Project Widow

[Ted Gocek]

Started an official "thread" here since the other on kind of took off
really well. This way we all know where the traffic is going and to
what. Besides Project Widow sounds way cool as a subject.

[daniel....@googlemail.com]

Nice one.

I've started a blog, i'll add the story/ idea, rough pre-viz and
moodboard. I'll also start a google document, which we will all have
access too, i'll put all the planning/ scheduling/ production notes
in. It may sound overkill for such a small project, but with out the
planning and focus it'll probably die off, it's happened quite alot of
times before. So planning will be a little OTT, but it should get us
to the goal :)

[Anthony Rosbottom]

Hi guys,
Someone in the other thread asked about my availability. I'd love to help but for the next few weeks I'm helping out with vfx on an independent film. Please keep me in the loop though as I might be able to help in the latter stages of this.

For the record I can model, create textures, shade and light.
My rigging and character animation aren't upto a pro. level at the moment though.

Cheers,
Anthony Rosbottom

www.bliz.co.uk

[animate1978]

Any and all help is appreciated.

I spent all day working on this - of course this is not final, nor is
it the final model according to Dan. However it is a start. So far
there are color, specular and displacement maps on it and believe me
they are not close to finish but the base idea is there.

http://picasaweb.google.com/animate1978/TG_ProjectWidow?authkey=Gv1sRgCKqP9vT19rGp0QE#5338484179061740306

Check it out... oh and rendered in Pixie, going to do an Aqsis test
next.

[animate1978]

I have started to work out some pipeline documentation, for all of us
to keep in mind because of the processes involved are quite well...
involved. I am uploading both a PDF and made a page on the Project
Widow wiki. Both are going to worked on as we progress, a lot of this
has not been battle tested like it is now so documenting this is
important. This way everyone involved can have a reference to this,
what to look for, what to avoid, naming conventions etc.... At this
time between Dan and I we have at least a start on a sort of CVS
system between our computers using DropBox (windows only of course)
and we are working out project directory workflow.

So here is both the PDF location for download as well as wiki link

http://projectwidow.wikidot.com/pipeline
http://groups.google.com/group/blendertorenderman/web/Project_Widow_Pipeline_Notes.pdf

Again this is a start, there is much to cover in terms of full
pipeline from a to z. Hopefully within the week things will run
smoother. Just to note my friend did authorize us for FTP use, however
because it is only FTP and not a CVS type server not sure if we should
use it for current project work or as storage for backup / final
resources? He also agreed to do sound design for us as well. So over
the weekend I will be doing some working on the actual storyboard /
animatic to get a better idea of this, get the time down to the last
second etc...

For now though I need to go, I am meeting up with some film buddies
who recently completed a short film (live action of course) and won't
be back until late tonite. Hopefully all this rambling made sense, if
not just say so ;)

Ted

[animate1978]

Oh yeah and I made an error - DropBox is in fact able to be used on
all OS. Sorry!

[daniel....@googlemail.com]

Hey all,

Just popping in to show off two images, it'd be good to have feedback
on the style of them, since this is what i was thinking for lighting/
style;

http://img34.imageshack.us/gal.php?g=projectwidowone.jpg

Of course, this is a group project so those images aren't anything
definate, just an idea.. I can't draw/ paint very well, so making them
in 3D seemed the best option :P

The items that you see in the image are the models from the prop
library folder, they still need alot of work, but i think with the
lighting conditions they don't have to be perfect.

I'm reading over the pipeline information now, thanks for posting that
ted :)

I think that dropbox should be ok for the minute, if we find that we
are running out of space i could try and rent a server with more
space, but still use dropbox as i think it offers the most user
friendly way to share and store our files.

Dan.

[Chris Foster]

Hey Dan,

On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 10:37 PM, daniel....@googlemail.com
<daniel....@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Just popping in to show off two images, it'd be good to have feedback
> on the style of them, since this is what i was thinking for lighting/
> style;
>
> http://img34.imageshack.us/gal.php?g=projectwidowone.jpg

I tried to look at this on my CRT screen at home, and couldn't see a
thing! Really all I could make out is the spider logo in the corner
(obviously), a blue line and the two spots of light :-( After that I
tried a laptop with an LCD screen and things where much better - in
fact I'm really liking the look of this.

