Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from July, 2008

D/B Step 1 complete

So I went through the animatic and listed all the elements I will have to create... and haha there is a lot 0_o... I won't tell you how many characters there are because YOU would freak out ^ ^ So the assessment sheets I filled out by hand... thats the pdf I posted last time... and when I filled out the inventory sheets which are the same as the pdf as well... I entered the data in teh computeRs so now I have these neat lists of stuff I need to create... Now I will analyze the inventory and group the items if they can share the same assets... Swordsmen 1-8 can all share the same base model so I can group them as one... seeing that once one is modeled, rigged etc I can just duplicate it and scale it and texture it differently for variation...

Design/Buildings steps

So the next phase in production is : Design/Building: So this is where I design and then build all the elements needed for production... now I could just say ok time to build the HSM universe LETS GO! but like where do I start 0_o so to prevent that zero underscore oh look here's what I do... First thing to do is assess what needs to be built... Step1 - Assessment phase: Watch animatic and take note of everything in the scenes such as... - Characters - Locations - Accessories/Props - Special objects So once you have a list of everything you need to create you organize them based on those categories... also you figure out which assets you can combine... like soldier #1 in scene 56 can be the same model as yelling man in scene #99 if I change his texture etc.... If you want my breakdown sheet for this first step GET IT HERE So once you have your list organize you start to design things... this isn't creation yet..just sketching out designs on paper etc Step2 - Design phase: Draw/

Awwwwww workstation building on hold....

So I got all my computer parts today and did the pin mod and was installing one of the CPU's when I noticed a big dent in the mainboard with a capacitor missing?!... So I'm on the phone now with customer service trying to get a replacement shipped out...So my workstation building is on hold for a few days....

Thanks for the tech help!

Thanks to Ricky and Jeremy for helping me figure this e5410 OC'ing business out... So I looked at all the links you sent and I think i have it figured out... some d00ds post explained it... "There is a simple BSEL mod to change the 5410 from native 2.33 GHz / 1333 to 2.8 GHz / 1600. Just put a dot of electrician's tape on CPU pad H30 (BSEL1) and it will boot up at 2.8 GHz / 1600 FSB (400 MHz). You can then tweak up the FSB in the BIOS." So I saw that and was all pad H30...yeh 0_o Then I checked out the other links and 5100 data sheet and found these diagrams/photos... So by checking all those pics.. it seems all I have to do is cover one pin (H30) and thats that... And it seems for the e5410 which I ordered I just cover the same pin as in the last photo... Sound right d00ds? I will get the CPU's tomorrow and DO IT ^ ^ but the case came today OMG! Ricky you were right this thing is HUGE?! haha I don't own a car but this thing is almost as big as one! Its great

Thanks for the pin mod info!

Thanks to Jeremy and Ricky for posting links to pertinent pin mod info... I should be able to figure it out now! All my boxes arrive tomorrow but I'll have to wait on building things until Sunday... I'm speaking at this event in LA on Saturday and haven't made my presentation yet... Its a free event btw! Should be a fun and informative day!

Some geek help ^ ^

I've been looking all over about how to do this but I can't find any tutorials so maybe someone more knowledgeable then I like Ricky can point me in the right direction... So I bought two E5410 CPU's which run at 2.33ghz... apparently by "pin modding" the CPU's with electrical tape or something... a BSEL mod... you can easily OC them to 2.8ghz... I've found a ton of posts online with people talking about doing but no information about how to actually do it with those processors... Like this comment on the page for those CPU's on newegg... --------- EASILY MODDED TO 1600MHz FSB. I went on 2cpu.com and QUICKLY found a SIMPLY mod that can be done to these chips to get them to run at 2.8 24/7 on RETAIL INTEL COOLING!!! WAHOO!!! I leave my box on for DAYS with 2 of these (8 cores) and it is 100% stable. ---------- I looked all over 2cpu.com and couldn't find it : ( So if anyone could point me in the right direction I would appreciate it! I'll total

