Rendering and Editing The Film

 

A still from Scene Five featuring my Pokebot character

After a lot of issues along the way, it's finally time to render my final film. Over the past week or so I had attempted to do some test renders on each of the scenes in the final film to see how long it would take for my laptop to complete.

This is where I ran into an issue - after running for over 90 minutes, my laptop still hadn't completed rendering a single frame - in fact it was only on 8%. It was then that I messaged some of the people in my class to ask them if they had any suggestions for improving render times as there was no way I'd get anything dome otherwise. 

That's when someone suggested using a render farm and even recommended a few that I could try. After looking into the options I settled on Fox Render Farm and the speed that I was able to get things rendered was like night and day. I couldn't render a single frame in 90+ minutes and the render farm managed to render Scene 1 - which is 200 frames - in a little over 6 minutes.

After checking through each of the 200 images in Scene 1 and seeing that there were no issues, I pressed ahead and set up and submitted each scene to be rendered. Rendering with this render farm was really convenient in that I would point the software to where the Maya scene I wanted rendered was, and then it would analyse it and read all of the asset and texture files using the project settings related to that scene. As for defining the actual render settings - it worked the same way - I would set the render settings in Maya as I would normally do if I was rendering it on my machine and the software would read those settings and apply it to the render job,

A still from Scene Three

All in - I would estimate that the rendering process for all 8 scenes took about 2 hours using the render farm - which consisted of 748 frames, something I definitely wouldn't have been able to do using my own laptop.

Now, with all the scenes rendered it was time to take all the image sequences I had gathered and turn them into a video. In class it was recommended that we use DaVinci Resolve for this as it's free and professional grade software. However, given the extremely limited space on my laptop I had to find an alternative option. After a lot of research I chose Shutter Encoder. It has an extremely basic interface but it is relatively straightforward to use. To make the video using my images sequences I did the following;

Add all the images to the queue on the left

Set function to h.264 or AVI or any output you want

Under 'Bitrates adjustment:'

• Set 'Scale' to 1920x1080 (or any other resolution you want)

• Click 'VBR' until it says 'CQ'

• Set the CQ value to 21

• Enable 'Max quality'

Under 'Image sequence:'

• Enable 'activate the image sequence to 24fps'

Under 'Advanced features:'

• Set 'Force tune' to 'stillimage'

Start function

 Once I started the rendering process on the video it took about five minutes to complete. I rendered out the video in both MP4 and AVI. I chose to do that because AVI is the format required for assignment submission and MP4 because if I ever decide to add this to my portfolio, MP4 is a more widely used format across different operating systems and video playing software.

With the render now complete I brought it into YouCut on my phone to be able to edit it on the go. As part of the editing process I cut out some of the awkward scene cuts to try and make it look a bit more cohesive and add some music in the background.

Overall, I'm very happy with how the film turned out.

Finishing The Concept Sketches

 

Following on from my diary entry a few weeks ago where I posted the concept sketches for the environment I'm creating for my short film - I have finally settled on a colour pallet that I think works for what I'm trying to make.

As mentioned in the post about the sketches, my inspiration for the environment as a whole is the Pixar film 'Toy Story'. With that in mind I tried to go with a colour scheme that I felt closely resembled what the film looks like.

It is also worth noting once again that I have made some changes from concept to inception but still approached the changes the same way I approached the concept art - making sure the changes closely resembled the original scene in the film while also remaining original to me. 

Doing Some Environment Test Renders

 

I'm currently in the process of modelling and texturing the environment that I plan to use in the short film for my assignment. While not everything is complete yet, I felt it was important to get some test renders done to make sure everything fit together nicely and the textures I had done so far are working properly. As you can probably notice in these renders, it looks somewhat different to the concept sketches from a few weeks ago. This is because I found that some of the models I originally planned to use either didn't work, or would take too long to texture so were swapped out in the interest of time management. Perhaps the biggest change so far is the wall texture. I had originally planned on putting in stars but when I was working on the texture in Krita, I realised it would take so much time drawing and perfecting all different size stars that I made a switch to clouds and was able to complete that much faster.

Another noticeable change from the concept art is that the middle drawer on this dresser is closed, but in the concept art, it's open. This is because I couldn't find a way that it would look when modelled that I would be completely happy with so I have put that idea on hold for now but if I have time before I need to begin rendering, then I will go back and try again. If however, I do not have time, I will still be able to follow the original storyboards with the ball falling down and knocking over the blocks as this minor change will not affect the over all narrative of the piece.

As I mentioned in previous posts, my main inspiration for the environment - and story as a whole is Toy Story and right now, there are a lot of very obvious nods to that on display including posters and even the duvet on the bed all of which I found through a Google Images search. I am hoping to change at least one of the posters on the wall to a piece of concept art I drew for one of the characters so that it ties in better as well as the duvet because in my mind having a Buzz Lightyear one when his character model isn't anywhere in the scene, doesn't make any sense to me - but they will do for now for placeholder images

Something else that I'm still trying to get right is the lighting. Right now all I have in there is some skydome lights and a spotlight under the bed to illuminate the character model that currently resides there. These lighting choices are far from final but were helpful in pointing out problem areas that I can focus on when I'm working on the final lighting let up.

This is also the first time I've brought all of the character models I made into the same scene. Up until now, they had been worked on in isolation in their own Maya files so seeing them all brought into the same scene is a huge step towards getting the project completed. In saying that though, I still have some textures to work on and some models to finish so I better get going on that!

Environment Concept Art Sketches

 

Angle One

With all of the character and prop concept art done - at least until I come up with any additions or changes that would require me to make new ones - it was time to create the concept art for the scene itself. I had a clear idea of what I wanted to create when I began to come up with ideas of the story I wanted to tell, I just needed to see if I could actually draw it in a way that can convey what I wanted to build in 3D.

Angle Two

My plan is to build a bedroom similar to the one featured in the Pixar film 'Toy Story'. I also plan to incorporate anything that I make for class in the meantime if it makes sense for them to be there or perhaps find a way to repurpose the item - similar to how I plan on repurpose the Pokeball that I created during a lesson a few weeks ago into a character in my project.

Angle Three

I haven't decided on a colour scheme for the room yet but it is something that I am actively working on and trying out different combinations until I get something that I'm happy with. Given that I have put a lot of furniture in the room it is taking a little more time than I had planned to do this as I want everything to look unique but also that it belongs in the room, and that nothing there seems like it was put there just to be put there. I want everything to have a purpose and a function.

Angle Four

So, while I continue to work on finishing these pieces of concept art, I at least, can use these unfinished sketches to put together a rough storyboard for the film - which is exactly what I plan to do next.