So I guess one thing to be aware of is that the low-end intensity
response of CRTs and LCDs are completely different. Does anyone have
ideas on how to deal with this?

~Chris.

[T G]

I do have use of my friends FTP server and am coming up with ways to work around resources that are needed and what can be archived for later use (such as animation and rendering stages)... I will be emailing some of you the info considering it's a secure server and I can't risk having that info in public view.

Will be setting that up tonight so soon we will have more space.

As for the screen issue.... umm no, seems like it might just be your CRT is going bad? Though we will be working on the lighting to make sure everything is lit right, it does seem a tad too dark but nice mood lighting ;)

I am almost done with this spider texturing so soon I'll be hitting others.

[Chris Foster]

On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 10:37 AM, T G <anima...@gmail.com> wrote:

> As for the screen issue.... umm no, seems like it might just be your CRT is
> going bad? Though we will be working on the lighting to make sure everything
> is lit right, it does seem a tad too dark but nice mood lighting ;)

Hmm, ok. I've always found my screen to be darker than LCDs in the
low-intensity range. I tried changing the colour balance of the
monitor from whatever random setting it had to sRGB and that helped
significantly.

~Chris.

[Paul Gregory]

On May 22, 9:45 pm, animate1978 <animate1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> ... I am uploading both a PDF and made a page on the Project
> Widow wiki. Both are going to worked on as we progress...

I would encourage caution here, in my experience of managing teams,
both open source and commercial, having information in more than one
place is a recipe for disaster. I would recommend choosing a single
point of reference for all important project related data, and
sticking with it. For example, due to the collaborative nature of the
project layout documentation, the Wiki is the ideal place, similarly
for project assets, FTP (or preferably an asset management system) is
better. To avoid this information becoming out of sync it is
imperative that everyone is aware what the central location for it is,
and where appropriate, the process to take when updating it.

Particularly, when editing the project assets it will soon become
important to know that nobody else is editing it simultaneously. There
are a number of ways of doing this, all with their own pros and cons,
the important thing is to choose one and stick with it.


Paul

[tyrant monkey]

Sorry, if am posting this incorrectly I have never used a google
groups page before and this is a little new to me. My name is Fred I
use the nick of tyrant monkey on Blenderartists. When I read through
the thread on blenderartist where a user suggested the use of Aqsis on
Durian I noticed a post by Daniel that mentioned an animation project
that would use a render man complaint renderer. I offered my help in
doing some concept art of this project. I can draw and model organics
though I am a bit stronger with inorganic stuff at the moment. I am
willing to do some 2d concept art and inorganic modeling.

[T G]

Thanks Paul, it is noted and yeah I think you are right, even if it is copy and paste, having two copies is a waste of time not to mention with the wiki much much easier to work with others.

Your input is valuable here Paul, I really appreciate it :)

[daniel....@googlemail.com]

Hey fred, it's good to have you on board :)

I'll send you an email with all the details about resources, dropbox,
wiki page etc.

And agreed about the central source, i'll admit i was getting a little
confused with multiple sources.

I've created a page on the wiki called "Enviroment" it's what i'm
working on at the moment, which basically has a list of all the models
that i will be making, along with WIP images. I think it would be good
if we post a complete list of things that need doing i.e. spider,
shaders, rigs etc, have a seperate wiki page for each with version
numbers and WIP images (and files?) so that we all know who is doing
what and what stage each item is at.

Anyway just an idea, if anyone has a better way of sorting this out
let me know :)

I'll email you now fred.

Thanks.

Dan.

[Paul Gregory]

As a follow up to my recent organistation and process post, I've made
some changes to the wiki that should help.

I've enabled the forums. The thing that prompted this was the recent R
+D page. While I agree that an R+D page is a necessary thing, I feel
that Wiki pages should really be kept for relatively well defined
content, rather than massively fluid content such as the R+D
discussions. So I've started off the forums (this necessitated
removing the side panel, as they didn't interoperate well in the Bloo
theme, but I've duplicated most/all access from the menu, so it should
be ok).

