The End

It's been a long journey, filled with trials, tribulations, and rendering problems, but I can finally see the end of the tunnel. It's the night before thesis is due, and I'm spending this last night finishing up my paper and gathering all the documents I need for delivery.

The last couple of weeks have been a whirlwind of animation, lighting, dynamics, and Realflow. Several of the effects I wanted to do did not make it into this cut of the film: the disintegrating ash effect was a particularly difficult sacrifice to make.

Interestingly, the shot I am happiest with is the fire breathing shot. I love the color of the flame and the subtle smoke and burning effect on the book itself. The effect is a great study in compositing, dynamics, and light. Everything was done in a separate component and composited together. This shot took about as much time as I expected, and looks almost exactly the way I wanted it to look. As I have come to learn, the key to great looking effects is compositing. In a sense, 3D visual effects is one of the most difficult areas to master because you have to be technically savvy in both 2D and 3D environments.

The underwater effect was the most annoying effect in that I spent the most time on it out of all the effects, and I'm still not quite happy with it. I still want to do a little more testing to create more tendril-like fluid emission instead of the gaseous look it has now.

I spent a lot of time these last few weeks with Realflow, and I'm starting to move from novice to an intermediate knowledge of the program. I feel very comfortable generating splashes, pours, and fills -- simply, everyday liquid effects. While the simulations for thesis aren't perfect, I'm quite happy with the results I got out of the program.

Lighting was a consistent problem due mainly to the fact that this is a night setting. Getting enough light on Billy and the dragon to see their facial expressions was a challenge for nearly every shot. Too much light, and they looked glowly and pale. Too little light, and their faces would be in complete shadow.

The compositing and editing for this piece was a complete nightmare. I have Demetri Patsiaris to thank for editing my movie together. I mainly had to keep track of all the different renders and all the different shots, which was crazy enough in itself. 37 doesn't seem like that large a number until you're trying to manage several layers for 37 shots. All in all, I think I rendered out about 100 passes. All the shots had at least a beauty pass and an ambient occlusion pass, and many had one, two, or more effects passes.

Well, I should wrap this up. This is the last journal entry that will make it into my paper. If you have read this journal up to the very end, thank you for taking this journey with me! And send me a comment!

Over and out

jk