Dead Life Necrodevils Video Game

Laythrom Media and Schotten Filmworks are working on Dead Life Necrodevils, a video game based on Schotten Filmworks’ feature film “Dead Life 2: Necrodevils”.

Dead Life Necrodevils’ Facebook Page

The video game is being developed for the personal computer platform and, at this time will not be available for PS3 or Xbox 360.

The game is also a teaser (of sorts) of more things to come; the game (which will be released at the same time as the film) will feature three different levels (1. The town of Devonshire (a downtown city map), 2. The Backwoods (a wooded area just outside of the city) and 3. Camp Wormwood (a militia camp based on the old Brookfield AFS radar station in Brookfield, Ohio). After the release, the teams will continue to work on expanding the levels and storyline for a future full feature release.

The game is a First Person Shooter but also will have a twist of Adventure/RPG thrown into the mix. It will offer both a first person shooter and third person shooter camera availability (to choose at the players discretion).

The initial release will feature a decent sized arsenal of weaponry (including pistols, rifles, smgs, shotguns, explosives and riot shields) and decent sized maps; the full feature release plans on expanding the existing arsenal (featuring loads of weapons, explosives and ammunition), offering even larger open world maps (with nearly all of the buildings being open to exploration), drivable vehicles and other (friendly and non-friendly) groups of survivors.

To keep up to date with the project’s development and progress, I do suggest that you check out and like the Facebook page.

For those who wish to make suggestions (concerning game play, options, availability, etc) contact Laythrom Media directly by email.

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Computer for Editing/Rendering HD Video

“What type of computer should I get for editing HD?”

Well…you can always go out and spend $7000 on a Dell Workstation that can handle HD; but for us, other indie filmmakers and the other people that visit our blog, cost is an issue. We are always pushing that mark of high computational power vs cost effectiveness/cost efficiency.

Here, we will help you weigh the prices and options to make decisions.

Workstations (Desktops) vs Laptops:

Although workstations are preferred in lieu of cost, upgrades/aftermarket, and power; we understand the desire of laptops because of their small footprint and their portability.

In my opinion, (concerning Windows based laptops) I would ignore Intel i3 and i5 based platforms. I would also either ignore Windows 8 systems (or roll back to Windows 7  x64 Professional or x64 Ultimate operating system). You will also need to look for  a laptop that has a video card and steer away from laptops with integrated or “shared” video memory.

Concerning prices, for Windows based systems be prepared to spend between $800-$1400 for a decent high performance platform and around $2800 for a Macbook Pro.

What do you really need? Well, it depends…are you running 720p, 1080p, 2.5k or 4k? A dual core processor, 6 GB of ram and a medium end graphics card will handle 720p fine but will start lagging (exponentially) at higher resolutions.  Not many indie filmmakers have the copious amounts of money for high end 4k cameras and video formats (for now); if you expect to get into the 4k realm within the next year or two, I would be somewhat generous with the workstation budget. Also if you plan on going down that path, you might be better off building the workstation yourself. A platform capable of fluently editing 4k video will most likely run you approximately $5000-8000 from Dell, HP, Boxx Technologies or Mac. If you take the time to research, plan and price components on TigerDirect or NewEgg, you could expect to only pay around $3200-4000 (both prices including display monitors).

What are you getting for your money?

Laptops

Avg Dell Pricing: $1000

• Intel Core i7 (2 Cores, 4 Threads) @ 3.0 GHz
• 15.6″ LED Display
• 8 GB DDR3 Ram @ 1600 MHz
• Nvidia GeForce GT630M @ 2 GB DDR3 Video Memory
• 500 GB SATA HD @ 5400 RPM

Avg HP Pricing: $925

• Intel Core i7 (4 Cores, 8 Threads) @ 2.4 GHz
• 17.3″ LED Display
• 8 GB DDR3 Ram @ 1600 MHz
• Nvidia GeForce GT635M @ 2 GB DDR3 Video Memory
• 1 TB SATA HD @ 5400 RPM

Avg Boxx Technologies Pricing: $2767

• Intel Core i7 (4 Cores, 8 Threads) @ 2.7 GHz
• 17.3″ LED Display
• 8 GB DDR3 Ram @ 1600 MHz
• Nvidia GeForce GT675MX @ 4 GB DDR3 Video Memory
• 750 GB SATA HD @ 7200 RPM

Avg Macbook Pro Pricing: $2878

• Intel Core i7 (4 Cores, 8 Threads) @ 2.7 GHz
• 15″ LED Retina Display
• 16 GB DDR3 Ram @ 1600 MHz
• Video Hardware Unknown
• 512 GB Flash HD

Avg Asus Pricing: $800

• Intel Core i7 (4 Cores, 8 Threads) @ 2.4 GHz
• 17.3″ LED Display
• 8 GB DDR3 Ram @ 1600 MHz
• Nvidia GeForce GT635M @ 2 GB DDR3 Video Memory
• 750 GB SATA HD @ 5400 RPM

