Post 31: Where am I ?

   Up bright and early as usual, and the computer still has at least an hour to go churning out the rendering of the Agnus Dei, which ends the Program, with its long list of credits going back to Louis XIII...
  Last night while I was doing my 3 required hours of daily reading, I rendered what I hope to be the final corrected version of the Graduate.
  Since that prevents me from using After Effects, but the 16 processors are not quite going full blast,

I can answer some emails, and write the Blog until it finishes.

   I was a little desperate for a while when the computer slowed down to a crawl working on the second part of the Offertories, but I seem to have found the issue, and am back working as normal.

  It is the 15 minutes movement in two parts for which I rebuilt Marie Antoinette's little Theatre at Trianon.

   In the first part, the camera flies around a near empty theatre, from the backstage the balconies and back. I have struggled with the second part, and tried to figure out what to do, I have no inspiration from the music, as it it my least favorite part of the Requiem.

   My first intention was to turn Virtual Lights and Shadows on in after Effects, and recreate the candle lighting of the period. That would have required dozens of points of light, each creating a separate shadow.

 I started doing it, creating a big chandelier,  a ramp of stage lights, and reflector lights hanging behind each set and around the sides of the stage. First, I used images of flames, and created a sequence of a man lighting the big chandelier after it was lowered to the floor. I went as far as creating a movie of a candle flame burning so the the candles would flicker realistically if I offset the movies out of synch. It looked good, but when I got past 3 dozen lights or so, the computer started getting bogged down with all the calculations required as I added more lights and turned more and more shadows on. Also, each candle movie made it slower, and when I tried to make each of the dozens of virtual points of light flicker, it  was becoming so slow O finally realized my ambitions were too high , even for my "Uber Machine"...

   So I am going to have to use the flat even lighting, and use an adjustment layer on top with the Curves, Exposure and Hue/Saturation Effects to "fake" it and modulate the lighting. 

  The first part is still rough, but is basically done, though a lot remains to be adjusted.I considered rebuilding the attic above the stage with all the wooden wench machinery, but that would be another huge job and time is now limited...

  I finally got another idea for the second part of the piece a couple of days ago, and that requires building a full basement under the Stage.

   That is the pit into which the sets are lowered through slots in the floor of the stage:

 

  My two sets of "décors", the trees and the kitchen, are already built and fully workable. All I had to do is add a dirt  floor and four rough brick walls to complete the room. But then I started thinking it would also have been a storage place for old sets and props of all kind, and I started filling it with stuff. I modified one of my paper puppets to make him a stage worker.

   It is beginning to take shape, and I hope the limited number of objects will allow me to do the lighting I had hoped for upstairs: