Monday, February 9, 2009

I aint afraid of no renda

Sorry for the lack of updates. The culprit lies in animation. That's basically all I've been doing lately. So far im up to about 20 seconds animated and rendered. This number should really start picking up as I get more comfortable with the work flow. I animate so little, that every time I get to this stage its almost like I have to re-learn the basics. I guess thats not a bad thing =)
Ahh, yes, so, while I dont really have anything to report about animation (its going well), the most amazing thing happened regarding the rendering aspect of the film.
The short story is, I was able to work out a deal with the cool dudes over at Renderrocket.com, to use their online rendering service. While I won't go into specifics (im not sure how much I could/should say), but I will say that they were extremely generous. The last time I was this happy about getting something was my 6th Christmas (Hello NES and Link! =).
The significance of this arrangement changes the whole look and feel of the film. It allows for high-res rendering (1920x1080), which creates many more options at compositing time, it opens up the door for fluids, dynamics, cloth, hair, all the things that would normally be avoided with a small group project, none the less a solo project.
To put it in perspective, the other night I rendered a pretty intensive scene. 450 frames (water, sky, huge environment, etc), at 1920x1080, taking about 30 minutes per frame. On my computer it would have taken 225 hours (nearly 10 days running 24/7). On the renderrocket's renderfarm, it took 3 hours!
Its one of those things that once you've tried it, you can never go back to normal rendering =P
Anyway, if you working on a film, or even a demo reel for that matter, I highly recommend checking them out. Its a great service, and the people there are super nice and helpful.
So, there ya have. The film is coming along great. Im very excited about the few scenes Ive already rendered. I'll post some very soon.
Peace,
Eric

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