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30 Dec 02
Ok, this is the last entry this year for real. ;o)

Nearly complete with the bone rig designs.  I'm trying to make them as simple and useful as possible, which means, of course, more work now rather than (hopefully) later.  For the bipeds in the film it looks like three rigs will be needed- the typical one, a dance rig for RG (Ballet), and a typical one for the girls; the girls' geometry is different enough from the adults to require a simple rig with proportions sufficiently different to demand a new skeleton be created.  The cat will only need a typical quadruped skeletal rig- his actions are (thankfully) limited in the film, though his presence is common.

28 Dec 02
Probably the last entry for this year.  Completed reworking all props to make sure they all have beveled edges and whatnot.  Redid the little girls mitten-like hands to smooth them out- also finished other details to them- checked bone rigs and textures; I think they're done.  Will (re)finish Ravel and the Mothers (probably redo hands), then texture them out and rig.  Need to add inside of mouths for them and set up lip sync poses, etc.

Finished texturing the cat- turned out to be a really simple texture, but took a long time to get there after I went through trying out a lot of complex ideas on him.  He looks just right now, suitably pseudo-fuzzy without any hair or shag.

It may sound like a modeling job but it's closer to texturing- I need to model/texture a few 2d backdrops that are in the extreme distance.  I think I have an approach to this that should be simple and effective.

21 Dec 02
RING THE BELLS!!!!  Done with the complete model list!!!  Holy waaaa!!!

Thought I'd turned into a texturing monk awhile ago but I found myself modeling at an average of 3 props a day these last few (I did 6 yesterday)!  Sheesh...  I'm texturing important aspects of them as I go.

 Model count is just about 125!!!  Reeeeearrrgh!  Agh!  And that doesn't break apart various complex "models" that are closer to entire sets.  I think when I began this little film I had imagined about half this many or less.  Still, it's heartening to go over lists of models to be made and look at all those little check marks in the "complete" column.  Really there's two more models on the list but those are just copies of 3 other models combined, miniaturized and retextured.  About one hour of work without any splining.

So is filming starting soon?  Ah... -er-, no... texturing isn't done.  And, sadly, on the modeling front- 100% complete with the list doesn't mean 100% done.  It means going back, finishing any detail work that needs to be done in combination with the realities of my texturing solutions.  I've found this means adding little details at times.  Also,  the bone rigs for the characters I modeled in the very beginning (2 years ago!) will need to be redone in combination with improving their spline layouts.   The three little girls' rigs are fine,  just the four adults need some redoing.

However, none of this is overwhelming, and can be accomplished in a short bit of time.  It's frightening but I am fast approaching the next major step in this hugantic, gimantic project...

17 Dec 02
Working on final prop mopup like crazy.  Churning out about 2 items a day with some texturing finished as well.  The list might get finished this year!  OMG, dare I hope?

15 Dec 02:
Survived finals and actually spent a little time working on the project.  Finals went well, and I used AM for a render of a set design final I did.  AM didn't save me any time over drawing it by hand, but it was more fun and I got to hone my skills a little.  Tiny versions of the final rendered set for Midsummer Night's Dream can be seen in my general gallery area if you're interested.

Finished the Red Headed Girl's dance rig; added pointe shoes to her and did a small test anim to see how they looked.  I let myself have a little taste of animating in between all this god-forsaken modeling I'm doing.  I'll have the shoes textured in a few minutes.  Let's see what I can get done over winter break.


05 Nov 02:
I'm EXHAUSTED.  School is taking about 90% of my resources this term.  I'm actually rather shocked at how tough things have gotten .  Midterms are done and my GPA survived the encounter.  Very little free time available in which I also have an intact mind.  Suffice it to say about all I can do with my free time (sometimes) is play computer games to numb the pain.  :o(

BUT: Things are still moving forward.  Final prop mopup and set details are proceeding.  Got a few articles of furniture, wall hangings, and other odds and ends done.  The art details are coming together.  The overall look seems pretty cohesive at this point.

05 Oct 02:
I'm LOST!  School is on.  Serious this time around (when is it not?).  As I'm needing to go into grad school to practice my chosen career (what, it's not messing around with raytracers!?!? yep, it ain't), and this is my application year, the fight is on... Don't expect updates in here often (those of you interested in this project), but have faith.  This is my pass time; it will move forward.  Slowly... but forward.

Got a new monitor, 19", so now the other computer doesn't need to share.  Two screens... hmm.... ;o)

03 Sep 02:
I'm SAVED!  Managed to get nearly exactly the look  I envisioned for the skies using AM's native materials editor.  I have to say AM's texturing abilities have finally begun to impress me.  I'm used to having control over textures via (basically) writing shaders (ala POV/Polyray).  It's taken me awhile to get used to how to work with the AM materials interface.  It's pretty badly documented.

