Improved Fire and Smoke, Part 3

I replaced the old CG fire and CG smoke with composited fire and smoke. Here are before-and-after comparisons of Scene H328, which is after the Stormtroopers have massacred the Carinda family (represented by the CG Stormtrooper stand-ins lying on the ground on the bottom-left):


And here's a close-up comparison (Scene H329):


You can't really tell in these pictures, but I also added a flickering light to the doors and windows that are "on fire." This helps blend the 2 different layers and makes them look like the flames from the composited fire are illuminating the CG model.

Later,
Bob

Jedi Starfighter Cockpit, Improved Fire and Smoke, Part 2

Brad's hard at work designing and building the Jedi Starfighter cockpit set. It will be our first (and perhaps only) real set in the entire movie -- everything else is a digital/CG set. I can't wait to see it, and I'm especially excited to see our final footage on this set. It will DEFINITELY elevate the realism of our movie.

On the CG side, I stumbled across some stock footage of real fire. Brad did a great job creating CG fire and CG smoke, but our goal is to create the best looking movie possible. So... I composited the fire elements onto a background plate of the Carinda homestead to see how it would look. Here's a side-by-side comparison:

The picture on the left shows Brad's CG fire and CG smoke.
The picture on the right shows composited fire and smoke.

It's a tough decision because I know Brad spent a ton of time figuring out CG fire and smoke. But, as mentioned earlier, our goal is to create the best looking movie possible, even if that means tossing hours and hours of hard work. I know the feeling -- we've discarded hundreds of hours of my work in favor of better-looking images. It's tough to see that much hard work go to waste, but ultimately it's worth it when our movie looks one step closer to a real "Star Wars" movie.

Later,
Bob

Improved Fire and Smoke

I've been totally buried with other stuff, so I haven't had any time to work on the movie lately.

Fortunately, Brad's been hard at work figuring out our CG fire and CG smoke. Here are before-and-after comparisons at the Carinda homestead:

The original fire and smoke effect basically used bubbles, but it resulted in very circular-looking smoke and fire which looked totally fake.

Brad's new CG fire and smoke effect uses a completely different approach that actually mimics the behavior of real-life fire and smoke. As you can see from the screenshots above, the fire looks way more realistic.

Hopefully my schedule will free-up soon so that I can re-render our background animations for the Carinda homestead scenes and update our animatic with Brad's new-and-improved fire and smoke.

Later,
Bob

Fire, Smoke, and Yane's Shuttle

Sarah went to the Garment District on Saturday, so hopefully she'll finish Brad's Jedi costume soon and we'll be able to resume filming. I can't wait!

Brad's been working on CG fire. Realistic CG fire and smoke have been a problem for us since Day 1, but it's been too time-consuming for me to figure out, so I left it on the back-burner. Now that Brad's helping me out, he's tackling CG fire and smoke as his 1st task.

Here's what our previous CG fire looked like:

Yuck! Not even close to usable, right?

Now take a look at Brad's 1st attempt at CG fire:

Wow!
Yes, there are some collision issues (where the fire interacts with the building) and we need to add smoke, but it's still a HUGE improvement over my previous attempt -- and this is only Brad's 1st draft!

Just so you guys can get an idea of what our final CG fire and smoke will look like, here's one of Brad's first tests (from a tutorial) showing CG fire, smoke, and proper interaction with the environment (i.e. the teapot and lid):


I spent several hours improving the texture maps on Yane's shuttle. Here are some before-and-after pictures:

This background will be used in close-ups of Katinka when she's talking to Brad.
The original CG model is the interior of an Imperial Shuttle, which is why the original seat is black plastic/vinyl.
To make our shuttle model look more "consumer" and less "military," I made the seat brown fabric. I also added more light to the scene and improved the wall texture maps.

Here's another before-and-after:

The changes are less dramatic in these pictures, but only because the light is so dim. If I made the lights brighter, you'd be able to tell that the cockpit seats are now brown fabric, and I also improved the texture maps on the walls, instrument panel, and table.

Unfortunately, that's all the pictures I have this week. It's kind of depressing how many hours we can spend on something, with very little to show for it picture-wise. However, I'm confident all of our hard work will pay off in our final movie when everything will look so cool that we'll be air-humping for months! ;D

Later,
Bob