Workstations (Desktop)

Avg iMac Pricing: $1778

• Intel Core i7 (4 Cores, 8 Threads) @ 3.1 GHz
• 21.5″ LED Display
• 8 GB DDR3 Ram @ 1600 MHz
• Nvidia GeForce GT650M @ 512 MB DDR5 Video Memory
• 1 TB SATA HD @ 5400 RPM

Avg Dell Pricing: $1115

• Intel Core i7 (4 Cores, 8 Threads) @ 3.90 GHz
• 21.5″ LED Display
• 12 GB DDR3 Ram @ 1600 MHz
• AMD Radeon HD 7570 @ 1 GB DDR5 Video Memory
• 1 TB SATA HD @ 7200 RPM

Avg HP Pricing: $910

• AMD FX-8120 (8 Cores) @ 3.1 GHz
• 23″ LED Display
• 10 GB DDR3 Ram @ 1600 MHz
• AMD Radeon HD 7570 @ 2 GB DDR5 Video Memory
• 1 TB SATA HD @ 7200 RPM

Avg Custom Made Workstation: $1140

• AMD FX-8350 (8 Cores) @ 4.0 GHz
• 24″ LED Display
• 16 GB DDR3 Ram @ 1600 MHz
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 @ 2 GB DDR5 Video Memory
• 2 TB SATA HD @ 7200 RPM

Youngstown Ohio and the Entertainment Industry

With Laythrom Media residing in the back yard of Youngstown, Ohio; it is interesting to realize the history that Youngstown actually has (especially in lieu of the entertainment industry).

Now personally, I have technically resided in the Greater Youngstown area for almost 20 years and I find it kind of saddening and a bit amusing that I have just come across the Warner Brothers/Youngstown history.

From Ohio History Central:

The Warner Brothers were exhibitors, distributors and producers of motion pictures.
The Warner Brothers were Harry, Sam, Albert, and Jack Warner. They were the sons of Polish immigrants. Their father arrived in the United States in 1887. The rest of the immediate family, with the exception of four children who had died in Poland, did not arrive until 1895. The family settled in Youngstown, Ohio. Members of the Warner family sold bicycles, soap, and ice cream and later opened a butcher shop.
By the early 1900s, the family had invested in a movie projector. They traveled across Ohio, Pennsylvania, and neighboring states, showing movies in tents. In 1903, they purchased a movie theater in New Castle, Pennsylvania. They invested in other theaters in Youngstown and in the surrounding area. In 1907, the brothers began to produce movies. They established a movie production company in California in 1918, and they created the Warner Bros. Company in 1923. The brothers continued to either purchase or build movie theaters. Among them was the Warner Theater in Youngstown in 1931.
In the early twenty-first century, Warner Bros. Entertainment was a subsidiary of Time-Warner Inc. It was one of the largest producers of movies and television programs in the world.

Sadly, now days the Youngstown area holds only a few independent film and production companies [including Laythrom].

CGI Renderers and Render Information

Finally have gotten to CGI Rendering…

Not meaning that we’ve never done any 3d modeling or VFX yet; but finally we have had the chance to sit down and shine some input on the different programs and renderers that are out there.

Personally, we typically use Autodesk Maya for any CGI that we create [second place is 3ds Max Design]; we have been using it for some time now and hell, we like it.

But on to actual information related to the title at hand…

Instead of rendering images on our “Iron Horse” workstation or on a farm (Render Farm), I actually decided to use one of our laptops that we use in the field at times [for scripting, live view, story boards, etc]. I did this mainly because I have seen many indie filmmakers using laptops vs workstations due to portability reasons; so please keep in mind that any listed render times are for reference only [the times will be different but the ratio between the different renderers should be close to the same].

PC Laptop Specs and Information:

After digging out one of our most basic laptops [easily purchased from any department store for approximately $500], I then downloaded Cinebench from Maxon specifically for this segment (benchmarking information follows).

Windows 7 Laptop, 64 bit OS
1.60 GHz, Intel Dual Core Processor
6 GB DDR3 Ram
Intel HD (onboard) Graphics; 1366 x 768

Cinebench CPU Score: 1.03 pts
Cinebench OpenGL Score: 5.64 fps

Now after running these tests and chuckling to myself about this laptop’s lack of power [approx. 1/10th of the ability of our Iron Horse workstation), I took one of our UH-60 Blackhawk Helicopter models into Maya and started running the renders.

Different Renderers

Obviously, there are several different renderers out there, the ones that we will be touching today follow;

Maya: Software, Mental Ray, Vray, FinalRender

Although we are mainly using Maya for this run through, you have the Software & Mental Ray options for 3ds Max Design and can also obtain the Vray plugin as well as iray, although I am not sure about FinalRender for 3ds Max Design. All of the renderings were rendered out at 640×480 @ 300 dpi resolution, settings were tuned to Production (High) quality and the scenes are identical.

