Problems and solutions

The group had many problems rendering this week which was due to textures not being in the right place. We had to re apply textures for some of the scenes as some of the files were sourced on other group member's laptops. The problem was easily rectified. This was done by reloading the textures on the faces concerned. This hampered render time but the problem was resolved. We learned our lesson. In order for Maya to retain the textures when transporting files one must set the project within the maya directory otherwise the textures do not appear within the scene. This happened several times when group members transported files via memory drives. 

Once we had all the necessary scenes we then started to render the images as targas on the render farm. Targa files would enable us to display the scene as a layer within after effects. In after effects we could then edit the images and turn the static shots to moving images. We could also include smoke effects as well as adjust light levels and colours to suit our needs. We thought that by rendering the images on the render farm using cube we would be able us to quickly render scenes for their eventual transportation to after effects. However, we encountered many problems when rendering on the farm. The issues included files not being red properly by the cpus as well as the render farm taking considerable amounts of time to identify the files it needed to render. We also discovered that the render farm was only really compatible using mental ray. When we tried mental ray our scenes became very pixelated and unusable. To overcome this major setback, we decided as a group that we would render each scene on different laptops. The process was laborious but saved huge amounts of time. Whilst at home we could render of scenes and edit them during the day. By using all available laptops we maintained good, continuos workflow. This caused some issues when transferring targas and desktops became messy with files floating around.

I think we made the right decision by rendering scenes on our laptops instead of the render farm.

This was because as more people were using the render farm it became overloaded with information. If we had begun rendering in the final week, I think we would have struggled to finish the project. However, because of the teams good communication and Ben Keswick's excellent leadership we finished rendering ahead of schedule. Because of this, we were able to deal with any problems that arose in the post production process effectively. Although the quality of our work was reduced slightly because we did not use mental ray the work output was greatly improved. The decisions we made as a team enabled us to produce a film that met the brief's requirements.

we encountered some difficulties when it came to editing the targa sequences in after effects. These included loss of images because files were not named properly. I think if we were to do another project like thin in the future we will ensure that files are named correctly and were easy to find which would save time for other procedures.