This year we had a foolhardy idea and gave up living in the reality. We made a fully virtual film. Many people don’t know how much work is in it, the whole story can be told the best by our narrator who is the maker of film actually.
As usual, we always make some booster films to popularize AlfaCity. It is typical that in the period of countdown, we are always in winter when we can’t organize outdoor activities. What a funny scene could it be: bleak landscape… and Alfas with winter tires. So, this year, we had a foolhardy idea and gave up living in the reality. We made a fully virtual film.
We tried to condense everything what we wanted – showing some beauty, animating, informing. Centenary gave the possibility and the reason for making our annual “movie” about the history of Alfa Romeo. Our protagonist’s birth is helped with the milestones of the factory, and then casts appear. But it’s no use defining it, check this out:
Many people don’t know how much work is in it, this can be told the best by our narrator who is the maker of the film actually, our member David Sólymos, a.k.a. SD.
AA: How and why did you get involved this project?
SD: The question “how” is irrelevant – he laughs. But the answer for “why” is evident: I’ve had an Alfa since 2005, we’re an inseparable pair, my work is 3D graphics, I had to do this work. Every rational reason was dwarfed by these. Once, I was surfing the net, seeking for interesting stuffs, and there was an adv on a 3D site with a general text, like this: “a car fan-site is looking for 3D graphic artist to make animations.” Then I spotted that e-mail address with amore tag, a click, typing amore.hu, a phone call, then e-mail, I became excited, what can be in the background? I didn’t know then, now you know… So I had an arrangement with BeeGee, I took some of my works as reference. We decided to have a smack and make a movie consisting only 3D animation. We started our project with great excitements and expectations.
AA: When did you start working? How long did it take?
SD: Exactly at the beginning of this year, so 3-4 months ago. I mean, there were weekends and nights, sometimes Saturday nights, of course, I was doing my “ordinary” job, if I had time for that. (I’m looking for rent and workplace – he laughs, again). Okay, stop playing the dumb. There are a lot of working-hours in it, and I hope that my efforts can be seen. I love tasks like this, the more it is impossible, the more I’m interested in.
AA: How was this job sequenced?
SD: In this case, we chose the music which was carefully cut by count M to be appropriate in length but to be still a complete composition. Then started to seek for a model because detailed modelling of a car like this is not a tiny job and we wanted to bring out the film as soon as possible…But we had to face the fact that creators of really expensive models omitted basic design details which would be a real eyesore. Because we’re Alfa Romeo owners, we know how an 8C looks like. In this way, Plan B was on: we collected all of the available photos, the detailed versions too, more than a hundred. Before finishing the model, we had an appointment when we discussed the whole story-line. Fortunately the music leaded us; the content was given, because there were a lot of interesting moments in the last hundred years. Carrade BeeGee made beautiful captions, his draw the texture with those 100 ruts and the concrete at the end. Next step was the animation. Of course, it seems to be a fast business, however we had absolutely nothing only the free capacity of the winchesters and those photos from the internet. We had to produce what this centenary means to an Alfisti. I hope, it was successful – he laughs.
So, when the model had been finished, we started to think of the aspects for captions, and the camera motions. I’ve been carrying BeeGee’s draft of fast-printed model images with the positions of captions. Then we became recluses. I started animating and sending terribly ugly stuffs back, because producing utter renders for a scene takes days. Deadlines didn’t let us fault or tinker away at an image. So there were grey-line graphics, smoothed texts, what a computer performs in real-time. Being Alfisties helped us to get through the difficulties, they trusted me, I knew the way of solution and the totally different result. Certainly, we made stills for close views, and I kept trying and developing the surface of the car. Not just a simple colour and luster was set but many layers were used to get the proper metallic paint effect.
The virtual world sucked me and while I was refining the model, playing with light and surface settings, animating, in the distance I was hearing people talking to me at home, and I hoped they accepted me. The story was slowly completed and the next phase was about the final renders. Time was almost over, while I was doing the final versions of the first drafts, last ones were only drafts because the skidding was not so elegant or the cam jagged and stuff like that. Weekends were quite okay because I could use more computers but only for specific processes. The aim was being approached slowly but surely. Meanwhile colleague and critic carrades gave feedbacks to continue. These were posted in the nick of time, on a tired Monday morning, or when I was dissatisfied, their satisfaction made me happy and fresh to continue. I do stress this because I really feel that Alfa Amore means a great community. Skip one. Finishing the final renders doesn’t mean that the film is ready. In the case of a conventional movie this is just the beginning. Imagine a house building for photography. Of course, only those scenes are rendered which will be parts of the movie. Then editing and using that leading music. Knowing the sequence, we had to make the smoking effect with a special software. We were very excited: will be the two motion pictures which are from different softwares in synch? Everything was perfect, however we made a lot of pilot render and setting. Finally, all of the changes and effects were unified. This was the last part, the post production. You can ask: how did you fit the smoke? How did you make that gum-stripe effect? If I answer, you won’t go on – he laughs. To sum up, there were VERY MUCH details, I made lists, ticked and wrote new things. And suddenly the movie seemed to be complete, what a joy.
We had to realize that we can refine it forever, but the line must be drown somewhere because next year Alfa Romeo is going to be 101 years old, and then we can start this whole stuff again or wait 100 years for the next centenary. Joking apart, there was a scene which was calculated 48 hours, but an average frame took 2-5 minutes. (30 frames/second, 60×3 seconds, multiplied by the rendering time: horrible numbers.) Rendering for 1-2 hours was quite okay in case of stills (for example, a calculation has just been over, the computer next to me was counting an image during this evening, although this is an architecture image for billboards in high density), but in this case setting had to been moderate, rims and the colour of the car and the complex model itself could have made a cut-off. Without this, a 10-20-minute rendering time per frame could have caused a forever counting. Perhaps, it is the most difficult part of this job: knowing what the machine knows, respecting the limits, but drawing cool things.
