Monthly Update: January 2022
It’s been windy here in Los Angeles the last couple of days. A few days before that it even rained a bit. That’s the nice thing about winter - at least there’s weather to talk about. I miss my home city of Chicago dearly around this time of year. I always loved winter growing up, far more than most it seems. Looking back, I feel like the fact I never had to shovel anything helped build this appreciation, but even so, the fondness remains. Though with the snap freezes my family has been dealing with the last couple of years, perhaps it’s for the best that all I have to contend with is a drizzle and a light gust.
Unlike the winds, however, 2022 has started off with less of a gale and more of a breeze. That is to say, things have been off to a bit of a slow start. Because of certain holes that needed filling, I was shuffled around for a couple weeks for my normal job, helping out with post visualization on an upcoming speed based DC movie, if you catch my drift. As a side note, I always feel like I have to be coy when referring to the films I work on professionally, despite the fact they’re usually announced and public by the time I come on board. I’m sure it’s no issue, but one can never be too careful. Either way, I just wrapped helping on that, and now I am now back to working on the other big DC superhero movie. I feel safe in saying that movie is Black Adam, and I’m very happy to be back in familiar territory.
It’s also been somewhat of a slow start to the year Forlorn wise. Due to a commitment I made to help out on a side project, I have only just gotten around to dipping my toes back into the pool that is animating the finale. I mentioned it in a previous post, but the finale is split into 3 scenes, the first of which is done. I am now several shots into the second scene. Those early shots are technically complex, animation wise, and I was concerned about how much of a hurdle it would be to overcome that. Thankfully I was able combine some animation together, and in the end it proved fairly painless. The next batch of shots I need to do are a series of quick close ups, and I hope to blow through those very quickly. That being said, this side project isn’t close to being wrapped, so it will still be touch and go for the next few weeks, at least.
Speaking of complexity, I ran into a rather concerning issue regarding the technical capabilities of my computer last week. In attempting to test render this second scene of the finale, I discovered that my PC was unable to render it out without maxing out the GPU. The set I had built is easily the most dense I’ve made thus far, so it causing strain on my now fairly weak PC is no surprise. I had run into this issue long ago, back in the very first episode, and my solution was just upgrading my RAM. Since this was a similar situation, I figured it was time to upgrade once again. However, like a fool I bought some more blades of RAM without checking first to see if my motherboard even supported that amount. Upon installation I found out for myself that indeed my motherboard did not. Long story short, my wife’s computer now has some extra power to it.
Faced with this dilemma, I had to take some time and figure out where exactly the breaking point of the scene was. This took a bit, because loading the level, removing sublevels, and then rendering was still causing the GPU to fail. I later discovered that even when you remove elements from a scene their data is still stored in that session. So on render, even though the objects aren’t on screen, the texture data is still loaded in the background. This might seem obvious to the more games/ programming oriented folks out there, but to me it was a learning experience. Upon figure that out, I stripped every element out of the level save the lights, then I rendered out the establishing wide shot for the scene to test and see if it would render. Upon every successful attempt I would add another element back in, until I found which sublevel was one too many.
It turns out the sublevel causing the strain was one containing some hero building assets, which had their time to shine way back in Part I. Because they’re at a distance this episode, I removed said sublevel and replaced it with comparatively less intensive buildings applied as foliage. This did the trick, and the scene now renders without issue. Based on the test image above, you can see that it’s going to look quite different than the blue haze of the previous episodes, and I must say I’m quite relieved that I won’t have to sacrifice visual fidelity or somehow track down a new GPU to finish this short.
In other news, Part VI was released just over a week ago now. I’m always more nervous than I should be when kicking an episode out the gate, but much to my relief the reception was just as positive as the last few have been. Folks online have such kind words to say, to which I am incredibly appreciative for their kind works and support. And as always there are a few critiques, but in general the few I received have been constructive. It’s nice, in a way, when feedback lines up with things that you yourself are already aware of. It also seems like my YouTube experiment is bearing fruit. In the last six weeks since starting the YouTube channel, I’ve already surpassed viewership for all of my Vimeo posts from the last 18 months. I know views aren’t everything, and I’m still small potatoes compared to many, but it’s nice to see progress in that department. The only unforeseen element of this past release is since then I’ve gotten quite a few propositions to work with people in making NFTs, which I can’t help but find amusing.
Lastly I’ve begun looking towards the future. After this arc is finished, I have several ideas of where to go now. I have a new short written, and I’m looking towards expanding my pool of assets. I’ve begun using Metahuman to block out new characters for future shorts, with the intent of using them as a guideline for making my own characters. I don’t intend to ever go for total photorealism when it comes to characters, however. Instead I like to opt for a more subtly stylized approach. I intend to give Kaelis yet another complete makeover when this is all finished, and that should provide a good template going forward. I also have been at work modeling and rigging some new stuff. One characters I’ve rigged is this little creature I’ve been looking forward to making for a while, and I’m excited to finally bring him to life. Depending on how things go, maybe I’ll be able to release something with him sooner rather than later.
All in all, 2022 is off to a fine start. I feel like by this time next month I’ll be back into that old familiar groove, and hopefully well on my way towards finishing this short that I started so long ago. I still hope to be completely wrapped by June, but really it depends on a number of factors, including whatever happens in my day job, and my composer’s schedule. Regardless, June is the goal, and the whole purpose of this blog is detailing the baby steps towards getting there. The finish line is in sight, it’s only a matter of time now.
Until next month!
Alex
