a solid week left to try my best to be productive with Axis Mundi, so I hope and pray that I will be able to force myself to get some work done. It's not that I haven't sat down to do some serious animating... It's just that when I do I sit there watching what I have play over and over again, and I hardly ever add any new keyframes. If I ever do add any new keyframes, it only takes me about a minute, but then I WATCH IT ALL OVER AND OVER AGAIN INSTEAD OF TAKING THE NEXT MINUTE AND ADDING MORE KEYFRAMES. SERIOUSLY WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH ME?!?!?!

Filming by the book

Today I have been animating and filming according to my animatic. Here's me comparing my shot in RCT3 to my animatic, in order to make adjustments:

So yeah, that pretty much explains what I've been doing and will be doing until I get to the end of my animatic. Then I'll just make it up from my head as I animate and film.

In other news, I've received grades for the art and digital media assignments that I posted earlier. The art project (The December Render) got a 97.5%, and the animatic got a 113%. Although, I didn't really get credit for the extra 13%, because that's not the way that the school's grading system works. The professor just happened to have a grading scheme that can go over 100%, because extra credit is built into it. Obviously I didn't really need extra credit, though.

December Render

I can't believe that it's been more than a year since I started working on the model of the Pagani Zonda. But here we are, almost a year removed, and I have yet another "December Render" to share. Hhhmmm. March Madness and December Renders. I really enjoy all of these little traditions that I am slowly instituting here at Hard Core's Film Updates.

So, without further ado, here is the second official "December Render!!!"

Yes! It's all snowy and icy and watery! And stuff! I kind of half did this for fun, and half did it because I needed to make something for my 2D Design final. I printed it out on the super-nice printers at the Digital Media Center where I go to college at ETSU. The image is 4800 by 2700 pixels, which is exactly the right resolution to be printed on a 16 inch by 9 inch piece of paper at 300dpi. So that's what I did. The critique for my class's final pieces will be tomorrow, so I might add to this post or make a new one once it has been critiqued.*

Oh, and in case you weren't bored by the technical details mentioned earlier, here are some more to ensure that you get a healthy amount of bore-induced snoring today: The image was rendered in Blender using the Cycles rendering engine, using my GPU (A GTX 485m). It took about 12 hours of rendering to get this quality, which is actually very fast when you consider that there is virtually no noise in it. A similar image would never have cleared up this much in 12 hours if I rendered it with, say, Luxrender. So far Cycles is proving its self to be really, really valuable.

*I had the critique today. Nothing special, really. It went pretty well but people weren't drooling over it or anything. The class wasn't geared towards digital art, so I'm not surprised that not many people really "got" the image.

A scene from The Battle for Axis Mundi

So... I decided that I would upload something kind of out of the ordinary for me. It is a preview of a scene from The Battle for Axis Mundi. I don't generally like to upload "previews" of my stuff before it is done, but I felt like I should make an exception in this case. Firstly, because this preview is not using footage from the actual film. Secondly, because it has been so darn long since I started this thing, I feel like people should get to see some indication of what is in the works. The animatic takes place about 4 minutes and 30 seconds into the film. That's how long it is right now. So basically over the next few weeks I will be working on making the very scene that you see in this video. But in RCT3 with fully animated 3D characters. So go ahead and take a look at what I am talking about, and then I'll give you some more tidbits:

So yeah. Kinda basic, but you get the idea of stuff happening. You also may recognize my slightly Derpy drawings as the Warrior of Light. You also may see a creepy spiky dude that you have never seen or heard of before. I guess I am kind of revealing him here. Oh well. I don't think that it matters that much that it stay a secret. Since I have shown you a 3D model of the Warrior of Light, I might as well show you a picture of what this bad guy, who's name happens to be "Evil," looks like in the game:

Now you are officially kinda-half spoiled. But not really. Because the point of this film is the animation. And I haven't made anything close to these animations before. So hopefully you don't feel too spoiled. Given that this is the biggest update for Axis Mundi so far, I kind of feel a little let down. I was expecting to be like OOHHHH YEAAAHHHH CHECK IT OUT ITS AN ACTUAL VIDEO ABOUT THE BATTLE FOR AXIS MUNDI WOOP WOOP!!!1!!1!!

Maybe I'll feel a little more excited once you guys start talking about it. Wink wink nudge nudge.

New for me, old for... French people?

I just found a really interesting thread. This thread has only one reply. However, this thread also has to do with my machinima tutorials. Which makes it awesome. And in French. Derp... I mean, the thread isn't french because of my tutorials. It just happens to be on a French forum and I decided to mention that last.

This thread is kind of old, but it's new to me so that's why I am posting it. Here's the thread in butchered English a la Chrome:

And here's the French version for those of you who can read it:

Oh, and here's the link: http://frct3.forumactif.com/t1029-tuto-astuces-pour-creer-un-film-avec-rct3

I love posting stuff about people talking about stuff I've made. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.