down to 35

We are down to 35 shots left to final. Will is on his own for the next two weeks as I travel through California, but before I left we lined up a whole slate of shots for him to attack in my absence. Those were all shots that, pretty much, could be solved with our existing lighting infrastructure and lighting/compositing strategies. Of course, what that means is that when I return we'll be left with a pile of what we casually refer to as the "hard" shots.

What makes a shot hard in this film? The biggest difficulties probably relate to water, and we have our fair share of splashing, pouring, dumping water shots to contend with. But we have other issues, such as the shot with a few thousand versions of Leed swimming around (hard because we have to keep them from looking identical AND because we have to get them through the actual RAM-limited render process). There's a file which doesn't even open in Maya any more, and we have to try and repair that one. There's the film's first shot which is hard because it's 1000 frames long and features a huge scale change that has to happen seamlessly. Another way in which water is challenging is that we have three shots that occur under water, and thus we have to figure out a nice way to simulate light coming down through a reflective/refractive surface from below.

But I like our chances. I am almost finished with my responsibilities from the spring term, and thus I will soon be able to focus more on these challenges.

a long-awaited Tower 37 (nee Uprising) update

So the 10-minute CG animated short I've written about here before (Tower 37, formerly called Uprising) is actually nearing completion. Which is a good thing, 'cause it's basically its third anniversary this summer. Three years ago I was working on the story and the reel, now we're down to 44 shots left to finalize.

You might get some kind of perverse enjoyment out of reading prior posts about the film, especially those from late summer 2005 when I thought we could actually finish it in just one term. Ha. Well, over the three years it ballooned to 11 minutes, and now has been trimmed back down to below 10. There are 114 total shots as of this writing. But I do see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Bit Films Intern Will is currently leading the lighting/compositing charge, and I'm doing what I can as my other responsibilities allow. I think we are much more efficient with a small crew than with a large one, and I hope to update with some regularity as our number of remaining shots drops.

If you're interested in reading about how I structured a collaborative animation production class around this project, or if you want to learn more about the film itself, you can download a PDF of my MFA thesis and knock yourself out. Or just watch the movie as it stood a year ago when I got the degree. The site hosting the thesis keeps telling me people are downloading it; I'd be curious to hear from those downloaders what they think about it all.

Here's an image from shot u2_01. It is 1/3 of the final full resolution. I'll start adding more images to my posts if this works and if people seem receptive.


For those interested in the technical specs, this film is being made using Maya 8.5, RenderMan Studio, and Shake. To a lesser extent we also use After Effects, the Maya Software renderer, and hundreds of custom scripts (mainly written in TCL).

Tower 37 is using the HELGA system (developed at Hampshire College) for production management and web-based render/comp spooling, asset management, and job tracking. I will update this post or blog with a HELGA link as soon as one is available.

memorable verbal family blunders

My kids have been pestering me to log all of their funny little sayings and doings before we all grow up and forget them. I think it's a great idea, but the idea of putting them onto a file on my computer, only to be lost and forgotten about, devastates me. So, pardon the tangent and enjoy some of my family's oddities.

"Napkins Farms": Noe's way of saying "Atkins Farms"

"Heliclopters": Jordy's term for the cool little spinning seed pods that come down from our backyard Maple.

"Goblets": Noe's way of saying "goblins" (after watching Labyrinth with me and Jordy).

"Bookmoork": Jordy made a bookmark by hand back in kindergarten and added an extra O. Now we all call 'em bookmoorks.

From the "taking me too literally" department:

Noe (in the car): "Dad, look at me!"
Me: "I can't, I'm driving, I have to keep my eyes on the road."
Noe: "If you keep your eyes on the road, a car will come by and squish them!"

white noise podcast

Back when my daughter had trouble sleeping (which is LONG in the past, she's the best sleeper in the house now), we used to leave her next to the oven vent fan in her carseat. It was the best source of white noise we had in the house, and it seemed to have a soothing effect on her.

When we traveled, though, we couldn't bring our oven fan with us. Except -- we could! I recorded an hour of it, burned it to a CD, and it was one of our most important baby things to remember when we went anywhere ("Bottles, check. Formula, check. White noise, check.").

I always thought it would be great to publish a white noise CD for frustrated parents and others (my mom sleeps with a white noise machine, after all). But now I have an even better idea: the White Noise Podcast.

A little googling shows that "white noise" also seems to be a genre of heavy metal, which I find it funny to think about babies trying to fall asleep to. So there's competition for the name.

Another funny aspect about this podcast is that it will be an interesting test of audio compression algorithms.

I put the first 55Mb file up: the tantalizing hour-long vent fan recording we used for Noe. Watch this spot for future updates. Enjoy, and happy sleeping.

summer computer animation internship

I'm considering offering a bit films summer production internship. It would have to begin as an unpaid internship, but the benefits (I think) would be fairly tempting for those curious about becoming computer animation professionals:

• experience in a high-end, industry-grade production environment
  
• exposure to tools such as Maya, Shake, RenderMan
• access to a 100+ processor render farm
• work experience on a major independent short film project
• the opportunity to live and work in or around Amherst or Northampton Massachusetts!

I'm floating this idea here to see if I get any feedback on it. Would anyone find this tempting, or does "unpaid" = nobody? Any ideas for how I might promote this position and attract good applicants?

If it were to start this summer, my current show (Tower 37) would need compositing and/or lighting interns. Heck, if you read this and are curious, get in touch.