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Well, a simple breakdown animation of all the passes used to produce the Active Duty animation seen over at Doug Drexler's blog. (DREX Files)
While this took ages to render out with multiple passes and repeated attempts I still have a lot I would like to correct. There is some Mental ray flicker on the Ships and smaller craft, that I did not catch. This was caused by the overuse of LUM mats on those little "cargo trains" and with how FG works. I also have a nav light freaking out and inverting itself, likely again Mental Ray. I would have made this video much longer but I was constrained within 5 seconds. I have plans to redo this as a longer cut relating to a older story I have for the U.S.S. Balmung.
Each sequence took something like 4days to render. In the future I think I should look at less demanding render methods but I wanted to match the still image as close as possible.
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One suggestion - if you go through the hassle of doing a breakdown (I know itAâs a lot of work, this is why I tend to not do those ) I think it might be better to show the elements seperatly, as you can hardly see any differences if you just look at the comped pictures, unless you know where to look at.
We all tend to be very critical of our own work, but I didn't notice any of the little "flubs" you mentioned above, MadKoi. All I saw was a beautiful animation. This breakdown is informative, but I must agree with Tobias and Chris. If we could see each pass on its own it would be much easier to distinguish how they integrate into the final version. Still, it was amazing to see those scenes. My hat is off to everyone for their hard work and outstanding results!
Thing that annoys me the most is how limited it is with output, cannot control codec type how I am used to through fansub style editing with freebee tools.
HD version should show those FG issues I mentioned. Look at the smaller ships the right nacelle on the balmung and the centerline on the cargo pods (area where the docking rings are)
And great seeing these two ships once again.
Separated the elements of each pass vs the additive method used earlier. Probably could do a better job of it but other things are taking up my time right now. Edited it to allow the same score to remain, this is the part where I got cheap and lazy! I did not want to search a new audio track. Most scenes I omitted the star field from the stack to better illustrate the added effect or pass.