Maya Software Render

Honestly, the Maya Software render kind of surprised me [since we rarely use it]; it took over 16 minutes to render, a lot of the colors are there but there is no Ambient Occlusion, the shadows are not fantastic and I am not a big fan of the glass.

Maya Mental Ray

As for Mental Ray, I will have to look into the settings and modify a few things. There is a lot of noise through out the image and it is starting to get blown out (over whitening). I like the shadowing on this one more than software and it did render out in a little over 8 minutes (half of the software time) but the noise in the image is driving me nuts.

Maya Vray

Although the Vray image isn’t horrible, the image is getting blown out, the shadows are off and the AO has quite a bit of noise in it. I personally like the look of the glass objects with Vray and don’t mind the 10 minute render time if there wasn’t so much noise.

Maya FinalRender

I don’t have many complaints about FinalRender (aside from the obvious watermark). The color looks good and so does the environment; there is some noise in the shadows which bother me and a render time of 24 minutes isn’t awesome either.

Other platform solutions

I was planning on putting the render from Bunkspeed on here, but lets be honest…it’s taking FOREVER on the laptop! As I am writing this it managed to complete 2113 ‘passes’ and has also taken 3 hours (thus far). I will be posting raw renderings from other platforms (such as Cinema 4d, Bunkspeed and 3ds Max (possibly also Softimage) in the future. Hopefully posts like this will help spread the information flow in lieu of rendering for others [including beginners]. I also plan to start posting renderer settings and values for entry, mid-level, and professional production quality as well. If anyone wants to help me add to this plethora of information, let us know.

Update:

Due to some light confusion and some emails, let me explain something;
The above renders were setup in a manner with settings that could be used by others with basic PCs. Ultra high settings that output a nice quality photorealistic end result (something that would take 45 minutes to an hour on our farm) is not being compared at this moment. The reason why I mainly did this is because I figured that most hobby users and amateur modelers would not like to wait around for 12-14 hours for just one frame.

Short Film “Housebreaking”

“Housebreaking”

Recently we were asked to check out a couple short film projects made by a group of students from the University of Texas-Austin lead by Jordan Kerfeld (Director, Writer and Editor). The one based in this blog is called “Housebreaking”; the story line follows Paul who is unemployed, his father-in-law hates him, and he goes to bed every night in his wife’s childhood bedroom. Desperate to escape his circumstances, he masterminds a home invasion plot to earn his freedom.

I do suggest others watch the short film and also look into their project titled “Tears at Dawn”. They have all of their basics down and we cannot complain on their use of color, angles and editing. The only thing that we thought needed dialed in was their audio; even though it took place inside of a nicely sized home, we did think that the audio seemed a little tinny.

We look forward to seeing their project “Tears at Dawn” as well as other works that they may produce.

Military Prop Inventory

So we’ve finally sat down an laid out about 60-70% of the Laythrom Media “Military/Police Props” (excluding all but four of our prop weapons).

It’s a good amount of stuff, but we’re always getting more; Army-Navy stores beware. If anyone knows a good place to buy or rent Blank Fire weapons, let us know; same for any off the wall military surplus (like dummy rockets, dummy grenades, parachute packs, kevlars, etc)

Tactical and Military Consultancy

Laythrom Media has several personal that can assist with tactical and/or military consultancy in lieu of photography and cinematography.

Combined, we have over 30 years of military and government experience [across different branches]. Our CEO and Director, M. Adkins has six years of experience as a Military Police officer in the Army [also as a special services operator] and two years experience working as a police officer with the Department of Defense. Our Operations Officer, C.Rosier has six years experience as a munitions and disposal specialist with the Air Force. M. Ramirez has eight years experience as a combat infantryman and Air Assaulter in the Army. J. McLaine has four years experience as a Master of Arms for the Navy and six years of experience as a Field Agent for the FBI and is also SWAT qualified. Last but not least, D. Wilson has served in the Air Force Special Operations command, as an Army Ranger and was Airborne, Air Assault and Pathfinder qualified; he has ten years of total service.

Depending on what may be needed, we can work with almost any film or photography project. Fees can be waived for small independent films or photography sessions as well. Due to our concerns and proclivities, we will consider and review any and all projects no matter how big or small.

As a final note, I will state that all of us are proud of our service and achievements as well as our affiliation. We will review projects and scripts in order to make sure that the said project(s) do not give the military a horrible or inhumane image if members of the military are portrayed. Obviously, on the other hand, if just a tactical consultancy is requested, that would not apply. Furthermore, we will only show/teach your cast and/or crew methods or tactics in an attempt to make your project as believable as possible. We will not show crucial tactics that can be used against Law Enforcement, Government or Military Agencies.

If you have a need for a military or tactical consultant, please feel free to fill out the form below and we will get back to you as soon as we can. If you have a time critical project, please specify this in your email.

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