THESIS COMPLETE!!!

It's been a long journey, but my film is finally complete. I spent most of the summer sweetening the comps together, as well as doing any rendering that was left. I also recently did my sound mix for the film, which I'm pretty pleased with. Here are some stills from the final film. They were all rendered in Maya using Mentalray, and composited in After Effects:

Spring 2012 Demo Reel

Jordan Prieto Demo Reel: Spring 2011 from Jordan Prieto on Vimeo.

Final Shot - Lighting Test

Setting up render files

Just did a final test render comp before finally starting to render my film. The files are almost completely set up for the rendering process. In the meantime, here is a still from the final camera being used in the animation with ambient occlusion. I hope to have a z-depth file set up soon as well so that I can render out that pass.

Revised Production Schedule (As of March 30, 2012)

March:

- Finish Lighting and Texturing (COMPLETE)
- Rough animatic with current animation
- Continue camera and character animation

April:

- Begin Rendering Process
- Continue making tweaks to lighting (as necessary)/sweeten compositions
- Continue character and camera animation
- Final Edit (in progress) with sound

May:

- Final Edits & Comps (wherever necessary)
- Finish character and camera animation
- Continue/Finish rendering process

Final Optimized Images - Bedroom...Ambient Occlusion Test

Ambient Occlusion Pass:



Final Render with Ambient Occlusion Pass combined:

Final Optimized Images - Lobby...Ambient Occlusion Test

Final Lighting without Ambient Occlusion Pass:



Ambient Occlusion Pass:



Final Render with Ambient Occlusion Pass combined:

Final Optimized Images - Hallway...Ambient Occlusion Test

Final Lighting without Ambient Occlusion Pass:



Ambient Occlusion Pass:



Final Render with Ambient Occlusion Pass combined:

Animation (Update - in progress)

Bedroom (Daytime) Lighting Tests

The images above are very rough, low resolution tests. This room is very briefly in the film, but I wanted a dark contrast to the saturated exterior shot that follows it.

Grassy Hill Scene (Update...near completion)

I've embedded a (very) short rendered clip of what the scene looks like in motion. I'm happy that I was able to get the clouds to cast shadows and all paint effects in the scene have animated movement as well. I went ahead and added a bit more flowers and foliage from last time. The picture is very close to what the final version will be, with only the tree textures needed to be finished.

Lobby and Bedroom Texture Test Renders

Here are test renders of the lobby and bedroom scenes. The lighting in these images are different (i.e. very intense and blown out) for the sake of being able to check the textures and are nothing like the final lighting setup. The previous lighting test images that I've posted on the blog are much more indicative of the final lighting look.

The main difference in the lobby scene from the last update is the addition of reflections in the room, particularly on the floor and on parts of the walls. The bedroom is in the process of adding dirt stains and grunge on the wallpaper.

Grassy Hill Scene (In Progress...Update)

Paint FX has been completed on the hill. I've added some scattered flowers as well for contrast in color and variety in the shot, including a dirt shader underneath which is just barely visible if the two images are compared. I've posted two images of before and after these additions. The lighting is essentially done as well, leaving only the tree texturing and the scene will be complete. That is currently in progress of being completed soon.

Grassy Hill - Lighting Test (In Progress...)

I'm currently working on the finalizing the lighting for the only exterior scene in the film. I had an issue come up with my subsurface scattering shader because I used physical sun and sky for the scene. All I had to do was go into the attribute editor of the SSS shader and uncheck 'screen composite' under the 'Algorithm' control to get a more natural look for the skin.

***EDIT(01/25/12): Paint Effects grass test render



This is a test render of the new paint effects grass that I'm applying to the scene. I still haven't added turbulance to it, so it isn't animating just yet. I had to convert the paint effects to polygons so that they would render in mental ray.

Lobby - First Lighting test with textures

Revised Production Schedule (Spring 2012)

January:

- Rough animatic with temp sound
- Continue texturing process (with Dom)
- Continue lighting process (particularly on 'Hill' scene)
- Continue blocking out camera and character animation

February:

- Complete adding shaders/texturing process
- Finish lighting process
- Finish character and camera animation
- Rough Edit #1

March:

- Begin rendering process
- Continue making tweaks to lighting/sweeten compositions (as necessary)
- Continue cleaning up character animation (as necessary)
- Rough Edit #2

April:

- Continue rendering process
- Continue compositing process
- Recording sessions (as necessary)
- Sound Mix

May:

- Finish rendering
- Final Edits & Comps (wherever necessary)
- Film completed (rendering/music/sound)

Bedroom and Lobby Texturing - In Progress