Cairo scorcher (animation)

SATtva_ · Post by **SATtva_** » Sat Apr 11, 2009 3:11 am

In the past two weeks I was busy making an animation: promo clip for 3d-vis studio. Preprocessing, modelling, texturing, and post-processing parts were made in Blender and GIMP. Audio was arranged in Audacity. And the rendering part was conducted with Indigo. Here are results:

http://www.vladmiller.info/video/cairo.avi (26 Mb)

(By the was, does anyone interested in the tutorial explaining motion blur in Indigo animations? If yes, I could write one.)

Borgleader · Post by **Borgleader** » Sat Apr 11, 2009 4:12 am

That video is pretty awesome, I mean it. I only have 2 small critics:

1. The water that comes out of the pipe acts a little weird. It sometimes "overflows" somewhat and spits out higher than it should. The flow isn't really continuous like you'd expect from a real-life one. (It subtle though)

2. There seem to be dark reflections in the water itself from time to time. Again, it's subtle but it caught my eye.

Good job though

SATtva_ · Post by **SATtva_** » Sat Apr 11, 2009 4:23 am

Thank you much. Well, black dots are famously known as normals smoothing issue. =) I've rendered about 100 frames before noticed that, and it was too late to start over again. T__T

Conceptual Architect · Post by **Conceptual Architect** » Sat Apr 11, 2009 5:06 am

Wow great work SATtva_!!!

Render time??

Best Regards

SATtva_ · Post by **SATtva_** » Sat Apr 11, 2009 5:22 am

About a week, but it's not so easy to estimate pure rendering time precisely. Frames was rendered on several (well, eight) very different machines, from time to time Indigo was stopped, started again, once there was a power outage in the building, and so on.

There are 500 rendered frames in the video. I didn't used network rendering, instead every machine worked on a distinct set of frames. Every frame was rendered to 1000 spp, but rendering time varied considerably (from one view to the next, from one machine to the next).

If you have any additional questions, don't hesitate to ask.

SATtva_ · Post by **SATtva_** » Sat Apr 11, 2009 5:28 am

In the first post I mentioned motion blur in Indigo animations, but actually this technique applies even to still images rendered with Indigo.

Post by **fused** » Sat Apr 11, 2009 5:30 am

whoa.... this is just sick!

awesome work!

WytRaven · Post by **WytRaven** » Sat Apr 11, 2009 11:44 am

Apart from the black spots in the water and the general oddness of the water altogether this is awesome work Sativa. The camera movement is very "hand held" realistic and the scene is very nicely lit, modelled and textured.

Zom-B · Post by **Zom-B** » Sat Apr 11, 2009 12:44 pm

Am I the only one, who noticed that the mask for the ivy is inverted??!? I only see "stenciled leaves"

Anyway, this is some really nice work!!1!!!

Personally I prefer more object based motion in the scene... not so much camera motion...

some birds could start flying, leaves could move, some clothes that dry somewhere could wave in the wind, a window could be opened etc.
The moving leaves of a tree for example would also have a moving shadow that covers some area and brings more subtle dynamic into the scene

having only 20fps and a lot of camera movement, the video would really need some (PostProcess) Motion Blur to be less "stuttering"... I don't see any motion Blur :/

This are just some hints, I still really thing this video is quite awesome, but the is always space for advancement, don't get me wrong

SATtva_ · Post by **SATtva_** » Sat Apr 11, 2009 6:49 pm

Am I the only one, who noticed that the mask for the ivy is inverted??!?

I beg your pardon, could you please clarify?

Personally I prefer more object based motion in the scene... [birds, clothes, windows, tree...]

Video is only 30 seconds, and I had a very strict deadline on making this thing -- two weeks. It was a balanced decision to not overload the scene with details and moving objects: many of them wouldn't be even noticed, so what's the purpose of wasting time on animating them? Also scorcher is a very hot day, so it's supposed to be calm, no wind, and leaves cannot move by themselves.

having only 20fps and a lot of camera movement, the video would really need some (PostProcess) Motion Blur to be less "stuttering"... I don't see any motion Blur :/

I played with it during post-prod and decided to make it subtle for more realistic feel. You can see it around frame 290, look at the ivy.

This are just some hints, I still really thing this video is quite awesome, but the is always space for advancement

As always (hey, this was my first animation ever, not just with Indigo!). Thank you. ^^

Zom-B · Post by **Zom-B** » Sat Apr 11, 2009 10:21 pm

SATtva_ wrote:
Am I the only one, who noticed that the mask for the ivy is inverted??!?
I beg your pardon, could you please clarify?

SATtva_ wrote:
Personally I prefer more object based motion in the scene... [birds, clothes, windows, tree...]
Video is only 30 seconds, and I had a very strict deadline on making this thing -- two weeks. It was a balanced decision to not overload the scene with details and moving objects: many of them wouldn't be even noticed, so what's the purpose of wasting time on animating them? Also scorcher is a very hot day, so it's supposed to be calm, no wind, and leaves cannot move by themselves.

Deadlines are always evil!

SATtva_ wrote:
having only 20fps and a lot of camera movement, the video would really need some (PostProcess) Motion Blur to be less "stuttering"... I don't see any motion Blur :/
I played with it during post-prod and decided to make it subtle for more realistic feel. You can see it around frame 290, look at the ivy.

for me it seems more like DOF blur, there is no "blured motion direction" visible.... just gausian style blur...
http://www.cs.mtu.edu/~shene/DigiCam/Us ... nd-4-8.jpg

CTZn · Post by **CTZn** » Sun Apr 12, 2009 11:35 pm

It's a great job SATtva !

It's still a challenge to make an interesting animation with those constraints. I can't remember of a better/longer animation rendered with Indigo.

About water: aah, why did you not use Indigo subdivisions ? It's doing great with water sims !

WytRaven · Post by **WytRaven** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 11:19 am

lmao ZomB! I wonder if this is a similar "brain thing" to the situation where a page of words can have their letters all jumbled up but the brain can still happily read them? So the shape of the leaves are there and the colour is there so the brain says "ivy leaves" regardless of the fact that they are completely wrong. I didn't notice that at all

"Arinocdcg to rencet rseaerch, the hmuan brian is plrectfey albe to raed colmpex pasasges of txet caiinontng wdors in whcih the lrettes hvae been jmblued, pvioedrd the frsit and lsat leetrts rmeian in teihr crcerot piiotsons.

The fcat taht you are ridenag tihs now wtih reaitvle esae is poorf of the thoery."

Zom-B · Post by **Zom-B** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 11:29 am

he he... you are right Wyt ^^

I actually always check the ivy results of other artists very close, since I played with the generator around a lot!

A bug in the generator always points the leaves upward, instead of downwards.... simply turn your textures 180° and everything is fine... this issue is visible here too
forgot to mention this...

Grimm · Post by **Grimm** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 3:07 pm

Excellent animation SATtva_, very nice. I liked the audio, it added a lot of realism to the scene.

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