Major Project: Rendering Progress 2

 After Understanding the direction I was taking the animation in stylistically, I decided to begin rendering my scenes. However before I could do so, I had to texture both characters for each scene before they could be rendered. The reason why I did not have the characters textured while animating is due to me running into the problem that the characters would severely lag when I would move their joints around in the viewport. I was unsure why this was happening and so decided it would be better to just continue on with the animation process. However this now left me with 35 scenes which needed their textures applied. In hindsight, it was a mistake not to texture as it would have given me so much more time to render, however I could not find a reason for the character to be lagging online and really just wanted to get on with animating as I did not know how long it would take me. With that being said, I managed to get into a good workflow of texturing a scene, importing the lights from the previous scene, setting them up and rendering. It was a very tedious process, however I got on with it to ensure the completion of my animation. 

The image below shows the render setting I decided to go with

Below is the first scene I chose to render as It is my favourite shot and I was excited to see how it would look as a final product. I used a spotlight to isolate the characters in the scene, making them the attention. I really like the look the spotlight gives the characters, making them look like they are a miniature toy version of the my drawings. This render ended up taking 3 hours. 

As the last scene took so long to render, I decided to go with a less complex scene in order to see how it would effect the render time. I need to ensure that the settings I am using are going to be practical in order to meet the deadline. I set the spotlight to be in the centre of the scene in order to give the effect as if the Cyberpunk character is emerging from the shadows. I also like this placement as it gave a nice contrast to the Samurai's boot, which is intentionally placed to focus the attention towards the other character.

This shot only took 30 minutes to render and I was really happy with how it turned out. I decided to leave the settings on what they are as I really like how high quality it makes the character models look. I calculated that if each scene takes 3 hours to render (the worst case scenario), It will take roughly 6 full days to render. This still leaves me with another 4 before hand in, making it doable. This is also the worst case scenario, meaning not all render will actually take that long. 

After deciding on the settings I then started rendering the animation from the beginning and going scene by scene. I decided to apply an emissive map to the item the characters are fighting over in order to emphasis its importance and help keep track of it throughout the shots. It also stands out as a piece of technology, rather than just being an object the character has and its emission is reminiscent of the Cyberpunk character eye making the visual connection that they are of the same world. 

This shot was easy to light as the Samurai, being the main focus, takes up most of the frame. I directed the spotlight towards the upper part of his body as this is the part that actually moves in the animation, leaving his legs in the dark, making the pose look less awkward. 

The spotlight really helped me to hone in on what was really important in the shot. This paired really well with the minimal environment.

This is the last shot I completed and it is of the Cyberpunk character running to the jump over the bridge. I purposefully made it a very dark shot in order to add mystery as to who is approaching, however this is something I need to watch out for as I do not want the animation to be too dark.