To promote the collaboration between Wreckamovie, Renderfarm.fi and Blender, it would be great to have a little teaser for Vampyre Princess 3D, which will be the first feature film to make use of this powerful joining.
Blender artist Hannu Hoffrén and Julius Tuomisto from Renderfarm came up with a nice idea that I have carried a little further.
Imagine this scenario: We follow a swarm of bats through several mountain-like scenarios, at night of course. With each shot, we get closer to a castle, that we finally enter, still seeing the bats fly through rooms and hallways. Finally, they all stream into a dark opening, and the camera follows through to a splendorous, dark bedroom... where the swarm of bats gather into a giant lump on the floor... after a flash of lightning, the bats are gone, and a kneeling dark figure remains... Who suddenly opens her eyes, revealing she is crying blood 8D
And how do we go about it? Well as it happens, Julius has already scored some music for this video, that is supposed to be 1 minute in lenght. He will post it here for your examination and discussion.
Then the graphics artists among you are called for - everyone can make their own shot of the sequence, leaving out the bats for now. Once we have 5-10 shots, we put them in sequence, colour grade them to match each other and put the bats in. Probably the shots will still look very differently - but this is a good thing in this case, as it emphasises on the collaborative nature of the project!
So start up your Photoshop, Blender or After Effects and wreck away :D
Of course it's also possible just to submit still artwork, that can be animated by other wreckers. Just make sure the rights are available!
Here's my shot for the teaser music. I made this after our get together at Assembly 2010, feeling very much inspired by the whole idea of collaborative movie making and the vampire theme (thus the title and lyrics).
It's currently just this one minute bit, but I'm going to finish it into a full song later on. It's basically the intro + chorus for the song. I'm sure the verse will appear as I work on it further. Anyway I know most probably prefer the no-vocals version, but I decided to include both here just for reference. Any comments on the tune, the theme and the mix are very much appreciated. Cheers.
I am no real musician, but I thought I'd drop in my two cents as well. I really love the atmosphere created in the beginning, makes me think of a cathedral and the kind of ambient one comes to expect when thinking of vampires...
And I love it even more when the unexpected happens, the tone change into a more modern sound.
What does not quite convince me (aside from the vocals... I am talking about the non-vocals version here since the singing somehow seems to spoil the mood IMHO) is just how "abruptly" the change takes place around second 20. I like that it does change - but I suppose I'd like the passage to be a bit smoother somehow.
Concerning the ending, I cannot help wondering if, again, things could be a bit less abrupt. And, personally, I'd like to somehow get back a little feel of the introduction chorus.
But then again... it's really a matter of taste, isn't it? So just feel free to disregard anything I said. 8)
@Sami: It's cool that you like the vocal version, wasn't expecting that really. :)
You're probably referring to the guitar sample that comes into play at 39secs? The 20-39 sec guitars are doubletracked real (though they are direct injected into Logic).
@Hannu: The guitars that are playing in the 20-39secs actually go completely away from the mix in order to achieve the sort of rhytmic sound that the last bit has.
Anyway I'll see if I could achieve the rhytmic sound of the last bit with a real guitar instead of the sample and give you a version where the clipped synth sound (reminiscent of some techno songs) is a bit more down on the mix.
I actually like the vocal version better. The song is in constant motion and changing. That is good.
What I don't like is the guitar-synth sound. But that might be just me: being a guitarist it just hits my ear.
The other problem is that when listening the song, I don't see bats and vampires: I see dead people. Zombies getting wasted, mariners getting eaten by the hounds of hell.
This might change with the change of the guitar sample.
The song is a nice and differs from the basic trailer songs. Which is also good.
I like the details what has been added since the version 100810, but I think the very crunchy & clipped synth pushes too much over the guitars. I liked the ending better when you could hear the guitars slide and/or bend up.
Hey guys! Terrific peace of music. Especially the last third. I would love to hear the last third first and the first as second. That I'm only saying because I really like this, of course.
1. Wouldn't a big pale moon fit the sky nicely in this mountain flight? Hannu mentioned moonlight already in the previous comment.
2. The break in the music could be used to introduce the entrance to the cave. Perhaps slowing down and then accelerating instantly when entering the cave.
3. The bats could come into the picture as Hannu proposed, when the camera enters the cave. The camera could follow the bats through the cave. The cave could have either lanterns or torches on its walls and the fly through could be made in synch with the rhytm of the music?
4. Some new element could be introduced with the song again developing in the background (whether or not with the singing/lyrics). I was thinking some "strobing" stuff could be used to produce some excitement?
Ah yes. A cave. The idea really seems to be stuck in my head as like Kalle said, the presentation's scene had cave in it, and also, the first emails about trailer had an idea of cave full of bats in them.
