Hi all,

I'm going to do a test transfer of animations rendered out from A:M to film, project and test it. I'll be availing the best Reverse Telecine service here.

Do anybody want their animations to be transfered to film? I can make use of variety of scenes during this test. If so, you have to render out a 10 sec clip of your animation following this spec and upload it to a server i'll specify.

Resolution : 2048x1556 pixel (pixel aspect 1)
Format : 16 bit Tif. You can render out openexr (uncompressed) and convert the images via photoshop. The openexr plugin for photoshop is available at the openexr site. Or you can upload openexr .exr sequence. I'll do the conversion.
Duration : Max 10 sec.

It'd be great if I can get scenes from TWO.

let me know by tomorrow. I'm in a hurry.

Satyajit

Very nice offer, but I fear that as good as noone has 2k-animations lying around...

*Fuchur*

Hmm, I think so. Anyway, does anybody know what happened to the transfer to film test Farstarproduction did?

I'm proceeding with the transfer of some of my animations for test. I'll let you know what happened.

Satyajit

Hi Satyajit!

I think you don't need to render animations for 35mm film in 2048x1556. I saw couple of my animations projected from film in at least dozen different cinemas. And I was always disappointed because the picture was always a little blurry. There are a lot of reasons for that- from objective (astigmatism of lenses is not calibrated with curvature of the projection screen) to subjective (projectionists are usually heavy drinkers).
I mean- you would probably get the exactly same result if you will render the film in half of that resolution.
I'm rendering my recent project in 1280x720. I made a couple of tests to 35mm film and I think this should be good enough... (not to mention that by default animations are looking much sharper than real world pictures).
So make a couple of tests also with lower resolution then go to the local projection room and compare the results.

Thank you kikiriki,

That was helpful info. Did you transferred from openexr or 16 bit format. Also, what texture resolution did you do? Just the usual? Or much higher res. Did you faced any problem? Was the blurriness prevalent through all the projections?

2K res is taking a great deal of time to render. Yes, I'll test some with lower res too.

Satyajit

Let us know how the film transfer experiment works out. Is digital projection making any inroads in India yet. It's just starting to get going here in the US. About 800 theater screens so far.

No, so far I was using only 24-bit targas. I rendering my recent project in Open EXR, but I will probably deliver the images for transferring to 35mm film as TGA.



Depends of the specific scene. I have couple of folders for my textures, containing the same images in different resolution. Usually the resolution should be at least the same as in the final shot. Like: if you are using 1280*720 pix as the final resolution, and in the shoot you will have a closeup of the heroes head, then the resolution of the color map for the heroes face should be at least 720pix verticaly. From my experience the Bump map should be at least 2x bigger than color map. Bigger is better :-)



Well- theoretically (in the ideal conditions) there shouldn't be any blurriness. But in practice I have never seen such an ideal projection. Not even in the best state-of-the-art cinemas. The 35mm film is very good media. When you will watching the image on the film through the magnifying glass you will be ecstatic about the quality! The colors and contrasts are much, much better than on any computer monitor! But unfortunately during the projection a lot of that contrast and sharpness are lost.

Do you still need rendered sequences? I have just rendered a 20 second sequence and I could send it to you. But I will ask you if you could send me couple of images from the film via snail-mail, because I would like to check if the colors on the film are calibrated with my monitor.

yea sure,

It'll be great to render your wonderful arts. I love your work. One of the best. I'll love to see that on screen. And of course I can send you some of the 35 mm films, so that you can check them out.

I've PMed you the ftp server details for uploading.

Satyajit

I'm back with the results.

The footages were a test scene with painted backgrounds from R3H, a camera fly of the Dragon scene from Hash CD. And the famous shot 58 from Dusan's C&C.

I tested both 2K Resolution (anamorphic) and HD on 35 mm and projected through the biggest cinemascope projector in the facility.

And the results were excellent! No color problem, banding or any artifacts. The colors were vibrant even without DI (Digital intermediate) which is used to color correct. And the HD footages were actually great too. Quite passable.

It was a test to convince the technical team of the producers that A:M can do it on the big screen.

The print has gone to industrial professionals to have a review on the quality. I'll post their feedbacks too. But I'm sure that'll be same.

Thank you Hash Inc.,

Satyajit