Thanx for all your support. And yes, there is some color correction involved ...

WHOA!...
That camera work is masterful.. The camera stood out to me, it looked real.  You feel the tension and urgency throughout.
That was the first iClone video that ever made me feel like I was physically there.
SICK!

UPDATE 04/02/2018

Hi folks,

As promised days earlier, I made the first part of a making of series concerning certain themes about the ongoing production. In this part I will show you some of the new sets and I will talk about the handshake camera and about some of the lighting stuff I created for the bridge of the HORIZON. At the end of the video you'll see a glimpse of a brand new set - the medbay, which I got two days ago. My friend, Andres Günther, has done a remarkable job converting all this stuff and I really don't know how this project would have looked like without him.

O.K. Here is the video ...




Thoughts about the camera work

After releasing a short clip showing some animation, I got very positive replies, especially about the camera work. It was kind of documentary style, handshake cameramovement. I can tell you, this wasn't planned at the beginning of the production. Several weeks ago I used this system to spice up an action scene and it worked very well. So since then I made all scenes in this style and after those positve responses for my short clip, I came to the conclusion that my movie should have this style of camera work. I will go away from traditional camera set ups and I will create some kind of documentary style. This means I have to redo some of the earlier scenes ... again.
The animation of the characters won't be touched, but all the camera stuff will be changed and I will reduce the amount of shots per scene, just to keep it close to the documetary style. I think this will give the movie a style you'll never have seen in an "Alien" movie ...

Some other news

I will use faceware in this production. I just made some tests and it looked very promising. I will do some promotional stuff for Reallusion about it, because after the test I am really excited about this technology. There will be at least on big tutorial about the use of facware and especially I will talk about the ways to enhance the outcome. And i will do a short scene (2 to 3 minutes) with dialogue, so you can see faceware in action within a short story. And I will do another video, which features a dialogue I already finished using face puppet and face key. I will redo this dialogue with faceware and then I will compare those two segment to each other. I think this is the best way to show the capabilities of this software.

So. This is it for today. As usual I will end this update with two screenshots, which show you the bridge of the HORIZON.






Have fun with your projects ...

Greetings, René

Awesome! Thanks for sharing this making of, very informative.

--
guy rabiller | GOETZIWOOD STUDIOS
"N.O.E." (Nations Of Earth) Sci-Fi TV Show, Showrunner.

Rene, 3 things:
1 - OUTSTANDING work.  You and your partner will get a lot of recognition for this, I am sure! 
2 - You sound just Like Arnold Schwarzenegger.  I would love to hear an impersonation.
3 - regarding the cam, LOVE IT!....I think it is a unique style that you have, but I do think it would be okay for you to experiment with traditional angles mixed in as well in combination, ie- following the back and then zooming in suddenly on something in the scene, for no apparent reason, and then flashing back, could enhance a sudden jumpy feeling of menace or anxiousness.  Oh well, just a thought....!

Very nice work Rene...
I like your effective use of lighting both visible and emulated.
And that POV camera/performer is a great idea.
I do agree with Tony's comment about your style being 'unique' and whether (some) traditional steady angles wouldn't perhaps offer welcome relief from 'all' moving camera shots - Suspense would certainly be added by a 'contrasting' from 'steady' to 'moving' ... (maybe I'm biased - I do like steady establishing shots and smoothly executed tracking shots).
This is really an epic undertaking Rene! - I'm really looking forward to more...
There's so much we can be learn from creators like yourself. (and I'm happy that 'sci-fi' is so prevalent here on this forum - love it!).
Wishing you the very best with this! ...
Steve.

◇◇◇ If you are working on something that you really care about, you don’t have to be pushed. The vision pulls you. ◇◇◇  - Steve Jobs

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Please be patient with me ..... I don't always 'get it' the first time 'round - not even the 2nd time!   - yikes! ... 

● MSI GT72VR Laptop, i7 7700HQ 4-Core 3.8 GHz 16GB RAM; Nvidia 1070, 8GB Vram ● iClone-7.93 ● 3DXChange Pipeline 7.81 ● CC-3 Pipeline 3.44 ● Live Face ● HeadShot ● Brekel Pro-Body ● Popcorn FX ● iRAY ● Kinect V2 ● DaVinci Resolve17 ● Mixcraft 8.1

Wow, very impressive, cool sets, wonderful lighting...
Thanx for this detailed "insight"


Toystorylab on Vimeo :     Crassitudes (my "Alter Ego") on Youtube: 

Verrrry nice work Rene. I feel it's important to build sets that are detailed enough so as not to break the immersion and
you've certainly done that with these sets. Excellent work.

pete



http://www.youtube.com/user/peterblood50?feature=mhee

I wonder how a frame would look rendered from Indigo, or later if it all was rendered in Iray  

UPDATE 09/27/2018

Hi folks,

it's been a while since my last update. I know. Unfortunatly there were several reasons which kept me away from the project for several months. First there was a project I had to do in May and the end result was the short scene "The talk".



This movie got really mixed reactions and I was a bit frustrated about that. There are some other reasons for it, but this is not a topic I want to talk about.
The I got a lot of work to do in real life so I was very busy within the last months. I am currently working on a travel documentation about Japan. It's a crazy project, shot in 4K 60fps. You can't imagine the amount of data this format creates. To work on this I used on of my biggest harddrives, the one with all my files from this project on it. And of course, the unthinkable happend. I bought this harddrive on April this year and several weeks ago it crashed!!! I took a while to realize that all my data from the "Alien" project was on this harddrive. I was devestated. I bought a recovery software and I was able to recover most of my files. The recording from the actors, most of the graphic sets and textures and most important - the sound files from the alien game "Alien Isolation", which were all sorted by hand. I really don't want to do this again.

So in terms of the project it was a really nasty summer. But I used the time I wasn't doing anything with iClone. I thought about the project and I decided to do some major changes. The first thing my freind Andreas and I changed was the costume. Andreas figured out a way to trnsfer the costume from the game into iClone and I was eager to have the original flightsuit in this movie. It took a lot of trial and error to make this work. We almost gave up on the idea, but after a lot of trials, Andreas managed to get a working flightsuit. You can see it a bit on this still.




As you can see, the visual style of the movie changed. This has several reasons. First, I wanted the movie look like a movie from the 70s, so I tried to get a more softer color sceme, not so much blue, more green and yellow. Second, I had to change my effect library on my video edit software AVID. I had to update to the newest version and so the library wasn't working anymore. I could have installed an update for several thousand dollars, but I didn't want to pay so much money, so i bought the "Ignite" library for 200 dollars. This library is not so powerfull like the old one, but it does the job. There are some pretty nice cinematic effects in there and I really like the look, but it's harder to get this look. I ahve to play with the values much more.
I also decided to change the camera work. I will reshoot every scene to make the camera handheld. I really like the documentation camera style. This will give that movie a unique style. I also want to reduce the ammount of cameras per scene. I just want to let the sequences flow with less editing at the end. I have a small clip to show you how I want to be the movie look like.



That's all for today. Until next time ...

Direx