Blog #4: That was a MASH

Well, here we are again. Working and working. The bayou was not as simple as we all thought, that is for sure. What was scheduled to take only a week, took about three. I think this was based around all of us not understanding the scale as to which we were wanting the bayou to be, the intricacies of MASH networks, and the overall scope of the changes wanted. There is no fault to pointed at anyone, other than our lack of experience with such things as a group. But that can change as we work through issues. I will say, that it was touch and go for a while, especially working with the MASHes we wanted in the set. However, a little teamwork, creative Googling and other work arounds, we finally were able to solve the major issues that were causing the scene to take up to 1 hour to load in. TIME NODES!!!! If we never found that article talking about these little buggers and how they can bog down an entire scene just from one MASH network, I would be bald. Anyways, once that was figured it was pretty smooth sailing. Although, as I was going through models and things to use, I began to notice a little discrepancy between some of the more realistic looking props and the cartoony ones. We’ll see if anyone notices them!
But overall, it’s coming together. I wish I had someone from the team to help directly, but they’re all pretty busy with all that animating so I can’t blame them for not being able to help too much. We’re all doing our parts. Next up is lighting the whole thing, so that’ll be interesting. Usually, I have a camera and an animation already set up when I start lighting, but I’ve been asked for general lighting of the whole set. We’ll see how that goes, but I have some ideas I want to implement, like fireflies and such but I’ll just have to take it one step at a time.

Below will be some progress pictures, but other than that, this is it for the time being. LIGHTING NEXT TIME!!!