I've just populated it with R&D and shaders for now, so suggestions
for a good forum structure would be welcome, answer to this post and
I'll set them up. Then we can move the discussion for the shaders etc.
to the forums, and keep the R&D page for storing the decisions and
processes regarding R&D, guidelines etc.


Paul

On May 24, 4:41 pm, "daniel.wray...@googlemail.com"

[animate1978]

Thanks Paul, that is a far better solution than using wiki, after all
things like shaders can be complex and may require more than just a
comment here and there. I do like that much much better, sorry if I
keep messing up the wiki site.

One thing I do want to ask is, I assume you are using your own
development build of Aqsis? Would this require us to also use the same
build? Or can we still keep using the latest "stable" version that is
on SourceForge? Either way it doesn't matter to me, as long as I don't
have to compile the source on this system (really is a ton of
libraries - plus I am not too experienced to compile code at that
level, I suppose I could try but at this time maybe not???) Anyways,
if one of the benefits of using current build versions means faster
renders, bug fixes and the like - it could be a better option?
Something to think about I suppose, I haven't really thought about it
until now.

[Chris Foster]

On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 4:06 AM, animate1978 <anima...@gmail.com> wrote:
> One thing I do want to ask is, I assume you are using your own
> development build of Aqsis? Would this require us to also use the same
> build? Or can we still keep using the latest "stable" version that is
> on SourceForge? Either way it doesn't matter to me, as long as I don't
> have to compile the source on this system (really is a ton of
> libraries - plus I am not too experienced to compile code at that
> level, I suppose I could try but at this time maybe not???) Anyways,
> if one of the benefits of using current build versions means faster
> renders, bug fixes and the like - it could be a better option?
> Something to think about I suppose, I haven't really thought about it
> until now.

I'd recommend that people should plan to using the development version
at some stage. For initial tests it's fine to use whatever version,
but if we're going to be fixing bugs which are encountered during the
course of the project then the development version is going to be
necessary. Also, I'd like to note that the latest version is *much*
faster for depth of field, so you'll probably want it in any case :-)

Daily development builds of aqsis are usually available to download
from our download server (http://download.aqsis.org/builds/testing/)
so that's probably the best way to keep up with the development
without compiling yourself. Unfortunately our windows build server
has been offline for about a month, but that's fixable.

Cheers,
~Chris.

[animate1978]

On that note I had gotten the latest Windows build from OSU, installed
and everything seemed to be going ok - until I tried to render SubD
geometry in Blender which promptly made Aqsis crash. Thought it was
just that model so I started a new scene, added a cube, applied SubD
to it and again, it crashed. However when checking out the content of
the install the SDS.rib rendered just fine, so it must be a problem
between Blender and Aqsis, though Mosaic doesn't seem to be the
culprit... I don't know :(... I will be going back build by build of
the 1.5.0 series until things work out. Hopefully your Windows builder
gets up soon.

Sucks because I was all excited. Not a huge deal for me though, just
means I'll be busy testing builds one by one. If worse comes to worse,
I'll revert back to 1.4.2 until a latest build for Windows has been
made available, then try again.

After posting I was thinking that yes maybe it would be much better
for all involved if at least 1 person was using a latest release, if
not more (aside from you developers of course). Dan might be up for it
but considering his talent here is the modeling aspect, keeping him on
1.4.2 might be a better option for the time being, until a stable
build is available? The system I am using right now may not be the
best for benchmarking but considering it is an older machine and does
handle Aqsis fairly well it shouldn't be a problem for me to keep
testing builds as this progresses. I am totally not opposed to that.

Till then!
Ted

[animate1978]

NEVERMIND! I had installed the wrong version, I had to double check
and I had installed a MUCH earlier version than I had just mentioned
(of the 1.5 builds) - I put the 4/26 build on and the crashes have not
happened, sorry guys for the mis information!

[Daniel Wray]

I've figured out why the Sub-D's were giving me errors, It seems to be with the way corners are controlled in blender with edge loops.

This may be something that comes with reyes style renderers, or it could be an issue with blender itself.

