Hi, all --

You might remember around December of last year, I was making inquiries about models of the San Francisco MUNI trains. Well, none were around, so I've built my own. Here's a still of the interior (obviously enough, I guess). This is a frame from the no-budget feature I'm working on called Pandemonium.

Just thought folks would like to see how it's progressing. There are 136 shots in the train sequence alone (about 3 and a half minutes on screen), all of which have at least some 3D elements, plus AfterEffects compositing and other opticals. When the sequence is done, I'll compress it and post it on my site.

All the 3D work is Carrara.

• Dex

Looking forward to it Dex! Mark

Great work Dex! I like how it's hlding up to interiors. What res are you working at? 720x540? Or higher? Any tricks to help with the compositing?

Looks great! -Kix

-Kix

I was wondering how it was going, looks good, anxious to see more.

Thanks for the comments, everyone. The backgrounds are rendered at 846 x 480 -- that's Photoshop's square pixel dimensions for an NTSC Widescreen standard definition image. The video is shot in 16:9 .9 pixel aspect ratio, so it's 720 x 480, but when stretched out to square pixels comes up to 846 x 480. We're doing the composites in After Effects, using Keylight and a few compositing tricks I've learned along the years. The footage was shot in front of lime green fleece (I now am the proud owner of two bolts of lime green fleece). For this particular shot the character walks from the window to the driver's compartment (on the left side of the shot) around the foreground element and looks out the window of the train (that we're looking through, more or less). He steps around the foreground wall and then appears in front of it, so I cut a masked version of just the foreground element with a pixel or two of feathering to put Cal (the actor) behind the wall and pipe, then faded it out when he was to appear in front of the wall element. Foreground elements do a lot to sell a shot, I think. I played with the levels on the video to get them to more or less match the color temp inside the train and that's about it. It is a pain to strike decent keys from DV footage, but we're getting it down to a science. The buildings whirring by in the background, by the way, are also Carrara stuff. Pretty low resolution buildings moving by and blurred in After Effects (which is a lot faster than using the 3D blur in C4P). I'm excited it's coming together, so please forgive me for blathering on.

I love to hear how things come together and the tricks involved! Please, blather on more! LOL. :D Glad to hear your progress. Keep it up!

Very impressive!