I've just completed the second version of my animated short for the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Automobile Museum.
This new edition of the gallery exhibition is essentially what I wanted to do all along. I was working on a very tight deadline last time (getting ready for the gallery opening) and wasn't able to get the piece where I wanted it, basically due to crippling rendering times, but for other reasons too.
My grandfather was some kind of genius, and it's an honor to do this kind of tribute to him, but I'm also exhilarated by the work in its own right. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I love, love, love CGI!
New animation here.
25 comments:
Darn it, I can't look at this at work but I'm looking forward to seeing it later.
Is it a quicktime problem or a "blocked server" problem? I'm about to put up a Flash version so the museum people can see it.
Ditto. Something to look forward to.
Mine's the blocked server problem. I don't mind, I can wait a few hours.
Cool. The museum guys are awesome but they can't compute their way out of a paper bag: browser plug-ins are a foreign language to them so I have to encode all video as Flash if I want them to see it. That's what I'm doing right now.
It's a blocked server problem for me as well, which is why I can't watch YouTube stuff at work. Are you going to add music to it?
I'm not sure about that. I didn't do any sound the first time, because I was having enough trouble meeting the crazy deadline without the headache of a soundtrack.
For the new version, I was considering it, but, don't you think find that audio/video displays in museum galleries can be kind of annoying? You're standing somewhere and you hear this muffled voice and cheesy music coming from around the corner, repeating over and over. Or, it's button-activated, and some kid dashes through and hits the button and then loses interest immediately and goes and hits another one and there's the voice of some woman laboriously explaining the digestive system, playing to an empty room. You know what I mean?
Let me know what you think when you've watched it: if it's "text-heavy" or whatever.
Jordan, it's awesome!!
I think some very quiet, simple music might add something. No narration though - I think the text works best.
Beautifully done!!
Thanks, dcd.
You may be right about the music. The cliché for class car displays is always ragtime or "flapper" music; but I think subdued classical piano might be better.
Is it just me or does that picture of young Jordan just make you like him even more?
it's gorgeous work, jordan. bravo.
Thanks, Marc! Glad you like it. (You have discerning tastes.)
(The rest of you also have discerning tastes, but Marc has, you know, discerning tastes.)
Ok I watched it this morning and it was jaw-dropping. It's unbelievable what you are capable of Jordan. I'm one of those guys that has zero interest in cars but you really managed to convey the beauty and elegance of the design.
As for the music, I'm thinking either Love Gun or Lick it Up by the hottest band in the land - KISS.
great work jordan.
though i am reluctant to disagree with any music-related opinion expressed by johnny sweatpants, i vote subdued instrumental jazz as a musical backdrop.
Brilliant! I'm going with "Love Gun."
I've already talked to the museum about putting in some Marshall amps.
Watched this finally. It's great. Very impressive!
Thanks, Julie!
The Flash playback is a little bit sluggish; it stutters and drags a bit. The DVD version is smooth as silk, however, and that's the one that counts.
Jordan, this is just fantastic! How do you do things like create glare on the windshield? Never mind, I'll never understand your explanation. You literally created a documentary on your computer. I kept waiting for a voice over. I can imagine using Tangerine Dream music (Le Parc comes to mind). Just awesome, dude.
jpx, you do yourself a disservice! Of course you'll understand the explanation.
All CGI works by reproducing the behavior of light. But light doesn't behave just one way; it does a lot of things at once; it's gloriously fluid and dynamic, like fire or water. Light has many attributes, and, the more complex the attribute, the harder it is for a computer to accurately reproduce. But, in the end, computers can ACCURATELY reproduce all of it; that's why CGI can look so real and fool the human eye so utterly. Painters can be very good, understanding light's behavior with their own brains, but no painter who ever lived can actually do all the calculation necessary to match real light's behavior.
Early CGI (like, for example, TRON or the "Genesis Planet" sequence in Wrath of Khan can't do much by today's standards. (They have to emphasize in the actual story that what you're seeing isn't meant to be "real.") If you freeze-frame the Genesis sequence: you'll notice that the objects (mountains, clouds etc.) have substance and cast shadows, but everything's unnaturally sharp; the shadows don't really behave like real shadows (more like video-game shadows); there's no distance haze and no motion blur.