One of the evening sky textures is easily the most complex texture I've made in AM with 13 attributes and it still needs a little more detail but it renders rather fast.  10 would be better.  I've learned that a lot of the textures out  there for AM made by other users have some serious redundancies to them and really don't properly take advantage of the power of each attribute's properties before adding another attribute.

26 Aug 02:
Plant day.  Tree, flowering plant, grassy flower plant.  rigged the flowering plant and noticed some bad interpolating when I posed it.  It's at 1,177 patches because I had to up the stem resolution, the little leaf skirts around it wouldn't move right without extra detail.  The trees look suitably foreboding since they've been shelled I guess, bare of leaves and depressing.

24 Aug 02:
Have a few weeks here to really put some work into this project before school starts again.

Got the Verdun Bivouac set up to 90%.  Now on to finalizing the details to the sets, such as plants, street lamps, sidewalks, etc...  Got Paris 1920 to 90% of that goal and am moving on.  Got a system for the street down, so that should go fast.  In fact  I find myself working back and forth between the sets.  As certain details get created I find I can use them (adapted) in others, so back and forth.  Some of this involves texture work, as the cobblestone streets are not individually modeled stones.  I thought about doing that, though...  Sanity won out.

Rigged a small plant and did an animation test to make it look like it was blowing in the breeze... incredibly simple to get that working.  The organic form of plants can be a nightmare to put together (there are two hanging plants in the Ballet Studio with nearly one hundred leaves each), but can also be immensely satisfying, as with a simple wheat-like stalk plant I'm putting together today that has such pure lines and form it's just beautiful to look at it, I think.  Patch count is 182 for it, so there can be  plenty strewn around.  Rigging it  was fun, and made it seem to blossom into life.  It's these moments for which I do all this.

I'm concerned about the actual earth texture/modeling for the Verdun Bivouac set- bare exposed trod-upon earth is not simple.  That's part the 10% I leave alone when I say things are at 90%.  The overall slopes are in place, but not the niggling details.  Arg.  :o)

In September I'll be purchasing a few NIC cards and wiring together my little renderfarm.  The other machine can handle about 33% of the material and/or let family members access their Ebay shopping while this one is busy.

16 Aug 02:
Finished with 90% of 1916V set, meaning all buildings are constructed but a lot of little details will need to be added.  Moving on to 1916 Verdun field hospital set.  This is it, the last location is being scouted as I write this.  One building is finished, and as the other two are identical to it, I'm basically DONE!  -er- not really, need to construct the ground and a small detail area that will take a lot of time.

Looking over art-styles and will begin testing backdrops (animated and static) soon.

1 Aug 02:
I can't believe the year is passing so fast.  Only one building left for the 1916 village set and it's a complex one.  As modeling skill increases, the demands of the fussy director seem to grow more outrageous!  Agh!  Anyway, should be finished with it by tomorrow, then I'll move to the street details, etc...  One interesting detail to this building is that it's the only one I didn't design on paper first, I sort of eyeballed a photograph of an actual Paris building and then let the splines flow how they would.

I hate to say this, but a filming begin date of December is looking impossible.  Stop!  Bad!  Don't look up from the grindstone!  Back to work!

9 Jul 02:
Extremely unproductive last week, but finally back on track.  Found a copy of Adobe Premiere for $30 and got caught up messing around with it.  Also got caught up messing around with video capturing using the new GF4-4400 card... nice.  Everything works perfectly, and that was the problem, too much fun.

Nearing the finish to the Verdun village set.  2 and half buildings to go.  One will be a war-torn wreck.  Not sure how to even do that yet.   But that's the fun and that's the point of this entire exercise, to have too much fun. :o)

26 Jun 02:
I must be feeling rather bold and inflated to update so frequently in here.  The 1916V set is nearing half way done as far as buildings are concerned- 3 at 90% with 4 to go.  That doesn't include street, walkway, lamps, etc... None the less, I can't believe how slowly I used to model.  Nothing like practice.  So much for the cocky part of this update:

Let me expose some stupidity (possibly) on my part:  While this village set is not one of the villages that gets leveled as so many did near Verdun in 1916, it was occupied at one point by the Germans and then retaken by the French, who occupy it at this point in the film.  Well, not really occupy it, it was theirs to begin with.  -er- nevermind all that, the point is this:  I didn't design into my "plans" any war damage to this set!  I know why I didn't do it, and the reason is too frail to mention.  A pivotal part of the story revolves around a moment of violence that happened when the French retook the town- enough violence that buildings likely took serious damage.   I guess I'm thinking out loud here.  I'll figure out something.  It's fun to learn first hand why one person making a film is not enough.

