Since Cycles is the ‘new hotness’ we naturally don’t want to exclude using it for our renders. However, Cycles lacks some features and support that Blender internal has; such as SSS, volume shaders, strand rendering, particles, A.O. and probably more. In order to use it at all we’re going to have to combine our renders, and we need a good way of managing this.

One side of this is the compositor: you can put a Cycles scene into a file, an Internal Scene, and then render them both from a third, compositing scene, that pulls in renderlayers from both. So far so good, but! if you have have objects linked into both scenes, what to do about materials? Cycles materials and Blender materials are different… or are they?

Turns out nodal materials are our friends, because they can contain both Cycles shading nodes and Blender internal nodes… nifty, right? so all you have to do is use nodes in internal, and then both will work.

If you feel like you need more in depth explanation, check out the video tutorial below, and download the included .blend file.

EDIT: New .blend file! includes solution to the emission problem: download here

Hey folks, a bit late on this one, but Spring internships have been posted on bitfilms. If you are interested in spending in spending a few months working on lighting, modelling, crowd sims/other simulation or animation (or a combination of the above) have a gander at the doc and send your resume/reel/cover letter in! we’d love to have you on the project.

Good news for the modellers, btw, is that we’ve been tuning/tightening our modelling pipeline. I intend to post on that in a week or two once I’ve formalized the last details, so it should be easier and smoother to get your modelling chops into final shots.

I promise my next post won’t have an exclamation point on the end 😉

Looks like Tal’s preview of the autowalking got posted at BN! Nice post!

This blog has been a little quiet of late but the project is quite healthy. We’ve been working hard on animation and refining our modelling pipeline to allow modellers an easier time contributing to the project. Tal and I have nailed down most of our technical hurdles in the autowalker/crowd side, which is a huge relief (those shots were always a bit of a scary looming task) and we think we can finish these shots with a great deal of fun.

stay tuned for more posts, where we share our current progress… and some news!

On a long term/distributed project, there’s often a flux of new, leaving and returning artists. Here’s a quick list of who’s active right now (In addition to me, who’s doing a little bit of everything and a lot of some things):

Producers + project management:

• Fateh Slavitskaya and Elizabeth Ellis powering along.

Animators:

• Chris Bishop is our animation supervisor, an amazing animator and teacher- well suited to the role of supervisor.
• Jarred de Beer (previously an intern) is still animating like mad, working on 2/3 of the most difficult shots in the first act.
• Virgillio Vasconcelos Animator, professor and author from Brazil- really great, and great to work with.
• Tal Hershkovich is doing lots of roach sim and animation.
• Carlo Serra Summer intern who’s working on a nice action-y shot.
• Sarah Laufer Mad talented animator! She’s tackling a very challenging shot.
• Francesco Siddi (previously a modeller/intern) and recent blenderwiki developer.
• Luciano A. Muñoz Sessarego who I met at TOSMI and is a great animator and all around fun guy.

Modellers:

• Dimetrii Kalinin (One of the nastiest modellers I’ve seen) – he’s backed up by his brother Michael, great concept/2D artist and animator.

Sound:

• Thomas Vecchione is currently doing temp sound for the animatic;
• Jan Morgenstern will then evaluate the result, looking for music opportunities – the two will collaborate on the final sound mix (Thomas = SFX, Jan = Music)

Fall interns:

• Samantha Luo : Samantha is a UMASS student with good Blender chops: 3D Generalist
• Andreu Cabre: Another Blenderhead, Andreu is trained in graphic design, and self taught in 3D: 3D Generalist with a focus on pipeline issues.
• Roberto Roch: Our other nasty sculptor/modeller, Roberto will be working on polishing assets to get final models in shots.
• Karen Webb: Our only animation intern, she’s new (ish) to Blender but a fast learner
• Samah Majadla: Mt. Holyoke College student and lighter from Caldera,  3D Generalist on Tube
• Christine Stuckart: recent grad, recent Caldera intern, like Samah she is starting as 3D Generalist with no prior Blender experience.

Первие наброски второстепенных персонажеи. Они стилизованы под главного персонажа, что бы все выглядело четко.Пока толко скульптура, возмозно их будем переделывать.
Так же в процессе другие персонажи.

English:

These are first drafts of secondary characters in subway station. They are stilyzed to match the main character. Only sculptures now so we may change them.
Other characters are under construction. Concepts are by Michael Kalinin, Modeling by me (Dimetrii). These characters will have only slight animation and simple rigs.