Either way, problem is solved, i just need to keep a certain distance between polygons on the corner vertex :)

2009/5/26 animate1978 <anima...@gmail.com>

--
My website:
http://daniel.wray.uk.googlepages.com/

[Chris Foster]

On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 10:22 AM, animate1978 <anima...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> NEVERMIND! I had installed the wrong version, I had to double check
> and I had installed a MUCH earlier version than I had just mentioned
> (of the 1.5 builds) - I put the 4/26 build on and the crashes have not
> happened, sorry guys for the mis information!

Good to hear that it's sorted. I've actually got some idea of what was
causing that crash, but IIRC it was fixed several months ago now.

On the subject of bugs, I saw your post on the project widow forum titled
"Pixel stretching bug?". Unfortunately I can't post comments over there yet,
but if you're using SDS for the rails, it's possibly due to a micropolygon
stretching bug which I fixed a few months ago. In that case, try the latest
aqsis-1.5 and let us know how that goes.

Cheers,
~Chris.

[Paul Gregory]

I've added a little more to the forums, mostly around R&D, as I
suspect that will be the main use of the forums. I've left it with an
R&D forum with sub-categories for the various areas that will require
some R&D, and a General category for other discussion.

If anyone feels that there will be other parts of the production that
will require the sort of discussion capability best offered by forums,
just shout and I'll update it. I was trying to be careful not to
overdo it, especially when other methods such as a wiki page might
suite the purpose better for other things, like model/environment/
shader lists etc.

Paul

[Daniel Wray]

Hey Paul,

Would you be able to link the Environment link in the drop down menu to the environment page please? :)

I think when editing it broke, but I'm not sure how to link the two, or even how to get to the environment page.

Thanks,

Dan,

2009/5/26 Paul Gregory <aqs...@gmail.com>

[Paul Gregory]

Done, the reason in case you're interested was that the environment
page is mispelled, "enviroment". I've just changed the links, so the
page name is still wrong, but I can't at the moment find an easy way
to rename a page.

Paul

On May 26, 12:54 pm, Daniel Wray <daniel.wray...@googlemail.com>
wrote:

[Daniel Wray]

Ah i see, sorry about that, i'll be more carefull in the future =/

I'll look into it, maybe i should just copy the content of the page and delete it, and then create a new page?

Dan.

2009/5/26 Paul Gregory <aqs...@gmail.com>

[Paul Gregory]

Aha, worked out how to rename, that is done too now.


Paul

[Cédric PAILLE]

Hi,

Just dropped a test rig of the spider in the the test_animation directory.

It's very WIP, there's a lot of work yet.

Cheers.

2009/5/26 Paul Gregory <aqs...@gmail.com>

--
Cedric PAILLE.

[Daniel Wray]

Hey cédric,

I've had a look at the rig and had a little play with it, it's shaping up really nice, i'm looking forward to seeing the final result :)

Will you put a main bone in the final rig, just so we can move the rig around in pose mode?

Thanks,

Dan.



One issue with the

2009/5/28 Cédric PAILLE <cedric...@gmail.com>

[Cédric PAILLE]

Hi Daniel,

I'll add a lot of things of course, as I said, it's a very WIP ;)

I have to deal with vertex weights too, I'm not very happy with it right now.

I've deleted UV maps, so I have to remake it. :(

Cheers

--
Cedric PAILLE.

[Daniel Wray]

Hey cédric :)

I see that the UV unwrap has been changed a little, what i would suggest you do, since ted has finished the UV maps and adjsuting them would be quite alot of work (No worries though, there is an easy solution :P ), i'd suggest that you either finish the rig (controllers, features etc) in the current file version and then append the rig across to the file "production files>spider>dynamic>model> Spider_dyn_0.4.blend", once in that folder you can wieght paint it to the completed spider model, and all of the UV data will be intact, this shouldn't be any problem as the two models are exactly the same, so the rigs will work the same on the models.

You can if you'd like move the rig across now before you do anymore work, it's entirely up to you :)

Thanks,

Dan.

