Onto the Next Phase of “The Barrier”

GeorgeWalksUp_304

I made some very good progress  on “The Barrier” this week. I completed the backgrounds for the “open house” scene and composited them into the scene. Now I can get onto the next phase.

I gave up on trying to convert the orientation parameters in Xtranormal into their equivalent in Blender. I came up with a more brute force method that worked out OK.

I used the location markers in Xtranormal to identify the corners of each camera’s frame. Next, I unzipped the state file, edited the document.xml file and got the location marker coordinates. I used those coordinates to create a plane in Blender which formed a target that I used to adjust the orientation and focal length of the camera.

It was slow going to begin with, but it went faster as I did more. Of course, now that I have what I need, I won’t likely need to use it again. In my work in transportation models it was often that I would spend a long time working out how to do something, use it once and then never use it again.

Next week I can start on the next phase of the project. Some of the scenes have stuff like computer screens that I left as green screens. I have the images I want for most of them, but will need to do a few more. Then I can composite them into the scenes.

I’ve started to think about the sound. I have all the dialogue and some sound effects already done, but there are some long stretches of silence I want to fill in. Also, I think some other scenes could be improved with appropriate background noise.

Note: You can watch version 0.6 of “The Barrier” here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATcKnFAwlU0 I hope to have a final version done some day.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.