Volumetrics are in Cycles!

So Cycles has volumetrics now so I thought I'd do a quick test.  This scene has no lights except those coming from the volume.  I'm sure they're working on point densities which I think will greatly help scenes like this.   As for the movie, I've been stalled for a long time because of work and moving households.  Now that things have settled down a bit I think I'll start in again.... sorry for the long time between posts:)

And still tweaking.....

Here's a quick update on the buildings I scanned in...

This street is completely different than the street I did in the past.  These buildings are VERY low poly with all of the effort going into the normal maps and the texturing.  This is a completely different work flow than modelling EVERY detail and then adding tiled and procedural textures to 'dirty it up'.    I think I like this flow a little better, you end up with a few too many flaws instead of too few, but it's faster and I think it looks a little better... any thoughts? 

Back from Ireland...

So I took over 4000 photos on my trip to Ireland most of which were for objects and textures.  I've got quite a library now and the computer has been converting them to models pretty much non stop since I got back.  Here's a couple of buildings I scanned in.  Believe it or not these models are extremely low poly.  Anyway posting a render up to prove I'm still working away on the movie.  I think my original estimate of 10 years to make the movie was a little optimistic.

Knight

So did this between a really hectic period of life and it doesn't have anything to do with the movie... sort of, I really was trying to get a little better at CG and started with topology study and camera and focal length study and then sculpt etc etc.   Anyway, I'm getting back on task so I thought I'd post this just to prove I haven't been idle :)

Noel

Here's another character I'm working on, his name is Noel and he's a professor in the movie.  Getting slightly better at topology, but have a long way to go yet:)

Joe Expressions....

A fellow animator on BA asked for some of my screen shots of a scene I'm working on and a few expressions of my Joe rig so I posted them for him,  here they are for completeness:

I used Jason Osipa's book, "Stop Staring" to guide me in topology and face rigging.

This is a screen shot of an animation with all of the NLA tracks.

Quick Dyntopo Sculpt

Ok, I'm officially a dyntopo fan.  I think I'll presculpt all the characters with this prior to retopology.  I'm at the point where I need lots of peripheral characters and background people.  Here's a secondary professor sculpt I pounded out in about an hour or less.

Finished a New Script

So I finished a new version of my texture paint script that works in concert with agisoft photoscan.  This is a screen grab of a trash can I scanned in retopoed and used the script to upgrade the texture.  If anyone wants the details of the work flow I can post it up, but I think I've got it down well enough to start churning out the props.

Little things add a lot...

Added flowers trees, mist pass DOF etc.  Getting close to calling it done and moving on to the next set.

Still working on the street.

added the F250 and the Pilot.

Ford F250

So here's Ford F250 I modelled with some scanned assets for the background and ground.  I still have some to do on the truck, but I thought this was interesting enough to post up.

Working On WorkFlow

Do you ever make so little progress on so many fronts that you're not sure what to post?   Well I feel as though the progress has been hampered much of late.  We moved our entire household and I've had to squeeze in work when I have free time. 

That being said I got a new toy for Christmas, well I bought it, it's Agisoft Photoscan.  I have been going wild taking pictures and scanning them in.  That's when I noticed a major shortcoming of the workflow.  Agisoft's scans are pretty crude sometimes and their textures and unwrapping leave a lot to be desired.  So I figured out that you can export Collada out of Agisoft and that gives you all of the camera positions.  I then was able to correlate the field of views and magnification for each camera back on the object.  What this allowed me to do is retopolgize the scans, unwrap them and then retexture the resultant object using texture painting in blender.  since this was somewhat tedious I decided to write a python script that automates the camera painting projection setup.  I finally got it working pretty well, below are a few objects I've scanned and started down this workflow path on.

Here is my first object fully completed through the new work flow, yes I can fly the camera around this beauty

Below is another example I'm in the middle of.  The Chair on the left is the scan, the chair on the right is my retopo of the scan (yes you can see I'm not done with the retopo yet as I just started on the scrolls.  After I am donw with them,  I will then texture paint the scan onto the new chair when I'm done.

Honda Pilot

I know it feels like I'm rarely posting, but I've been working on my modelling skills.  I'm thoroughly convinced I'm terrible at modelling, but also that I'm better than I was.  Here's my current project.  I've come to the conclusion that the correct way to model is to take your own reference photos.  This is my car so I have infinite access to taking more photos.

An Updated Photo with the model aligned to the camera:

Whirl Part 1 completed.

So long time no post.  My brother has been hard at work again with his class of students.  I think they did a superb job with the time and resources they had.  There is a lot of blender in here.  I did a lot of the rendering, the particle systems and modified the famous Agus3d scene to render the fly down the river in cycles.  Most of the river shots were done in Blender Internal, but the rest was rendered in Vue.  The king rising out of the river, smoke and transition from water to solid was done in blender with mostly cycles and Blender internal for the smoke and fire.

I have been working on the film in my spare time but have been busy moving and other various things.  I have actually completed most of the animation for two shots of the film.  Right now I'm putting cycles hair on my characters.