Fed Reserve Animations

[jujubee]

I've recently completed several stills and an animation segment for the Federal Reserve located in Boston.

I am sure there are certain things which can be improved - unfortunately time, money, and other projects have a big impact on the final quality. If I had more time, the images below would contain more detail. They are what they are - I am not really looking for critiques as they are final. I've kept the image size small here for efficiency.

I should make special note that Patrick (Siliconbauhaus) from this forum created the overall architectural structure. He did an outstanding job considering their seemingly endless list of changes. I created all the furniture modeling (except the Cafe Bar and a tree), texturing, and lighting to their exact specifications. Total project time was 1 month mixed in with other projects.


View the animation here.

[pixelstudio]

Cool animation m8,

since you asked a few critiques haha
- in the beginning you have very much light comming from the right, what is good. but when you turn to the left the area with the black chair look very dark, like the floor is almost not visible.
Same goes for the red chair, i wonder if the are meant to be that dark?
- some of the wall look a bit to greyish.

Overall it's a good animation!!
Now a few questions, i myself are also working on a animation. that has exterior and interior.but we also have moving people in them, that requirs some different render approuche.
But i wonder how you setup your rendering's? Using a precalced lightcash and IR map i guess ??
and what about your frame times? and did you use a render farms ?we are around 4 minutes per frame, and rendering about 10 minutes total, so it takes loads of time. proberly

Did you use vraylights? if yes then did you enabled the IRmap for them? it renders much faster, but the quality drops

[jujubee]

since you asked a few critiques

You know what I mean - sometimes you just don't want to hear what is wrong with your scene after spending a lot of time being squeezed by the client. It's not like I can change anything with small details for these now - for future projects critique would be useful.

but when you turn to the left the area with the black chair look very dark, like the floor is almost not visible.

I agree. The carpet was specified by the client. Other than the pendants, the client didn't specify the lighting in there.

some of the wall look a bit to greyish.

You're right. Thank you. That's a very good comment I will keep that in mind for future projects.

Using a precalced lightcash and IR map i guess ??

Yes.

what about your frame times?

Frame time over my network of 7 comps of varying system specs was 1:46 average per frame.
Some of the other comps had to be taken off because I needed to order more memory and/or had to work on other projects.

However, I still ran out of time and had to send it out to Corey from this forum where he obtained 1:40 on individual dual-quads per frame. The animation was done in 1 hour versus my time of 32+ hours.

Did you use vraylights? if yes then did you enabled the IRmap for them?

Yes. I try to only use those and avoid all other lights if possible. As for 'enabling IRmap' - I'm confused about what you are talking about.

[percydaman]

they look pretty good. I can't help but think a little warmth added would help alot though.

[jujubee]

Warmth as in more yellow in the overall environment? It is very sterile. There's sunlight and sky intermingled with white flourescents - but apparently the sun doesn't contribut enough illumination here.

Here's an actual photo:



The ceiling lights in this picture are yellowish. Also, the walls were a yellowish tinge.

Personally speaking too - it's not my choice in overall furniture, layout, and design. I do like the cafe/bar area. From a functional standpoint - it serves it purpose a whole lot better than what a Skecthup model could possibly ever do.

[DaForce]

Looks pretty good dude.
Certainly will be a huge improvement over what they have now. The place looks very old.

I quote like the carpet style hehe

Were these the renders with most of the glossy off?

[jujubee]

The walls had glossies off because the final renderings for 3200 pixel output was brutal on my aging systems (Moore's law.)

The animation had glossies off due to time constraint and the fact that I didn't want to deal with flickering glossies (in case I ran into that issue down the line.) Also, glass was removed. I'm pretty bummed out about that - if I had more time it would have turned out a lot nicer.

Probably could use a few newer systems but I need to wait since money is tight.

[RErender]

Not bad at all.

I'd would suggest though that you approach the animation differently, instead of actually walking through the whole scene at once do some pans and stuff of the important areas. This way you can break the scene up into smaller pieces and concentrate more on the details. Watch HGN or something to see how the shoot the architectural spaces on tv.

[paulison]

yes i agree start from scratch :P j/k

looks good to me !! (no crit)

[pixelstudio]

Ah well, i see you have some good comp and nice frame times!!!!
Personaly i'm a bit afraid to use render farms, mostly cause i'm not sure on a couple of things like, will all textures be loaded okey, what if things render wrong (lost your money and time?) and such... but well i have to find out more i guess

As for 'enabling IRmap' - I'm confused about what you are talking about.

when you use and vraylight you can set "Store with irradiance map", what renders much faster. but quality is kinda worse.

[jujubee]

I'd would suggest though that you approach the animation differently,

Yes you are right - however there is a thing called 'time' which I've run out of.

Personaly i'm a bit afraid to use render farms

As long as you store all your support files in specific directories - ie. textures, irradiance map, and source file - a competent render farm manager should be able to remap the paths and hit 'render' directly from your settings. Also make sure they are running the same version as you.

And test a few frames first. The irmap and lc were done in my apartment.

It is very frightening to send it out, but most importantly, you have to make sure you are organized yourself.

***speaking of changes - client just asked for some different wall colors...***

[pixelstudio]

Ah man, thats a real problem. clients asking for changes when you have finished something. sjees.
I usualy think "DUDE think that before i render all frames F@@#!!@#" but well customer is king they say

If you render verything out in RPF's and use a couple of ID for materials you could adjust some element is AE or Combustion... but rendernig it all over proberly would look better

We usualy balance those clients out, if they are loads and loads of work we let the customer pay more for the adjustements. sometimes they keep te original, or sometimes they pay and take the adjusted version.... but it isn't very nice to do.. could loose a customer that way.

[RErender]

I'd would suggest though that you approach the animation differently,

Yes you are right - however there is a thing called 'time' which I've run out of.

Yeah, I didn't think you'd change this one, just thought it might be useful in the future. Can save on the work in changes too, wall colors might only change in a couple of the shots.