Workstation ordereD

So I had to hold off on getting the new DSLR and HD video camera because a check I was expecting didn't come in yet... but I did order the new workstation I typed about earlier... Came out to $2802.00 and I did get some aftermarket heatsinks/fans cause Ricky got me thinking about it ^ ^ When your thinking about a new rig and your 3d animated film its easy to start to believe that you need the highest performance machine out there but thats simply not true... I made WATS with an AMD x2 4400 machine with 2gb RAM and a 5900xt gfx card... a very modest to low end system for 2005-2007 and it worked great for me... So this time I'll have an 8 cpu system with 8gb RAM and an 8800gt gfx card... again NOT the highest performance machine but pretty good ^ ^ You could easily spend 5k - 7k on your workstation alone...but I'd rather get a render farm + server + cameras for the same amount of money...

Animatic is DONE

A little ahead of schedule...but the animatic is done ....but fairly loose...it clocks in at 130 minutes which is way past what I thought it would be seeing that the script is 98 pages buuuuuut I don't have anyone to answer to so whatever time feels right is the right time ^ ^ I would like to keep it under 120 minutes though.. I recently saw "The Dark Knight" I kept saying to myself "gawd when is this gonna end?!" so I'm not going to get close to 152 minutes hell naW So now I will order the workstation...new video cam and DSLR and catalog all the elements I need to design....

Geek tech reply...

Ricky SayeTH I noticed you are getting a 350w PSU for the new file server; might be a bit low wattage with the hardware you are using. And I was wondering if you'd have a faster throughput with two 500gb hard-drives in raid, rather than one tb drive, although the Hitachi is supposed be a blazing fast one. I thought the same thing with my last file server but a mega geek informed me of the low power requirements of Sata drives... my old file server had 7 sata drives in it with a 180w PSU 0_o and there were never any problems... As far as RAID-0 goes... on the file server... its serving up all the media through a gigabit connection which the single hitachi can almost fully utilize at 80 megs a sec... but RAID-0 makes me nervous, increasing the odds of losing media by %50... I do backup the final rendered files from off of my file server onto external drives but the increased throughput of 30-40 megs isn't worth the extra risk to me... Could do RAID-1 but then thats only half the

And even MORE geek tech...

So since time is a factor I have to make two other purchases one to speed things up one too slow things down.... Ya know real live humans come fully modelled, boned^_^ , rigged and skinned 0_o so they are quick to animate...time savers... I will be utilizing live action where appropriate to save time animating... since the world will be 3d I will need to shoot them on a greeen screen and composite them... HSM will be rendered at the same res as WATS 1920x817 24p.... And to get clean keys from live action I need a video camera that can shoot 1080p uncompressed... WHOA WHOA thats gotta be HELLSA expensive right? Not if you know the little secret I was first informed about on Stu Mashwitz's Prolost blog... Canon's mini cams from its Vixia line shoot 1920x1080 and can output it uncompressed from the HDMI port.... So ya need the cam I dont have that yet... a drive capable of 150 megs/sec + I got that.... and a Mac or PC with a Blackmagic card with HDMI in dont have that YET... So

And more geek tech...

I'm sick so I've been sitting in the same chair for like awhile...hence the mad blogging... I seem to remember I took a year designing and creating all the elements for WATS and for HSM I have it scheduled for 6 months...So just now when I should be going to sleep I started to freak out a little..OMG all that in 6 months!?!?! Ya know what freaks me out the most modeling, boning, rigging and skinning... cause I dont really know what I'm doing and when it comes out right I'm all surprised haha... but yeh I could hit major time snags with that... I dont really worry about the other stuff...like the ideas... I can't wait to start doing some 3d tests so I can develop a new style... there's been some 3d stuff that I liked the look of FF7: Advent children being one... I also liked the 3d in the intro of Hellboy 2 I saw recently....but ya know me I have to be original so I will develop something that looks WIN but doesn't take 1000 years to render... also I'm no

Tech details...

