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We are working on a short that is coming to an end regarding animation of the main characters. We are currently building the city where the story unfolds.

Here is a test render from shot 001. The animation is final in this shot, but there is a lot of texture work to do. For us its learning by doing, so please chime in with tips if you want to.



Edit:
I´ll quick address what stage we are in, so people know what to comment.
At this stage the animation is done. Lighting is just a standard physical sky and sun. Currently working on uv-mapping the different objects in the scene. Character textures is just "slapped" on, so they need a lot of attention.

Here are some lightning references. Quite harsh, but this is "inspired" by a norwegian movie from the eighties. I guess there were little money for light setups.





So, this is quite early in the production, and you´re welcome to comment!

Best regards,
Tor Martin
http://www.tnl.as

Seeing as you're currently working on texturing and the environment, I'm not too sure what to suggest at this point. It looks great though -- looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

Texture update:


Tor M

A quick slap comp to test out some look development.
Still a lot of shader work that is not yet started on. The characters cloth need some attention. I would like to break up the spec on his jacket. And his jumper should have less and softer spec. (Same with his hair).

Some early development of hair. The testing did not venture further before we decided to drop the hairs.

Here is a slap comp of the dog. Have worked on the dog shader. Have got a spec in the eye that I like, but the nose is under work. Want a wetter feel with nice round pores. The background also need some kind of atmospheric effects, maybe some floating particles, just to break of the static feel.

1st thought, from this POV it looks like hes hitting the crack pipe

Haha, yes, the dog is a bit droopy

Here is another update on the dog. Tweaked the shader, less plastic now. Missing some good contact shadows with the ground.



Critiqs are welcome. Guess I´ll keep texturing the background buildings next week.

Regards,
Tor M

He would look so much better with fur.

Hehe, I had hoped that nobody would ask for fur
I am actually uncertain about the fur. Not sure if you saw the initial fur test?
I find it hard to work with very short fur, haven´t found a good workflow to do this yet. So, ideally we would like the fur to be a lot shorter than it is in the test.
But shorter hair needs more hair to cover the hole face. The test has about 1.5 million strands of hair.

I guess displacement is not the route to go since fur should move with the body. I´ll give it another try.

Thanks for keeping it straight!

Here is a second attempt on the fur. There is only three layers of hair yet, and all the layers picks up the same color. I reckon the final fur will be a bit "older/grey-ish".

I guess the dog looks nicer with fur, but the render times is going through the roof and lurking in the attic. There is also some fireflies, and its caused by the sun. Not sure yet how to address them, so any tips would be nice.
And do anybody have some tips to get the hair to pick up the rim light? There is a quite strong rim light just behind the head, but with fur, its hard to see any lighting caused by the rim light.




Regards,
Tor M

Try a metallic, highly reflective material for the hair.

Nice shader Brian, love the look of it!
Good tip, will try that tomorrow! Cheers.

How many hairs in total for now? How many hair segments? Do you use any Layer transparency to fake the fading tips? I would avoid it if that's the case, can add a lot to the render time and it's not really necessary.

Hi Mihai,
I have three hair systems for now:
Short_hair_face: guide segments 3 - hair segments 6 - total hair 750.000
LongHair_head: guide segments 8 - hair segments 12 - total hair 50.000
Ear_hair: guide segments 8 - hair segments 12 - total hair 100.000

I am exporting from Cinema 4D, and the last plugin from JDHill supports Hair. Not just guides, but all the hair which is great.

Upon export, Maxwell gives me these prompts:
- Writing Hair vectors (0/4500000)
- Raytracing UVs for hair object (0/4500000)

It does this for all "hair systems".

My tag properties are as follows:
Primitive
Root width (mm): 0,2
Tip width (mm): 0.01
Type: Cylinder

Export options
Raytrace UVs (checked)
Max distance: 30 cm (default value)
UV source: the dog

I dont use any layer transparency, just picking up the dog´s material and adding some shine.

Regards,
Tor M