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Here I back... I was working at casting children for the movie, so it was nothing interesting to upload. Now we are preparing to shotting... So I have some time to continue work at CG stuff of the project.

The main actor was casted a while ago and even one part been shotted with him (it probably not perfect, so I gonna re-shot it). But there are scenes like falling from the building or stuff when the perspective could not be gotten on green screen because of small sizes of the room and creepy zoom of the camera. So I decided that all the main characters will have low res CGI version to solve all those problems.

Here is the screen shot of the model.
Yeah.. the quality isn't something, but this model made for to be small or fast on the screen. So the details are not necessary.
















Also it was very great fun to make this texture... OMG it's so funny.

Script >>  Storyboard >> Concept Art >> VFX test >> Casting >> Making Props >> Filming >> VFX >>  Sound >> Making trailer


The STORYBOARDS are done... Every one who make a film make a Script and storyboards. In Regular filming storyboard aren't very much needed, there are a lot of actors work cameras shotting their actions from multiple directions and then in Editing they make it look nice.

In more complicated projects. Movies about cars, fights or a Michael Bay movies. They need storyboarding much often. There are much of a complicated to shotting scenes. They need to be sure that effect will be nice before even starting to film. The filming of the sequences are to expensive to maybe re-shot them ones. And also storyboards are helpful for the crew. To make people understand what is the vision of the director. What is the aim of the shot.

In super complicated movies. I like to make those mostly :D . So there storyboarding needed everywhere. Every scene, every sequence need to be storyboarded to make sure that the needed emotion will be given. Then when the plan is done, you can start shotting.

Now imagine the complicated movie of Michael Bay. I mean when everything supposed to be storyboarded and it has a lot of complicated shots. In that time we need already storyboards node in motion. Motion of the camera, of the objects... Basic effects supposed to be done in this one.

First time in movies (I'm not really sure) when such storyboarding system was done it was Aliens 1986 by James Cameron. He didn't done any CGI stuff then. He filmed basic shapes of miniatures. They were made of paper. You could see people on background that moving those.

Next step ( by my research, not sure ) done Steven Spielberg in 2005 for War Of The Worlds.
He with CGI artists were done a full size CGI movie on the most basic level, to know what will they shot later.

Then something similar I saw at Tears Of Steel. Made by Ian Hubbert in Blender. 

For wrong hate movie is very important to make a emotions right. (it's probably the reason why am I filming) Except of the reason to learn making good CGI and VFX.

So I started with simple 2D drawings of the Storyboard.

This one was drawn something like a year ago.

I knew that this will be a train station but I wasn't know how does the train station is gonna look. I needed the design of it.
So I've done the design :D



Then I made a OpenGL basic animation part. I gonna show you just that part because I don't want you to lose the Interest for the final product.

Sounds were done in Audacity and adjusted in Blender sequence.

' back

Script >>  Storyboard >> Concept Art >> VFX test >> Casting >> Making Props >> Filming >> VFX >>  Sound >> Making trailer

   Here I'm back. No time to write :D I need to finish till 25/01/2015 all 45 minutes of the storyboard but I've done just 25 minutes. I have no time! Anyway I found that I work faster if I make some breaks.
Ones in an hour I make 15 minutes of break to listen music and do some other stuff. (for example writing this blog)

Here are some updates, guys.

First I've got very good result (done fast) in GLSL open GL rendering (for storyboards). If using HRDI as a background and rendering Open GL just dark, silhouette stuff it look almost ready for final cut.

Here is an example.

All the dark stuff is OpenGL but the background is HDRI rendered in Cycles.







 I found that food can cause you work better or worse.

Sugar and milk helps to work as crazy... (just a tip) Sugar has glucose that without brain stop working... you feel less inspiration and laziness without it. Milk is make you a bit drunk. Not too much but enough to give sure ideas ...

Script >>  Storyboard >> Concept Art >> VFX test >> Casting >> Making Props >> Filming >> VFX >>  Sound >> Making trailer

Last few weeks I was working on storyboards. I found GLSL rendering is very useful in this case. Any way. Here I started to storyboard a new sequence (inside the building). The file for this was not right. I mean there was no HDRI on background. I tried to make it all in 3D space. Anyway I became smarter so I made a new HDRI using one that already done.

