How I Spent my October
So, right out of the gate, I created a new short animated video, which you can find here:
Mind you, not everyone will dig it, because:
It has heavy metal music for the backtrack, and I am aware that some of the folks on this list are not as appreciative of that musical form as others.
It is wholly self-indulgent.
I made this for my D&D group, partly because the imagery was playing around in my head for months, but also because it was a handy excuse to play around in the Blender 3D program again. The video is built out as an opening credit sequence for the new “season” of the campaign I am currently running, and lists out a lot of the major characters that the players have met or will meet in the upcoming sessions.
I had wanted to finish this before we started the campaign back up, which was to take place during our yearly gaming meet-up the six of us have, dubbed (appropriately enough) “Dorktoberfest.” Thanks to the hefty rendering times, though, I was running out of time and had to make some big changes.
The first was moving all of my work to my laptop and bringing it along with me to finish up on-site. Indeed: the first couple of days during our retreat, as others were running games, I would be running in and out of my room to check on the video status and set up the next rendering session.
Now, my laptop is a strong one, but even it was buckling under the weight of the computer animation, complete with light blooms and particle explosions. I wound up cutting back on all sorts of rendering settings to get the thing done, and gadzooks, boom goes the dynamite, I managed to finish it in time. Thanks to some tech know-how by one of my friends, I was able to “Premiere” the video on the TV in the living room before we started the session, and a good time was had by all.
But, upon my return home, I immediately set about rendering from the beginning again, this time to really smooth out a lot of the rough edges. Even on the powerhouse desktop I have, it took another 10 days or so to finish the updated video, but it was worth every drop of blood, sweat, and tears.
The new video had the following upgrades made:
The render settings in general were boosted up. Not to max settings, of course, but enough that I could clearly see an improvement, especially in the areas of shadow.
I was able to animate the textures on the magic orbs; I had thought I had done this in the original, but it never showed. Not sure what happened, but works now!
One of the biggest improvements was the particles; not just the look of them (going from a flat color to one with a bright center that faded off), but also getting a consistent flow. Turns out that when making the particle animations, unless you “bake” them so they are set for the full timeline, you can get moments where they suddenly start and stop. So, it was great to have them working smoothly this time.
Minor point, but I changed the font back to Apollo Small Caps; I had that set originally, but the laptop didn’t have the font, so I had to swap it out at the last minute. It was good to swap back, though, as it made reading the names much easier.
There are more, but those were the highlights that really made it look more “lit.”
What I really enjoyed about this was that I actually did take the time to clean up the sequence and render it out again. It would have been very easy to just leave the video as is, since the big reveal was already over, and honestly, it was meant for an audience of five, so I wasn’t looking to impress anyone else. And if there is one thing I’m overqualified for, it’s leaving people unimpressed.
That said, it was great to take that extra time to clean things up, make a few changes to the camera work, tighten up the visuals, and make things a bit more clear to the viewer. It reminded me a lot of my art school days where I never really felt like I had a chance to really polish up my work the way I wanted to. Back then, once something was finished, I already had like 5 new assignments piled on that needed to be dealt with, so returning to do more polish for my own enjoyment was out of the question.
I actually have a stack of old school work that I want to redo for this reason. Assignments where I still really like the core idea behind the work, but the execution is off either because it was never properly finished or I just didn’t have the skill / know-how to pull off the look I wanted. The goal is to eventually redo all of those works to my own satisfaction. And when I do, share with the “class.”
So, that’s one reason behind the resurrected Fireside Chat Logs: I can let folks know when I have something new finished, and where to find it. But another reason is to just keep in touch with family and friends more often. It gives me a good reason to focus more on my writing, again. Not sure how often these letters will go out; maybe every other week, or once a month, or maybe just a few times a year. Regardless, I’m sure it’ll be a fun ride.
As I’m sure Captain Max Pruss of the LZ 129 Hindenburg no doubt once said, “What could possibly go wrong?”