POST 40: REBUILDING THE TOWER

    When I first built the church, in order to create the octagonal tower, I used 2 wide textures which I bent  using Ray tracing with 4 sections each . 
   I then visually erased the parts that intersected with the four vaults below the vaults:

     It didn't look quite right, and I theorized the curves should be ellipses. So I decided to rebuild the tower using 8 separates wall sections. I precisely measured the length of the octagon sides at 1600pixels, so I decided to cut the 8 walls out of a 3000 pixels high x 12800 pixels wide continuous yellow ochre texture I made:

    I then proceeded to cut out of each wall ellipses 1500 pixels high(the height of the vaults) and 1600 pixels wide:

  After assembly in 3D in AE, the fit is close, but still not perfect. I will have to fiddle with it.

  The walls are higher, so I raised the dome to match.

  I also created more dramatic lighting: a mixture of Ambient light, and five hanging Chandeliers/Points of Lights down the nave and in the transept. I have not yet turned shadows on, but it looks pretty good:

   

POST 39: MISCELLANEOUS THOUGHTS

    It has been a while since my last post. I have not progressed very much as far as developing the sets further in detail, but I have given a lot of thoughts to how we are going to shoot the movie, and to the difficulties my computer has rendering these huge sets I started creating. I have also decided to tackle the scrip writing myself.
  Randy introduced me a few weeks ago to his friend Preuit Holland, who normally works in California, but is from Birmingham, and has been in town to take care of personal business.  A graduate of the American Film Institute, he is an accomplished Film Maker, Director, Photographer, Artist, Designer and "closet CG generalist". Just check out his web site to know more.
   He also happens to be a great friendly guy who doesn't mind sharing his knowledge, and a thinker who has spent a good deal of time trying to figure out how things work in his business. His advice has covered many topic, and I have enjoyed his conversation and his emails very much. He has caused me to rethink my process, but has not succeeded yet in making me abandon my beloved/hated After Effects to learn a "Real 3D Program" like Lightwave 3D, which he uses himself. I have downloaded it, an I have played with it, and I don't understand it any better than the other I have tried. My brain cannot wrap around the concepts, and I don't think I want to spend the time required to learn it. Who knows if I will still be interested in CG in a couple of years. I might decide to pick up a paintbrush again, or build a car, or start making jewelry… 
    So the idea at this point is to develop all the sets in a loose way, just enough to have fairly realistic 3D spaces we can use to make a storyboard and plan shots. I will be developing the script at the same time. When we know precisely where we are going and what sets or parts of sets we actually need, I will build these parts in 3D with more detail. While the closer parts of the set need to be full 3D, the more distant out of focus areas can be represented by a flat or curved background image(like the cityscape seen through the portholes of the spaceship).
      That way, we will render only what we need instead of the whole set.

POST 38: BUILDING 3D ARCHITECTURAL DETAILS

    Now that I have a basic layout, I need to start thinking about replacing the pictures of Architural Details by full 3D constructions. I will start with the portal, using this image as a departure point:

   I cut it up in simplified sections(base portal, columns, column bases, cornices), and made up those parts that couldn't be seen(column sides, horizontal planes, portal sides, etc...). I made properly shaped textures to bend with Ray Tracing into cylindrical parts for the moldings:

I built the basic Portal first, then started the more complicated task of building the 3D base for the columns:

     First, I made the series of moldings and made it a Precomp in AE:

   Then I rotated it 90 degrees left and right and fitted the three together, added the rectangular base and the flat horizontal surfaces to get this 3DPrecomp:

 Finally, I placed it in the Portal Precomp, duplicated it, and fit it at the foot of each column:

   It looks pretty good, now I have to build the cornice. I think I will remove the middle cornice that makes the image a bit too busy.

   What I am wondering is, since I am going to reuse a lot of the Precomps a number of times, is there a way to make them "instances", so After Effects only has to render them once? I will use this Portal as Altars  at the ends of the Transept and as upper part of the Main Altar. Many other Architectural details will be repeated throughout the "church"(cornices, pediments, niches, frames, columns, etc...), so it could save a considerable amount of processing power, and speed up rendering, which even with my fast machine, is painfully slow in this huge 10,000 x 8000 x 8000 pixels 3D space.

