On The Line a Diary of the creation of a short

Sunday, 20 November 2011

2011-11-20T10:41:00.000-08:00

The film has been approved by my tutor, and I am currently getting everything ready for the final presentation. I am undecided when to upload the film, but it will probably be the week after the degree show. Anyway the film is finished and therefore the blog is also finished. I learnt a heck of a lot through the process and hope if anyone else reads this they will find some help in their own work.

So that’s it

All done

Wednesday, 16 November 2011

2011-11-16T04:58:00.001-08:00

Added a new video to the website in behind the scenes, it’s a shot breakdown of the work involved in animating the one shot, from Animatic to final piece that would go into the film.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzgHVG6sqS8

Also I have the sound back from Hal at Audio Mainline and the sound is superb. Very happy with it. So unless there’s any more pressing changes, I think I am nearly complete in the production of my first animated short.

Tuesday, 08 November 2011

2011-11-08T04:45:00.000-08:00

Its been a few days since I finalised the film for sound, and have began looking over my work so far and categorising it easily for presentation. One thing I have not spoke about yet is the Facial controls I had developed for the film.

The basic UI is setup in combination from a variety of sources. The book Stop Staring by Ospia, although developed in Maya greatly helped in the creation of the floating UI system and flow for ease off use. Centring on the Complex setup of the book for blend shapes, and combing this with Paul Neale’s rigging DVDs to create the basic floating UI.

Each circle on the UI represents a joystick for the control of each section of the head and listed accordingly. All controls drive facial blend shapes (38 in all) except for the jaw control which is a combination of Blend shapes and bone movement (preventing such things as the teeth to show through the cheeks).

They work in a percentage so that for the controls working directly on a line, it moves a percentage of the blend from 0 to 100. However for the joystick controls, working in a square, they work directionally, giving a percentage on each blend dependant on location in the square. The controls also affect the tongue, but the eye controls float away from the eyes as a look at constraint with dialable pupil dilation.

Each joystick control’s surrounding shape keeps the control confined and also allows presets to be created. These are instanced to each other allowing complex blend shape setups by simply dialling in a developed facial emotion that may be reused, such as Phonemes on the mouth movement. Where any phoneme used can be saved and dialled back in at a latter time.

The setup, although using the same ui setup for each character, needs each blend shapes for each character developed independently, and any presets also saved independently. Therefore every character has a unique set of blend shapes and ui elements. With phoneme development being the last thing in the process to create, using the preset saves. This means that when developing the lip sync it can be made easier down the line by creating custom phonemes (based on Comet’s animation work http://www.comet-cartoons.com/ and the Stop Staring book by Osipa) when creating the facial rig. Of course this means more work in the build but in the long run it pays off.

Saturday, 05 November 2011

2011-11-05T10:21:00.001-07:00

I have rendered off all the last sequences, adjusted the lip sync where it needed and sent it off to Hal to work on the sound. Good day in all. I got behind a little bit due to computer troubles but I am back on schedule again and beginning to work on my dissertation imagery at the moment. Feels funny not having anything to do on the film now!

Tuesday, 25 October 2011

2011-10-25T05:42:00.000-07:00

Its been just over a month since my last blog post. The films coming along, I spent this month re rendering scenes with better lighting, and bug fixing. At the moment I am just creating the zdepth maps for a sequence where I changed the animation, for the character to appear more dazed. I am hopeful, dependant on render times, that I should have the film wrapped at this stage by Friday so I can send it off for sound design at Audio mainline

Saturday, 24 September 2011

2011-09-24T04:48:00.000-07:00

I had a great tutorial on Friday which really pinned down the faults in the work or animation. After going through a new schedule I have about 24 faults to re render. The only draw back is the time it takes to render a sequence. But I am hopeful I can have these faults fixed by the end of October. Then can send it off to Audio Mainline for the mastering of the sound. The faults are generally lighting issues with the sss shader. Where around the mouth area there are noticeable red areas in the skin. Due to the backscattering working out the thinness of the mouth wall. I am compensating by adding more lights to the front of the character, thereby tricking the effect a little. So far it seems to work well. Also changing the inner mouth wall for some shots to a standard shader rather than a sss skin shader

On another note I think I need to explain the shadow workers. Someone commented the other day that am I going to change those characters as though they were placeholder characters. The shadow characters is an analogy to being a lost worker. Spending so long on the line that there real selves just aren’t there anymore. Where as George, although spending so long on the line, just sleeps through the actual work, perhaps dreaming of his time on the subs. They were characters I did create as with all the characters, although without any discernable features and just blackness to look at.

