Dave: Here it is, it’s been pretty exciting. Together we’ve learned quite a bit through all of our problems this quarter. I think we came moderately close to how we imagined it. I’ve been introduced to many methods and workflows because of this project and I’m a little more comfortable in some areas because of it. However, it’s definitely not finished. There are many small things I had intended on doing and wasn’t able to get to. But that’s what winter “break” and portfolio is for.

It’s been a great working experience grueling through the process with someone as determined and abled as Kurt, and I fully intend on continuing our collaborative stride into Studio II.

Kurt: Well, this is the cut for now. There’s not much to say I guess, the final render and breakdown can speak for itself. I’m pretty satisfied with our product after just 10 weeks of work. I learned a lot this quarter. Dozens of techniques and ways of problem solving were either taught or discovered without the overhead of worrying about my ability to bang out a model or texture. While I did plenty of exploring, especially in the use of mental ray-specific shaders and rendering techniques, perhaps the greatest achievement in this project is simply that it got to this point. I’m not so much surprised as I am proud of the effectiveness of mine and Dave’s time management skills in combination with our pretty consistent work ethic.

There’s plenty to fix here, but for the most part I got over some big hurdles while maintaining the original aesthetics and concepts. Technically, little things will get marginally better over time as we go back and retool some elements, but for the most part I like what we did.

Almost there. I think we’re going to axe the alleyway steam for now, it broke the composition and was flat/distracting. I’m still working on crepuscular rays and better smoke for the landing pad, but today is the cutoff point for any rendered elements. A compressed version of the beauty pass lives below. No compositing in this one, just the straight fly through.

http://kurtkaminski.com/stuff/beautyPassSM.mov

Here’s the pre-comp ship frames.

Everything is right around the corner.

Well, those HD renders sure were pretty this whole time, but Dave and I just decided to go down to 960×540 due to our time constraints and the amount of activity on the farm. This gives us a few options for winter, such as re rendering in HD or trying out displacements while keeping it at 960.

Either way, I calculated the difference in pixels. Take a look.

1280 x 720 = 921600
960 x 540 = 518400

So while our new dimensions are 75% of HD, we’re actually seeing 43.75% less pixels. That will potentially cut the beauty pass render time in nearly half. I’ll be posting results as they come in.