Christmas Card 2022

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Finis
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Re: Christmas Card 2019

Post by Finis »

I made the main room octagonal and added a dining room to the side. I'll add a closed door based on a bookshelf arch. If there is time there can be a fireplace. The textures could use some fine tuning but too much else to do. Next is furniture, toy train, and decorations.

The tree has 300 particle instances of a light emitting icosphere. Surprisingly, the lights only add about one second to render time. The other bay window can be the writing nook with some customized items. Little of the room is visible in the camera view with the defaults. I read that 28mm focal length is popular for movies. That expanded the view but there is much distortion. 35 or 40mm works and tighter views are fine for many shots since it is about the characters and objects rather than the room.
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house3.jpg
house2.jpg
house1.jpg
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Re: Christmas Card 2019

Post by Finis »

Collecting free models for furniture and set dressing. Still working on textures but they are ok. Made a fireplace plus free log and container models. Fire simulation takes a while to render so I might not have fire in the finished animation. Will have more dramatic lighting. Dark scenes were noisy and the denoiser made splotches. B2.81 to the rescue! The new Intel denoiser did great on the dark scene and reduced render time for light scenes by needing fewer samples. The stonework, columns, arches, need a different material.

What do you think would be good for the panel in the fireplace arch? I don't think the wood works there.

Instead of invisibility the bad guy will have teleportation. That way I don't have to animate him as much and Tevu can find him when he reappears. Then how will Tevu capture him? He has to clap or some similar gesture to do it. Tevu will prevent him from doing that.
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TreeDarkRoom60SamplesDenoise.jpg
Room60SamplesDenoise.jpg
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Re: Christmas Card 2019

Post by Draise »

I like the warm lighting of the table, very nice.
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Re: Christmas Card 2019

Post by Finis »

Thanks Draise.

This won't be done before Christmas. I'd rather deliver it by then but I'll try to finish by the end of January.

I've added several set dressing pieces and some furniture. Next are few lamps, some pictures on the walls, Christmas decorations, and presents. I need to arrange the furniture and items so that customized items aren't visible or aren't noticeable except when intended.

The free stuff is from BlendSwap and Free3D. Some of it is for Blender Internal or isn't finished or otherwise needs work. Some of it may be stolen, may not have been made by the person claiming to have made it, etc. BlendSwap sometimes has notes with a model stating a license that is different than shown on the web page for the item.

My method to use free stuff has been to create a new blend file with the free model where I modify it as needed. I put the model's parts in a collection. I make a text file noting the author, license, and where I got the model for attribution/credits. Then I use File->Append to copy the collection from those files into the working scene.
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Re: Christmas Card 2019

Post by Finis »

I've added more furniture and objects like dishes. The furniture and most of the objects are free stuff.
Things I modeled:
- The building itself.
- The tree (Blender sapling generator) and the ornaments
- The oil lamp on the table (from here)
- An antique pharmacy bottle (from here)
- Bottles from an old project.
- An open book (from here)

I lowered the ceiling and put a barrel vault over the door arch. I'll put a similar arch over the fireplace. Still working on the ceiling material. it should look like the pressed tin ceilings of olden days.
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Room-3.jpg
Room-2.jpg
Room-1.jpg
Last edited by Finis on 01 Jan 2020, 01:05, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Christmas Card 2020.2

Post by trueBlue »

Nice work!
I like the first one the most!
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Re: Christmas Card 2020.2

Post by Finis »

Thanks trueBlue! Thanks Spacekdet for ceiling suggestions.

Here is a render test with a fire simulation. I think a warm fire is good for Christmas pictures. I thought it might take too long to render with fire. One of these million polygon critters renders in about 48 seconds with Cycles. 50 seconds with this test fire.
WithFire.jpg
The new Intel AI denoiser is great. These images just have 50 samples in Cycles so it saves time and the dark scenes aren't blotchy. It blurred the sitting figure in this image. There aren't any controls for it but slight changes to number of samples or lighting might fix that.

I planned to overlay Eevee's glow on Cycles frames to create the glow of Tevu's lightsaber. Then I learned of a Blender compositor node for glare. Problem: the glare node works on bright lights. I want glare/glow for the Christmas tree lights and saber but not for other lights. Cryptomatte to the rescue. After much study of cryptomatte tutorials this compositor node tree applied the denoiser and isolated the Christmas tree light material for glare.
Nodes.jpg
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Re: Christmas Card 2020.2

Post by jamesmc »

Maybe you won't need lighting on background if the holiday lights are bright enough.

Backlit may work to provide subtle outlines of the surroundings.
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Re: Christmas Card 2020.2

Post by Finis »

@James The room will have brighter lighting for most of the movie. For dark scenes the Christmas tree lights could work as you suggest. Backlit. Hmm, that could work to make the bad guy look ominous.

Some details, Christmas decorations, and presents and I'll be done with the setting. Then the characters and animation.

I modeled lunimarias, a wall, a roof, and light fixtures and put a cylinder around the scene with a panoramic sunset photo I took at Three Rivers. The roof is a quickie and will probably barely be seen in the movie.

For artistic effect I wanted the light fixtures to be bright but still show a parchment texture on their glass. If they emit enough light for the room they are just white. These have a round area light under them for the real lighting and their own light for visual artistic effect. That is troublesome and not working well so I'll just go back to emissive material on them.

I already estimate the movie's total render time at over sixty hours if it is two minutes long. So there is a trade off between quality and speed. I think more samples plus the denoiser could be a suitable compromise. I'll also test denoising in HitFilm instead of B2.81.

These pictures were rendered with 200 samples in Cycles and no denoiser. The 1080x1920 pictures show enough speckles to notice and I'll bet that they would change or shimmer in animation. The Intel AI denoiser is magic for some dark scenes but it makes some scenes have a cartoonish look. I'd use Eevee if I wanted a cartoonish look.
OutsideLuminarias.jpg
LightFixtures.jpg
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Re: Christmas Card 2020.2

Post by Finis »

Here are video tests to check noise vs. denoise in motion. This is a worst case with the camera moving and turning. Most scenes will have a stationary camera and I think it will look better that way.

This also tests the 28mm focal length I read is popular with film directors. That gives a wide angle view but there is distortion near the edges. I didn't find it noticeable unless I looked for it. I'll probably use tighter 35mm to 50mm for most shots.

There is no denoiser in HitFilm Express or Davinci Resolve. The pro versions have it and there is a cheap plugin for HitFilm. Enough samples to reach acceptable noise levels are fine for still pictures but that render time is far beyond ok for animation frames. So my plan now is to use 720p instead of 1080p, 24 fps instead of 30, use the the Blender denoiser compositor node, and increase samples.

I mistakenly upscaled these tests from 720p to 1080p in video editing.

no denoise

https://vimeo.com/384365383/e6d8fd397a

with denoise

https://vimeo.com/384366535/32be24353a
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