I've actually been thinking about how to animate the bats flying close to camera and that is probably the main reason what makes me think about caves. :)
I was thinking, would it work if the beginning of the trailer is flying over the mountains without any bats and they start flying only after entering the cave? The transition to a closer view to the mountains & castle would be easy to create with bright moonlight shining from outside into the cave, thus blinding the camera for a moment.
Yeah CAVE, don't you know Carl; we worked your first photos into that big presentation Hannu&me gave at Assembly2010 :D
I think that got Hannu so excited that he even worked the cave into the trailer concept... even though it wasn't in my original briefing... but hey, I guess that's why they call it "collaborative film-making", right ;D
Looks like the clouds haven't been rendered for two and a half frames around 2 secs and again for half a frame at around 9 seconds...
Anyways, nice maiden flight for Renderfarm :D
I know this was only a test but I might as well say: For the next renders, I think the movement speed should be much slower... maybe a third or fourth of what is in that test. More like a hang-glider motion, not a supersonic jet ;D
Yeah, there are couple of errors there (like stars floating next to clouds!!!) but nothing that can't be easily fixed with couple of replacement frames & adding stuff in post. By the way that black & disappearing clouds can be fixed with adjusting camera's view distance settings, if someone's having similar issues with their scenes. I always forget to adjust that when animating camera close to a volumetric mesh's surface.
But, thanks for the comment & big thanks for the integration!! I feel this has brought renderfarm.fi into totally another level of usefulness & user-friendliness, and so has happened with WaM too!
Doesn't seem to work... My Mac says I have a "JAR launcher" but still nothing happens if I click on the .jar file. I want my own personal SysAdmin for chrissakes ;P
As I just commented on Renderfarm.fi (http://www.renderfarm.fi/animations/559 - we need a link to the Renderfarm.fi node here too, we're the WAM link on our end tomorrow hopefully), this is basically the first ever shot placed on Wreckamovie.com that uses the new integration between the two services.
I think this collaboration will bring a lot good for both services in the future. Anyway more about this officially tomorrow.
Also, I didn't have in mind that we're rendering two awesome and high demanding sessions. This also decreases the time of retrieval, since the clients got fed with workunits on those two previously.
We anyway aim to decrease the time of rendering, and maybe we would be interested to dispatch the workunits to the machines of the team in priority.
Right, it's picking up speed now. Judging from the present state, the rest would only take 150 hrs not 396... if this curve goes on til 99.4% it should be much less than that in the end =)
Just my thoughts about the progress of a session, so you won't be disappointed nor surprised.
The general curve of progress for a session is more or less like this (especially for heavy sessions):
-start pretty slow, the workunit are distributed on the hosts depending of the demand.
- rendering a frame (or a part) takes a while, there's a timeframe of 2-3 hours before the first results return (except for i7 processors :p). At this point, it can be that many hosts return their results at the same time. A machine with multi-core would return 2-4-6 parts more or less at the same time. All those results help the session to reach a high percentage of progress rapidly.
-Then comes the last parts. The server would creates new workunits for the last part that are taking too much time to return (slow machines). At this point we can reach 99.40% for over a day. But this isn't so important as all the other images are already ready for download (except maybe few of them, like 1 or 2).
In our case, it means that we would have the animation when the encoding of the images start, meaning all the parts have been computed and returned.
Hehee.. it shouldn't be very heavy scene. There seem to be two other tasks running too, which up the rendering time. Wouldn't mind if more people install BOINC on their system though. *wink*
Oh right, it says ELAPSED not ESTIMATED ;P And that's why the number keeps growing ^_^
Okay so if it keeps steady at that rate, it will take 396 more hours... lets hope lotsa guys fire up their computers soon ;D
Eek.. maybe I should've tried to do something more spectacular than "just a start". :D Ah well, I'm too exited about this integration to worry about the quality of this particular render.
Well after watching Hannu's mountain flythrough, I got inspired and reworked the teaser. Personally I'm so pleased with it that I think I'd like to call it the final version (well, still need to make it into a full song - but that's later;).
The thing is that the lyrics / singing have become such an integral part of the mix here that I can't imagine to separate the two versions anymore.
It's definitely much clearer - also I think the timing of the choir seems to match the guitars better now... or am I imagining this?
About the lyrics on the other hand, I'm not so sure - I think they don't work for the teaser as they are too distracting... unless maybe you get an opera singer to perform them in russian :D
Ok so here's an altered version from the previous post. Again included with and without vocals.
Edits are only after 39 secs: I took out the guitar sample that was bugging Sami, lowered the volume on the distortion synth that Hannu was making a point about and played new guitars to the song.
I hope it's going to the right direction? Certainly a bit more organic now I think.
Hannu and myself agreed that it was quite a busy mix also. I think that's my progressive rock roots right there ladies and gentlemen.
As I finished working on my Eurovision song contest entry yesterday (Finland is having an open entry policy this year again;) I'll try to make a cleaner mix of this and post it up here again.
