Render-times

While test rendering these scenes, it seemed an opportune moment to experiment with Arnold's render settings. Initial renders were running at 46 minutes/frame at 720p which was clearly unacceptable.

46 minutes - All lights, high settings

Through a combination of reducing the use of lighting and incremental changes to sampling and ray depth values, acceptable images could be produced in a little over 6 minutes.

13 minutes - Lights removed from cells

12 minutes - Sampling settings reduced, cell lights converted to simple points

11 minutes - Adaptive sampling employed

7 minutes - Specular ray depth reduced to zero

6 minutes - Fine adjustment of settings

While this process was worth exploring, the scene is still in development and render times are likely to increase. With this in mind, it may become necessary to bake light maps from static light sources to simplify the scene.

Fleshing out the environment - Textures

The task of detailing and texturing the environment seems quite onerous...

Deep breath... one step at a time

Initially this was an exercise in UV layout, sourcing and preparing textures and creating Arnold shaders (with believable material properties).

Other considerations would soon surface:

• The use of tileable/ seamless textures for large areas
• The application of wear and dirt to support the environment's story
• Organisation of multiple textures images in the UV space 
• The use of advanced material properties and production of supporting maps - Bump, normal, transmission, emission and specular.

In this working example render, a few problems can be seen.

• The brick texture does not align across UV boundaries (i.e. at the quoins)
• Although dirt has been applied to the floor texture, it appears uniform without signs of wear through footfall and age.
• The lampshades do not display the transmissive attributes applied. This would prove to be a problem converting materials between Arnold versions.

In this later iteration, the material transmission problem has been fixed by replacing the legacy shader.

That's a sound idea

Just dropping ice cubes into a glass. As each filled the glass a little more, each gave a lower tone, a falling chromatic (achromatic?) arpeggio of four notes.
Something about it sounded right for an intro. I'll have to dust off my field recorder and experiment.

'T' is for Titanic...?

Moving on with preparation for modelling, the ubiquitous T-pose is called into action. This is based on the silhouette explorations and comprises photo-bashed elements with over-painting and screen captures from Zbrush.

Combining as many elements as possible it also utilises the Taliesin palette and a touch of facial colour zoning. The t-shirt has been designed to be over-sized (a hand-me-down or memento) but the shape might need work. The material hangs too heavily. The "Bambi effect" has also been applied.

Why the Titanic reference?

Case of the Missing Hare

What to do, what to do? I've tried some basic sculpted hair, I've left others bald for now. Do I use hair cards (game style), sculpt with added "hero hairs" or go full XGen in Maya.

Much more investigation required here.

David in development

After a bit of head-scratching I've taken one step back to pin my protagonist's image. Starting (or restarting?) with a silhouette sheet I was looking for a portrayal of characteristics while balancing practical application in animation.    

Still aiming for childlike proportion, David would have a large head with slender body and limbs. This could be combined with larger extremities to support an ungainly appearance akin to a lamb or calf, perhaps a nod to the Bambi effect to evoke sympathy in the audience.

I'd first envisioned David's clothing as a simple hospital gown, oversized to emphasise his small frame and frailty.  With more thought on his backstory and support for the visual I started to look at function, source, age and colour.

What more could a worn, old t-shirt have to tell?

Psychiatric patients might only be allowed slip-on shoes but how much more could be discerned from shoes with laces removed or trousers that sag low for the lack of a belt?

Taking a Stax Records logo c.1961 I experimented with a t-shirt logo that might reference Harry Stack Sullivan. (Where could we have heard that name before?) Harking back to the origins of the story, the designs also use Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin palette.

I feel ready to work up the main character but I expect I'll be back to examine more references before we're good to go.

A Bit of Colour in the Cheeks

Working through the character set, I felt the need for a little distraction. These characters have been treated to a very quick poly-paint in ZBrush. The colouring is based on a zoning technique separating the major areas (forehead, cheeks, nose and chin) of the face.

Works in progress but the colour does breathe some life into the characters.

All require refinement but the cast is growing and the players are starting to display distinct character.

   

Jacques Choi writing for ArtStation's Vertex magazine takes us through some principles of colour zoning the face:

Jacques Choi writing in Vertex 1

(https://magazine.artstation.com/2015/10/vertex-3-free-ebook/, pp 214-215)