Update 03
Well guys. I did it. I did the 2 minute animation and everything is fine! Clients are happy! I had to extend the deadline like 4 times, and took a month extra fintuning things (which came out of my pocket...) but the clients were happy and more than happy with the result for taking the extra time. It was a fun little animation.
I am techinically under a verbal NDA, but I can show it to a select few (cause I'm sure you are half a world away) if you guys agree to keep it somewhat very private!!! Just PM me and you can take a look! ;)
Here are some random facts:
- Modeling mostly done in trueSpace, Blender, Softimage then 3Dmax.
- Everything else done in Softimage
- Rendering in Machstudio Pro 2 (3 passes for background) and the OpenGL viewport (2 passes for characters)
- There were a total of around 40 shots.
- At times there were 20 characters on screen - (I really need to learn how to do crowds..)
- Each frame has a total of 35 seconds average in total computing power, including all passes and post effects rendering time. Thanks GPU's!
- Compositing and editing was done in entirely in Blender.
- I put in about 460 hours, meanwhile my brother did 55 and my disciple/student did another 55 hours.
- For the characters, I built one generic rig and an ICE randomizer thingy that helped me build many other characters.
- The character lineart geometry were done in Blender with the grease pencil, converted to meshes then used in Softimage in the OpenGL viewport.
Many thanks to those who share yours scripts and things, including those who helped with the OpenGL scripts, the ICE wheel compounds and scene examples, the spring scripts, and other every day tools I use, including tutorials.. I couldn't have done it without you.