POST 37: THE BASIC REBUILT CHURCH

   I actually still don't know exactly what colors and textures will work best for the walls and ceilings, and that will evolve with time as I add 3D architectural detail: columns, arches, pediments, altar, niches, pulpit, balcony, organ, etc...
  So I used the same fairly basic irregular red ochre texture and friezes top and bottom all around the church, and the same blue vaulted ceilings, except for the Altar wall which I want to be different to give a sense of orientation within the church:

     The first thing I want to do is add arches and flat columns. So I created patterns in Photoshop that will be bent using Ray Tracing in AE and fit to the inside curve of the arches adjusting x,y,z scales separately:

     The first try using column textures matching the walls doesn't please me because they blend into the wall too much, so I will design columns matching the arches geometric patterns instead:

  Also, if I use the green/red/purple/yellow color scheme, which I like, the blue ceiling will have to turn purple or go, and I will probably custom design slightly different ones to fit the nave, the transepts and the choir. The walls will be eventually redone too with more geometric patterns on the frieze and wainscot

Post 36: REBUILDING THE CHURCH

   I enlarged the transept to match the nave and found a better Labyrinth to use as a Rosace at the center.
    On that footprint, I rebuilt with simple red ochre weathered walls and a more muted friese around the bottom. I used the same blue ceiling image, but customized it to fit the nave, the transepts, and the choir.
    Fitting the octogonal tower was still difficult, and I found that the straight line cut in the ceiling was wrong. I ended up creating a mask by trial and error so the opening seen from the top matched an octagonal template. Once I had the mask for the nave, I copied it to the transept and choir vaults:

    I then had to erase the texture I used for each half of the tower until it fit:

     Next came the hardest part, the dome... I need 8 triangular slices which will be curved using Ray Tracing. Instead of a solid texture, I chose to try an image I had by Anderea del Castanio:

   It is incomplete and distorted, but with a little Copying, pasting and cloning, I got a nice perfectly triangular slice:

   It turns out that once put in place around the 8 sides of the tower and curved in AE,  there is a gap between the slices, and they are a bit too long:

   So I used the Edit>Transform>Warp in Photoshop to shorten it and curve the sides out progressively until they touch:

POST 35: LESSONS FROM THE CHURCH TEST

    I am not going to push the test any further and build a dome which will need to be redone. I have learned enough to get to building the final church.
   First, in order to fit the octogonal tower properly and get clean edges with the vaults, I have to make the Transept the same width as the Nave. The only way I found  to do it  was to erase/clone part of the images in 2D until they more or less fit together in 3D. I tried masking, but the intersection between the octogone and the half cylindrical vaults was a double curve and I couldn't make it work. But I figured out that if I made the widths the same, the cuts in the vaults images would be a simple V shape instead of an empirical odd curved V:

 and I should get a perfect fit with regular curved cuts in the half tower images(I made a half octagon using ray tracing with a 4 segments setting in the geometric Options:

Post 34: Building a Test Churh

   I always like the idea of the "den/lab" of our strange "mad scientist/inventor" being in an old abandoned church with decaying frescoed walls and a vaulted ceiling.
  Seeing Terry Gilliam's "Zero Theorem" a couple of months ago confirmed my choice, and oriented my search for images and textures. The high vaults and the large cross shaped space will allow interesting camera moves, and can provide very dramatic images, and wonderful multicolored abstract backgrounds for close ups.
   Since I am working in After Effects, and am limited to single curves, the shapes have to remain simple.
I will use the basic cross shape:

    I cannot make a spherical dome over the crossing, but can fit in an octagonal tower with a dome in eight single curved sections:

   I decided to build a large test church just to see how it worked, and how AE handled the rendering on my faster solid state machine. That will also allow me to try different colors and textures. I started with a 6000 x 10,000 pixels canvas, which I had to eventually enlarge to 8000 x 10,000. THAT IS BIG!
   I placed wide angle virtual cameras at the four end of the cross to see what I was doing in space.
   I built the walls in Phoshop mixing textures, frieses, fresco fragments, paintings, and architectural details, imported them in AE, and put them in place.
   I used Ray Tracing to vault the ceilings and adjusted them to fit the width of the nave and the narrower transept:

   Here are various camera views of the space:

     A view down the nave from the door looking at the altar:

     A view down the nave from the Altar:

       A view of the Transept toward the right:

         A View of the Transept toward the left:

      A bird's eye view from the dome:

 A view from the floor looking up to the dome:

    A view of down the Altar from the nave vault:

       A view down the Transept from floor level: