Storyboards

I've been working on some storyboards for the first scene. I think that if these work out we may use these instead of the (rather tedious) written camera movements. There will still need to be some written descriptions, but not nearly as many.

I have slightly simplified and re-written the first scene to make it quicker and easier to film, as well as being easier to follow. (always very important!)
 Remember, the script is not locked yet, so feel free to put in any changes you think would help (always commenting, so we know what you changed)

Here are some of my first attempts:

O.K., so it's not great, but you try drawing in a moving 15 passenger van!

Feedback wanted!

light explosion

Explosions can behave very differently depending on the color of background and lighting. Here is almost the exact same settings for the smoke (with an improved domain) but a different color background. The smoke has apparently gone from light grey to dark grey. It hasn't really changed color, but in contrast to the background it looks different. It's the little things like this that matter in CG!

Rendered in 1080 x 1920 (not 1920 x 1080)

Resolution:     120

Smoke high resolution:     4

Dissolve:  1/40

And this time the domain is almost big enough...

Explosion render

It's late, so this is all I'm going to post for now, just a teaser: 

Settings were as follows:

Smoke resolution:     100

Smoke high resolution:     4

Render: 4K png 50% compression

Blender version:     2.59 (r39307)

Those smoke resolutions take up a lot of resources though. It was using almost 2 GB of memory each time it computed a frame. It goes without saying that it used all the CPU! For about 60 frames, it took almost 8 GB smoke cache.

Explosions!

I finally found a really good looking explosion made in blender. Here's a link: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?230329-How-to-make-a-very-realistic-fire-explosion-in-Blender-2-5!
The only downside is that I can only get it to work on older versions of blender. Right now I'm using 2.62. I tried it in 2.65, but couldn't find the options I needed.

I have it baking now, if it looks good I'll post a result soon!

Scene one test, now with sound!

I've been playing around with some ideas for the first scene soundtrack and the first set of credits. Here's what I've got right now. Let me know what you think!

The taming of the Frankenstein.

Well, I think I fixed it. It's rendered 300 frames or so (about half) without crashing, so I may have solved the problem. I restarted my computer, and this time resisted the urge to open my web browser. I opened Blender, and disabled Save Buffer, Instances, Free Unused, and Local Coordinates. (I think, if I remembered right). It also seems to be rendering somewhat faster too. I'm seeing render times of about one minute on my main computer.
 The main problem I see when I look at it is that my animation skills are abysmal.
Josh, would you be willing to try animating it, and then sending the .blend file back for me to render?

Update: It's around frame 550 now! I may be able to get a video out tonight!

Title

This could come in quite handy:
http://www.blenderguru.com/videos/how-to-create-a-professional-logo-animation/

Very professional looking. I've got some fun ideas for our logo, (VA FX), but they'll have to wait, because I'm about to release the long-awaited asteroid, earth and satellite .blend file! Here's a render:

Notice any problems? It's rendered in 4K, and I tried something different with the link, so you should be able to download it and view it in full resolution. (Hint, the problem has to do with the compositing, and it's not the lack of it), I still have to put the rest of the nodes in before I release it though.

Improved camera

Now with aperture!

In case anyone's curious, it takes about 40 sec- 1 minute per frame to render with a node chain. (That's with my CPU overclocked) 

Concept Artwork

Click for full 2K! This is the current result of some of my work for this movie. This is supposed to be a lens for the satellite's camera. (the gray box at the bottom will be the camera / satellite) The boxes around the lens are supposed to be the controls for focus and zoom.

What do you think? I know it still needs a lot of work, especially texturing. What could be improved? I'm thinking of adding an iris behind the lens, but haven't yet.