Topic: Penn Hills Senior High School

[Brian Hengelsberg]

This is a working movie file combining multiple animations.  Work yet to do on the file is the addition of a classroom animation (which is why the spoken text goes longer then the animation), re-animation of the interior to correct the blinking in areas and fix the SSAO, and scene transitions tweaking.

 

[Simoni]

Pretty amazing, huge amount of work, looks great apart from the animated figures who look like your walking through a zombie asylum, Lumion desperately needs understated people, who maybe nod their heads slightly, shift their weight, just enough animation to show they are alive. Seems like Lumion is still in game design mode, Architectural visualisation needs subtle cameras defaults, subtle people, subtle landscape elements.

[Ferry]

Really great animation. I like all the content on the outside also a lot! Re-render the interior with our overdraw might help. I actually like the interior also a lot.

[Simoni]

Hi Ferry, what "is Re-render the interior with our overdraw" Lumion is brilliant, but anything that makes the interiors better is welcomed.

[Ferry]

In the update you can enable overdraw to fix SSOA problems.

[Brian Hengelsberg]

I am re-animating the interior with the overdraw settings as we speak.  Tweaked some of the materials and fixed some of the material depth settings.  I will post the new finalized animation file once it completes.   Thanks for the comments.

[Morten]

Top-notch work, Brian – a lot of effort has clearly gone into making this and it shows.

Out of curiosity, How long do you reckon it would have taken you to make a movie like this if you didn't have Lumion…?

(@Simoni: Regarding the characters, I think we can all agree that there is room for improvement – they were made on a shoestring budget )

[Brian Hengelsberg]

The short answer is that it would have never been done because of the man hours and time frames for deadline.  We would have complied Sketchup animations in conjunction with some still renders.  This software has been invaluable to us to create these animations in relatively short time-frames.  We are a small office, and there are only two of us generating the graphic portion of the office workload.

 

In regards to the figures.  Yes they are not perfect, but i think they help to add interest.  The last update made the most difference to me as i could animate the objects to move correctly.  I think it would go a long way to just darkened the clothing to give them a little more contrast.  I think doing that would help make the characters look a little less "zombie". 

 

I am hoping to use this in the future, and look forward to all of the hard work that has gone into all of the improvements!

[Philip Kelly]

AIPGH

I have a few questions if i may..........

 

1. What format did you bring  the model in to Lumion 3D?

2. Is it all one model?

3. Did you place all the trees on site?

4. How big was the model mb when you brought it in?

 

Looks great well done if i was a client I would be well chuffed.

 

Phil

[Brian Hengelsberg]

Phill,

1.) We used Sketchup for all of the models as this is part of our workflow.  We exported to Collada fies and 3ds files (we were experimenting with workflow for future projects as this was our first attempt.)  Clean model with diligently checking back faces is important.

2.) The exterior was 3 separate models, only due to us adding data as we found how well Lumion handled the geometry.  The building and site were all one model, the fields at the bottom of the hill (football and baseball), and the buss and cars other than the ones supplied with Lumion were the other two for exterior.  The main interior is one file, the gym, cafeteria, and auditorium were all separate (more on the separate files below).

3.)  All of the trees and landcape elements were placed onsite in Lumion.  Did not take that long, and gave me more control over placement in lieu of "painting" them like Cryengine and Farcry type gaming engines…although that would be nice for some areas (nudge to Lumion staff )

4.) The exterior with site and building was approximately 40 mb.  Interiors ranged from 10-40 mb depending on the view.

 

The only reason we used the separate files was because we were developing the model as we were trying out Lumion.  If i had all of the information at the start, i would not hesitate to put everything in one model as it seemed to handle anything i threw at it brilliantly.  Let me know if this helps or if you have any additional questions.  Thanks for the kind words and i look forward to comments as i update to the final movie (hopefully tomorrow).

 

Brian

[Brian Hengelsberg]

Video is in final stages of production.  Fixed the SSAO on the interior main shot, and added the classroom animation.  If i had a  little more time i would try to tweak it a little more, but you know how it goes.  Just for fun i added a second and third video we had produced 2 years ago when we were in the design phase of this project (all completed in Sketchup). Thanks for all the help and encouragement!

 

[Ferry]

It looks awesome! You can fix that blinking light though with the depth offset value. Also inside the building you might want a smaller SSOA range. I'll see if I can make that animatable.

[Frank]

I like the comic-style version. How did you create the materials with outlines?

[Brian Hengelsberg]

Ferry,

I adjusted teh deapth settings for both materials, the emitting and the one that would be "behind" it and still could not get the blinking to go away.  Seemed as i turned up the emittance the more it happened.  Small issue that i am OK with right now as time is running short, and this interior takes about 12-14 hours to annimate.

 

I agree with the SSAO comment, although i might leave it for now.  One thing i did notice is that there is almost a halo around the people objects that causes flicker at the SSAO when the camera moves past.  All in all minor things that i can deal with, and most people (clients who are not in the industry) will not notice.

 

I think i have reviewed the thing so much that i pick out the most minute details, but they are things that will change how i work on the next project.  I will post if we change anything other than the "trial" text at the beginning of the video.  Keep the suggestions and comments coming; it all helps!



@ Frank,  the "comic-style version was a video export directly out of Sketchup.  We kept the outlines in the edges in our style dialogue, ajusted all timing, and added a frame mask all within sketchup.  So maybe misrepresented putting it up on this forum as it was not a Lumion file (just thought it was good for a comparison.)

[Frank]

What a pity. I´ll put outlines on the wishlist