Post 25: Test Run with Friends

   We had friends over for dinner Sunday night, and I asked them to look at the show as it was and give me some critique, as well as check it for mistakes, jarring things and spelling errors. Sometimes, one gets  involved so closely obvious mistakes are not noticed.
  They seemed impressed with what they saw, but did find a number of spelling mistakes, which I set out to correct yesterday. That of course gave me the opportunity to fine tune a few things, remove a few unnecessary things, and add a few new ones of course. Ideas keep coming...

  I rendered the revised Dies Irae last night, only to find when I watched it this morning that I had made a spelling mistake in the one word I had added! The R key is next to the T key. I never ends...

Post 24: Working on the Dies Irae

    I found some great images to use in the Requiem. The problem as always is to find high quality images in hight definition. Things have gotten much better since the days when pictures on the internet were something like 400x800 or less. It has become common for people to post stuff straight our of their camera. Still, amateur pictures are often badly framed, badly lighted, and badly exposed, and I am looking for the best possible images. Also, I need mostly images shot straight on, and many pictures reshot at an angle. Furthermore, my canvas is a huge 5760 pixels wide, and images that big are hard to find.
  So in a way, the project has been influenced by my lucky finds. 
   Different sequences require different approaches. Some I work on in a linear way from start to finish. Others, especially the longer ones, I work on in sections. That is the case with the Dies Irae. I did the beginning linearly, but am now working on "snippets" that will be joined later wit transitions.
  For example, I knew I wanted to do a section on the famous "Martyrs of Compiègne", the whole convent of 16 Carmelites that were guillotined together on July 17, 1794, one of the very last days of the "Terreur". Georges Bernanos wrote a book, and Francis Poulenc an Opera about them. The youngest was 30, the oldest 80. My pickings were slim, nuns didn't get their portrait painted very often, but I am putting together a short hommage, and an also doing a section on the treatment of other "refractaire" priests and nuns that refused to swear allegiance to the Republic when the Churches were taken over and the convents closed.
  I am also doing a small section on Madame du Barry, born Jeanne Bécu, courtisane, and long time Favorite of the former King Louis XV, also executed towards the end of the "Terreur". 

Post 39: Back to the Dies Irae!

  As a way to keep myself going 12 hours a day, I have to change movement  periodically, and work on all at the same time. Some people would probably prefer finishing one, then the next, etch I just can't work that way, as everything I discover working on one might be used on another. I prefer the back and forth approach, and find it gives the ensemble more unity.
   Talking about unity, the Dies Irae stands apart, and I waited quite a while to tackle it.  I then came up with an idea I pursued for quite a while, an kinda put aside because of concerns some people might laugh... Not allowed during a Requiem.
   I started working with another more sedate idea, but my heart was not into it. So I showed the first draft to a few trusted friends, and they thought it wasn't funny, and I should pursue my first instinct.
  So I re opened the file in After Effects this morning early, and have been cutting things,out,  adding new ones, and moving stuff around. I am at the same time simplifying and adding new complexity.
  In particular, I decided to add some "tricoteuses". Rather than explaining, I will give you the Wilkepedia Link.
  I found of course caricatures of the nasty ones

but also a wonderful image by Greases of a young sweet adorable "Tricoteuse Endormie"(asleep)

     I should be able to use it to good effect...

Post 38: Things are Good

   I really like the new machine a lot. Even though"on paper", the tests only show a 50% increase in speed, rendering goes a lot faster, and working with it much faster.
   I have nearly completed the Agnus Dei, with a long list of "slightly wacky" credits, including the Kings, the Philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment

 the Revolutionaries both American and French, etc... Even the Founding Fathers!

  I am well lease with last night's rendering, which took a mere 5 hours, with no more than a few bugs and hiccups to correct.   
  I came up with pretty elaborate individual background for each credit, even though they will show only a few seconds. I particularly like the picture of Carlos I tinkered with in Photoshop to go from this

to that:

I also did a little Hommage to my Dad 

and one to my Mom:

  I think my sisters will like these...

Post 37: Faster Machine, I think...

   Well, the new Accelsior PCIe card arrived in two days, and immediately went into the top slot where my old Apple Hardware Raid Card had been sitting unused. I installed the latest version of El Capitan, which went very fast. I only installed Photoshop, Bridge, and After Effects, the "OLD" Quicktime 7 Pro, the VLC player, plus my usual utilities: DiskWarrior, What Size, Clean App, Black Magic Speed Test, CineBench, Matrox Power Desk.
  I plan to reserve this new machine named ACCELSIOR for heavy lifting, and leave it as uncluttered as possible to avoid font and software bugs.  
      I am not getting the maximum 820 Mbits/s speed they claim(up to), and am a little dissappointed in that I was hoping for at least 700, and am only getting about 655Mbits/s...

