Hotel Righi video, part 4 - FX

(The Hotel Righi [ree-gee] project was a set of renderings I collaborated on back in 2007. Now that I have some free time, I'm turning it into a short fly-through video.)

cloud attempts

It took a few tries to get the clouds to look right. The 1st attempt (top left corner) was starting to look okay, but that technique was prohibitive. The next technique took a few tries (2nd, 3rd, 4th). The camera moves quickly through this part, so it's probably not worth dolling up too much. Maybe I'll change my mind toward the end of the project.

ferry rendering, frame 520;

sailboat model

I built two special boats for this project. One is the Lake Geneva ferry that took a day to create. The other is a low-mesh sailboat for scattering around the lake. It took about 15 minutes to model.

Once again, the camera flies by at about the speed of a jet airplane, and the ferry appears as a blur in the video, so it didn't require much detail. Most of the finer detailing will happen around the hotel, when the camera slows to the speed of a bird.

3D rendering (top) & video post effects (bottom)

Now that test frames have been rendered for the entire video, I can begin synching my audio and adjusting my post effects. Each post effect mimics a camera lens and is blur-based.

The motion blur effect blurs any moving object along the line of action. The depth of field effect blurs anything that isn't within a specific distance from the camera. The bloom effect blurs the borders of luminous image areas, so bright areas appear to glow.

next: hundreds of buildings