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

On Hiatus, and Possible New Shuttle Interior

Hi everyone. Sorry for the delay. I haven't worked on the project much over the past few weeks because I'm in the middle of moving. I've been busy finding a new place and packing, and I'm going to busy this month packing, moving, and unpacking. Plus, we're still waiting on costumes from Sarah, so we're kind of on hiatus right now.

The only thing I've worked on recently is a possible new model for the interior of the Carinda family's shuttle. Right now, we're using a model of the Imperial Shuttle interior, as seen in the following animatics:

They're pretty cool looking, but they also look CG and fake. Of course, improving the texture maps and geometry would fix that, but I'm also considering using a different model entirely -- the Millennium Falcon!

Of course, if we use the model of the Millennium Falcon interior, I'd change the camera angles and/or geometry so that it isn't recognizable as the Millennium Falcon. But the model -- when texture mapped -- looks more realistic than the Imperial Shuttle model:

As you can see from the 2 pictures above, the key phrase in the previous sentence is "when texture mapped" because the 1st picture is what the model should look like, and the 2nd picture is what the model looks like now.

Believe it or not, both pictures are of the EXACT same model! It just needs a lot of work -- probably 10-20 hours of texture mapping -- to make the 2nd picture look like the 1st picture.

Although it will take a lot of work, I think it's probably worth it because the Millennium Falcon interior looks more realistic and "Star Wars-y" to me.

Anyway, that's all I've had time to work on recently, and I'm not sure when I'll have more time to spend on this project -- at least not until mid-June or so. Please be patient with us because we'll get back on track as soon as I'm done moving and as soon as Sarah finishes Brad's costume.

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