How to..masterplan

[jtiscareno]

So if I understand you correctly is that I just vraymesh one tree or car once it is in the scene and then instance it? So this is the vray proxy...

beacuse before I tought one had to "import" back in a vraymesh or proxy into it!?!?

I will give it a test with cars and trees that we have here

Also Olitech, what company do you use to buy trees?

[CT]

Olitech

True awesome animations. The Bahrain Bay one is a stand out.

[czoog]

Well Done Olitech! Bahrain Bay is a great project, you guys did a fantastic job bringing it to life.

I actually work for SOM now, but I did not work on Bahrain Bay...

I just saw the first construction photos pinned up in our pantry the other day, picture a few huge bulldozers wading through a beautiful blue water bay, building up mounds pristine white sand to form the islands.. cool stuff.

[pg1]

I have never posted on a forum before but your Incredible work moved me from my laziness. Bahrain bay is some of the best work I have seen.

The only problem is the quality of the video is there any higher res version floating around on the web for download??

[olitech]

jtiscareno:

Also Olitech, what company do you use to buy trees?

We don't...I make them:
http://www.chaosgroup.com/forum/phpB...hlight=#105429

CT: thanks!

czoog:

Well Done Olitech! Bahrain Bay is a great project, you guys did a fantastic job bringing it to life.

It's only because your office does great work! very professional and creative...it's OUR pleasure to work on such inspiring design!

pg1:

I have never posted on a forum before but your Incredible work moved me from my laziness.

hahahah...Awesome!! this place has that effect...
Afraid no higher res on the web...there's a fullres DVD version, but i want to render an HD res this summer...there's so much detail that gets lost in the 720 version. drives me nuts!

[ene.xis]

olitech i really think u should make some money with those! i d buy them pronto!


...or share them....hehehehe (doesn t hurt to ask, does it?)

[olitech]

olitech i really think u should make some money with those! i d buy them pronto!


...or share them....hehehehe (doesn t hurt to ask, does it?)

when u see them up close they're just ok, but for animation they work well. That's why i like the Riffa video (above)....i sprayed down something like 15-20,000 of them!

[ene.xis]

when u see them up close they're just ok, but for animation they work well

they re great!they would reaaaly be usefull!

[jhiler]

One thing that can be a problem with working from SketchUp models is if the person that is modelling in SU isn't very clean in how they model. when we receive models from some of our people working in SU faces are facing the wrong way, things are just put together in horrible fashion and in general they are looking for the easiest way to make their model, they don't realize that we have to come in and clean up after them. But as long as the person modeling knows what they are doing and that you are coming in afterwards to work from their models, then you should be ok.

I agree with Oli that you should work on terrain/site first then get into buildings and finally into entourage. If there are a lot of existing buildings around if you can obtain aerials or your own high res pictures then you can texture map buildings pretty easily and keep poly count down so that anything close up you can model with a little bit more detail. We tend to render entourage seperately and just composite it into our post process.

Also a good story board from you and your designers will help you determine which views are your most important and where to spend the most of your time.

good luck

-jerry

[olitech]

Also a good story board from you and your designers will help you determine which views are your most important and where to spend the most of your time.

You know what? This is probably one of the most important parts!

[jhiler]

Also a good story board from you and your designers will help you determine which views are your most important and where to spend the most of your time.

You know what? This is probably one of the most important parts!

And it also usually the hardest to nail down because the designers never know what they want.

My favorite is hearing "just give me some views that look good" Well my opinion and their opinion usually are totally different when it comes to that.

[olitech]

My favorite is hearing "just give me some views that look good" Well my opinion and their opinion usually are totally different when it comes to that.

I ABSOLUTELY second that! This even happens internally.
The storyboard also serves as the first 'sign off' from the client and gives them something to chew right away.

[Giovanni]

Oli,
beautiful imagery there, thanks for sharing.

But, how do you guys render such large scenes?
Do you always render the terrain with everything matte on top, then other layers, then comp it?

Also, objects that are matte out, do still carry their geometry and map information, don't they?

what kind of hardware you guys use?

thank you

regards

gio

[olitech]

First of all, I totally apologize for hijacking jtiscareno's thread! This will be a long one.

Giovanni:
To be honest, i'm not a huge fan of comping. If we can do it one-shot, everyone goes home. Our composite guy (1 guy) has enough to do with colour correction and fx...if we do have to, we'll try as hard as possible to break the composite layers into foreground, mid, then background. We use tiffs or tga for frames so that we can knock out the alphas if we need to change skies,etc...distance comping as opposed to layering on the terrain. (we'll matte people in as a last resort; and even then, we'll render flickering and all and comp on top-shadows)

As jhiler pointed out, a good storyboard will enable you to plan this.

Basically from the ground up, we try to build everything as lean as possible, low geometry counts, low to med texture res, low gi sampling (fill lighting to compensate), etc...(gaming experience helps!) Once we send the first clips, we add detail/higher sampling as required. We'll add all we can until it crashes, then deconstruct. Brute force, but deadlines are deadlines!

That's a nice benefit of precalculated imaps...once they're calculated, we can matte out objects and still retain the gi. And we always calculate at 1/4 res (360x240) with 'don't render image' ticked..every 10 frames.

Send it to the network! If it flickers or needs tweaking, fine, but at least the first iterations serve many purposes: the 3D team can see what needs fixing; the video guys can start to edit; the architects can prepare for 'changes'; and most importantly (for us!) the client can comment and we can react to changes in the final renders. whew...this way, we avoid 'bottlenecks' in the production.

All our boxes have 4GB of ram...with 3GB switches enabled...processors range from single proc. oldies to newer duals and dualcores. We use whatever is available.

Oh, and the editor can turn sh** into gold or gold into sh**! Luckily for us, ours is a very patient, relentless guy! We get him clips as early as possible so that he can dictate timing (how much we actually have to render)

Tip: don't try to fill empty areas with more clutter (geometry)...shadows are your friend! use them! embrace the power of the dark side...

[DaForce]

embrace the power of the dark side...

Not if I have anything to do with it...


haha get it... dark side.. daforce.. the force...therefore I combat the dark side .... ah forget it.