Would it be possible to have control the rotation of each

2009/5/28 Cédric PAILLE <cedric...@gmail.com>

[tyrant monkey]

LOL, so that's what happened to the enviroment page, I was about to
start on some drawings when I checked the wiki page and boom there was
nothing. I thought I was going a little nuts cause I remember seeing
something. by the way I think I need an invite to the site or somthing
because at the moment I can't post anything at the wiki.

> My website:http://daniel.wray.uk.googlepages.com/- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Daniel Wray]

Hey fred,

I'll email paul, since i dont' seem to be able to invite people, well i can't figure it out anyway haha. So yea i'll get you an invite ASAP.

Are you on dropbox? If you are it'd be good if you could drop the images into planning and concept folder, if not just let me know and i'll send another invite :)

Thanks,

Dan,

2009/5/29 tyrant monkey <chit...@gmail.com>

[T G]

LOL I just figured out why - in between the conversations the Environment link was still looking for Enviroment, which used to be looking for Environment, anyways..... I couldn't figure out how to fix the top link bar, so I spent a bit digging and FINALLY found it :) so it is fixed now fully, I tested it - it works. Environment is online hehehe

As for adding people to the wiki - that is Paul's deal since I do not have admin rights to the wiki. I also have a wiki on the same host (related to the BlendertoRenderman.org site - linking it soon to the site) so I know that 1 - you need to register with wikidot first, then send Paul an email with a request to be added. He may or may not depending on the need, or at the very least have a guideline of some structure to the wiki. On one hand we want to get as much info but we also want to keep it simple and not run around without a formal structure. I have been trying to keep things tidy, we will be adding much more for sure just have to find the flow.

I had done a LOT of work for blendertorenderman wiki, since early March, it is still not finished and there are loose ends so keeping a good solid flow in wiki is generally a good idea so at least with the Project Widow wiki I learned from that. Rambling on here sorry.

[T G]

Good news!

Recently I have been involved with discussions with the team developing Animux, an animation Linux distro. Not only are they trying to implement the very tools we are using but they also have advising and development from the heavyweights of Blender, including Ton, Bassam Kurdali, Daniel from Graphical.org and several talented programmers. They are very excited that I am talking with them, they have been following all of our progress, including Eric's work on Mosaic and Aqsis. They have been following our progress for some time now it seems. Mark also talks to Ton and while Ton is really encouraging Blender specific development, they have been stressing to him the importance of RenderMan compatibility. So if we combine our forces here there just might be that "key" - if Ton sees our test short and we do what we can to make sure we make it sparkle and shine then it only enforces our goals and our argument.

In an IRC chat the main leader of the project, Mark, has invited us to use their 12 node renderfarm to do final renders. So we have access to a full Aqsis renderfarm. If Eric would do some rendering as well on his farm, between the 2 nodes I secured here in Portland we would have a total of 20 nodes between 3 locations. I don't think we would have much to worry about rendering final frames anymore.

Not only are they interested in working with us testing out the BRAT pipeline (or BtoR pipeline), they are interested in future developments so that the BtoR goals are in line with their goals, which won't be hard to do since they have been using our model for theirs.

I already informed them that they would need to update to Aqsis 1.5.0 in order for us to use their farm, they are already working on it as I type this. So they are more than willing to be a test bed for all future work involving Aqsis and Mosaic.

I think our time is starting to come through.

[white...@dreamscapearts.com]

Very exciting news!

Even though there's been very little interaction I've always had the
sense that there are a lot of people intently watching this from a
distance.

Concerning my render farm, I built the farm 2 years ago setup strictly
for Pixie's network bucket rendering for the parallel rendering of
single images. This is a very simple setup to use (which is why I did
it) that has no server or multi-pass management system. Its a small 10
node farm running matched 2.0ghz AMD Athlons, 512megs ram and 4gig
drives. Since the memory and drives are so small it may be a challenge
to get anything to render even with small bucket sizes. My intentions
are to upgrade to 2gig ram, add a server using network booting
(removing the drives per node) and running DrQueue, then add image
tiling and pass management to MOSAIC to tie into DrQueue. These are
all however very "distant future" goals as I simply have no additional
time outside of MOSAIC's development for the foreseeable future.
Anyways I'll have to replace 3 hard drives, upgrade the OS's and
startup scripts and then load Aqsis before I can use the farm for
this. Then all processes will have to be managed manually which means
I'll have to be around during render sessions. What I'm getting at is
I'm willing to give it a go but not sure how much I'll be able to
render without huge problems and I don't have the time or money right
now to upgrade and setup a server :(

Eric

[Daniel Wray]

Hey eric,

I'd be more than willing to chip in with the upgrade costs, I'm not exactly sure how much i could stretch to at the moment, but i think it would be enough to cover a few gig's for the nodes and perhaps a motherboard for the server machine (perhaps even getting a cheap PC of Ebay would suffice for a server machine... I'd say even a p3 would be fine for a server machine).

I'm not sure how well this would work, but using team viewer as a remote management software, for example if ted wanted x number of frames rendered, he could connect to your server machine using team viewer, set up the render(s) using Dr Queue on the server machine, which then passes all of the jobs onto the nodes, and back to the server so the files can then be uploaded to an FTP server.

Times could be worked out for rendering, so for example say your electricity usage were cheaper at a certain time of day, you could tell ted, or one of the team members who needs to render frames, then they would know that at a certain time the machines would be on and running and that they could proceed with rendering the job, and also watching over it. It'd save you the hassle of having to watch over the renders.

Just an idea :)

Dan.

2009/6/4 <white...@dreamscapearts.com>

[T G]

No problem Eric :)

It's more important in this economy to make sure you are taken care of first above anything else. So if that means your renderfarm is not able to be tended to for this at least I won't be upset. We still have access to animux.org renderfarm and that alone is going to help us out in the end.

Ted

[Chris Foster]

On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 6:24 AM, <white...@dreamscapearts.com> wrote:
> Concerning my render farm, I built the farm 2 years ago setup strictly
> for Pixie's network bucket rendering for the parallel rendering of
> single images.

You might be interested to know that one of our summer of code
students (Daniel Walters) has chosen to work on network rendering for
aqsis this year. It wasn't something on our list of things to do, but
he came to us with the idea and we thought why not. If everything
goes well that means aqsis should have simple-to-use network-parallel
rendering in some form for the next development version (1.7). Mind
you, for rendering out an animation I doubt you can do much better
than trivially distributing the frames between render nodes, and that
requires render farm management software of some sort.

Our other summer of code students this year are working on ray tracing
(Raphael Campos) and optimisations (Trevor Lovett)... exciting times!

~Chris.

[white...@dreamscapearts.com]

Chris:
I've been keeping an eye on that actually. That was one of the big
features that attracted me to Pixie before I knew much about
RenderMan. The ironic part is bucket rendering ultimately won't handle
images on the scale that I intend, instead I'm leaning toward adding
multi pass tile rendering to MOSAIC. With that approach the support
passes and image tiles can be highly paralleled, however bucket
rendering is great for fast previews on the farm (mostly what I used
Pixie for on the farm). Anyway I'm very impressed with Aqsis's
progress in both speed and stability not mention piqsl is approaching
the usefulness of 3Delights idisplay! Kudos to all :-)

Dan:
Thats definitely very generous and I'm not opposed but be aware that
this farm is for my own studio and I have no intentions of opening it
up for public use, however I don't mind using it for projects like
this. If I already had it finished I would have offered its use
without a second thought but as it stands now I'll have to pull off
development on MOSAIC for at least a few weeks to get it up to shape.
Currently I already have a P4 3ghz system with 2 gig ram and 120gig
drive, I need to upgrade 10 machines to at least 1 gig ram and I need
to purchase "boot on lan" roms for the lan cards (or buy a rom burner
and do it myself). Also the power here goes down for a few seconds
every other day so I need at least 2 decent UPS's. Most of the work
will be just getting everything working properly such as customizing
Linux, pxeboot server, good management of boot images, descent startup
and utility scripts, and good render process management, ect. As far
as remote management that isn't really what I had in mind for it
(studio use not public farm), I'd have to look into it but I'm sure it
would be rather complex to get working properly. I'd prefer to run the
renders myself so I can work through any problems as they come up,
that way I could do what ever it took to render my portion without
someone else waiting on me for real time tech support.