Well the guitars are definitely more organic now, but my problem that they are cutting too much into the frequency range of the choir has worsened... For I see it the same way as Sami, for the "story" of the teaser, it would be better to have somethin aetheral than too grounded stuff. That's why I'd imagine the choir always being the lead element of the track, and the guitars merely adding rhythm and drive...
Anyway, maybe we'll have to see it along with the first acual images ;P
Really didn't want to hijack the music for the teaser because I know there are probably plenty of other people like Pasi who are interested in scoring for such things.
Anyway I'll post my proposal (a couple of different mixes) this evening. I'm fine if somebody comes up with something better too. :)
Yes, the whole idea kinda started from Julius' composition, but be sure to listen it when it comes around so you can do all the nitpicking you like. ;)
Awesome video... the cardboard scenery sure put a smile on my face. And made perfect sense when thinking of how Snowblind looks like, crossing the boundaries in between comic strips and movies. Whee! \o/
Hehhe great stuff! Somebody should make a film like that today, looks almost like a lucasarts point&click game ^_^
No what I had in mind was not really a transistion... The bats are supposed to fly into the room and maybe flutter around a bit in one lump for a brief moment, then a bolt of lightning illuminates the rum for a flash frame, and suddenly the bats are gone and the girl is there.
So it doesn't necessarily mean the bats have transformed into the girl, maybe she was already there and we just didn't see her... Or the bats were just a feverish imagination... Or maybe, a thousand years have passed in that strike of lightning, and in that castle that once housed bats, there is a Princess now... or the other way around ; )
Anyway, my meaning is that it's supposed to be kind of a metaphorical thing and not a morphing effect ^_^
I think we will do that last shot ourselves with an actress and green screen, to give a little bit of an idea what the final film is gonna be like...
How about making some rule of thumbs for the shots so they will be more easy to join together.
For example animate the camera in the scene so that it comes into the scene and finally goes out in a way that it fades nicely with full black frame?
Also maybe the length could be limited from 5secs to 15secs? Longer ones can of course be squashed in time in edit, but short ones are harder to stretch while trying to keep the image quality.
I think they shouldn't contain any fades, so the form of transition can be decided on later. For example, they could also vanish in fog or something like that ;P
But a minimum length is a good idea, I'd say lets make that 5 seconds, or 125 frames.
Since the teaser is supposed to be rather mellow, I think it would be best to have linear camera movement in all the shots, a bit of panning should be okay as well ^_^
Also, keep in mind not to make them too dark, so we can do more in colour correction later. In other words, make them a little brighter than they're supposed to be, when you render them =)
Any 3d software users are warmly welcomed for this task of course, but as a reminder, if there's any eager Blender-heads there, this is a good change to try out renderfarm.fi as flythroughs don't necessarily need much of animating, but they tend to need lots of rendering power.
Good idea. I wonder if Julius is registered there? Might be the best person for this one as he could tell little bit about renderfarm.fi too.. if he haven't done that already.
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Indeed, disregard anything I said. I realize I have been lagging tremendously. I'll be looking for the latest version. ^^"
I am no real musician, but I thought I'd drop in my two cents as well. I really love the atmosphere created in the beginning, makes me think of a cathedral and the kind of ambient one comes to expect when thinking of vampires...
And I love it even more when the unexpected happens, the tone change into a more modern sound.
What does not quite convince me (aside from the vocals... I am talking about the non-vocals version here since the singing somehow seems to spoil the mood IMHO) is just how "abruptly" the change takes place around second 20. I like that it does change - but I suppose I'd like the passage to be a bit smoother somehow.
Concerning the ending, I cannot help wondering if, again, things could be a bit less abrupt. And, personally, I'd like to somehow get back a little feel of the introduction chorus.
But then again... it's really a matter of taste, isn't it? So just feel free to disregard anything I said. 8)
Thanks for the comments guys.
@Sami: It's cool that you like the vocal version, wasn't expecting that really. :)
You're probably referring to the guitar sample that comes into play at 39secs? The 20-39 sec guitars are doubletracked real (though they are direct injected into Logic).
@Hannu: The guitars that are playing in the 20-39secs actually go completely away from the mix in order to achieve the sort of rhytmic sound that the last bit has.
Anyway I'll see if I could achieve the rhytmic sound of the last bit with a real guitar instead of the sample and give you a version where the clipped synth sound (reminiscent of some techno songs) is a bit more down on the mix.
I actually like the vocal version better. The song is in constant motion and changing. That is good.
What I don't like is the guitar-synth sound. But that might be just me: being a guitarist it just hits my ear.
The other problem is that when listening the song, I don't see bats and vampires: I see dead people. Zombies getting wasted, mariners getting eaten by the hounds of hell.
This might change with the change of the guitar sample.
The song is a nice and differs from the basic trailer songs. Which is also good.
I like the details what has been added since the version 100810, but I think the very crunchy & clipped synth pushes too much over the guitars. I liked the ending better when you could hear the guitars slide and/or bend up.
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