Yeah right- I'll be modeling a half-destroyed building here, I just know it.  Details, details, details, it's all in the details...

17 Jun 02:
School is done except for a course I'll taking this summer.  Hope this means work on the sets gets underway with more steam than before.  1920 Paris set building is 90%.  I don't want to tackle the actual street/sidewalk at the moment until I have to do that for the 1916V set as well.  Seven buildings in the 1916 set, with one at 90% by tonight.  I have yet to draw two of the buildings, so I'm not even sure what those look like yet ( I know their footprints and how they fit on the street, as that is drawn, but not the actual details);  the others have been sketched out and designed and modeling can begin on those.  It seems to take about 1 day of modeling to complete a low resolution "other" building (without final touches), but getting to the computer to model is tough lately.
 

25 May 02:
Neck deep into the external 1920 Paris set and I realized I needed to reconcile with my target dates.  Let me put it this way.  The 1916 Verdun village set will be on an order of about 10x the difficulty and amount of modeling as the 1920 Paris set, so, uh- dates are being pushed back.  But this is OK.  The budget is unlimited (it's called slave labor) and my dedication is not in question.  Also, new hardware keeps coming my way, and I'm up to a Palomino 1800+ cpu now, as well as keeping my 900 I got last summer.

 I'm very pleased with the look of the 1920 external set.  I'm confident work will accelerate once summer begins and also because I now have a sort of system worked out to crafting the external sets, much as I did with the internal sets.  Got things figured out, so to speak.  I will admit though, that the spline count for the 1916 set is looking to be about 50,000 so- something I never really grasped when I was in the planning stage.  Wow.  Obviously the buildings will be modeled separately and only assembled as a "set" later, but that many splines all at once in a choreography... wow.  The 1920 set is at about 4000 and will come in at 5000.

On the negative side, despite my excitement over how things are turning out, I won't be posting any more shots of the externals for public view as they develop and in fact have yanked the pan mentioned below.  I'm not going to really explain why besides stating this:  The overall "look" for this project is clearly not following most of the major "cool" trends I'm seeing in CG, so... wait and see.

6 May 02:
Added a none too exciting animation pan to the sweatbox.  Working away at an external building facade for the 1920 paris piece.  The system for this is just now forming and work is accelerating.  It was tough to switch from internal to external shapes, oddly enough.  Heh, just looked at the dates above; I doubt July will bring initial renderings, but we'll see.  I have a feeling a lot of transition time will be spent between when I'm finished modeling and when animation begins.

20 Apr 02:
Story boards are complete.  By this evening the final prop list will be complete after I've gone through the story boards to check the inventory of on-screen items.   Not that this will advance things too quickly until summer, as school is heavy and serious this term.  Still, crawling or creeping, it's forward motion.

3 Apr 02:
Still alive and kicking.  Have been working on the story board finals and am making headway, but I think I'm about a month behind where I'd hoped to be.   Make that two.  -sigh-

Picked up a near professional grade microphone for the dialogue work, along with a cool pre-amp mixer board that's really compact (6 channels).  I won't be doing any real mixing through the board, just using it as a pre-amp, phantom power source, and for basic level settings.  All the mixing and stuff will be done on the computer.  Anyway, the microphone is very nice and was *very* affordable.  It's a Behringer B1 condenser microphone, and to my ears after playing with the new set-up awhile, this is gonna make for some sweet sounding, easy to record dialogue.

Working the storyboards over I eliminated one set, the external 1920 set.  Well, it's not totally eliminated, but the limited camera angles I've set for the shots that take place there have made a simple building facade all that is needed.  Haven't gotten to the final Verdun story board part yet, and frankly I'm afraid.  I know what I have in my dreamy, wishy-washy head about that part and I'm terrified I'll actually stick with those plans and need to tackle that set the way initially envisioned.  In deciding to take on this project (among all the other ideas I have that I'd like to do) the Verdun scene was the first I concretely imagined, and while I've toned it down *a lot* it's still a moment in the film that while it won't appear much to a viewer perhaps, will hold a *lot* of dear and loved elements for me.

I'm hoping to be moving past story board in about a month.

28 Jan 02:
1060 patches later, 1916-inup done!  Loads of props needed and added to the master list.  On to the external sets.  This should slow down my modeling quite a lot again, as I've no system or "look" I'm practiced in for the externals.

