WHen your not satisfied improvise...

So its not 7am now and I started working on laying out this scene at 7pm yesterday haha... its finally done now... I came to the point where I wanted some burning tree branches in the scene... At first I tried making it look "real" by using an image sequence of real fire stock I got off the web on top of specially textured wood to make it look like it was burning and some Xpresso controlled visible lights to mimic flickering fire... ahhh the stock fire sucked so I got my Canon hf100, some crumpled paper, rubbing alcohol and matches... it was 5am still dark... I burned some on the back porch and shot it... the close ups of the embers looked really nice but smoke was spewing in my face...my eyes got red and I choked but I still got the shots ^ ^ So then I had to convert and luma key the footage...while AE was rendering that I got a new idea and made some "motion graphic" fire using Cinema 4d's Mograph module...and it was SUITE! ^ ^ So forget the real thing... just improvise and stylize I say...

Actually I've been using the Mograph module a ton in the film... its great to layout scenes and disperse objects with random patterns... I use it pretty much everyday... and oh yeh this scene after being optimized came down to 1.6 million polys... even with everything turned on I get 40+fps in the viewport...not too bad... I'll use layers to turn everything off but the "Main area" where animation takes place once I get down to that... ah render is done...now I can go to sleep I guess...another battle tomorrow...Brought to you by professional weirdo M dot Strange.