A robot with Frikkn LAZERS

A beautiful piece of animation depicting the car-sized Mars rover that will shortly begin it's journey to Mars. Yay!

New test from Oana...

All's quiet on the Martian front

I'm in the process of rendering the last two shots that need to be spat outta Vue: a Martian sunrise, and the penultimate shot of the giant canyons. Both are pretty heavy-duty and going to take about a week or two to finish.

Meanwhile, I'm off to the US for a couple of weeks, so will leave the computer to it - there's not much I can do while it's chewing through the renders anyway, so don't be surprised - or concerned -if the site goes quiet for a bit - - Last Flight is still flying! ;-)

Incidentally, I will be taking a helicopter flight over the Grand Canyon while I'm in the States, which I imagine is about as close as I'll ever get to a view like the one that' I'm rendering at the moment... Not that I'm complaining; Mars is only my second favourite planet; Earth is still number one with a bullet!

Nuke 'em!

Our friendly CG expert, Oana, has been been using Felicity's artwork to create a 3D projection of the cliffs in Nuke - a tricky proposition, as the shot features quite a high-angle rotate, as you can see in the video below.

Still a few issues to work though apparently, but as you can also see, it's going to be a dynamite shot!

...man, I love this stuff!

Concept art from SauceFX

Felicity - working out of Sauce in Parnell has illustrated some beautiful concept art of the cliff shot we're planning on creating. See the large version here.

We now need to find someone with mad 3D skill to help us make this shot a reality! Please get in touch if you'd like to have a go at it - or you know someone who might be capable.

The shot involves a quarter track around the astronaut as she stands up, with the ground plane and cliffs moving in sync with her... the background comped in on cards. It's going to look fabulous.

In the meantime a huge thanks to Sauce and Felicity for the wonderful work!

Yeasayer goes to Mars

This is without a doubt the most realistic video of astronauts on Mars I've ever seen. I loved it - and am a bit jealous about how successfully they've recreated the red planet!


YEASAYER - 2080 - MyVideo

Thanks to Dylan of www.dylanstoreymusic.com for the heads up!

After Effects first draft...

Been slogging through After Effects... Here's one of my first attempts at compositing in it...

As well as a sky created in Vue, the image features animated dust clips and an optical flare, and the footage (shot at Sunset Studios) was cleaned up in PhotoShop...

Whew - it's been a real geeky weekend, but I freakin love doin the detail stuff!

Canyons test

Here's a quick and dirty (low res that is) look down into the canyons of Mars, with clouds whizzing past, as created in Vue 7.

The clouds are going way too fast, and full blown rendering of the shot is looking like it will take 10 days, so I'm not sold on it yet... But I'm getting there...

Canyons of Mars from Damon Keen on Vimeo.

This shot will ultimately be composited with a cliff-edge and our astronaut's feet, as we see a POV of her peering over the edge... Original storyboard shot below:

Rendering...

So... 50 hours rendering 40 seconds of Martian sky early this week (for the scene below), followed my 35 hours for 7 seconds of fast moving Martian clouds Weds/Thurs. My poor old computer is crawling.

I'll say one thing though, Vue does a beautiful job of skies; it's clouds are beautiful - it's certainly a godsend for us.

Every shot has now been assigned a job bag and handed over to Sunset for coordination.

Also a big welcome to Harry from Melbourne who is experimenting creating dust for a number of shots. Can't wait to see his results!

We're alive!

...But what have we been doing?

Well, Dylan is working on sound and music (exciting!), and I've been putting every shot into a separate job bag (Boring!), so we can systemize the visual effects work. What this all means of course is that the edit is locked down - YAAAY! - and the final film is 18 minutes long.

So what's the plan, stan?

Well, once I've got every shot in its own job bag (this week) it'll go to Zane at Sunset Studios to be given a first grade - essentially to give the whole movie a consistent look.

Then we hand out the shots to various people to work on. This includes compositing and a lot of keying. Adam will be working on the animations for the wrist display computer. Which, in case you're wondering, currently looks like this:

LAME! Once Adam finishes of course it will look AWESOME. Can't wait.

Meanwhile, I've been rendering out cloud sequences in Vue and creating backgrounds for the green screen shots... Slow, but enjoyable work, at least it is if you're a geek like me.

In short, there's plenty happening. And if anyone out there knows anyone who could create some realistic CG dust for us, get in touch! We'd love to hook up.

Looking down into Noctis Labyrinthus....

Just a quick render, looking straight down -about 5kms straight down that is- into the canyons of Mars. Starting to feel pretty good about the way they're looking!

Fly birdy, fly!

Rendered the computer generated seagull (see previous post) in Vue 7 and have dropped it into some of our green screen footage from Sunset Studios.

It's pretty unpolished, but looks like it may be fine for some of the more distant birdy shots - especially once we throw in a bit of dust and grade the sucka. Nice!

Seagull test from Damon Keen on Vimeo.

Hold pattern, some turbulence...

So what's been happening?

Well, Dylan is working on the music and soundscapes of Last Flight, and has produced some spooky, evocative stuff. Exciting!

Meanwhile, we finally have a solution for the air blasting out of Kassie's spacesuit: Good, old-fashioned airbrush propellant! With a can of this stuff and a tube, we should get a convincing stream of white fog blasting out the leg of the spacesuit. Whew! And with time to spare before the shoot! (Assuming we ever get good weather again in Auckland)

A big shout-out to Chev for coming up with the answer!