Sowing machine animation

[Ihno]

This one might not be the most visually appealing thing I've ever done, but it's one of the most challenging animation-wise and definitely the most challenging compositing-wise. Tons of invisible cuts, a client who constantly decided to change lots of stuff and add new scenes, which then changed everything that came afterwards, and on top of it, it had to be seamlessly loopable. Lots of headache.

[Ihno]

I used TyFlow for the simulations and Blackmagic Fusion for the compositing. I ended up with 2.1 TB worth of render output split across 46k rendered images. Rendering out the comp file took 6 hours on a fairly beefy computer with two 2080TIs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7H23aYvfv8Y


This is what the Fusion file looks like. It might not be that intimidating for you VFX guys out there, but for me, it was like climbing Everest.


Something is wrong with the Forum software... Had to splitt it in two posts.

[haniel1107]

great animation job!

[fixeighted]

That looks great.
I do think it is rather appealing, but I like this kind of thing and have done a number of similar projects over the years

I know how complex these things can be; managing client demands with what is possible within the budget, so well done I reckon.
Of course I don't know what the budget was, so it's hard to say whether it was worthwhile for you to go through the pain of completing it

[Ihno]

Thanks!
They paid for the time that went in. Due to all the changes and added scenes, it was about five times the initial estimation, and they understood that it was because they basically turned it into something very different than what they initially commissioned. They didn't complain too much about having to pay so much more.

So, I have nothing to complain about here.
It was just so much work that had to be done over and over again. Because in this type of thing, changes early on will destroy the whole simulation and camera animation, requiring me to resimulate several times to get everything happening at the right time again.
And then reanimate the camera so everything is shown correctly.
Then, redo the preview and the compositing of that. Several segments where done in passes and I had to do the preview in passes too to get it to the point where they could juge it propery.

There must have been ten previews so, ten times doing much of it again and again. But hey, for this type of thing, I'm now quite good in Tyflow.

[fixeighted]

That's all great and I'm glad it worked out for you. It's quite rare to get a client that is so understanding about this stuff.