For those who are interested I made a new post on my blog, "Monday Morning Quarterbacking". It's yet even more pondering about this beast of a project known as Fuel & Fire. This time I consider what I need to do if I were to make this entire project into a "graphical film", much like the animatic in the youtube link in my earlier post.

My post:
http://www.giantmonster.tv/giant/?p=584#more-584

I'd welcome anyone to read it and give me any feedback. Seriously, I'd love some feedback - I need feedback. Any and all critique is welcome. This is going to take some deep thinking, experimenting and a lot of research.

An excerpt from my post:

@unknownuser said:

Artistic Considerations and Building this Thing
Artistically this is still an interesting endeavor (otherwise I wouldn’t be writing all this down). So after all of the above, where does this stand?

• Visual Details - I haven’t figured out what the final image fidelity will be yet. I do know that the direction I have in my mind will take more time to render. In short, it involves rendering several layers and comping them together into one visual style. That will add more time in Photoshop/Motion/Comp applications. Additional development time per frame is not something I’d like to increase. I’m going to have to research better tools for that, i.e. Shake.
• 3D Layers - part of making this a film would involve some additional layering and 3D camerawork with the 2D images. Another step, that adds more time. This might also force me to render on my MacBook Pro, since the PC version of the SketchUp doesn’t have the option to render an alpha layer.
• Tools - This is going to stress my current toolset. In a pre-emptive strike I’ve already purchased the Final Cut suite. I’ve been planning to do that for a long time now and here’s my excuse. Another piece of software I’d like to learn is Shake and I think that might help in automating the comp time with the layering process.

And in relation to all that I did some experiments with comping renders.

VRay and SU composite:

Podium SU composite:

Joao,
Yeah, I haven't seen a style like that, but I also haven't searched a lot. I'm looking for something like that as well - and will probably try and make one myself. There's a tutorial here that shows how to make a style, you should try and make one!

In my opinion the iPhone is the StechUp of the mobile phone world. I've had other smartphones and the iPhone has been the best by far (never had a BB). I find it so much a joy to use that I don't really care about 2.0. I do most of my emailing on it and in fact this post as well. Its not just pretty it's super fun to use, I have no complaints.

As for GPS I wouldn't mind having it, but I can do what I need with the "current location" tech. I never print out any directions ever. I'd rather not have a seperate GPS anyway.

PC is probably the best version of the game in general. I am partial to the 360 version myself (though I normally don't like first person shooters on the console).

I am lucky enough to live in the bay area and be able to crash the dinner get-together. I'm wasn't lucky enough to get into Basecamp though

Showing the guys my stuff was a bit more intense then I expected, heh. It was like I was at a high pressure job interview with Mike Lucy throwing out "You got the job!" or "You lost the job!" every now and then. I believe my job approval rating tipped over the 50% mark somehow. Todd is too kind with his assertion of any genius regarding my efforts. I find more genius here than in my own personal efforts. I do this for fun, I don't get paid to use SketchUp (yet). Just glad to feel welcomed at the dinner. Lot's of brain power there and it was really fun to join in however small.

Any news on a Thursday dinner? I might like to join that as well, I didn't get to meet everyone.

Very observant, Igor. The Dark Trooper was first conceived of for the game Dark Forces released by LucasArts. I was the creator and writer for the concept as well as the art director for that game. That was some time ago

The information on the wiki is pretty accurate. When you say that they weren't trusted with larger weapons, I'd say that isn't correct. In fact they had pretty large and powerful weapons - too large for a human to hold with just one hand. The Phase III weapon could be held by putting the rather large magazine on a human's shoulder and operated with two hands - yet in the D Trooper could hold it in one. In short those guys are huge!

But you know what would be cool? Showing your models in 3D on your phone. I have renders on my phone to show people what I do, but if you could navigate your model/scene on the phone that would be pretty interesting to have.

I'm a huge portal fan. The companion cube and cake is probably the best story/game device ever created, but I'd settle for a plushy or a shirt instead of a tattoo.

http://store.valvesoftware.com/

That's a shame. I really love your work.

I wish I could help you technically. But for me I only export/import within Maya and I've had varying results with that. Plus, I don't texture at all, so I'm lacking in that knowledge to say the least.

If you have illustrator of some other similar program that can load the EPS or AI file, use that to export it to either .DWG or .DXF. You can then import that drawing into Sketchup. I believe there are different ways to treat the drawing/export in Illustrator that should help with the results.

Here's a quick example:

SU on the left Illustrator on the right.

Jim - I hear ya on that one. I can never look at my old art (or new for that matter). The feeling and joy of finishing a drawing/project and loving it. Seconds later, I'd look at it and feel ashamed at the mess I created. Oh well.

