Iron Sky – Day 96
I’m in the office early today after having to take the weekend off due to a very sore throat. While I am not 100% and I have been asleep most of the weekend the show must go on. I came in for a few hours last night and found Mark just about to head out after a long day doing “moon stuff” and Tuomas and Luke continuing on previs for the show. There are so many things that are “gaps” in the edit right now that leaves massive question marks in my opinion as to what the “purpose” behind some shots are that do not tie themselves in with the existing edit currently. This will however change, but it is pushing it to the limit and thankfully the LightWave3D team here at Iron Sky are taking some initiatives to deal with this, some very much could in the end really really help with the flow of several sequences. Time is of course money and that’s always a problem on a lower budget show that has built itself up in many ways as being a VFX extravaganza among other things. There are always limits to what can be done with the time and money left, but when you recognize this sooner than later – they are no longer limits but opportunities to fundamentally make the film better because you go through the process of “killing your babies” as the expression goes in film screen writing. Trick here is those beloved super long (500 freaking frames, 24 second shots?! really…) really don’t do anything for the film but take away from the action rather than add to it and the audience isn’t stupid but they are impatient and they bore fast. Avoiding the trap of certain shots and establishers is key in preventing this. I hope the editors see this as well and do the jobs they are coming here to do so that we can lock down and NAIL really awesome shots that really rock and are useful to them as editors who see the show through different eyes.
Of course it helps if your VFX team is made up of seasoned pros, who in some cases have done a huge amount of editing themselves along with visual FX shot diarrhea abortions on their own projects or others in the past. « QuadPanels 1.5.1 – Bugfix (Previous News)
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Almost every film in existence, IMO, could be improved by being 10% shorter.
(SOME, of course, >are< perfect. ("The Wizard of Oz") But it's rare. Like you say, directors are loathe to kill their darlings, even when it helps the film.)
At this late date, I'm surprised there isn't a…. whatever you call the cut with slates or previzez in it.
It’s getting there. Tuomas and Luke took a really good crack at busting one of the main space combat sequences to the next level yesterday and they did a great job. timo, our director is here today and tomorrow (which is much appreciated so we don’t go too far off base, in the end, its their show after all) and we hope to lock out changes to this sequence and lock down the one that takes place next story wise in the show.
Keep in mind, that the amount of shots we have left to do, will big are no more than a half decent VFX fattened episode of BSG. I can’t say how many but its reasonable for us to do what we need to do in the time left and thankfully it may have just become a shit load easier to transfer certain elements from Maya to LightWave – we are testing this now. Kat’s secret weapon (thanks to the happy people I know who make this thingy possible for letting us have a go at it) – will be the fun this tool brings. If it works.
KatKat
Can you give a percentage of VFX shots that are really done? (i.e. waiting in a folder to be graded)
Sounds like you can’t say, but: a scene xfer utility, or just a mesh xfer utility?
Sounds like it’s a little more sane there after this last weekend. ::thumbsup::
The product has existed since 1998 or so and used to be a paid for tool. Now its free, but completely unsupported and hard to get because you have to know certain people. I can understand why they don’t give it out because if more people knew how easy it was to use, it would in effect screw up a LOT of maya studios because they wouldn’t need 20 freaking TDs and other nitwits in a row and could just have LW people and a few maya animators and that would be it. Mental Ray would be tossed like that because its so much easier, faster and cleaner to render in LightWave but the bitch is to get it from Maya to LW or back. FBX exchange is a joke compared to this.
Is it the beaverproject? Is it free now?
Beaver project has been free for several years.
We use PointOven. Load/Save LWOs directly in Maya (and UVs are intact as well) and of course does both F-Curve (keyframe data) transfers as well as MDD baking.
Looking forward to PO2.0 (it will have motionreferencing among other things). 🙂