Let’s see in details the files organization we post yesterday.
First of all we have created a main folder with the name of the project: “Eleven O’Clock“.
Inside it we can find 3 folders.

“Production” is the folder containing -> Continue reading ‘Organization of files: more details…’->

A possible problem you could find during the realization of a project, especially a 3D movie, is how organize files and folders.

This is a very important point, because when you work in team is fundamental to know where you can find the right files you have to work on.

For this reason we want to publish -> Continue reading ‘How to organize files’->

The 3D short of Trickle Project is going on very well.
The dead-line is incoming and we have a lot of things to do.

Lorenzo now is refining the last UV maps and textures remaining.
Davide, after completed the shading of the objects, is taking care of the lighting of the two environments shot by shot.
Least but non last, Mattia is working on the animation.
Here you can see the first two shots made by Mattia.
Tell us what do you think about it!!

Here we are again!
The motion blur improvement keeps going on.
Last achievement: fill the blank pixels that appears in the render.
Next step: projected shadow to be blurred as well, of course

Before anything else we want to say a special thank to everyone who’s giving us useful feedback !
Keep suggesting!!!

Aaahhhh…. the power of open source!!!
Your comments give us the strength to go on!
Thank you all.

These are the first images from the new short we are working at.

This is the main character of the story: -> Continue reading ‘Eleven o’clock …a preview!’->

Here we are with the third lesson.
Theme of this lesson is texturing and UV mapping.

To download the source video click here: -> (MOV 224Mb) <-

The node of motion blur we are developing use the Sobel algorithm, a filter mainly used to highlight contuors in a picture.
Appling this filter to motion vectors, the result is a gradient of the single pixels.
The gradient is as strong as the pixels movement is diverging.
Before we analysed the whole scene in a single render layer.

Using different render layers, we analyse only the moving object.
In this way we identify the areas where it’s possible the appear of holes or blank pixel inner the object itself or when parts of it overlapping.

Now we have to analyse this areas and find the better way to fill it. The idea is to check the pixels arround the blank ones in order to fill it with this RGBA channels considering also the speed of the movement.

The artefacts we found are essentially due to two causes: the first takes place when a single object has movements where its components overlap, the second concern pixels that have divergent movements.
The result of these two problems is the creation of blank pixels or “gaps” that create fully black pixels or partial matte pixels on the resulting image.

In order to resolve these problems -> Continue reading ‘Motion blur: current artefacts and possible solution’->

This is a script for creating a pyramid, where you can decide the number of sides, radius and height.
This script is made by Lorenzo, a guy of the new Trickle Project.
It’s just a simple script, but it’s fully commented so you can understand how a Blender script is built. -> Continue reading ‘A simple script: create a pyramid!’->

The initals experiments made by Petru showed that tracing the entire path of each pixel generate visual patterns in the final result.
Inspite of the physically correctness of the result, the presence of such arctifacts makes the visual result unpleasant. The arctifacs are caused by the non-uniform accumulation of pixel traces. Implementing anti-aliasing algorithms to trace lines or using working buffers with a resolution wider than the original (up to 10X) are not enough to avoid the appereance of those patterns.

We then tackled the problem from a different perspective. Applying principles of signals and digital filters, we developed an algorithm that even in its simplest implementation provides acceptable results.
The algorithm is based on the creation of equidistants slices that define the image at an instant of time during the opening of the simulated shutter.

These slices are accumulated in a buffer according to a Gaussian distribution to avoid aliasing. Then a low pass filter (in our case a gaussian blur) is applied to the generated image to eliminate the aliasing due to the creation of slices (“stair effect”).
The results compared with the vector blur of Blender are promising. You can see an example in these two videos compared.

Vector blur node rendering

Motion blur improved node rendering

The future development goes in the direction of -> Continue reading ‘Evolution of motion blur node’->