Last Place Still Means You Crossed the Finish Line

As the semester came to a close and the end of semester screening drew closer, I grew more worried that I wouldn't make it in time to submit my short film and my worries were realized. As I finished my animation and set off to render at the beginning of the week, I did not account for how much time the added lighting assets would add to the render time. What I could render at a decent, but slightly grainy quality in 30 seconds per frame shot up to taking over a minute and a half per frame due to the added light bounces to achieve the same look. Not to mention the seemingly never ending run time increases, which saw my short increase from what was suppose to be 3 to 5 minutes at most all the way to around 10 minutes long. The difference between 7,200 frames and 14,4000 frames is obviously huge, especially at the render speeds which, if I hadn't used a render farm, would have taken my computer 15 days to render. The render farm allowed me to cut that down into 6 days but it still was too much time.

I wanted to submit to the end of semester screening, to see my short on the big screen would have been a great moment in my life and the feeling of accomplishment would have been huge. Unfortunately, by the time the deadline arrived, I had about 7 minutes out of the nearly 10 rendered, excluding editing together and adding sound. The disappointment as I sat and watched the deadline pass by can't even be described.

I couldn't let it affect me though, as I was determined to finish the short film by the end of the semester and I've finally finished rendering the frames and editing them. I had to remove some scenes and change the ending, but, with how the story progresses, I feel the ending is still justified by the concept I envisioned. Unfortunately though I also had to remove the sound as it's not what I want. What I have now I am proud of and believe it is a somewhat altered but nevertheless proper realization of what I set out to do.

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