Friday Update! (Patreon)

Hey everyone! I just rebooted my computer for the first time in a month, which means I closed my browser for the first time, which means all the dozens of tabs I've had open as a sort of "to-do" list have all been swept away. In most ways, it feels amazing.

But unfortunately most of those tabs were full of in-progress messages to you fine folks! I've been working hard on getting back to everyone, but I'm running into that "number of hours in a day" limit- thank you so much for your patience!!

Also!  Thank you so much to everyone who's submitted black video! It's all so good and I've been cracking up! I'm going to go through and gather up all the footage in the next day or so, and hopefully post the final this next week, so if you were planning on submitting, do it quick!

(If you've submitted and I haven't responded, I will soon! I've been kind of saving them so they're marked as "unread" until I can get everything all organized. Organization is my nemesis.)

The Corridor video is finally out! Rated R Willy Wonka! Quarantine edition. Crazy crazy fun working with those guys, and seeing how they put stuff together :D  Although- look, I gotta say it somewhere: my internet was being super funky for the entire last bit where we're talking/reacting, so I couldn't see anything, and all I could hear was kinda garbled audio, so I look a little like a friggin' sociopath (I find video chatting a little tricky even at the best of times :P)

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So- I'm on a slippery slope. I'm really trying to get this Dynamo Dream episode wrapped up, but I've started updating old shots. I've learned a lot of stuff in the past year, and figured out new workflows and assets, and it's just so tempting to go back to the old stuff and tweak it knowing what I know now. 

Like- okay, here's the start of the original shot. It's fine, and if you saw it in the episode, it probably wouldn't be too distracting. 

But I know that the only reason I put all those grass/shrubs around is to hide the horrible ground plane (in theory the landscape is supposed to be pretty barren). I also kind of overdid it with layering in the depth haze. 

So this is the new version- and I dig it a lot more. To me, it more feels like a place you could jump into and walk around. A lot of that has to do with Oleg's great photoscan packs. I've been getting into photoscans and wanted to make something similar- but gosh darn he took it so far and did it so well that me doing it myself would feel totally redundant (although, as always, making such heavy use of someone else's assets does inevitably feel like cheating :P).

But a year ago I was using a lot more feathered-solid-as-atmosphere to add depth, and one of the things I've found is that while slapping a bunch of haze in a scene can usually help compositionally (basically the easiest way to establish depth/layout of an environment), it doesn't always help with the realism (example). I've been trying to keep my renders a bit more raw and postwork free, lately.

Actually- I hadn't realized how much I avoided doing grounds. 

I think my biggest goal for this next week needs to be finishing up that greenscreen tutorial- I know there's a few folks waiting for that specifically, and I'm trying to get it out asap!

Anyways! Thanks, everyone!!! Talk soon! :D