Plagarus: Parts One and Two


PART ONE:

The planet was made by the very talented Mr. SwirlyPillow =)

Hopefully everyone likes it. I’m not working on Part One anymore. I’ve gotten sick of it. On to Part Two!

PART TWO:

Thanks to Dan Rivera for his help on the voice recording, which is a considerable improvement over the original stuff, let me tell you.

Hopefully everyone likes it, too. No more Part Two. On to Part Three!


Also, looking for pointers on improving my animation skills, particularly character animation. Right now, as you can see, we’re in rough shape.

Dan

woahhhhhh, EPIC! So pretty! My favorite shot was the initial docking shot at :47

I’m a big fan already, can’t wait to see more

That was awesome! Great rendering and camera work!

I can’t wait to see part 2!

haha wow, that was pretty awesome! Needs about 20 more minutes though imo :wink:

My buddies are trippin and think the character is real green screen footage, but that’s a 3D character right?

This looks better than (Star Wars) Episode 1! :smiley:
Epic work!

Wow. Looks brilliant, especially the docking scene. And I’d also like confirmation on whether not that guy is modeled or green-screened!

Are you a fan of the Firefly series? I think this could look awesome with similar camera work to that (not that your camera work isn’t good!). Like with lots of camera refocusing and whatnot that make it look as if someone if filming it on the fly with a camera in their hand. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVaKbcrOrp8&feature=related

Also, if my understanding of the current theories of supernovas is correct, the star that is about to go nova would have long ago swelled up to many times its original size, thus engulfing the planet. Unless the planet only became habitable in this swelling period, which I think would be hundred of thousands of years long at least. Where’s Prof. Brian Cox when you need him?!

Hey wow that is really good, especially the cinematography and sound effects. Maybe if you got someone else or used a better sound system to record the narration it would make the whole thing a bit better. Either way pretty amazing

That was really amazing, very good character animation, needs some more facial expression though to make it more realistic looking. Loved the docking scene which looked as it was taken from some of the star wars movies :smiley:

Great stuff. I really want to see more of it.

The very 1st word that came to mind was EEEEEPIIIIIIC.

The scene where a shot was fired and the ship appeared was executed amazingly.
Character -amazing.

Wow! Thanks everyone for your nice comments! =D It’s not perfect by any means, but you all are very nice about it. Thanks! =)

@Omnamah: I am a fan of Firefly. It’s interesting you bring that up because I employed some cinematic techniques that I learned from the Director’s Commentary on the Serenity DVD. Very cool. I’m glad it showed through!

The character is 3D, but I find he moves more naturally when you add a noise modifier to his armature animation.

Again, thank you all for your nice remarks! I’m already working on Part Two. =D

Dan

Eff my life, dude. Eff my life…

Wow, thats awesome!!! very very impressing!! I like the look of the charater the most! But I think a little more DOF in the long shot of the Rocklandscape would bring even a little more realism :slight_smile: just saying :slight_smile:

Thanks Xero and My3D for your nice comments. =) I’m glad you liked it!

Still working on Part Two. This one is a bit more complicated than the last, involving some lip syncing and more extensive character animation, so it’ll probably be two or three weeks before the next installment is ready. On the other hand, I’ve also got a potential custom job lined up, which may push back the release of Part Two to sometime next month. =\

We will see what happens!

Hope you’re all doing awesome!

Dan

Can’t rush GREATNESS…

Just one more shot of the conversation scene in the Plagarus Part Two. Then we’re onto a nice, fairly easy musical interlude. Hopefully it works well.


New rendering techniques have made the rendering times much faster. For instance, the original Plagarus scenes were extremely noisy due to the fact that I had to use CPU rendering, while keeping render times reasonable. Now that I’ve got a pretty good graphics card, GPU rendering has allowed render times of less than a quarter what it used to be on the i7.

Also, I’ve discovered that I don’t need to have the background geometry involved in many scenes. The shot above is taken with a simple equirectangular background image. The advantage of this is that there is nearly instant rendering time for background elements, as well as the camera can pan, letting the background image move with it.

The downside, of course, is that it’s almost impossible to completely merge it with the real background geometry when rendered for real. So, the room will appear slightly different between shots where geometry is rendered and it’s just the character in front of a backdrop.


Also, there is the benefit of having better DOF effects in Cycles than before. This is a huge advantage as well. Additionally, something new since the release of the previous installment of Plagarus is motion blur. This is a particularly useful technique which greatly increases the believability of the animation.

The downside? The next installment of the movie is probably going to start looking visually different from Part One. This is going to be an issue which may involve me having to go back and re-render the entire thing.

There was a chance I had to do this anyway, as I was hoping technology would advance enough to allow me to render a 1080p version of the movie. Right now, it’s in 720p.

Hopefully one day this film will be done.

Here’s hoping, anyway.

Dan

Keep on keeping on. And thank for the notes on the update! and i might misunderstand the ‘merging’ comment, is there not a way to mask in blender?

Hey Kirk,

I’ve never tried masking layers in Blender. It’s been low on my list of things to learn, but I guess it should happen. What I was talking about is the fact that the room the characters are in will look different when actually rendered with the characters as opposed to simply being separately rendered as an equirectangular background world image. This is a huge time saver, but, sadly, it does look slightly different than if I render the entire room properly.

Done the conversation scene. On to the next scene. The next installment of Plagarus should be done within a couple of weeks, probably. Here’s hoping. I’m looking currently for a fairly realistic looking valley of some sort. Anyone got any ideas on how to make one?

Dan

Getting there.




Sadly, the movie is looking a bit rough, still. This is probably a pretty unavoidable side-effect of being a one-man show. =\ Oh well.

Hope you’re all doing great.

Dan