We're Back!

I can't believe it's been almost a year since we've worked on this project!

On the bright side, taking the extended break has allowed me to watch our movie with fresh eyes. Most notably, there are 2 changes I'm going to make immediately:

1) Change Yane's shuttle, and
2) Change the Med Center on Tatooine

Here's the 3d model we've been using for Yane's shuttle:


It's cool, but I realized we might want to change Yane's shuttle to a YT-2400 "Outrider":


Here are the main reasons FOR changing the model:
1) It looks more "Star Wars"-y with that "used universe" look, and
2) It looks like a precursor to the Millennium Falcon, which fits into our movie's timeline (which is after "Revenge of the Sith" and before "A New Hope").

And here are the main reasons AGAINST changing the model:
1) It looks like the Millennium Falcon. We don't want to look unoriginal or look like we're copying "Star Wars" TOO much,
2) I'll have to spend hours upon hours improving the models (I'll have to improve this model of the exterior, and also the model for the interior cockpit and/or cargo hold) so that they can handle close-ups, and
3) I'll have to spend hours upon hours replacing the old models with the new models in all of our shots.

After discussing it with Brad and Sarah, we decided to switch to the new Outrider model because it just looks better. When we started this project, we decided to do everything within our limited means to make the best movie possible. So if that means throwing out the old model and replacing it with a new model, so be it.

I'm currently in the middle of improving the Outrider model, so I don't have any before-and-after comparisons yet. Hopefully next time...

The 2nd change I want to make is the Med Center on Tatooine. Here's a screenshot from the animatic:

The red arrow is pointing to the enormous Med Center and the red circle shows Yane's shuttle flying into the Med Center's docking bay.

Truthfully, I've never been happy with this scene. The Med Center looks a little incongruent with the other architecture, and I've never been happy with the way the city (presumably Mos Eisley) looks either.

I haven't figured out how I'm going to improve this scene yet, but I'll worry about that after I finish improving the Outrider's exterior and interior models.

Anyway, that's what I'm working on now that I'm back on the project. Hopefully we'll have some super-cool blog updates over the next few months.

Later,
Bob

Improved Dantooine Backgrounds, continued

Sarah finally finished Yane's peasant costume! YAY!!! Now all we need is the skirt for Yane's Royal Palace costume and we'll be ready to get Jen over here to shoot her footage! I can't wait!

On the CG side, I finished improving all of our Dantooine backgrounds. As mentioned previously, I replaced as many of our CG background buildings with high-resolution digital pictures of Matmata, Tunisia, which is the actual location where George Lucas shot the Tatooine scenes for "Star Wars."

Speaking of which, even though our script places these scenes on Dantooine (which we did deliberately so that it would tie into "Star Wars" when they mention that the Rebel Alliance had a base on Dantooine), we decided to make it look like Tatooine. Now that we're using Matmata for our backgrounds, I'm strongly considering changing our script and relocating everything that happens on Dantooine onto Tatooine instead. It just makes more sense, but I'll have to review our script to make sure this change won't cause any problems.

Anyway, here's a before-and-after comparison of Scene I510a, which shows Yane walking down Garm St. on Dantooine:

The 1st picture shows our old animatic with Katinka walking down our CG model of Garm St.
The 2nd picture shows our new-and-improved animatic with our Yane stand-in walking down our more-realistic-looking Garm St. Of course, the final shot will include background extras and perhaps more set dressing.

By the way, the 2nd picture (above) is my 2nd version of the new-and-improved shot. Here's the 1st version that I ended up discarding:

I like this one too, but the 2nd version (the one we'll probably end up using), makes Garm St. look bigger and more spacious to me. But maybe that's just me. If anyone thinks the 1st version looks better, let me know and maybe we'll use that one.

Here's a before-and-after comparison of Scene I541 when Yane leaves Bibble's Bar:

In the 1st picture, the Stormtrooper is a "size reference" stand-in for Yane, and the background is completely devoid of any detailing (buildings, moisture vaporators, etc.).

In the 2nd picture, I left out the Yane "size reference" so that you can see all the new details: background buildings, landspeeder, R5 droid, and even a couple Nuna walking around!

Of course, I always go through a couple versions before settling on the final one that I think looks best. Here's an example of a version that didn't make it:

This is exactly the same as the final version, shown above, except it's missing the R5 droid. It seems like a simple change, but the scene seems to lose its "life" without a droid. Somehow R5 gives the scene more life -- at least that's how it feels to me.

Here's the final before-and-after comparison. This one shows Scene I542 when Yane runs around the corner (on the right) and spots the Stormtroopers escorting Ryke from the Med Center:

WAAAYYYY better, right? I even re-texture-mapped the foreground wall (on the right) to match the appearance of the buildings in the background. Of course, this isn't final -- I still have to add color correction so that all of the backgrounds match, plus add live extras and other details. But at least it's a huge improvement over our previous animatic!

Later,
Bob