Busy and backpedalling

The blog has been woefully quiet as of late. I've been really busy, but not much noteworthy of sharing here, unless you think me flailing my arms around and ranting about Maya crashes or Source bugs is entertaining. The animation portion of production is just about to be finished. All the model assets have been built and textured, and our last animator is finishing up the one remaining shot, and then it will be nothing but fixes, tweaks, and sound/music additions.

One thing I did decide this week was that I was not going to render the entire thing in mental ray for comparison to the game engine. It was important to my original idea, and it was sort of relevant to my amended project once the original idea was made obsolete. But now, so close to my project's completion, I realize that it's a little silly. My project is more about the process of making animation in a game engine than the comparison between the two, so why not just focus on that? Also, I must be honest, I'd rather use the time to focus on my upcoming job hunt.

So I have picked two shots. And a possible third if I decide it's necessary. I'm going to render those two out as high-quality as I can, point out the comparative difference between them, and wrap it up. So at the end we'll have:
-2:20 short film using game engine tech
-25 seconds of mental ray renders for select scenes
-A short visual comparison between the two

Think of the first part as the feature film, and the rest as DVD EXTRAS.