Sunday, 18 September 2011

2011-09-18T12:22:00.001-07:00

Finished a trailer for the film and currently working on a dvd menu and poster for the film, before getting back into fixing the Ian bug. I am pretty confident that I can resolve it with better lighting around the front of Ian’s face. The only problem is how long it will take to render new sequences. Will be starting the last bug by Tuesday I think, since the poster and dvd menu renders should take all tomorrow.
Anyway here is the trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6S7EAoI16I

08 September 2011

2011-09-08T13:34:00.000-07:00

Its been nearly a month since my last post. I went on holiday for two weeks and generally been fixing bugs on my return. Also began working on the dissertation. An area I will leave out of the blog.
Ok, so I am three quarters through the bugs. Last section of re renders I need to do then some star effects on other areas and that’s it. Its looking ok, I am going to complete this pass of it all first, then see how much time is left to re render the backscatter problem with Ian. I am currently happily on schedule. But with plans for a nice dvd layout as well for the film, a short trailer to produce also, I think I may have to crate a small schedule for the rest of the time till the final hand in.

Anyway
Onward

Thursday, 18 August 2011

2011-08-18T02:27:00.001-07:00

I noticed today once the levels are adjusted Ian and Darren’s red back scatter from the skin tends to stand out way to much. A way round this would be to re render the sequences with it off. However I don’t want to lose the effect around the ears so a second way would be to create a back scatter map for the back scatter values. Keeping the areas around the mouth and neck quite low with the areas around the ears quite high. Since I have till December to finish the film it isn’t a problem with the schedule, and will start the new renders of those sequences after the other bugs have been fixed. Anyways onward!

Sunday, 14 August 2011

2011-08-14T04:44:00.000-07:00

I am about halfway through re rendering buggy sequences and adjusting the colour levels of certain points. At this rate unless any other bugs are spotted I am hopeful to have this part of the film wrapped in only another week. I have 11 more sequences to re render. However 4 of those sequences are just adding star effects to the scene. Its going allot faster than i originally guestimated

Thursday, 11 August 2011

2011-08-11T06:49:00.001-07:00

I have been bug fixing the film for the last week. About quarter the way though the bugs then will adjust the levels of the film to produce nice lighting effects and ambience. I am generally using the last shot showing on the previous post as a template for the levels to the sequences, and began working on each shot the other day. However I decided its best to do the levels once the entire film is finished so I can keep the levels consistent throughout. I tend to over expose the frames to give a nice light of the character and not the background. Perhaps if I were to make a film like this again it may be worth lighting these separately and rendering backgrounds and foregrounds separately.

I should have the film complete by mid September. With each shot needing re rendering taking about a day. With over 17 sequences that need fault fixing or affects added, I expect to have this part of the short completed soon. I would say it takes about 3 days per sequence

Wednesday, 03 August 2011

2011-08-03T04:15:00.000-07:00

I have wrapped the animation side of the movie now and am only two days behind the schedule I had planned. I still have a lot more rendering to do, fix lighting issues and some bugs in the scenes. But all the animation work is done.
Over the next two months I will re render some of the sequences, for better lighting and some of the problems I have noticed (missing windows, missing green objects, bad lighting, hair problems) but wont now post the film online until complete.
I am also going to work out a title sequence for the film, in cg rather than added latter. With the title “on the line” attached to the door as it opens and fades out. It should look quite snazzy and in line with the rest of the film.
I had a few ideas for the titles, an animated line that went through the title, or different fonts and animations. But in the end decided sticking with the look it has now yet adding it to the scene so it appears 3d would suit best the theme of the movie. Quite simple but to overcomplicate the title with something that didn’t go with the theme would ruin the movie.

Here is an image from the last sequences

Friday, 29 July 2011

2011-07-29T12:25:00.001-07:00

I have finished the sequence 119-129. A very hefty sequence and the last of the majors. Just one more shot to do.. well two but I am combining them again to finish off. Also began rendering off the sequence just created, and should be ready in another week.
The last sequence was very enjoyable to do, the last of the lip sync on the characters, i struggled with some parts, such as the movement of Ian’s earphones, but they work well eventually. Some distortion on his arm as it rotates but it works well enough.
First person views work well and the final poses of Darren as he enters the white.
After compiling the film for testing I noticed a few more problems, such as Darren’s hair flickering again for a frame in one shot. I have added it to the to do list, its nothing major and now I have figured out the sim better I can easily rectify the problem by rendering off the sequences again on just one camera shot. It’s the sequence where the office then Audrey then Darren fades out before the elm appears. I wanted to play more with that shot anyway since I felt he needed to disappear to black a little bit sooner.

Saturday, 23 July 2011

2011-07-23T13:09:00.000-07:00

I have finished Darren’s body movements and will begin on Audrey tomorrow and Ian’s. Darren’s walk cycle I repeated a number of times to get it just right. Also his interactions with the door. In the end I relied on the curve editor more than hand animating in certain parts, and added a path control to the walk cycle so I could get his speed just right for that final sequence as he exits the building.
I have not added the elm moth star effect as yet since I am planning on taking all that as added affects latter. No doubt blackening off the scene so I can just work with the moth pathways, and add then as a screened layer.
Its near the end and this marks the final body movements of Darren, except for a very small sequence which I will tackle last.
Anyways Audrey tomorrow. I have a good idea of the body movements she will accomplish, and I expect it will take less than a day to create them, so I am hopeful I could have Audrey and Ian’s body movements wrapped by tomorrow night and then on with the facial.

Anyways….. onward

Thursday, 21 July 2011

2011-07-21T14:08:00.001-07:00

I have blocked out the walk cycle for Darren toward the door, the door movement and set up the rest of the cameras today. Also I have been playing with the white effect at the end of the sequence. Using a cylinder linked to the door, it distorts as the door opens, encompassing Darren and the door with white. The effect is such that u can still see outside the windows yet Darren himself is in a white area. I am trying to portray the sense of achievement, of fulfilling the dream and a question, is he fading out to his dream world. The shot is only for 2 seconds but it leaves those questions there until Darren rides off on his bike and the Moth follows, a bond between the dreams and reality of his life.

Wednesday, 20 July 2011

2011-07-20T12:47:00.001-07:00

With Darren moving off his chair to walk, there is a movement hierarchy between the chair and Darren, and then Darren will walk off and stand independent to the chair. To solve this I have rebuilt parts of Darren’s rig to allow for the chair interaction and for the walk also.
It’s running smoothly and I have animated George and began animating Darren. With his stand from the chair and movement towards the “it’s not about money” shot.

Tuesday, 19 July 2011

2011-07-19T10:47:00.001-07:00

Sequence 119-122 I have decided to combine with the next sequence, so it runs till 129. Its just 30 seconds with a lot going on in the sequence. Darren walking of to his life adventure and opening the doors to white was a problem. In the end I have decided to add a sell illuminating half cylinder, (so Darren still has an area to walk outside) that is connected by a box to scale when the doors open, yet keep the same shape. Therefore I can add layers of white latter to add more glow. Creating a nice affect.
Apart from that I am taking this sequence a little slower. It’s the pinnacle point of the animation, where Darren says his “it’s not about money” bit. All that emotion and thought of the characters I wish to do justice to the action and reaction of Ian’s confusion and Audrey’s slip of anger as Darren walks out.
I guess this is the final main sequence, with just a few small fillers to add after. So I will be saying goodbye to my characters as I animate them.

