Improved Jedi Temple Hallway Texture Maps, continued

I've been busy, so I haven't had much time to work on the movie. :(

However, I did make a slight improvement to our Jedi Temple Hallway model. Here's a before-and-after comparison:

I added blue carpet to our stairs to tie it into the background matte painting. Now it looks more cohesive, and makes it less obvious that we used a 3d model for the foreground and a matte painting for the background.

Unfortunately, that's it for now. Hopefully I'll have more cool pictures in my next blog update.

Later,
Bob

Improved Jedi Temple Hallway Texture Maps

After improving the exterior Jedi Temple shots, I realized we had to improve the interior Jedi Temple Hallway shots as well.

Here's a before-and-after comparison of the Jedi Temple interior behind Brad right before he opens the blast door revealing the droidekas:

The foreground is the same, but I changed the background (upper-right part of the picture) from a small chamber to an enormous room.

Here's another before-and-after which gives a better view of the change -- this is a few shots later, when we show Brad's reaction to the droidekas:

It makes a BIG difference, doesn't it? Now the background looks and feels like a REAL Jedi Temple, rather than a clunky little computer model that we threw together.

Also, I thought maybe it was too cluttered, so I tried a version without the holoplanet:

I think it looks better -- cleaner. Unfortunately, if you look closely, you can see my crappy editing-out of people. For example, here's a close-up of the section to the left of the stairs:

I know most people probably wouldn't catch this, especially since it would be blocked by Brad for most of the shot. But it still bothered me -- we can do better, even if it's by cheating the shot. :D

BTW, here's what the original background looked like, before I edited-out all of the people:


I still think it would be a cleaner shot WITHOUT the holoplanet, but we gotta do what we gotta do. Fortunately, the holoplanet is still consistent with actual "Star Wars" reference pictures of the Jedi Temple, as seen here:


Who knows... maybe we'll eventually decide to delete that holoplanet. But for now, I left it in to hide my crappy editing job. :D

Later,
Bob

Improved Jedi Temple Hallway Texture Maps, continued

Brad's making progress on our digital fire and smoke. Here's his latest test footage (using the Carinda homestead model):

Pretty sweet! He's making more improvements, like making the flames shorter and less "stringy." But we're a big step closer and I can't wait to get my hands on the final version!

I spent last week improving the texture maps and geometry on our Jedi Temple Hallway model.

Here are before-and-after comparisons of Scene C115b (when Brad is escaping from the Jedi Temple):

I improved the lighting, added reflectivity to most of the surfaces (which makes everything look more 3D and realistic, rather than CG), and stuck a vase in that bump-out to make it look more Jedi Temple-like.

Here's a before-and-after comparison of Scene C115c (Brad muttering, "I have a bad feeling about this" before opening the blast door and revealing a bunch of droidekas):

As you can see, I removed that weird middle-wall (on the left) and added our Jedi statue to the background. I originally created that Jedi statue for our exterior Jedi Temple set, but we changed the exterior camera angles so the Jedi statue was no longer visible. Rather than waste our super-cool model, I stuck it in the background of this shot. :)

Here's a before-and-after comparison of Scene C115d (the background of Brad's reaction shot after he opens the blast door and is confronted by a bunch of droidekas):

This camera angle probably shows the most modifications to our Jedi Temple Hallway model. I completely changed the windows to look more Jedi Temple-like, and I also added those Jedi columns (which I kitbashed from the Jedi Council Chamber model).

Here's the final before-and-after comparison of our droidekas (which, unfortunately, aren't animated yet -- that's going to take a LOT of work!):


Of course, these are not final images. They're just another iteration in our evolution towards final footage. I still have to fix the lighting, improve the texture maps even more, etc. But it's another important step towards our final movie.

Later,
Bob

Improved Jedi Temple Hallway Texture Maps

I've been busy with other stuff, so I haven't had much time to work on our movie lately.

Plus, I spent a bunch of time trying to add "dirt" to our texture mapping to make buildings and other objects look dirty (and more realistic). Unfortunately, I haven't figured it out yet so I burned a bunch of hours with nothing to show for it (yet).

I'm currently improving Jedi Temple Hallway model. Here's a before-and-after comparison of Scene C115d (Brad's reaction shot when the blast door opens revealing a bunch of droidekas):

I replaced that sculpture (which is seen in "Return of the Jedi" in the Cloud City scenes) with a hologram of a planet, which I got from this reference picture of the Jedi Temple:

If you look carefully at the top-left of this picture, you can see the planet hologram that I'm talking about. Here's a close-up:


I'm still improving the geometry and texture mapping on this model, so that's the only picture I have so far. Even that picture may not be final, but it's what I have for now so you can at least see the work-in-progress.

We've scheduled 2 more shooting days the 1st 2 weeks of December. Most of the footage we shot over the past 1-2 months turned out to be animatic-quality, so we're pretty much re-shooting everything.

However, not all was wasted. If we hadn't shot that live footage, we wouldn't know how to improve the shots for the re-shoots. We'll re-shoot as many times as it takes to get the quality we're after.

Happy Thanksgiving!
Bob