Update 09.08.09

Imports, imports, and more imports. Oh, and some rendering too. The scene is really coming together and we're importing the assets into the main file. More to show on Thursday!

Update 09.03.09

We have a ton of stuff modeled and textured and are now getting things imported intot he scene. Here's an example lighting test that was done.

Update 08.11.09

Got some trees cooking in the pot right now. Should be done soon. We also have some doors that have been finished normals mapping. We also have some siding, mailboxes and lights that are just about finished. Here's a taste:

Keeping It Low

Since we have a large amount of footage to render, we need to make sure that we keep our polygon counts and texture sizes appropriate for distance to the camera. In other words, if you aren't going to see it, then it doesn't need to be there. Se are going to be using lower detail assets in the background and higher detail assets in the foreground.

One trick we are using to do this is to bake out the higher polygon detail of some of our higher resolution assets onto our low polygon assets. We can get things looking pretty close to their higher polygon counter parts while keeping our render times to a minimum. Here's an example of the higher polygon asset next to the lower polygon asset with the detail baked into it:

As you can see we can get a lot of detail with very little actual geometry. Currently we are using Xnormal to generate the cavity maps (or ambient occlusion maps) and our normals maps. We also plan on using it to bake the textures from the higher resolution objects into our low resolution ones. So in the end we can spend very little time creating two versions of the same thing.

More to come.

What are we doing here?

This blog is dedicated to the development of the 3D accident recreation for Choices 301. We are using Autodesk Maya, Photoshop and whatever else we can get our hands on to create a fully realized recreation of a very horrific accident. All work is being completed by our current students and alumni.

The goal is to put the viewer in the driver's seat. They will see what sees. We are going to be rendering our end product in stereoscopic 3D in order to further immerse the viewer in the experience. The end result will hopefully be a tool used to raise awareness of the consequences of drinking and driving.

If you want to learn more about Choices 301 and what they do you can check them out here: http://choices301.com/

Benjamin Barnard