First scene test #1

... And the long awaited first scene test!

Again, I don't claim in any way that animation is my strong point!

And, here's the blend file!
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3AzOhkYNoUUOHFzV3pVek05MDQ

In the meantime...

While it's rendering I'll put some more details on here.

 The file for the first scene is made up of four blender scenes. I have one for the world, one for the satellite, one for the asteroid, and one for the star field. If you're wondering why I can't combine them, and reduce complexity, there are several reasons. One reason is that it uses two render engines and then composites them. Another reason is that it makes it a lot easier to apply the right effects to the right parts in the compositor. For example, I use a glow effect on the world, which I think looks good and really improves the scene, but that glow effect looks really weird on the star background, so I had to find a way to selectively apply compositing effects.

Animation of the satellite and asteroid is really hard (at least for me, that's one of my weaker areas) because they are in separate scenes, using different render engines. This could be solved by converting the asteroid to Cycles, but the reason I haven't is that it doesn't look as good:

That's with the same lighting as the satellite. Doesn't look nice at all, does it?

Anyway, it can be done, but for now I'll let it alone. Video coming soon!

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!

I made a Frankenstein!

AARGH!

Well, I'll post a short test of the first scene soon if I can get it to render. It's not working right now, to the point of totally crashing my main workstation, and when I say totally, I mean the mouse stops working, then the keyboard lights start blinking, then the whole computer reboots by itself. I was going to farm this out so we could cut down on rendertime, but I'm not going to inflict anyone with a blend file that crashes every five frames!

Other than that, things are going pretty well. The satellite looks pretty decent, as do the world and asteroid, so if I can get them to render we should have some pretty good looking results. Here's a still render, I don't seem to have as much trouble with those:

-Going into troubleshooting mode... Will update if I get any large uninterrupted render segments.

...And here it is!

Here is the .blend file for scene one: 

http://www.blendswap.com/blends/scenes/asteroid-satellite-and-world/

Don't forget to unpack the textures!

Within a few hours of me posting it, it was on the front page of blendswap! Here's proof:

(O.K., so it was in the recently downloaded, but still... :D)

I will upload it to Google Docs if anyone wants, otherwise I'll just host it at blendswap. Reading through blendswap's terms, I realized that they will have limited usefulness for us, as they will not accept WIP (work in progress) blends, and I expect we'll have quite a few of those! Also, I need to learn how to make my own textures, because it's just so much easier not having to keep track of every single texture used and the license. I can only make so many though, the earth ones obviously have to come from NASA ;) Anyway, enjoy, and please post if you do anything interesting!

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.