Saturday, 16 July 2011

2011-07-16T11:12:00.001-07:00

So far the render problem seems to be resolved by rendering off the shots per shot through the render instead of videopost. I have not checked them yet but looking at individual renders there doesn’t appear to be any major faults where the hair jumps. I should have that sequence finished for tonight so I am really only 3 batches of sequences behind from the actual animation.
For the animation I have finished shot 94-97 and am very happy with the results. Animating Audrey’s walk turned out well and gave me more practise in accents in walks. Hmmm also I noticed when animating Darren’s sigh it might have been better if I had a morph to bulge the cheeks. I didn’t and with the way the rig is setup I can’t add morphs this far in, so made do, but it would have been better if I had a morph for cheek bulge also.
I am learning so much with working with Visemes and am tempted to go back over a few sequences to clean up the animation after viewing it again now. Audrey’s first speech and Darren’s Elms shocked expression when the moth flies at him, and the moths angry expression as it nears. Apart from that and general adjustments to the lighting and effects, I should have the sequences animated by the end of July. Only 4 sequences to go :)

Tuesday, 12 July 2011

2011-07-12T13:36:00.001-07:00

The patching process of editing rendered frames when the skin looked wrong worked fine. It was a little bit time consuming with about 30 or 40 frames in the sequence having the skin flicker problem. But I fixed it by patching up the frames using renders where the hair didn’t work correctly. I had yesterday off for my birthday and today and getting back into animating tomorrow the final four sequences. Next is 94-97 a quite complicated shot that I don’t think I have given myself enough time for. But I will work on it solidly for the week and try and cut the time it takes down so I can hopefully have the film animated by the end of July. This sequence involves again some character interaction between Ian and Darren plus Audrey working away supervising in the background. A nice shot but I can see the animation will be a little bit painstaking. But still as always very enjoyable.
The sequence I am rendering at present is George’s mad wake up moment… “our sub was like a ghost” etc. It’s a big shot, with over 30 seconds of animation to render and close up shots of faces plus reflections from Georges glasses. Consequently it is estimated at 370 hours at present. I am quite hopeful that it will drop as the camera pans of George. It is taking about 15 minutes per frame at present. It’s not a concern but it will be if there are any hair problems in the sequence, or shader problems. I think I could just re render frames for a skin problem, but if hair problems occur I will have to render off the sequence again.
On that note I have a thought that maybe, if instead of using videopost and rendering off each camera after each other, I could render it off using the standard render a camera at a time. This may fix the problem with the hair. If this sequence doesn’t work and there is a hair problem then I will choose this method to patch up problem areas.

Anyway heres a render of the shot as is

Friday, 08 July 2011

2011-07-08T12:20:00.000-07:00

I am progressing smoothly with sequence 30-34. I have animate Darren, George and half way through Ian. Render wise I have managed to get through 3 more sequences but then ran into a problem with sequence 30-34. Firstly an animation problem where Ian’s arm clips through the box when shaking hands. It was easily fixable. But the second problem is Darren’s skin shader sometimes changes colour between frames. Almost like a shadow round the mouth area. I am thinking this may be caused by my reducing the spec weight of the teeth and gums. But it only occurs on odd frames. Possibly a reaction between the normal skin and the teeth inside that skin. I am going to attempt altering the settings of the renders (increasing the mem limit to 1500 from 650 and ticking placeholder objects) and see if that helps resolve the problem. If not I am hoping it would occur again on different frames. Therefore I can patch them together with the sequence rendered before.
Also another hair problem. However I believe this is due to the simulation having to recalculate when I up the percentage of the sim when he leans on his hands. I have lowered the sim values to compensate and it should work fine. If it turns out I again have the skin problem I can patch frames from the skin problem renders so it hopefully will work out ok. I am more concerned right now in getting the hair right between the renders and zdepth,

Tuesday, 05 July 2011

2011-07-05T03:21:00.000-07:00

Finally finished shot 44 rendered only to find out I had set up videopost wrong so one of the shots was speed up to fit all the time of the sequence into one camera shot. A mistake by me but easily rectified. I am now beginning shot 80-86. One of the last shots when all the characters chat together. Also Audrey moth appears in the scene. The best way I can think to do this because of the size difference between the characters is to enlarge the background for the shot. Render it off, render off Audrey moth with the same lighting and compose them together after. Initially Audrey would speak and Darren would turn, but I am thinking if Audrey moth speaks half the sentence it would look a lot better and more amusing.
Looking back on 44 again. I had set up layers for lighting effects of the ceiling lights. Giving it more blur etc. But it just detracts from the sequence with the eyes automatically looking at the brightest areas. Sooo I wont be doing anymore ceiling light effects. It just doesn’t work well. For such a subtle effect I don’t think its worth the extra days rendering to get it right.
Here’s an image to show what I mean

My eyes look straight at the ceiling

Its only very subtle but I do think the lights with out that blur works better.