Verdun here I come!  This set will need to be carefully thought out as there are only a few shots there, possible one large overhead establishing shot with background paintings hung obviously, or composited in less obviously (haven't decided on the look here yet).  Because of the unlimited possibilities involved in landscape shots, let alone a war torn one, I don't want to spend three months modeling some nightmarish 10,000 patch thing that I'll never get around to texturing (or rendering!).  This means back to the story board to double check ideas and camera angles for last OK and see exactly what the camera will need. I want to construct not much more than that.

Wish me luck, please.  Don't expect any updates in here for awhile.

27 Jan 02:
1916-indown done, moving on to 1916-inup; BG's upstairs bedroom.  It'll be a much smaller set, but parts of it near the window get a lot of scrutiny.  No big deal now, as the window treatments I've got going are pretty nice.  Hung a double curtain I'm proud of in 1916-indown, which I'll merely repeat and modify for 1916-Inup.  And with the doorframe style decided and modeled already, that'll be a cut and paste too, same for the ceiling blend and moulding.  Wohoo!  I'm pretty exited to move on to the external sets.  Oh gosh, the end of set-building is in sight!

1916-indown went up to 2886 patches!  Easily the most complex model in the film so far, though I expect 1916 Village to trump that.  This one took longer than I planned because it demanded more research on my part into french interior architecture and design... What's new? :o)  It isn't that I'm recreating the interiors of any historical French building, but it's hard to go off in your pseudo-french-original direction without knowing what certain forms look like originally.  I want the film to look like more than simply an American's idea of something occurring in France; I want it to look like something with a personal and beautiful touch.

17 Jan 02
The 1916 internal set (DG's home: downstairs) is coming along well.  It's the largest of the internal sets and most complex as far as organizing the architecture goes (that part's done).  Once BG's bedroom was complete, the process of building these things really sped up.  I won't be posting any more interior renders, as I don't want to give away a lot yet about the over-all look of the film until I'm much closer to rendering it out.  I've spent a lot of time researching interiors and city scenes in order to base the core "look" on something real- then I twist it a bit.  I should post a bibliography.

10 Jan 02
Dance Studio at 90%, moving on.  I prioritized the sets after my DG room experience (wah!) to put those most necessarily detailed (ie. filmed the most time, with the most angle) last, so that my skills will be up when I get to them.  That means the internal BG set is next, then the external Verdun set (the field hospital), followed by external DG set, and finishing with external BG set.

BG is "Blond Girl" in case no one's figured that out, and DG is "Dark Girl," while RG is "Redhead Girl."  The Blond Girl lives in a village very near Verdun in 1916, DG lives in Paris in 1920, and RG... nevermind, I don't want to spoil the story.

A little note on props:  Current count (NOT including set components): 55.  If I included the set components (curtains, curtain rods, barre, windows, shutters) etc... we would be past a hundred now, and some of my most detailed work is there.  Ah... what a library of French-esque furniture, fashion, and fixtures will I have after this film!
 

04 Jan 02
The sky has opened up at last!  Dg's room is at 90% and I am moving on!

I finished adding stairs, and an intricate curtain rod with seashell decorations and a drape over it.  After about a day's research I found enough photographs of suitable interiors to understand how various old-style draperies are hung.  I went for the simplest hang for this set, as the more complex double hangs are going to go into BG's room and house for the 1916 part of the film.  Did some cloth test animations and figured out how I want it.  Overall the set turned out well.

There are so many ways I could blaze through some of this production without building things, but I think I'm realizing the point for me is to up my skills in modeling, texturing, lighting, design, filming (the photography part), and eventually animation.  My biggest problem is I like them all.

I never mentioned this explicitly, but I was thinking of using Bink as the compressor for animation (though I'll be keeping every single pre-compressed frame on CD as well), however I ran into serious sound compression problems with Bink and don't think I'll be using it.  I picked up After Effects from Ebay for a steal (<$100) and really like all the options in that through the codecs installed on my system...  I hate to admit it, but DiVX is looking very good, and perhaps QT as well.  The sound quality I can get coupled with picture quality is wonderful.  Oh well, if anyone other than me ever wants to run the animation on their system, I suppose I can package up the needed driver along with it.

01 Jan 02:
A new year...  Haha- still working on DG's room.  Making progress and learning a great deal.  I posted a few more stills for those interested in looking at things.  One of them is a model with actual textures(!)- something I don't do often this early in a project unless I have reasons.  Getting into designing some curtains and flooring for DG's room now.  I'm lucky, as hardwood floors will fit right in to Paris circa 1920. :o)