Astana enhanced, part 17 - rendering progress

(Astana was a hurried video project where a camera flies through 1300 acres of property. Now, to answer my question, "what if we'd been given more time," I'm enhancing the entire neighborhood.)

frame 3276 (click for full-res)

It's months later and the rendering is almost halfway completed. Much of the time was spent figuring out the best settings to eliminate flicker without losing too much rendering speed. Flicker is caused by anti-aliasing, global illumination maps, and shader interpolation, if the settings aren't just right.

resolution comparison
(Each of these details accounts for less
than 1% of the entire screen area.)

After a few early tests, I abandoned my HD-res goal. HD, while beautiful in its degree of detail, can take 8 times as long to render as NTSC, and I simply don't have the computing power to crunch those numbers expeditiously. However, HD is the industry standard, so its hurdles can't be avoided forever.

This project has been valuable instruction for rendering gigantic scenes in a timely manner. I learned - for videos longer than 30 seconds - to render backgrounds and moving objects separately and composite them afterward. This will result in speedier renderings, higher-quality video, and greater control in post.

I also learned - for longer videos - to avoid global illumination (GI). This is particularly obvious in the wake of the HD standard. Two of the goals of my next video project will be GI alternatives and fast HD renders.

Below is a lower-res version of the video so far. This one contains audio, so adjust your speakers if necessary.

approximately 40% of frames completed

Wonder Warthog, part 3 - sketching a head design

(I'm redesigning, modeling, and rigging Gilbert Shelton's classic cartoon character, "Wonder Wart-Hog.")

detail from a design drawing

Throughout my anatomy study and character-based software tutorials, I'm also designing our hero's head and costume. The rest of him is standard male human anatomy, already designed by nature. Here are my first tries at the head.

early sketches

The first step of the design process is to get the ideas out of my head through some quick sketches, and see which of my impulses work and which don't. I'd like my version to look less silly and more like a warthog than the original.

drawing incorporating anatomical info
(click to enlarge)

Then I throw some reference material into the mix. This includes old Wonder Wart-Hog comic books, photos of warthogs, and studies of warthog and human anatomy.
At this stage, I'm ready to experiment with some sculpting, so I can see what the design looks like from various angles. After that, I'll have to design a costume and be sure that it and the head look good together.

next: more designing