Thursday, 11 November 2010

I spent the last few days from blocking to pretty much the final animation of the first 2 shots of the animation. From the zoom in where Darren rides in and when Audrey walks up and take off the sign.

I ran into a few problems with the sims on the belly and chest, since the chest would almost implode when walking forward, however taking down the effects on the Y and X resolved the issue, allowing for some movement in the Z. Really I wish I had noticed it sooner, since I can now edit each of the sims again for the characters taking into account the effects in the XYZ. To be honest the effect is so subtle I doubt it will be noticed.

Animation wise I was a little daunted by the first few shots, and took a lot of reference of someone walking and taking hold of the card for the little nuances of movement that I added. It really helped anyway bring the first scene to life.

I am going to create the end shot of Audrey putting the card back to advertise for more staff right after the animation I have already done, so it will be just one big long render. I might start rendering it off pretty soon, so I can judge how the final sequences will looks like and give me chance to go back if necessary (also taking of some of the rendering from the 3 months I have set aside for rendering at the end), but for now I will just use preview animations to show the tutors.

Tomorrow after working on the final shot I will probably work on lighting Darren and Audrey. Although I have already lit the backgrounds its necessary to add some nice highlights and fill lights to the character and give the tutors something to reference when looking at the preview animations.

This first 38 seconds should have taken 2 weeks but at the moment it looks like I should have it done by tomorrow (1week), however I think there will be a lot of tweaking after!
I am also still having some problems rendering say Darren’s hair, as there is not enough memory to render of a frame with that size texture (2048), but since the rendering will take place on my other computer, I think it should be ok, but will take a few test renders over the next few days using that computer to see if the memory will be adequate. I don’t think it will effect render times its just a memory problem with my old computer.
Anyway here’s a render from the last few days work.