MovieProject - Freddy's World

Free and individual project : Creation of an animation film

Status: Finished ! Date: 2008-10-01
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Next week, I will work at 80%. This will let me a full day per week to go on with this project !
I could work a minimum of 8 hours a week.
I think it will take me at least 4 months to reach the end of this animation.

Status: Finished ! Date: 2008-10-06
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I officially start this project today ! ;)

Status: Finished ! Date: 2008-10-08
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You see the synopsis and the scenes'cut in this file (.xls)

I will add some modification during the production

Status: Finished ! Date: 2008-10-08
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Here is the summary of the story:

A bored child, sits on his bed alone in his room. He plays with a plastic plane. He begins to run in the flat and imagines a scene of aerial combat.
Damaged by an enemy, his plane crashs against a big dam. The gigantic wave causes catastrophic damage.
Then, we discover the stunned face of his mother, who just enters the room. We see the kid standing on the broken aquarium. The water is spilling allover the demolished room.
Last act: The child is alone in his bedroom, punished. Bored (again), he discovers his small-scale tank model on the ground. His imagination starts working again...

Status: Finished ! Date: 2008-10-10
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I have started by creating the living room. It's not finished yet, but I will add details later. What I need is a global idea about the concept.

Status: Finished ! Date: 2008-10-10
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It is the first time I model a human character in 3d.
The first renders:

Status: Finished ! Date: 2008-10-11
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Animating the character gave me some difficulties at the beginning because the armature was not correctly set. So I had to improve it to simplify the motions and the animation.

Here is a first picture of the scene 3 (act 1):

Status: Finished ! Date: 2008-10-17
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The first pictures of the imaginary flight:

Status: Finished ! Date: 2008-10-20
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I have finished the create and to apply the textures of this plane. I wanted it to be rusty. I think it gives it a kind of personality



(Note: it proudly wears the colors of my country, Switzerland !)

And the first version:

Status: Finished ! Date: 2008-10-21
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A quick preview of one of the flights scenes:

Status: Finished ! Date: 2008-10-22
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Both of those pictures are screenshots of the 3d view of Blender, it's not rendered, it only uses the GLSL shaders (new game engine in Blender, thanks to the Apricot Team !!)



Wireframe:

Status: Finished ! Date: 2008-10-25
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While I was creating a flight scene, I noticed that there was 5 seconds where nothing happends. I had the idea to add a new character: A little bird ! hehehe !...


Yep, it's a strange bird, I know...

Status: Finished ! Date: 2008-10-25
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-I am working on this movie since almost one month (@ about 25 hours a week).

-It is more complicated than I thought, and above all, longer. I don't know if I will finish in less than 4 month, as I planned.

-I add some modifications of the summary while I progress. It is not easy to respect it exactly. I don't know if it is a good or a bad point

-I finally begin to be to get organised well enough.

-I notice that it is important to be disciplined. Some days, after a long working day, I am no more motivated to go on with that project.

-I think I can optimize some tasks to get a best efficiency.

Status: Finished ! Date: 2008-10-28
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The results I get are encouraging ! However, some details could be improved, as the reflectivity of the water which is inadequate. The vegetation is missing, I will add some trees.

Status: Finished ! Date: 2008-10-30
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The first scene of the act III will be the crash of the aircraft against the dam.
Here is a preview:



Edit (9 dec.): Actually the explosion will be part of act 2.

Status: Finished ! Date: 2008-11-01
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To shape the body of the mother, I simply duplicated and modified Fred.


This render will be re-used for a photo in the livingroom.
I think that the hair's material is not good enough, I have to work on it.

Status: Finished ! Date: 2008-11-03
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The livingroom's aquarium is almost completed. The 3 fishes and the algae are animated.


I tried to adjust the lights, but I think I can do better.

Status: Finished ! Date: 2008-11-03
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For the act 2, I will use different settings, to give a render more "unreal", because it is Fred's World !

Status: Finished ! Date: 2008-11-08
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Today I started to set up the "massive destruction scene". I used the fluid simulator integrated to Blender.
I have some problems with it, because it need a lot of memory RAM (up to 16gb) to get acceptable results (this simulator is not very appropriate for large scale simulations...)
For the final result I will mix 2 simulations:
1-High resolution grid (1024) without particles and only 1 subdivision,
2-Low resolution (250) but with a lot of generated particles (to get the floating foam) and a two surface subdivision.

Status: Finished ! Date: 2008-11-08
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I added subsurface scattering to get this milky material.

Status: Finished ! Date: 2008-11-14
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This table shows the progression of the work:

Status: Finished ! Date: 2008-11-14
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Act 2 is Fred's world, so I have to create a special atmosphere, to illustrate that child imagination.


For this image I used Blur, color correction and sharpen nodes. But I found that the blur filter is not correctly set...

Status: Finished ! Date: 2008-11-18
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( = about 2 hours of work)

Status: Finished ! Date: 2008-11-20
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Here are some key frames of the act 2


Yep, I wanted a pink sky ! This shows a naive child imagination.

Status: Finished ! Date: 2008-11-24
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I could get 3 computers, in addition of my two PCs. This will increase the computation time.

Status: Finished ! Date: 2008-12-04
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-The final rendering of the acts 1, 2 and 3 are completed
-The music is done at 90%
-Idem for the sound

Left to do:
-The adjust the lighting of the livingroom + rendering
-The featuring
-The official web-page
-Find a title
-Make some pictures of "promotion"
-Some adjustments (about the sound, for example ...)
-The publication

Estimated time remaining: 1 week!

Status: Finished ! Date: 2008-12-09
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I finally reached the end of this project. I am happy to have been able to meet the deadline.
I think that I could even been more fast.
I learned how to optimize a lot of tasks in creating this film, for example, techniques of animation and animation cycles, or the management of the rendering which I made on 6 different computers with differents OS.
In a word: I would be absolutely ready to repeat this experience!
Thank you for taking the time to watch the animation and have read those few articles!


Some infos:
-Total rendertime: 284 hours! (= 11 days, spread over 6 PCs)
-Baking: @ 1024 (15GB of RAM)
-Total size of the project: 31Go (15,000 files)
-6000 Frames (4min)
-2 Months and 8 days of work @ 7h/jours = ~ 400 hours