Hmmm OH!
My film so far
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BbY3LNAgN0

Saturday, 02 July 2011

2011-07-02T14:08:00.001-07:00

I am half way through sequence 115-118. Only 6 more sequences to go, but it is taking a lot longer to render due to mistakes than I believed it would. Mainly the hair simulation errors. So with the last sequence which has taken over 3 weeks to render so far due to mistakes, I still need to re-render one of the camera shots. 200 frames. Probably another day to 2 and a latter frame where the simulation jumps. Just one frame but it is noticeable. I am thinking of trying to patch these up from the exact time the simulation has problems. The simulation seems buggy like this. Why it doesn’t recalculate from the start when rendering off another sequence I am not sure. However if the sim resets after these jumps I can go back and render the areas of problems, without having to redo the zdepth. Luckily with the same settings it does render the same sequence after being reset. I noticed some of these jumps in the hair in other areas of the animation that I will have to re render but taking out just the areas of the problem and patching up with new renders works well. Either way I decided just to re-render one of the camera shots and hope it is the same simulation as the Darren and Audrey shots I have already rendered so I can put them together.

Also I had to up the memory limit for the sequences and using placeholder objects since the scenes would crash due to memory errors.
Anyway I am currently rather worried about the render times. Realistically I need the sequences wrapped and rendered soon so the sound professional can mix and edit the levels and fit it all accordingly.

On this sequence I have animated Georges facial features a number of times now. I am just trying to get a look of just waken and saying his words of wisdom. I tended to keep his eyes and brows to closed which caused him to look annoyed. Hopefully I have changed it enough to portray the emotions I want him to convey. Also added a little twitchiness to his mouth during speech. It looks good therefore am going back over the previous George sequence to incorporate the same things (they have not been rendered yet).

Wednesday, 29 June 2011 (latter on)

2011-06-29T15:04:00.001-07:00

Sequence 58_65 finished!!

Wednesday, 29 June 2011

2011-06-29T06:01:00.000-07:00

I am currently working on the lip sync to Ian and Darren from the shots 58-65. Its going well and finding it easier over time to pick out the necessary mouth movements for a set of speech and then the less important Visemes in-between. George was such a wonderful character action to animate and lip sync to. With his eye movement, lip sync and body I really tried to emphasise the quick confused state he was in as he wakes from a dream. It works well I think, with the only problem being the camera timing not working to well in the final animation. I would like to show all of Georges speech on screen framed in the camera, however to do this mean I would lose Darren’s turn back to Georges speech. Therefore it looks like Darren is ignoring him and staring at Ian instead. I will play with the camera shots latter to get the best views for the sequence, but so far I am quite happy with the progress.

Saturday, 25 June 2011

2011-06-25T06:39:00.000-07:00

Finally rendered of sequence 44-52 again yet there is a bug again in the teeth and gums for all characters when talking. It is very noticeable yet a quick fix was to lower the overall spec weight of the teeth gums and tongue for all the characters. Unfortunately this means re rendering the sequence one more time. Another 70 hours.

Here is a shot of Ian before and after the shader changes

Although subtle it is defiantly noticeable and a real problem. Something I will have to change in any new sequences toward the end of the animation.

Beginning the next shots today. Shot 58- 65> the sequence where George wakes up “it’s a lie” etc. It’s a good sequence to do and I cant wait to get stuck into it, yet have decided to merge sequence 58-60 with a latter scheduled sequence 60-65 since they flow onward. So it’s a two week sequence rather than a week. I am hoping to get it wrapped in a week and a half. My only real worry is the beginning of the sequence needs to tally from the sequence before, and the end from the sequence after. Where the characters are etc. Ian is simply working at the start, but I need to have him in relatively the same place at the end of the sequence for the clock shot where it appears behind him and Ian. Also for Darren.

