niedziela, 29 lipca 2012

Big bad wolf

I've taken pictures of a lot of murals yesterday, but for now I'll just post my favourite. I love everything about it - be it colors, composition or details. It's a work of art! Kudos to the author.




Anyway, I didn't work too much on the dragon model, it's too hot to stay inside for too long, and when I actually sat down in front of the screen, I read a bit about rendering and texturing in zbrush. I promise to work some more tomorrow. I'll try to post some bigger work in progress editor shots soon.

czwartek, 26 lipca 2012

More murals!

Here are some parts of murals that I've taken pictures of today. I'll have to come back again later when there won't be any cars in the way. The first picture is just one part of a very long wall covered in murals. Later I'll try to merge the pictures together.

 These two pictures were also on the same wall, oddly enough it seems that at one point a part of the wall was taken down, and the mural with it.. It's a shame that I didn't get to see it.



Anyway, I'm still working on the dragon hopefully I'll finish it in the following days. I also have to come up with my logo and finish the facelift of the blog. Hm..

Zbrush and murals

It's been a couple of days since my last post. But that doesn't mean I'm slacking! I've been modelling this funny, fairy tale dragon in zbrush. It's based on a short series of illustrations made by my girl friend. It isn't done yet but I must admit that I like it already. I've learned a lot about zbrush, it's a really handy tool and I really enjoy working with it. Next I want to make a HD remake of sarge (quake player model) for my next movie project. I'm really excited about it.

Anyway, changing the subject, the city I live in right now, has a lot of street art known as murals. I thought it would be pretty neat to go around the city and take pictures of each of them. Today I've taken picture of the first one. Apparently it shows a destroyed bridge and trains that are falling into water. Pretty cool I must admit. It gets a lot of attention too, because it's really close to a big shopping centre and the main railway station. Actually, the brick buildings that you can see in the background on the right are a bridge with rails. So yeah, this mural clearly relates to that.


It's signed M-City, no clue if it's the title or the author. This photograph is a begining of a seriee. Expect more of these soon. Anyway, tell me what do you think, does this mural impress you? Do you think that I should post more photos of interesting things that I see?

sobota, 21 lipca 2012

Facelift in progress

As some of you might've noticed I've already made some changes to the blog. More stuff will follow soon, maybe a template change even. Opinions on the current look?

piątek, 20 lipca 2012

Upcoming blog facelift

Today I have some stuff to do and then I gotta catch my train back to Wrocław. But tomorrow I'll start upgrading my blogs visual side, the background from the q3 add will go byebye, it's a bit sad beacause I got somewhat attached to it over the years but it's just no good:) Hell5pawn videos is going to get more serious, we'll see how it works out.

czwartek, 19 lipca 2012

Polish railways

Sorry for a post not related to gaming.

Right now I'm sitting in a train that connects south and north of Poland. I woke up at 4:30am to get on this train, after 26 kilometers (out of a total of 469 km), we have to wait bacause there was an accident ahead. We'll probably wait around 2 hours.. and that's not all, because there was another accident two days ago, and it's further ahead. I'll have to take a replacement route by a bus. From the place I am at now I can't find a bus or anything. *sigh* Sorry for the negative post! Back to video editting soon:)

środa, 18 lipca 2012

The afterspray 2 - DreamHack

Woohoo, it's here! After almost a month I finally finished my latest movie. For those who do not follow my blog. It's a Quake Live frag highlight movie from the biggest international LAN event, DreamHack (held twice a year, in winter and summer). Exactly a month ago, 32 quake players gathered there to compete against each other in order to win the tourney. The movie I made showcases the best frags (kills). I always try to do something original in my movies. This time I used the in-game configurations of each of the players to show their own frags with. As a result, while watching you see what the player did while playing. I think it's an interesting approach, but I am also aware that some viewers might dislike it.


Alternative stream: own3d.tv
Download link: MaverickServers
Post on ESReality.com

There's a bonus in the download link, the movie file is zipped along with all the shown configurations, I've also added a little readme file that describes how to install those. If anyone has any trouble with them, feel free to ask.

