One Way

Monthly update

fsiddi — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 15:15:47 +0000

Since many everyday life events are taking over, I think I’ll try to update the blog at least once per month, instead of promising to do it every week. In February the characters Ferris and Stella have been redesigned by Valentina Stecchi. As soon as some of this designs are final I will upload them here.

At the same time, rather than concentrating on the animatic, i spent some time texturing and improving the look of some items of the train station. Since I am now contributing to the Tube short film by Bassam Kurdali I will try to implement some of the solutions found there, as far as pipeline management is concerned.

Weekly checkpoint 09

fsiddi — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 17:24:19 +0000

This weeks highlights are relatively few, since we are on slow work in progress. I have been working on some more station modeling, solving a in important issue in texture positioning. In the meantime the work on improving the characters in also progressing and next week it I might post some images.

Weekly checkpoint 08

fsiddi — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 17:16:49 +0000

I think that I’m finally able to publish again weekly checkpoints about production progresses, so here it is the first one! This is a summary of what happened during the past weeks, so it might be a little bit longer than usual.

New planning tools

A good deal of time has been spent setting up a set of tools for task management resource tracking. Several solutions have been evaluated, such as OmniPlan, Celtx and other GTDs. Since an online solution was needed (possibly something more accessible than Shotgun), I opted for a couple of online spreadsheets. One document is shot-subdivided, another contains information about models development progress.

Data refactoring

Some reorganization of productions files is being performed, creating a project tree similar to the one visible in open movies such as Big Buck Bunny or Sintel. This process is taking some time because of Blender’s inability to relink library files once their paths are changed from absolute to relative.

Improved pre-viz

Better low-res version of all the models were created, in order to render an understandable animatic while keeping render times down. This animatic will be released as soon as it is finished in order to get external feedback.

Now back to work.

Awakening

fsiddi — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 15:31:04 +0000

After some months of silence, during which I’ve been working on many other projects, winter has definitely arrived and it’s now time to start One Way again, almost from scratch. For doing this I will need some new concept art of the main characters and a better animatic, to be presented to a film commission in order to get founding to pay artists.

The months ahead are full of challenges, and I hope to build up a team able to deal with them.

Renderfarm pictures

fsiddi — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 16:34:43 +0000

Before the project starts to come back to life, I would like to uploads a couple of pictures I found on a folder while tiding up.

Definitely messy uh? And now a couple of pictures of the iRenderfarm, made of 14 iMacs and 2 Mac Pros, crunching frames thanks to brender (network render script written by Olivier Amrein). I really miss this hardware now that I’m graduated…

About the short film itself: I have thought possible solutions about its prosecution, and the conclusion is that I will try to improve some aspects to make it ready for a public release. This date has yet to be set, but I will try to make it clear as soon as possible (also to pay respect to who contributed to the project so far).

Graduation

fsiddi — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 12:27:55 +0000

I finally managed to find some time to give an important update about the project. The moment of the Presentation/Premiere of the short film quickly passed by, but the project is not finished.
What was the premiere about, then? Well, the aim of my degree research was to explain potential and dynamics of open movie making, with the addition of the technically advanced element of stereoscopy.

Presentation in the cinema

After the presentation outside the cinema

Outside university

Maybe these are not exactly the pictures you are looking for. Maybe you expect some movie preview as well. You will have to wait still some time to see actual screenshot or progresses, I’m sorry.

In the last week I moved to Berlin to work on a very challenging stereoscopic project and now I will have a couple of days off. This blog is not dead and will not be for a quite some time!

Write you soon.

Weekly checkpoint 07

fsiddi — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 20:56:17 +0000

There is not much time left to the presentation of the project, so we will be quick: another test in the cinema with some tweaks in the stereoscopy gave good results. The render-farm is now expanded with 4 more iMacs and a MacPro (15 nodes in total).

Here we go with one of the first final frames.

I think the next update will come close to the presentation, so stay tuned!

New contribution list

fsiddi — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 14:59:45 +0000

Hello,
I made an upadate to the contribute page. Since new contributors might be interested, I state once again that at the end of the project (in less than two weeks) all the assets will be relased and properly credited under CC license.

I also include some WIP renders of the main characters: please help to make them nicer:)!

Ferris

Stella

If you pick up something to work on, please write it as a comment or on the thread on kino3D or blenderartists.

Thank you.

Premiere date is set

fsiddi — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 09:45:38 +0000

The presentation and discussion date of my thesis has been set:

July, 21st at Cineplexx – 9.30 am

The discussion is public and will last 30 minutes, during which I will screen the movie.

—-

La data di discussione e presentazione della tesi di laurea è stata fissata per il giorno:

mercoledì 21 luglio 2010 alle ore 9.30 presso il Cineplexx di Bolzano

La discussione è pubblica e durerà circa 30 minuti, durante i quali il fim verrò proiettato in anteprima assoluta.

First test screening

fsiddi — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 01:56:58 +0000

Very interesting and positive update of the project! Today me and Marco went at the Cineplexx here in Bolzano and had the chance to see a preview of the movie (which is still heavily work in progress).

When working on stereoscopic films it is absolutely necessary to have preview on a screen of the same size the project is aimed at. In our case is a 15m screen, so the 5-8m previews made with a projector on a wall have been confirmed on the target screen.
Sound as well, very crisp with quite powerful LFE.

Beside visualizing a correct stereoscopy, the most relevant issue was creating the files for the digital cinema media server in use at the cinema. The final product was a so-called DCP (Digital Cinema Package) and its creation process will be covered in the next posts.

This picture was taken during the projection. The little green rectangle on the left is the emergncy exit signal, and it’s 25cm high:)

I take the chance to thank Cineplexx’s staff and management for their kindness and availability.