This one was combined from I guess 3 HDRI's. One layer it's a Default Sky texture in Blender. Second it's a HDRI of a forest I've done a while ago and Third it's a 3D environment of a town.
A while ago I was using 256 samples to render this scene which was taking a lot of time. (1.5 million polys) Anyway I tried to use Clamp. Direct on 1.10 and Indirect on 0.50 and I've got a fine result just on 32 samples.

This is the render of the scene after HDRI added... Looks still not the best, but better.







I don't wanna show the Storyboard before the movie... I don't wanna break this mystery of what is happening. I hopes you are not wrong hating me because of this.

Script >>  Storyboard >> Concept Art >> VFX test >> Casting >> Making Props >> Filming >> VFX >>  Sound >> Making trailer

Some people asked me to hurry up with the movie. I guess it started to be a real "time challenge" from yesterday evening. What happened? I was casting young actors for the main child character. And I chosen. I must to make filming of all scenes contains him in very short while (because children growing fast)... Some expensive Hollywood movies became more expensive because of children growing stuff. They were needed to change voice, adjust proportions and even recast the actor because of he were too grown.

Any way I had to stop developing the disaster scene (it's not contains children) and started to create a lot of animatic storyboards of all the scenes containing the child. Good that the designs of all locations are been done already.

Here are some rendered screen-shots: (I'm not showing the done sequences to keep the last product more interesting )

Those I call Light reference. I will use the information about light, shadows and reflections to make a the best Green Screen shots.

 Here is another one rendered screen... Actually because file.blend of the location is done, so I can put there a low poly people and animate them using information from the script.
Those renders are just single picture from the animation.



Here is an example of the animation rendered in Open Gl (this one you already seen ones, I made an new updated version of this.) And I love new Open Gl Blender backgrounds :D

Script >>  Storyboard >> Concept Art >> VFX test >> Casting >> Making Props >> Filming >> VFX >>  Sound >> Making trailer

Hello there. Yesterday I had almost nothing to show because of Holidays laziness. But this night I've done a lot of good stuff...

This is the render I've got yesterday and it looks a bit boring. The chaos part of the disaster is too ruff.. No little details that could make it look better. So first of all I decided to put more peaces with the same material into the scene. To feel it like they were actually distracted.

Here how it looks with smaller details. Any way This render isn't perfect because details aren't small enough. On the picture you can find a truck and imagine human size against the smaller parts so I will need to put more little parts in future.
Those parts were about 2000, but while simulation some of them felt through the ground and I deleted them. Now there about 1000 peaces.

Next part was to distract the bridge. First I deformed him (it made of metallic plastic type material) and then I separated a part of him that I want to fall. This part I fractured by Cell Fracture add-on and simulated as Rigid-bodies.

The last step were adding the trees on background.

This were done using particle system. I drawn a Weight where trees are needed to be and made 5 polygonal trees. (each one has 5 polygons).





Renders extremely fast... I cannot believe it.


Anyway the VIDEO that explain it a bit more.

Script >>  Storyboard >> Concept Art >> VFX test >> Casting >> Making Props >> Filming >> VFX >>  Sound >> Making trailer

Hello. Here is me back from Holidays. Almost nothing been done since last post so I gonna be in very minimalistic details.

Here is some rocks... :D Yeahh rocks that I've done looking at one of the pictures of real disaster. But soon realized that it has no relation to the script. Those rocks are mostly natural. And I need broken structures of futuristic buildings... Yeahh.
I have to design it little bit deeper.

This is a Render of the beginning. Here will be a lot more disaster... Work in progress actually.









Anyway I was working on tests about physics. I found that I need metallic objects to deform be each other. Those physics are not available still in Blender so I tried to hack those trough the Cloth simulation and Soft bodies... Accidentally, but actually awesome happened that a plane been deformed to a shape of a pillow. I was so liking this effect so I even made a tutorial of that.