TITLE: Requiem NAME: Markus Altendorff COUNTRY: Germany EMAIL: maal-irtc20030115@anthrosphinx.de WEBPAGE: TOPIC: Space Settlement COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. MPGFILE: maal_req.mpg RENDERER USED: Maxon Cinema 4D 10.1 Studio Bundle TOOLS USED: Adobe Photoshop, Apple Final Cut Pro HD CREATION TIME: 100+ hours for modelling + animation, about a week for rendering. "Many after-hours died to bring you this animation" HARDWARE USED: Macintosh G5 2000 Dual (Editing), Mac Mini (Render) ANIMATION DESCRIPTION: A blip on the radar turns into a twelve mile graveyard... *** CONTENT WARNING *** Dressing of characters may be considered inadequate depending on your cultural background. You have been warned. VIEWING RECOMMENDATIONS: Any MPEG player should do (tested with Windows Media Player, ATI Player, Quicktime Mac 9/X), including VideoLANclient and MPlayer 2 Side note for Quicktime Player: At least on my machines, the video is much darker than with any other player i've tried. May be some gamma table effect or whatever. Play it twice. 1. Read the dialogue to get the story. 2. Look at the video. Sorry for the lots of text, but there's a limit to what story you can tell with gestures alone... General recommendation: Make sure to set up the brightness right. By the way, regarding one comment "it's the artist's job to balance the lighting" - yes, i try. Really. But it's your job to balance your screen. The videos look just fine on mine... DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS ANIMATION WAS CREATED: + Credits / External sources / Copyright notices: ------------------------------------------------- Textures of planet earth: NASA Blue Marble Project http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/ "These images are freely available to educators, scientists, museums, and the public. NASA images are generally not copyrighted." (NASA Website). Soundtrack: built with Apple's Soundtrack Pro audio loop files. Quote from Apple's SLA: "You may use the Apple and third party audio file content (including, but not limited to, the built-in sound files, samples and impulse responses) (collectively the "Audio Content"), contained in or otherwise included with the Apple Software, on a royalty-free basis, to create your own original soundtracks for your film, video and audio projects. You may broadcast and/or distribute your own soundtracks that were created using the Audio Content, however, individual audio files may not be commercially or otherwise distributed on a standalone basis, nor may they be repackaged in whole or in part as audio samples, sound files or music beds." In other words: I made it, i can share it. You try to re-wrap and sell it, and the lawyers may smite you. Well, may. + Alterations to raw renderings: -------------------------------- - Subtitles added in Final Cut Pro - Fade-over between scenes added in Final Cut Pro. - Ship-over-spacestation sequence composed from two-pass rendering of ship with alpha channel and space station. (see below) No further enhancements or compositings werde made. + Old objects: -------------- Most of Amurel (the cat creature), Loa (the winged), the operations room. + New objects for this round: ----------------------------- The broken ring-type space settlement. The "explorer" twin hull spaceship with interior. The holographic solar system chart. The whole facial control of the Loa character (moved from point level animation to spline-deformers). The hair setup. + Things i hate about it: ------------------------- - Overcompressed again. Edge artefacts everywhere. *sigh* - No lipsync. No time... - Started far too late with this project, AGAIN-AGAIN... + Things i love about it: ------------------------- - It's done! YES! - The sad tone of it. + Some tech talk: ----------------- - Don't mix large and small objects. At least not in Cinema 4D. The space station and the small spacecraft are at the right scale, the space station being some 160.000 units large, and the spacecraft only 30.000 (centimeters equiv.) This blows the calculations up to one hour per frame. Splitting it into two passes results in one minute/frame instead... + Production blog: ----------------- Jan 28 Started working on animation script Feb 02 First go at ring-type spacecraft model Feb 09 Another try Feb 19 Refined script, added timing, scrapped part of introduction Mar 02 Reworked arms animation on Amurel Mar 04 Reworked arms animation on Loa Mar 09 Built 3D model for radar display and solar system holographic map fx Mar 10 Refined "Convertible" spacecraft model, added slider control for rooftop, lights and engines Mar 11 Started "Explorer" spacecraft model Mar 12 adjusted scaling of model "Space Eye" and close-up components Mar 13 Continue work on ring-type spacecraft (cracked hull) Mar 14 - Apr 26 lacking notes. D'oh. Mostly refining the existing models to include mechanical fx Apr 25 Scrapped the script. Too much scenery, too little time. Rewrite, shorten. Apr 26 Animate scene 0100 (discovering the blip on the radar) Apr 27 Animate scene 0600 (camera flyby of broken space station) Apr 28 Animate scene 0200 (dialogue and space chart) Apr 29 Animate scene 0300 (launch from home base) Animate scene 0500 (dialogue in cockpit) Animate scene 0700 (last words) Apr 30 Edit and subtitle, compress, upload...