5/27/12

Improved Coruscant Spaceport





Great... Google changed their interface, so now my text formatting is screwed up and I can't figure out how to display the pictures side-by-side anymore.  What a pain...

Anyway, after consolidating most of the scenes at the Coruscant Spaceport into a single 3ds file, I improved some texture maps to make the model look more realistic.


Here's a before-and-after comparison of Scene B102b when the Jedi Fighter lands at the Coruscant Spaceport:


Admittedly, the changes are minor -- I made the buildings shinier and I made those crane things (immediately below the Jedi Starfighter, and also in the background on the bottom-left third of the screen) rusty.  Small improvements, but I still think they make the scene look more realistic.

Here's another before-and-after comparison, with a more obvious change:

I hid the Jedi Starfighter in the "after" picture, just so that I could see the ground and background more clearly.  Aside from that temporary change:
  • I changed the ground to look more realistic.
  • I removed that concept Jedi Starfighter from the background -- it seemed like it made the scene too busy.
  • I replaced some of the boxes with more detailed and realistic-looking boxes.
  • I changed the background sky image from the smoking Jedi Temple (which wasn't tall enough to fill the screen) to the new Coruscant skyline.

There will undoubtedly be more improvements in the future, but that's it for now.

Later,
Bob




5/13/12

Still Working, Despite the Silence...

Wow... it's hard to believe it's been a month since my last update.

Despite the lack of posts, I have been working on the movie as time permits.  Unfortunately, the work I'm doing right now doesn't lend itself to pictures.

Back when we created the animatic, I often split a CG model into separate files for each scene.  For example, if there were 5 scenes at the Coruscant Spaceport, I split the Coruscant Spaceport model into 5 separate files so that each file could focus on the elements necessary for that scene (lighting, background, etc.).  The benefit was smaller file sizes that reduced the frequency of 3DS crashing, and faster render times (since I deleted unnecessary geometry).  The downside was that changes to one model (ex: improving texture maps) didn't propagate to the other scenes.

So... right now I'm consolidating all of the different versions of each model into a single "master" CG model.  For example, right now I'm consolidating all of the different Coruscant Spaceport scenes into a single "Coruscant Spaceport" file.  That way, when I make improvements in the future (like texture maps), those improvements will be reflected in all scenes at the Coruscant Spaceport.

It's very tedious and time-consuming, so I don't know how long it will take.  However, the hard work will be worth it because when I'm done consolidating the models, I'm going to resume improving the mdoels (primarily texture maps) to give us the photorealistic imagery we want.

Later,
Bob