This month’s post shows how we accomplished Lighting Instances with Global Illumination Glowing Surfaces in LightWave 3D
Lighting Instances with Global Illumination Glowing Surfaces in LightWave 3D
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Category Archives: Production
Detailing the Instance Generator for HD
This month’s post shows how I modified the original Instance Generator lattice to contain a fully detailed interior for the new HD version of the short.
Creating an Army of 800K Marching Robots with LightWave 3D
Enjoy our latest blog post – Creating an army of 800K marching robots with LightWave 3D nested instancing, over on DreamLight.com
3D Character Design and Animation – Desktop Evolution
I’ve made a blog post revisiting the initial design of the main character, 0090, over on our main company blog. This is in preparation for resuming production on the advanced HD version of Fault Effect for release in 2017 to commemorate DreamLight’s 30’th anniversary.
3D Character Design and Animation – Desktop Evolution
Stay tuned!
BTW: I’ll be continuing the blog posts for this Autiton Archives – Fault Effect project over on our main studio blog due to its more advanced formatting options (supports mobile devices, etc.) and so that I only need to maintain one blog at a time.
Turning loose 1.5 Million Autiton Sleepwalkers
Once I had the Autiton model geometry simplified I then simplified all the surfaces on the Simplified Autiton model. I removed most of the texture maps, gradients, bumps and procedural surfaces from the model leaving only basic color surfaces.
The original high resolution Autiton Model.
The Autiton Diet: Losing 19K Polys
I next set about sliming down the polygon count on the basic Autiton model because the Autiton would be instanced 1.5 million times so the fewer polygons the better. Because the camera would be moving quickly and each Autiton would be rather small I wouldn’t need nearly as much detail as the original Autiton model and could use a far simpler version so I loaded the original Autiton model into LightWave Modeler and started simplifying and optimizing the geometry. The primary method I used was to dissolve edge loops that had been used to add edge detail and smooth curvatures. I then deleted any stray points that were left and welded extra points to maintain all quads. I was able to bring the polygon count of the model from 22,322 down to 2,716 reducing it by almost 90%. That should do the trick.
I reduced the polygon count on the Autiton model by almost 90%
1.5 Million Autiton March
In the previous post I had the static, low res, Autiton stand-in instances working with the hex particle emitter. As well as the particle emitter recursively instanced to create 1.5 million Autiton units. So it was time to send them all for a nice little walk. I started with a previous walk cycle of an Autiton unit that I had created using IK Booster and Motion Mixer. This is the walk cycle that was used to make the Autiton instances walk in all the interior shots.
I then swapped the walk cycle Autiton for the stand-in as the reference object for the particle emitter’s DP_Instancer generator. This created six rows of 25 Autitons all walking away from the center for 150 Autitons per Instance Generator hex cluster. If you look at the next video closely (in full screen mode), you can see the particles moving along the ground below each walking Autiton instance. Continue reading
Testing Recursive Instancing
Gallery
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I’m moving the scenes up to LightWave 11 and testing out the functionality of LW11’s instancing. In the opening shot where the camera zooms through the vast Instance Generator Lattice there will be rows of Autiton instances (1.5 million of … Continue reading
New WordPress Based Web Site with Production Blog
I’ve deployed this new WordPress driven web site for The Autiton Archives with a blog in order to be able to post updates during the production process. Once everything is up and running smoothly I’ll be able to post status updates with production images during the production of the Fault Effect director’s cut HD version of the pilot short.
I created a custom child theme based on the default Twenty Eleven WordPress theme for this site. Because this is a new child theme it may have some growing pains as new sections are being fleshed out. If anyone notices any issues with the new site please don’t hesitate to post a comment. Comments are moderated and need to be approved before they show up on the blog though so they won’t appear until I have a chance to review them.