Post 30: Mission Accomplished, for the moment

 Well, the building of Versailles has at last been completed, as shown in the screenshot below:

 The Menagerie is not in it's proper place, but I wanted to get a tight aerial view of the whole thing.

 But the animation remains to be done at the tune of the Agnus Dei.

 I am a little tired of looking at the damn thing for days on end, so I will move back to the Offertorium and Marie Antoinette Jewel Mini Theatre for a change...

Post 29: Long Hours, Long Days of Tedious Architect Work

  I have almost finished putting together the buildings of my Virtual Paper Versailles, and need a short break before I assemble the small but very intricate Menagerie building:

  So I took some screen shots and am posting them to give you an idea of the complexity of this crazy project. I definitely know the layout of Versailles now!

  Top view:

   Front view:

  Back view:  

  Left view:

   
  Right  view:

   Front aerial view:

  Back aerial view:

   I will be able to put a camera on a path, and move it all over the grounds as the different buildings come out of the ground in stages.
   If time allows, I would like to start adding trees, bushes,fountains, and small paper figures. 

Post 28: So Much to do, so Little Time in a Day

   I have not posted for a while simply because I have been too busy to post. Working on the theatre of course, but also working on the other sequences, day after day.
   Some are about completed, but some still require a lot of long hours on the computer.
   I spent a lot of time refining the walk through the gallery of paintings, adding more figures, and turning them to face the camera as it snakes through the virtual space, refining and smoothing out the camera path up and down and around the paper figures trying to achieve the best angles. It is getting close:

  So I put it aside and got to work rebuilding Versailles, virtually of course and out of paper. Still, as any construction job, it is taking way more work and time than expected. The castle was added on and on and on and modified for over a hundred years... 
  The building of the paper replica is divided in 8 stages:
 

  Every building has to be broken up in single flat components, either wall or roof, that have to be named. And there are hundreds of them, small and big:

  Then, every single component has to be made a layer in AfterEffects, placed in 3D space , oriented properly along the x,y,z axis, and fitted together precisely with its neighbors. Every piece of roof has to be angled and fitted properly. It is like a huge jigsaw puzzle IN SPACE. I learned a lot about the castle that, and love doing it.

Post 27: Almost there!

  Well, I knew when I started it was going to be a big undertaking, and it definitely has been. 

  To be able to move the camera everywhere in the space means that I had to create an entire backstage area, and a back side for the sets, the curtains,etc...

 I am particularly fascinated with the beautiful elaborate wooden machinery of the theater, which is located above the rafters in the "attic":

   It is sort of an 18th century "Steampunk", and I would love to recreate this hidden part of the theatre and show it off. Most people "down below" never knew it existed.

   So I did build "antique" wooden beams and laid down a floor with the boards spaced far enough apart to allow for the passage of the ropes that moved sets up and down from the large pit underneath the stage:

 That is one of the things that makes this particular theatre special. I assume the reason for it is that the Queen didn't want the building to stand out, the exterior is actually quite ordinary. But the machinery was state of the art , and designed by Boulet from the "Opera de Paris".

  I just don't know if I will have time to recreate all those winches and make them turn.

  Getting the curve right on the balconies and cutting their flooring was quite difficult, and I will not be able to rebuild the domed ceiling in After effect. We will have to make do with a flat "illusion" 

    I am almost there...

  

  
  

Post 26: Le Theatre de la Reine

    I have been doing a great deal of research on the little theatre Marie Antoinette had built near the Trianon, and have become so enamored with it that I plan to try and see it next time I am in Paris. It is not open to the general public, but I will have to find a way to see it.
  I have a rough blueprint:

and also colored front and side views:

   So I know the relative dimensions of the structure, and they are quite unusual. For one thing, the stage area is actually larger than the audience area. The theatre was obviously designed specifically for Marie Antoinette's needs, which were to perform herself with her friends in front of a restricted group of friends(about 100 seats).   
   The orchestra "pit" is quite substantial, and slightly raised from the main floor. The seating was on plain benches, with a "parterre", a raised area along the curved walls separated with a balustrade , and a balcony wrapping around the oval shaped theatre:

   Another very interesting and unusual thing is that unlike most theaters where the sets go up in the rafters to be stored and come down when needed, in this little jewel the sets are stored below the stage, and come up through slits in the stage flooring. This can be clearly seen in the side view, and in that wonderful picture shot from backstage that even shows how the sets are built of linen canvas on wooden frames, and canvas panels hung above:

  This shows the same set from another angle, and the double rows of slots in the stage are clearly seen:

  There were to sets readily available, reflecting the young queen's taste for a country life, one of a large rustic stone walled kitchen with a fireplace:

and the other of a long alley through a forest with a canopy of trees in early fall:

  I also found an image of a set of a contemporary palace suite of rooms:

  Having collected all the information and images I could find, I cut them up and straightening them up to build a collection of parts. I actually had to make up the main curtain and the stage floor with slots and trap doors:

   Then yesterday, I actually started building a "near replica" in 3D in After Effects:

   There is still an awful lot to do, but I can definitely see the possibilities, using a lot of period paper dolls both as actors and musicians on stage and as the audience: looking at the stage for the back of the audience, looking at the audience from the stage, roaming camera moving around, changing sets, etc... The possibilities are endless. In a first stage, the paper dolls would be whole, but if there is time, some could be cut in parts and animated...   I am really excited about this sequence.

Post 25: A New Idea

    I may not have been working on the project directly in After Effects in the last month, but I stayed "in character" so to speak, with the theme of the project while reading several excellent books about the French Revolution, the French Court, Versailles, and a detailed Biography of Marie Antoinette. 
   I learned that Marie Antoinette built near the Trianon a small theatre called "Le Théatre de la Reine" where she would put on plays, operas and ballets with her family and friends. I never had the opportunity to see it, and it was rather difficult to find decent photographs, it is an absolute jewel of a place:

   The look of it remind me in some way of the Antique Toy Theaters I had researched before. I have among my collection of "virtual paper dolls" some Puppeteers, Singers, Dancers, and various figures that could be animated on a virtual 3D stage. 
   So I started thinking of a sequence that would take place partly on stage in the center part of the screen, but also in the side boxes on the right and left side of the screen. I will need to build a 3D virtual theatre in After Effects, and animate the various paper doll characters.
    I was lucky to find three rather large images(roughly 4000 x 2400 pixels) to work from, and started cutting them up in Photoshop to extract the components, starting with the stage set:

    I am not sure at this point whether I will keep them in color, or create a stylized black and white set like the Portrait Galleries.

Post 24: Full scale Test coming up in the Concert Hall

   I have not been working on this project very much in the last month or so because of other projects, and also because I have been waiting for Carlos and his team to take a look at all the clips I have so far and give me some feedback. I don't want to waste time pushing too far the development of something they might not like.
   I attended the performance of Beethoven's Ninth that Carlos masterfully conducted a couple of weeks ago with a large chorus.Seing the chorus occupying every seat all the way up the sides made me realize that it would make it difficult to drape the fabric evenly all across to get a continuous screen.
   I had noticed doing a projection test in the studio that the animation of the camera dancing through the Virtual Portrait Gallery does not play very well on angled side panels, and would work better on a flat screen. Also, the triple screen as we first envisioned it would be quite far from the balcony seats, and people on the far left and far right would get only a partial view. Furthermore, if the screen is behind the chorus, the singers will not be able to see the images, and will have the projectors shining in their eyes.

   As a possible solution to all of these problems, I am considering using instead a single length of fabric 10 ft wide and 54 ft long stretched across the stage high above the orchestra:

   I am not exactly sure at the moment what would be the best location and height, so I asked Adam if and when we could do a projection test during the day, that would allow Carlos and his staff to watch my 6 Test Clips full scale in the concert hall, and give me the feedback I need to continue the project.
   We settled on December 1, so we will be setting up in the morning, and doing the final projection test in the afternoon, hopefully with 3 projectors.
   Since there is no panel left long enough, I went ahead and purchased a bolt of the same fabric we draped the building with for Light Dreams. We will hang it roughly above the podium using eyelets and cord, and see just how things look from different perspectives.