In the late 'eighties and early 'nineties, "raytracing" was invented. This meant that the computer was actually attempting to follow the behavior of light as it bounced and merged and was distorted. Examples include The Abyss and Terminator 2. But, again, it's supposed to be kind of unreal. The water tentacle and the T-1000 reflect their surroundings (raytracing in action) but they're made of water (basically moving glass) or chrome; very simple, smooth materials that reflect light in very predictable ways).
As computers got more powerful, CGI learned how to handle more complex materials (cloth, fur, hair, fog, smoke, fire) and dynamics (crushing; bouncing; tearing; collisions; blur) and introduced "scanline" and "radiosity" rendering. When I first started trying to learn about this stuff, every book warned that "radiosity" was impossible except for the most powerful computers. For example, ten years ago, in Fight Club, there are many radiosity shots, including one in particular that involves the camera tracking into a waste paper basket full of corporate wrappers. In the commentary, FIncher talks about the difficulty of filming it and how they decided to do "a full radiosity render" but that it was risky, because they only had seven weeks before they had to deliver the movie to Fox, and it would take exactly that long to render the shot! If they got it wrong, they were screwed. (They got it right.) ILM has a limit: everything they do can't take more than four hours a frame (a FRAME) to render.
I'm not making a movie; just aiming for DVD-size resolution, so it's easier for me. (Plus, by ILM standards these are baby shots). However, I DID NOT use radiosity for the "steel component" or the "moving bridge" portions of the movie. (It wasn't really necessary, because those shots are lit by spotlights; the steel doesn't reflect that realistically, but you can't really tell. I did some tests.) However, everything in the fake "courtyard" with the overcast "sky" is full radiosity rendering. So all the light is followed everywhere; the chrome hubcaps reflect the walls; the sky reflection provides glare on the windshield chrome; the shadows pool delicately under the car. There's no single point light source; just a big square patch of bright sky; illumination from an infinite (essentially) number of points. PLUS, there's motion blur, which really sells the shot. So, six or seven minutes a frame. But it's worth it!
Here's my very first blur shot, from when I first learned how to do it, with a comparison "no blur" version so you can see the difference. The blurred version took all day and all night to render (vs. a couple hours for the nonblur). (Since then I've learned some new techniques to get the blur times down.)
I just now got enough time to finally watch this all the way through (work + baby = well, you know). It is fan-freakin'-tastic.
Loved the transition from 3D to the blueprints, and the arrows following the three axes to the various views of the car.
You added so much to V2! I was just expecting a CG Dewback or two to go loping through the gallery.
Classical piano sounds like a good soundtrack choice, although I was hearing some Vivaldi in my mind's ear as I watched it. However, that's a little predictable.
Thanks, man. Yeah, the secret ingredient is time.
In Psycho, Marion Crane tells the used car salesman, "I want to trade in my car, and I'm in a hurry." He morosely shakes his head and tells her, "That's the one thing you should never be, while buying a car, and that's in a hurry."
I was remembering that line at the end of May, thinking, "The one thing you should never be while doing CGI, and that's in a hurry." (See my story above about Fight Club,)
When Spielberg and Cruise suddenly decided in August 2004 that 1) They were going to make War of the Worlds and 2) They were going to make it right then, for summer 2005, ILM did not take the news well. (But it's Spielberg; that's like Nelson Riddle's orchestra finding out that Sinatra wants them for a record.) Dennis Muren, the multiple Academy-Award-winner who was sfx supervisor on the movie, persuaded Spielberg to shoot all the special effects sequences first, before (I think) even finishing casting. Just to give them rendering time.
Doing V1, I had so little time to render everything that I was working on three computers at once, with my main machine always rendering. I didn't even have music to listen to because I didn't want iTunes running and slowing down the machine. I rendered every other frame of the first "explode" shot because it was the only way to get it done. (I was frantically finishing the "Styling Bridge" model on a different computer at the same time.)
So, yeah, V2 is all about time to get everything looking the way I want it. I can't even look at V1; it just looks like crap to me. (I had the same problem at the museum.) They've got the new one now; it's going into the gallery on Monday; only two weeks after the opening.
Plus, I learned a couple of new tricks: 1) the new blur technique means everything's got motion blur, which makes an overwhelming difference; and 2) the matting tricks that let me do the transition you mentioned.
There's nothing like the feeling of learning a new CGI trick; it's like being a kid and hearing the bells of the ice cream truck. Your head fills up with a million dizzying ideas about what you can now do!
The wood grain on the "Styling Bridge" is from a close-up photograph I took of the side of my own desk.
Jordan, did you go to school for this?
No.
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