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