Gallery Set Up

Each of the 3 sections of Zohar HaNegev will be screened on a separate screen in a gallery. The screens will form an enclosed triangle formation, meant to give a claustrophobic feeling. The viewer will stand in the center of the triangle.

gallery setup

No matter the direction the viewer is facing, a part of the city will be seen. These screens are meant to be very large and give the feeling that the audience is actually walking through the city streets.

bird's eye view of gallery setup

The narrative audio track which describes what the viewer sees will be play from a phone, given the to viewer as (s)he enters the gallery space.

Upper Floors + (temp) Sound

Here is a playblasted walk through of my favorite section of the piece -- The Upper Floors. Modeled by Di Ye.

click to play quicktime

Provided are also hi-res renders. These screens may appear dark on some monitors.

Exterior + (temp) Sound

The Exterior sequence of Zohar HaNegev. Rendered with Mental Ray on standard resolution with low final gather and ray trace settings. At the moment a single frame takes aproximately 20-30 seconds to render on SD and about 1 minute on HD.

I have already done tests to resolve the flickering in this video.

click to play quicktime

Updated Lower Warrens Walkthrough + Sound

Below is an updated walkthrough through the lower warrens of Zohar HaNegev, it a simple playblast with a temp track. Professional actors are planned to record a better sounding narrative than the one in this clip.

click to play quicktime

Additionally, I've provided hi-res renders of the warrens. These were rendered with Mental Ray for Maya, and are using very low final gather settings. All shadows cast are using maps. I fear that the high amount of lights are slowing down the render times significantly. These renders may appear dark on some screens.

mayabatch.exe reeks havoc (once more)

The rendering problem I've mentioned in this post has returned in Maya 2011!

The day lighting was completed and ready for render, I received the following error from Maya, when attempting to batch render:

// Result: Saving temporary file: D:/Projects/Zohar HaNegev/zoharhangev_project/scenes/UpperFloors00__4240.mb // 
// Result: Rendering with mental ray... // 
// Result: Rendering Completed. See mayaRenderLog.txt for information. //

Of course, Maya did not render a single frame…
A further look into the mayaRenderLog.txt reaveled the following message:

Starting "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2011\bin\mayabatch.exe"
QWidget: Cannot create a QWidget when no G// Maya exited with status 1

I've attempted several things in order to solve the error. Amongst which, were reviewing  the render globals trying different image formats, deleting Maya's preferences, disabling the Antivirus, and testing different scenes. I also posted the problem on several forums. The only advice I received was to contact Autodesk.

I decided to completely uninstall Maya 2011, and the older versions that I had on my hard drive (2009 and 2010), and re-install 2011by itself.

This seemed to solve the QWidget problem.

Unfortunately, mayabatch.exe returned to the original problem of 2009, where it would only use up to %50 of the cpu power to render (8 cores, 16 threads). To be accurate, it started  around the %13 mark, blasted up to %49-%60 for a short time and then hung at %22 for the reminder of the frame. I also noticed many unnesicary DAG calculations before each frame that lasted about 2 minutes and a very long hang time after each frame was completed. This meant that a frame that would normally take approximately 1:15 minutes, would now take around 6 minutes. These problems were not present before the reinstallation.

Maya still rendered single images in a timely manner, thus I will be providing playlasts, coupled with still images of the renders for now.

As of today the problem has not been solved.

Shots 4 & 5

Proceeding with the rendering, I've solved the problems in my previous post.

1) being unable to change the color settings on mental ray in the sky, I opted for a surface shader with an envSky node in the color channel attached to a sphere that surrounds entire scene.

The light is cast from a single directional light uses ray tracing shadows, in addition to mental ray's final gather. I set the light color to a slight yellow and the shadows to purple, in order to stimulate an early evening desert light.

The envSky uses a ramp with purple, yellow and white colors set to smooth. Truth be told, I think I can simplify the network by slapping the ramp surface shader color channel and bypassing the envSky altogether.

2) The mental ray rendering problem,was solved by upgrading to Maya 2011. Now the computer renders using 100% of the CPU power.

Below are shot 4 & 5 of the exterior scene:

click image to play quicktime

click image to play quicktime

In a shot 4, there is a flicker artifact on the left hand building. Also, the shadows need to be more opaque.

These scenes were modeled by Di Ye. and myself.

Exterior Lighting Test

The modeling for Zohar HaNegev is complete thanks to the hard work of Di Ye and Melissa Davidson. I am now in the process of optimizing the models, preparing them to be textutred and blocking in the lights.

Here is a lighting test for the first shot of the city's exterior, modeled by Di. I've lit the shot using Mental Ray's Physical Sky.

There are two problems here:

1. The shadows are too blue -- and I'm finding it difficult adjusting the color of the sky. 
2. Mental Ray seems to be using only 50% of my CPU power at the moment.

Hopefully I will be able to solve both of these problems soon. Please see the clip below:

click to play quicktime

Lower Warrens Walkthrough

Click to Play Quicktime

Here is a walk through of the lower warrens. Modeled by Melissa Davidson with additional models by Di Ye and myself. The basic lighting has been blocked out and a rough camera has been animated.

The camera was animated with the assistance of Craft Director Studio. Using their observerCam feature, I was able to control the camera in real time with a game pad and record the movement. The game pad is fully configurable, which allows me to set the controls to operate just like a first person shooter. The left analog stick is used to move the camera, while the right stick is used to look around. The shoulder buttons tell the camera to move up and down, and quick repeated taps simulates stair climb.

CREW!

I'd like to introduce our crew for Zohar HaNegev:

Melissa Davidson

environment modeler

Melissa Davidson grew up in Ontario, Canada, where she developed a love of art very early on in life. She would eventually earn a degree in computer animation at Humber College in Toronto. Since then she has been working freelance on a number of projects including providing art direction and animation consulting on a couple of indie video games which will be released later on this year.

Melissa's Website

Di Ye

environment modeler

Born in China, with a degree in International Business, Di Ye made her way to San Francisco in 2008. Over there she has been pursuing her MFA degree in Visual Effects at Academy of Art University.

Di's Blog 

Eric Montero

texture artist

An accomplished painter, draftsman and animator. Eric Montero was one of the few to be awarded a full scholarship to the Vancouver Film School in 2004. A master of anatomy and body dynamics, this modern renaissance man practices theatre acting and operates a dentist clinic in his spare time.

Eric's Website

Michael Fallik

director, creator, lighting and rendering

Born and raised in Israel, Michael Fallik trained at the Camera Obscura School of Art in Tel Aviv, Vancouver Film School in Canada, and is currently studying for his master’s degree in animation at the University of Southern California. He has worked as a storyboard artist and cinematic director in Singapore, and has animated and directed twelve animated shorts, including the award winning The Heart Collector in 2005. In 2007 he was awarded a certificate of merit at the Annie awards for contribution to the ASIFA Animation Archive in Burbank, California.

Michael's Website

There are still spaces open. For more information, see http://www.michaelfallik.com/city/crew.html