Seeing how we are about to embark on this journey, I thought now would be a good time to put ourselves in check. With 3D the sky is the limit, unfortunately we can also spend an eternity trying to get there.
I want to take this moment to introduce everyone to some of the complications involved with creating a 3D film. Pigeon Impossible is a 3D short 5 years in the making that was released this year. The lead creator documented the lessons he learned the hard way in production through series of video podcasts. There is a lot of invaluable lessons to be learned here:
Grab a bag of popcorn. Let's have a look:
There are a couple of common themes throughout these videos. First 3D can be excessively time intensive and unforgiving if the storyboard, characters, and workflow are not well developed in pre-production. We could easily spend 5x longer working on the short than it should take (watch #014). I can't emphasize enough, we cannot begin until not one, not two, but all three of these conditions are met!
Luckily for us we have an excellent education in this area as CSUF students that will help us nail the story and characters down. We still have lots of work to be done in these areas, but there are no big technical problems in our way. What we have to be careful of is having a proper workflow in place, which is all to often the the forgotten factor. The "we will figure it out later, lets move onto the fun stuff" train of thought will only get us into trouble.
Why is developing a solid workflow first so important? Well it is simple, having the knowledge and tools needed to technically accomplish the 3D film prior to production ensures we never have to do the same task twice, saving huge amounts of time fixing problems and troubleshooting. That is of course is in addition to having a good game plan.
But how do we stand? Do we have the tools needed as well as the knowledge to achieve this? The answer yes... and also no, not quite yet. The biggest area we are currently lacking in is the Rendering, Lighting, and Compositing development. Just ask the other 3D Short teams at CSUF, both the Meteor Team and Buki Team will tell you tell you this is perhaps the biggest technical road block they've hit. Look at how important Compositing, Rendering, and lighting it is to Pigeon Impossible and any Studio 3D Animation for that matter, that is a gigantic chunk missing.
It is not all bad news though. I'm doing something about it. Actually so did our school and teachers by partnering with Autodesk to bring us Maya 2010. We now have in Industry grade compositor packaged with Maya called Toxik. After Effects is a great application for motion graphics and adding post effects, but it was not built from the ground up to handle the duties needed for a full-scale 3D production. Toxik is.
So that's one major potential brick wall we have avoided. Phew, so what's left? How about a proper integration with Mental Ray, our rendering engine? This is no small task, in fact it's a very monumental one. I'm currently involved with the creation of a script to do just that, collaborating with a programer from France. I am slaving to make sure it is receives all the functionality we need. Doing this on the side in addition to everything else we need to finish before the spring semester starts. When it is done, we will actually have a better lighting, rendering, and compositing system to work with than Pigeon Impossible.
I apologize if this is turned a little technical for some of you following, unfortunately it is a necessary evil behind the nature of creating a 3D film.
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