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CGC:
Who worked on the film and how much time did you spend on the project?
LK:
The
film was made just by myself, and took 23 months to complete. For
a period of about a year I was given 2 days off work per week to
work on the project in addition to committing the remaining evenings
and weekends to the movie.
CGC:
What are the tools you used? (software/hardware)
LK:
I used 3DS Max for the modeling with various plugins (Shag:hair,
Stitch, Dreamscape and SpeedTree), World Builder for the large areas
of the landscape, Photoshop for texturing, Premiere and After Effects
for editing and compositing.
I
was using an Athlon 1.4ghz with 1.5gb RAM and a 64mb Geforce card.
I had to buy three more workstations for rendering.
CGC:
Can you tell us how you modeled and especially how you surfaced
your characters?
LK:
The characters were modeled using just polygons, originating from
a cylinder primitive. The textures were made up of a series of projected
maps (mostly planar) that were then positioned over the different
areas of the character. These textures were then blended together
using the greyscale value of additional maps laid over the top.
CGC:
What can you tell us about the lighting? GI?
LK:
The
lighting procedure began by creating a non-renderable low poly sphere
that would enclose the whole landscape. Spotlights would then be
positioned at each vertex on the sphere (26 in total) and targeted
at the scene. One of these lights would be the sun, which would
illuminate both the diffuse and specular component of the objects;
while the others would act as ambient light taken from the rest
of the sky and would only illuminate the diffuse component. Each
light had its own intensity and colour based upon its position in
relationship to the sun.
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CGC:
Give us some numbers regarding the polygon count, texture maps,
etc… on a typical scene?
LK:
For a scene featuring the girl and her nearby surroundings, the
poly count would be around 100,000 for the character (that's including
mesh smoothing) and about 200,000 for the environment. Though characters
and backgrounds were rendered separately because of the large polycounts.
CGC:
Have you started to tour the different film festivals just yet?
LK:
A
few months ago I began sending the movie off to film festivals,
and have had a few screenings, and there are some more coming up
shortly.
CGC:
What’s next for you?
LK:
When the time feels right, I'll be working on another animated short;
though from my pages of ideas so far, I feel it will quite a contrast
to 'This Wonderful Life'.
Related Links:
This
Wonderful Life's home-page
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Interview with Martin Krol
Wed, 4 Nov 2009
Our latest interview is with Martin Krol, a self-taught artist that has been working in TV, Film, Commercials, and Games. He has worked on 300, Underworld 3, The Messengers, and The Last Mimzy. Check out his upcoming Gnomon Online Master Class, where he will be teaching Modo, Cinema 4D, and ZBrush integration! |
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