2/19/12

Improved Animatic Backgrounds for Bibble's Bar

After improving the CG model for Bibble's Bar, I started re-rendering some of the background plates for our animatic. It's been very time-consuming because a few months ago I moved all of the files for this project from my old PC to my laptop. As a result, there have been growing pains with missing plug-ins, missing video files, etc.

Anyway, here are a few before-and-after comparisons of the re-rendered scenes from Bibble's Bar:

You've seen this before-and-after comparison before:
  • The stadium seats were removed.
  • A bar and tables were added.
  • The lighting was changed to green and purple.


You can barely tell in these compressed images, but the background in the scene above looks much more 3D and realistic than before. In fact, here's a bigger version of the "after" picture:

It's still a little hard to see, but the stucco on the walls looks more realistic, the TV in the background looks more realistic, and the cup and bottle in the foreground are new (though we may cheat those out of the final shot).

This one also looks much better when seen full-size:

It will look even better when we replace those 2 stand-ins with real actors.

This is probably the best example of the improved CG model for Bibble's bar:

Aside from the temporary stand-ins (Theresa, Wookiee, and bartender), I think this scene looks much more like a real bar and less like the fake CG bar in the old version.

I'm going to keep re-rendering the background plates for the Bibble's Bar scenes. I also decided to redo the exterior model for Bibble's Bar.

Later,
Bob