Here's an old concept I did way back when:

My blog post that went with that drawing:
http://www.giantmonster.tv/giant/?p=319

I don't think it's perfect, but I always loved the attitude in the gesture. Amazingly poor shaping in the helmet though. Ugh.

Oh, and I should add, that everyone that I know that works there, or has worked there are the nicest and most humble people I know. Hands down. It makes me proud to know them.

In contrast to that, I know plenty of people at other similar places (CG shops) and I can't say they same for them (on average).

That position you listed is for an Art Director, and that's a key position. Most work for a long time to get there.

Pixar hires many different types of people with many different skills. In fact I'm teensy bit frustrated with them since they just hired away my concept artist, and now I have to look for a new one. I know plenty of people over there and they are quite talented, and here's what they all have in common; talented, SKILLED, and knowledgeable and passionate in their expertise. Plus, they worked, and worked and worked at their profession of choice.

To paraphrase Ted Elliot (or his writing partner Terry Rossio), "If you work at something long enough you become an expert." Those guys wrote the first Shrek and the Pirates of the Caribbean films.

So do your thing, be good at it, and if you want to get into Pixar understand what they want, find how to become that, and work to be that thing. Looking at their job site is a great start.

If you decide to go that way, go get 'em!

I pretty much look like my avatar.

But here's a photo to confirm.

Those who know me know that I like to hide behind cameras. Sorry if this looks really egotistic and dramatic. My friend got a little carried away with my still camera. I sorta like the pic anyway

Real drawings? What does that mean? I hardly draw "in real life" or in Internet parlance, irl. But I'll bring my beat up sketchbook, that will show off my crummy sketches. I do make up for that by pasting SU printouts in it.

I'm not attending 3DBC, but I'll drive down from my work place in San Rafael to join to festivities. I'll probably meet you at Chilli's since it'll be a bit a of drive already.

Thanks guys!

After I've stepped away from the video I thought I'd write up a mini postmortem. I'm considering building this project as a still animated film in addition to a book so this is a sanity check for me and how I should approach the process going forward. Some of this you've heard or experienced before, and some won't mean a thing to you. Maybe it might make sense.

Here goes:

• Naming Conventions - My simple system worked well at first, but it started to collapse under the weight of revisions and additions. My text document that kept track of all the shots became complicated. I'll need even more detail. The document is going to get complicated and time consuming - but necessary. 30 shots and 15 files for the video, and I think I need add more in the sequence.
• Shadow Render Bug - A known issue on this board for sure. This wasn't a terrible problem with stills, but it became a huge deal during camera moves. I spent plenty of my time dealing with rerouting cameras, realigning the sun to avoid the bug. Ultimately, some shots where severely compromised because of it (the last 2 shots for example). This makes doing Fuel & Fire as a mini film unbearable, and near impossible. Hopefully there will be a fix in SU7.
• Clipping on Large Models - I was forced to break up a lot of large area models, into smaller files just so I could get a camera closer to a subject. Messy way of doing things. I had both shadow and clipping problems in the crash sequence, and in the final render (after many many renders) still has problems.
• Posing - Posing the cars with the my rigging hack worked very well. I only wish I could do it with soft body meshes. Going from SU>Maya>SU was a bit of a chore. It was easy to pose in Maya, but took way too long to import the models back into SU. It took up to 1 minute to import a .dxf into SU, and sometimes 3 minutes to render a selection inside the imported .dxf to delete the extra blend shapes that do not belong in the scene. I've got to figure out how to cleanly export a Maya dxf without the blend shapes.
• Better Motion Graphics App - Premiere isn't going to hack it. I might have to make the move over to Final Cut and Motion to accomplish this.
• Anamorphic 2:35 - Being a cinematographer, I love this aspect ratio, and it was a joy to frame for this instead of trying to compose a page. My mind just works that way.
• Dutch Cameras - I wish there was a better way to do this, and maintain the tilt. In general I wish there was a better way to control the cameras. I'm sure there's some plugin script out there that would help. I'll have to check on it.

Okay, that's it for now.

I finished up an animatic of the car crash scene. It's pretty ugly on youtube so I'm working on some streaming solutions on my web site.

Awesome renders! I love the NPR one!

Anssi
You nailed it on the proverbial head! That's exactly what I wanted with that image. This is something that I'm aiming for in this project - it's almost like taking candid snapshots of an ongoing scene. I don't want it to end up looking posed, perfect or static. It's a hard thing to do, but I'm getting better at it. In the beginning I felt compelled to show off every detail in each render - I wanted to show all the work I put into it! But now as all the images start collecting into a story, imperfections and cutting out the details add to the life of the entire piece. In the end, you will see most everything that was designed and modeled, but not all at once.

Sort of like the film "Cloverfield".

Back to work! (writing this between imports and renders)