  But then, that's "on paper", and when it comes to actually working at full def, and especially rendering in After Effects, things seem to go a lot faster. 

   I have a month to send it back if I am not satisfied anyway. We will see how it goes in the next few days...

Post 34: Hoping for a Faster Computer

    Since I have been doing these projection shows, I have been on a quest to make my computer faster, and faster, and faster. It is never fast enough, and since I am coming up with more complex 3D constructions and more complex animation all the time, this is a never ending quest.
    I started by buying the fastest maxed out 2.4 Ghz Quad Core MacPro in 2010, with four 1TB Hard Disks, 2 of them in a Harware Raid  0 array using the the top of the line Apple Raid Card, and 32GB of RAM and the best ATI Radeon Graphics Card .  With the Monitor, that was a $10,000 machine back then... I did the two PTTR Shows with that machine and the 30 " Apple Cinema Monitor in 2011 and 2012.
   Then I wanted to run 4 x 1920x 1080 monitors, and added a second matching Graphics Card. That worked for a while, and I did the first Light Dreams Show that way. But I had rendering times of 17 hours on some sequences, and the 3D work I was playing with was getting more complex.
   I then wanted to have HDMI Video in and out, so I added a Black Magic Card, and live video processing required more power. The very fast 200 or so Mb/s read speed I was getting didn't cut it.
   So I struck out hard, and replaced the four 1TB hard drives with four 412GB SSD's from OWC, and the two Radeon Graphic Cards with two faster GPU NVIDIA QADRO K 5000.
 That was an expensive update, that I chose to do over buying one of the new Tin Can MacPros. I am not sure it was the right decision. There was a substantial increase in speed to over 400Mb/s, and the GPU on the Graphics card allowed Ray Tracing. I was disappointed to get only 400, I had hoped for 600 or even 700 Mb/s. The problem is the bottleneck of the SATA connections, and of the Apple RAID card. I switched to Software RAID, and the speeds remained the same.
   There was a way to get faster, using the then new OWC Excelsior PCIe based card and put it in my RAID card slot. It has 2 SSDS in a Raid 0 array, and PCIe is much faster than eSATA, possibly allowing speeds of up to 820 Mb/s....I wanted the biggest one of course, and that was another $700, so I put it off...
    I am finding now 5 weeks away from the show that I am still getting bogged down with long render times  on the more complex sequences of the requiem, . So and I don't like to waste time. So, after talking to a rep that told me I could return it if I was not happy with the new speeds,  I just decided to order the 960 Gb Excelsior Card:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/PCIe/OWC/Mercury_Accelsior/RAID

     I am very excited, and can't wait to get it in a couple of days and see just how fast the machine gets! 820Mb/s would be a dream, but I would be happy with 700Mb/s...
  I will have to install a new system on it, with minimal software to avoid bugs due to interferences, just the software that really needs these high speeds: After Effects of course, Photoshop, and later Isadora and Resolute Avenue. 
  I will keep you posted!
   

Post 33: Back to the Agnus Dei for a change

   The Offertorium is well on the way, but Marie Antoinette's very complex "small theatre" is quite taxing for the computer, and myself as well, so I am "taking a short vacation" from it to work on the last movement, the Agnus Ei and Communio. That is the one I rebuilt Versailles for out of "virtual paper". 
  The Opening section was done a long time ago, as well as the animation "demo" for the first castle built by Louis XIII. I am now making the rest of the buildings emerge from the ground in various ways and with various camera angles and focal lengths, going from a telephoto for the first "small castle" to a wider and wider lens going further and further away as the castle grows exponentially through the reign of Louis XIV from this

to this

  The final movement is about 7m 30 s in length, and full of energy, but with a constantly changing tempo, where quieter lyrical moments slowly increase to faster and louder moments. This is repeated three times with the same words. 
   First, I have to decide how much time to devote to each stage of the construction, and animate the emergence of each new building either next to or over existing buildings.
  I would like the pace of it to get faster and more frenetic toward the end. But I have to deal with the fact that unlike most symphonies, the movement does not end "with bang", but rather IS a succession of three short crescendi for the Agnus Dei(which is a little strange since the words are : "Lamb of God, would who takes away the sins of the world, grant them rest")and ends with the Communio, which is very slow and quiet("May everlasting light shine upon them, O Lord,

with your Saints forever, for you are kind.

Grant them eternal rest, O Lord, and may everlasting light shine upon them, with your Saints forever, for you are merciful").

   I also would like to include "credits" as part of the video, rather than after like in a movie. The video simply cannot continue with no music. I am using quotation marks because they not belike "regular credits", but rather "tongue in cheek credits" that are part of the story, thanking all the historical "actors", and all the players involved in the making of the wonderful objects and buildings of the Golden Age, and of the show itself. These would run over the Communio.