Anyway if your really serious about this the best way would be to just
make a donation to MOSAIC and this is were the money would go ;-)
http://sourceforge.net/project/project_donations.php?group_id=206110

On Jun 4, 5:30 pm, Chris Foster <chris...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Chris Foster]

On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 2:07 PM, <white...@dreamscapearts.com> wrote:
> Anyway I'm very impressed with Aqsis's
> progress in both speed and stability not mention piqsl is approaching
> the usefulness of 3Delights idisplay! Kudos to all :-)

Glad you like what we've done with piqsl lately :-) Can I ask what
specifically you like about it, and what features you'd most like to
see? There's potential to add a thing or two before the 1.6 feature
freeze and I've been playing with it again in the past day because I'm
temporarily sick of solving the hard problems ;-)

Here's some features I've been thinking about:
- image intensity scaling (+ gamma correction?)
- viewing of shadow maps
- channel selection for AOVs (arbitrary channel -> rgb mapping?)

What do people think is useful? How should the interface look?

I think viewing shadow maps properly would be particularly nice...

~Chris.

[white...@dreamscapearts.com]

On Jun 6, 4:11 am, Chris Foster <chris...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Glad you like what we've done with piqsl lately :-)  Can I ask what
> specifically you like about it, and what features you'd most like to
> see?  There's potential to add a thing or two before the 1.6 feature
> freeze and I've been playing with it again in the past day because I'm
> temporarily sick of solving the hard problems ;-)

Well I really like having the book and image management pane next to
the image viewer, but the biggest improvement IMO is the ability to
cycle through the images with the arrow keys.
I think another good step in that direction would be to add a "playing
mode" like i-display has so animated sequences could be played back in
a loop. Maybe this could be done so either all images are played or
images could be loaded in multiple books and then play what ever book
is currently selected?

> Here's some features I've been thinking about:
>   - image intensity scaling (+ gamma correction?)
>   - viewing of shadow maps
>   - channel selection for AOVs (arbitrary channel -> rgb mapping?)

These all sound great to me, especially shadow map visualization!
Another thing that's come to mind is MOSAIC will soon allow rendering
to multiple image layers using multiple displays, so it would be cool
if each image could have a blending mode to the image before it in the
stack so multiple image layers could be viewed composited as one (at
least add, subtract, multiply and divide). Also maybe a filter to tell
piqsl don't load such and such images (maybe filtered by display type,
or channel or string?), that way a standard file display could be put
into piqsl for animation preview but the other composite frames would
be ignored or placed in separate books so they could be animated or
not separately?
Anyway most of the features I really like about i-display and airshow
are the animation playback and image zooming features which you guys
already have on a basic level now :-)

[animate1978]

Just a reminder in 2 hours a Project Widow meeting is being held in
IRC, on the Freenode net #projectwidow.

As for the above, I never got into Piqsl until very recently and once
I found out it's usefulness I can't imagine not having it!

I have to agree with Eric's suggestions for future improvements or
features. One thing I found on the web was a screenshot of Pixar's
display program (I think on the Pixar site itself), in which there is
an ability to split images between the two, for comparison. In that
example it was a beauty shot and what looked like Normals, split in
half. Quite a task to undertake I think but that is the only thing I
can think of that might be a nice feature.

Shadow map visualization is a must! lol

[animate1978]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6Xls65X8FI

Storyboard Video Run 01.

This is a first run of the storyboard vid... to see the timing. Feel
free to voice your opinion on how the flow goes, is there too much
going on? I can easily get rid of a couple of boards here or there.

The soundtrack has been carefully selected. Bonus points if you can
identify it ;). Cool thing is that it's under the Creative Commons.

Anyways by the end of the week this will be finalized, and sent to my
friend to begin sound design.

By the way this was done in Windows Movie Maker so the end credits are
just a place holder, so it looks weird, just ignore it.

[Cédric PAILLE]

yeah, cool I like it !

BTW, I've uploaded the rigged spider in the FTP at "Production files", UV maps are to rework, I had to split the mesh and mirror.

Cheers.

2009/6/10 animate1978 <anima...@gmail.com>

--
Cedric PAILLE.

[white...@dreamscapearts.com]

Very cool I like it too!

Couple questions and comments though...
I know Ghosts 2 is free for listening but is it OK for us to use as a
soundtrack without legal issues?
Also I'm not sure I like the pacing from the train hitting the web on
to the end. It seems there should be more drama after the earlier
buildup when Gladiola finally gets hit (maybe this could be done with
effects or a custom soundtrack merged onto Ghosts?). Then it seems
there should be a longer pause after Gladiola is belly up with maybe a
slow pull in to allow the audience to wonder if Gladiola has suffered
the same fate as the other spider. Then maybe something a little
different at the end to emphasize that shes not crawling away to hide
but determined to start again? Anyway I know the pacing is a direct
result of the sound track so I'm not sure if there's anything that
could be done even if we wanted to?

I was a little concerned about the realism of the spider and the
gritty environment that the audience would be repelled rather then
care (I was thinking it would be more Pixar cartoon like), but after
hearing the soundtrack I really like the idea now =)

On Jun 10, 10:41 am, Cédric PAILLE <cedricpai...@gmail.com> wrote:
> yeah, cool I like it !
>
> BTW, I've uploaded the rigged spider in the FTP at "Production files", UV
> maps are to rework, I had to split the mesh and mirror.
>
> Cheers.
>

> 2009/6/10 animate1978 <animate1...@gmail.com>

[animate1978]

Yes the Ghosts music is released in Creative Commons, so pretty much
we can use it for whatever as long as we do not claim ownership nor
make profit from this. Since this is not intended as a profit gaining
venture and I am more than willing to list NIN in credits (just cause
we can :P) this is fully legal to use. Not to mention that by having
this as a soundtrack would introduce us to a whole new set of fans,
possibly. At the very least I am pretty sure nobody has used NIN in
low budget CG art? I could be wrong. Either way the only way this
would have been legal was for Ghosts or The Slip. Earlier tracks would
NOT have been legal, I wanted to something off The Downward Spiral (A
Warm Place), however because of such legal issues it wasn't possible.
If I could not use this I would have just used an ambient track a
friend and I did about a year or so ago, so I made sure about the
legalities for this.

As for the storyboard, good to see some issues brought up. Pretty much
the pacing was done before the soundtrack, it just so happened to
match somehow (spooky actually). I agree with the ending, it seems too
fast. Like I said I can take out boards and redo the pacing. I can't
make it more than 2 minutes long though, not for any other reason than
our own project time - animating and rendering this is gonna be a pain
and 2 minutes is 120 seconds, break that down to 3600 frames. While
that is nothing compared to BBB and let alone any feature CG film, for
us that is quite a bit to handle, however if it's too short then
people won't understand. I have to get that fine medium.

I will continue to work on it and tonight will upload run 02.

(once again had sent only a copy to Eric....lol)

[animate1978]

Hey guys!

Just to let you all know I am returning to Portland on Monday so then
things can go back underway like before. I had spent all week doing
some home improvement stuff so really did not have time, or the
technical ability to work on the project, so I had done a LOT of
research that I sent to my email account, stuff that I will be weeding
through next week. At least one thing I had been involved with is the
setup of Dr. Queue, since that will be done on the Animux renderfarm.
I wanted to try to understand that more now since it seems to be quite
a bit of effort to run right, this way once things start rolling in
that stage it will be relatively easy to complete - in theory. I am
still waiting for them to upgrade the build from the old 0.60 version
to 0.64, so once that is done I will be doing some tests with Blender
- Aqsis - Dr Queue to see how a good workflow can be established
(getting exported RIB files to Animux file server for instance).

Again that is just that issue.

Next week I want to start building shots, at least so that by the end
of the week at least a simple animated shot can be tested. Just an
idea I guess.

Anyways till then have a good weekend!

Ted

[Cédric PAILLE]

Hi all,

I've just uploaded the spider rigged with all UV maps reconstructed (V0.6), there's still some little things to improve (IK switches, etc.), but it's not so bad!

Just tell me if you have other ideas.

2009/6/20 animate1978 <anima...@gmail.com>

--
Cedric PAILLE.