Here's some details Ricky requested in a comment... So in my situation I use Cinema 4d... I also do a lot of After effects work... When doing WATS I had my source media on 4 or 5 different computers...this caused a lot of slowdowns and got real annoying when machines would crash or needed to be restarted.. To create a Cinema 4d render farm... You need the render server running on one computer and the render client software running on your slave/node computers... I had the render server software running on one of my render slaves... this caused slowdowns because the cpu had to try to render using %100 of the CPU AND manage the render server and all the files it was sending across the network.... ALSO all the finished render files take up a lot of space and seeing that the render server was running on a render client the hard drive was small and I had to constantly move media off of it because it would fill up... ALSO your 3d programs need to store they're textures somewhere whic

Lessons learned....

As I move forward with this new production I dare not repeat the mistakes of the past...here's some things I'm doing differently this time... Breaking the film into more sequences... many more sequences but they have less shots are more manageable... WATS was made up of 11 sequences...some with hundreds of shots... the After Effects project files for each sequence for too big and took like 2 minutes to save.... HSM has 46 sequences... the biggest one has around 50 shots... Using centralized storage for all source media... This time around I'm using a dedicated file/render server... on WATS I used drives on the render slaves...bad idea... If one crashed or restarted it would screw me up because I was accessing the media on my workstation... So I'm building a cheap file server that will run the c4d render server and house all the source media... Bringing in the editor, sound designer and composer early on... I didn't bring them in until the edit was being done... Once

Geek thoughts

4 cores or 8 cores that is the question... To overclock or to not overclock that is another question.... Where the fuck do I find instructions on how to do a BSEL mod to an E5410?!?!....umm that is another question... I'm going to buy the parts for a new workstation soon... I was going to build a quadcore system then I found this article So i've decided to build a budget 8 core system based on those specs instead... It comes to $2800.00 with two 24" LCD monitors.... the 8 cores will come in handy for AE renders and as an overnight addition to the Helmer render farm I'm going to build later this year ^_^ YES I LOVE BEING A GEEK YES I FUCKING LOVE IT!!! TERABYTES GIGAFLOPS YES YES YES!!!!!!!!!

Strange coincidence 0_o

So if you read my blog and watch my youtube vids you probably remember this Me ranting about this Samurai film that sounded a lot like what I was doing as I had announced online some basic info about my project months before.... Now I see from the films imdb page that Gackt... formerly of Malice Mizer has been cast in the film...haha so odd... as I was talking about my film on youtube I was listening to Malice Mizer as it is known that I am a fan of the band .... Apparently the director went to Japan and asked Gackt recently and now he is acting in this film?! Thats too weird!! haha Its funny though as I shouldn't worry about being copied... seeing that people can only copy what they have seen me do before or guess as to what I'm about to do... I guess they can copy that if that makes them happy or somehow makes them feel that they are original as if I never existed...I know that happens all the time... Unknown person does something new.... Person with money and connections st

New Studi0 spacE

Thanks to my friend David Choe I now have a new studio space that I will use to make HSM... There's enough room for 2 workstations and my render farm and even enough space to set up a fairly large green screen to do stop mo/photography... I'm 46 minutes into the animatic now... this shit is CRAZY! So in between working on the animatic I'll be slowly setting up the studio space to be in working order... After there's some stuff up in there and my pal Sean Boyles bombs it out with samurai madness I'll post some photos of the place... Until then I'll just keep raving alone..........

1761

1761 Thats how many shots there are in Heart String Marionette.... Just finished numbering the shots and got the storyboards velo bound at Kinko's so it looks all shiny now... So now with script and storyboards in hand I weave the animatic.... I filled out this month's schedule so I finish the animatic around the 20th so I have some time to build my new workstation before August hits and I start designing everything... Just found out most of October will be taken up by speaking engagements here in Berkeley, Ca and like in London, and Rome... So I have to be careful and stay on top of things.

Animatic Note

Just printed this note to myself and stuck it on my monitor while working on the animatic... ANIMATIC WORKFLOW: -LAY DOWN FRAMES SEQUENTIALLY --ADD DIALOGUE ---ADD MUSIC ----ADD HARD FX -----ADD AMBIENCE + SOFT FX ------FINE TUNE EDITS