Bible Animations

This week's vlog entails a lot. It's shorter, but from a general look back, this may have been the most productive week yet!

- Statues
   Another particle distribution, this one is much smaller. Only about 6 statues. Having said that, making 1 took enough effort, hahaha. I cannot thank GOD enough for HIS insights into how to make it properly. It was so well configured that it worked superbly for Freestyle, even though that was not the final goal.
Additionally, it does need a few textures. At the moment, it does have the global wall texture, but you can't really tell - they look perfectly smooth. Plus, there are no dents or chips or anything that would indicate what materials were used in their construction. The hieroglyphics so far look amazing! I am so thankful and so amazed! GOD is so good!!

- Palace and temple similarities
   Because the kings of old were pretty much equated as being the mouth for the gods and sometimes even being worshiped, it is not surprising that specifically pharaoh's palace looks a lot like a temple. Same kinds of structures. Having said that, I'm no Egyptologist so I can't speak as to the 100% accuracy of that statement, but if you go and do the research yourself, you will see exactly what I mean. :)

- Details on every wall
   The Egyptians pretty much had hieroglyphics on every surface - even on some of the actual statues. Like there may be writing on the tassles or whatever. Everywhere you looked, you had the opportunity to read something, hahaha. Not saying that's a bad thing, but it does mean a very very large amount of detail. In the case of hieroglyphics, GOD had me create a font and I can use that to amazing effect, but having so many textures in a single scene, is very resource intensive. This week, GOD allowed me to reduce the textures' resolution by 50% and the difference that made is indescribable - in terms of render time, it takes just under 20seconds for a 50% HD frame to render.
   That does bring me to another point, which is MIP Maps. MIP Maps is a method for the computer to fade between different resolution textures, making it easier for the computer to handle a very large texture. The acronymn, according to wikipedia, means "much in little" in Latin. Which would make sense, since that is the goal. Keep your textures sharp, but open some resources! hahaha.
Blender has a very good grip on this and it makes a very big difference to your render times without any visual difference. What surprised me was the amount of difference it made in render times - even more ironic was that oversetting it to reduce the resolution, actually made it slightly slower from the default settings. Sharp MIP Maps actually give you better render speeds - GOD is so good! HE always gives me more and more clever ways of reducing render times (which in 3D means a lot!!!). To sum it up:
 - Use MIP Map generation on your image textures
 - Low eccentricity value (the lower, the faster)
 - Set your filter size as low as possible (0.1) and don't tick minimum filter size, unless you are sure that is what you want to do, because it will blur far off textures like you would not believe.

- Particle double placement
   A conundrum for sure! No matter how much I work at it, Blender just does not have stability when it comes to particle modelling. It still wanted to put a pillar over another pillar with the exact number of vertices and particles... No idea why. The best thing I can think of is to make sure there are more than enough vertices and more than enough particles and try to get all the right ones filled (?), hahaha. GOD did give me two tips this week though:
- Always check for doubles, even if Blender doesn't see them
- Always check for double placement before your final render (doesn't always show in the viewport, but will in the render)

- List still to-do
   This has been probably the biggest project so far that GOD has assigned me. I can honestly say that it is a lot bigger than I anticipated. More textures, modeling, rigging, etc. I do appreciate the challenge and I also do appreciate the accountability of the vlogs, because I can't vlog nothing, hahahaha. GOD knows me better than I know myself - HE insisted I vlog about it.
So what is on the agenda:
- Trees
- Fields (crops, sand and grass)
- Animals
- Transport (chariots mainly, but also pharaoh's carrier)
- Extras (people - egyptian and hebrew)
- Decor (like pots, furnaces, fire stands, cups, etc.)
- Buildings (gonna re-use what I can from Esther, but a lot has to be done from scratch)
- Environments (other plants, hills, rivers, etc.)
- Voices + Sound Effects (luv sound effects - would like to try Melodyne for the voices - I heard a short demo, and the voice timbre change was very clean, but would have to download the trial to see how good it really is.)
- Animation + Render + Edit (a process that happens only after the voices, but goes with sound effects and music).

- Overall length of production:
   Considering how long it usually takes me to do a chapter (5 months roughly), I can't say how long 6 will take. The best calculation that comes to mind atm is 5x6, which is 2.5 years, but I don't think it will take that long (in fact, I pray it does not take that long, hahaha!). I really don't know how long this will take, but I can say this, as long as GOD enables me to make these, you'll be able to see the progress as it happens! :D

Keep praying for us though - we are definitely being opposed as a family, but we see GOD's faithfulness all the time! Your prayers are sooo appreciated!

Now for some videos!


Blender and Make Human are paramount to my workflow and I cannot say thank you enough for these resources!! Thank you LORD for blessing these people with amazing skills and generosity to pass these things on and thank YOU that I get to share the knowledge YOU pass on to me as well!

Be sure to stop by the ministry's (Cross Allegiance) website as well as our facebook page. I know you'll be immensely blessed!!