Now I can get back to my other movie project! More info soon.



wtorek, 17 lipca 2012

*drum roll*

So yeah, the movie is pretty much ready. I've rendered / compressed the final version and as always still found some minor flaws that can be fixed. The movie is alright as it is, but I want to polish those details. The video is a bit over 3 minutes long. Which might be too short for some people. But I put quality over quantity, and I'd rather make a short video that leaves the viewer wanting to see more (most likely will watch the video again), than a long video that might bore the viewer halfway through. Long videos require much more interesting content, which is quite hard to gather nowadays.

Anyway, I'm going back to polishing the video, I'll release it later today.

niedziela, 15 lipca 2012

Almost done - DH highlights

I'm close to finishing my latest movie. For those that don't follow my blog frequently, I'm working on a quick Dreamhack summer 2012 quakelive frag highlights movie (phew, that was long :)). Initially, I wanted to make it for the recent Republic of Gamers movie making contest, but due to some personal stuff that took priority over finishing the movie, I missed the deadline. I didn't drop the project though, and so I'll be finishing the movie shortly. I'm missing a proper intro, ending, name tags, and some final touches. Other than that, the release might be delayed my current poor internet connection. Heck, I might even might go find a good hotspot to upload it! I'll figure something out:))


piątek, 13 lipca 2012

Doh

The deadline passed and the movie still isn't done. It was a very busy week for me. Sorry for the delay, I didn't want to release the movie in a state I wasn't happy about. It'll be done soon!

niedziela, 8 lipca 2012

Working hard

I'm doing my best to make it before the deadline, I didn't start capturing footage yet though... Had to test some settings and figure out the best values. But I'll be capturing footage today and tonight for sure.

Recently there were some movies released, one of them has pretty much the same content as the movie I'm working on. It covers the same esports event after all.  But I can already tell you that my movie isn't going to be anything like it. There will be another DH summer 2012 movie besides mine. (or more? heh) It's actually interesting bacause it will be a first for me to be able to be compared to other movies with such similar content.
There also was another movie released, it's an entry to the RoG movie contest. (the one I'm taking part in too). The guy abused sony vegas transitions, and thus ruined a decent movie. Pity.

sobota, 7 lipca 2012

Home sweet home!

Today I finished the semester at uni and came back home. I'll be staying here for a couple of days before heading out to Wrocław (polish city) to spend the vacations with my girl friend.
So yeah, I have a couple of days left to the deadline and I'll be trying hard to make it in time. I was thinking a lot about the concept of the movie and I'm pretty sure what I want to do. Tomorrow I'll start capturing footage and possibly start putting it into sony vegas.
I also want to make some changes on my blog. I was thinking about adding pages and lists of tags. There would be a page with my movies, a page about me and a page with tutorials (which I have to write first hah!) So yeah, no slacking!

wtorek, 3 lipca 2012

One hundred thousand views


Today, the number of views combined from all my movies on my youtube channel passed 100000! I'm happy about reaching this milestone. But there's no time for kicking back and celebrating. I have a week left till the dealine.

Back to work!


poniedziałek, 2 lipca 2012

Settings

Right now I'm getting ready to start capturing footage from the demos I've picked. Before I start doing that, I have to know what in-game configuration (cfg), resolution and frame rate I want to use.
I already know that the video resolution will be 1280x720 (limitted by the competition rules). I'm not yet sure about the config, as I want to try out something different. As for frame rate, I want to add some motion blur to the video, but not too much. I can achive that in two ways - by using a wolfcamql command called mme_motionblurframes or by capturing the video with a higher frame rate and then lowering it in vegas.
I'm going to try different values until I'm happy with the outcome.
I was also playing around with the codecs. For the first time I made a low quality template for rendering fast previews to check if the video and audio are synchronised together properly, I don't need high quality to check that. In my previous projects I used to render short parts in max quality just to check if something is right. Such a waste of time! With the deadline closing in, I don't have time for that, so these LQ previews will work wonders. ;)  I was also looking for some real high quality settings.. and I found some but it was compressing veeery slowly (5 seconds took 10 minutes to compress), so I'll have to play around some more with different values. Such things take time but they're necessary if you want to make the movie properly. More news soon!