Anyway onward

Thursday, 23 June 2011

2011-06-23T15:31:00.000-07:00

Finishing off shot 36 today and 38 (before and after a clock shot)> Darren wakes from his first Elm encounter, and sighs, steadies himself, then drifts off again. The sequence works well but the sigh was so hard to get right and I am still unsure if it works. The flexing of the head eyes and mouth almost looked like a sneeze, but I think its passable now and should look good in the final film.

Anyway I am pretty ahead with it. Just Darren elm to animate tomorrow so I am pretty happy. I am planning to add Darren Elm to a nice fancy plant area, rather than rely on a just white background, and do a quick fade in and out between Darren and Darren elm. Mimicking the movements of Darren and also the same camera flow. To achieve this I am planning to import Darren and the camera into the sequence of Darren elm, and place the character in the same view and eye location. It should look pretty convincing change of character,. and ground the idea that Darren is Darren Elm,.
I have to admit i look back on my work and realise how little I know yet also how much I have learnt through the process. I can see faults in previous animations in the sequence and things I could have done better.

Anyway onward

Thursday, 23 June 2011

2011-06-23T01:46:00.001-07:00

Finished shot 30- 32 yesterday. I expanded the sequence to be until 34, which flows on nicely and would have been the next weeks shot anyway. I have cut down the animation time again a little, just simply because I didn’t really have any problems in that sequence except for putting Darren’s arms up to rest on his head. It all works nicely anyway and there are some great expressions from Darren. Sadly not much is shown of Darren in the sequence since Ian holds the conversation, but the shots work very well and flow nicely from the shots before and after.

Next is shot 36… However I have decided to animate through the clock shot of 37 (already done) to the shot of Darren fading out to the Elmy Darren. It should be a two day shot for 36 so I am hoping with the added shots up to 37c (3 more shots) I can have it complete in 3 days at the most. Its looking promising anyway.

The shot after this will be the first time I have animated Georges facial movements since it will be the scene where he says “it’s a lie its all a lie”. The first time he actually wakes and in a half dream state talks to Darren. I am really looking forward to the shot and have a multitude of ideas for Georges maddening expressions in the shot.

Render wise things are going ok. The shot 44-52 is taking forever. Plus I accidentally wiped over some of the renders of the full sequence so that’s set me back another day. I have a long list of faults and things that need re rendering due to hair problems, missing objects, things like that, and ceiling lighting. But im getting there slowly.

Anyway onward.

Tuesday, 21 June 2011

2011-06-21T13:01:00.000-07:00

As said on the previous post I did in the end adjust the cameras, and am quite happy with the final flow of the piece. I am currently working on the facial animation and should have this sequence wrapped in another day.
On the rendering of 44-52 I am trying to finish the sequence with some added effects, the background disappearing and then Audrey disappearing as Darren enters his Elmy world. However the renders don’t seem to tally. With the hair of the shot not exactly the same. It’s a real problem, and if the second pass with no background objects doesn’t work I will go back and render off just the background for the last shot, and then the foreground characters as a separate pass giving me the same control. I am behind in the render schedule, with this shot taking a good 70 hours in all to render. But I may have to go back and re-render in separate passes if I cant get the shots to tally exactly due to the hair sim. I am unsure why the hair sim has recalculated its physics and would have though it would be the same throughout. Perhaps when I set up the render for the night it recalculated half way through the sequence. I don’t know. Either way there is a way round the problem.
Here is a render as off now of the shot, with all the characters (with out any effects)

Sunday, 19 June 2011

2011-06-19T04:05:00.000-07:00

Shot 30-32 is going very quickly. I had some troubles visualising Ian’s movements when he speaks, but think its nearly as good as it should be. I am trying a less bobbing action, to not emulate Audrey so much and keep that smooth flow that Ian has within himself. With the shake I decided to position the characters at that point, set keys and work between those points. The action is lovely as Ian takes his arm up, wipes it quickly on his t shirt before offering the shake, and Darren following the movement, a little nervous. Today I am animating Ian’s arms, hands and Darren’s, before the eyes then faces.
I seem to have formed a technique, following tutorials online, especially Comet Cartoons shot breakdowns (as mentioned in the previous semester) http://www.comet-cartoons.com/ to help understand and develop a process within big shots. Generally I start with the main character that holds the conversation, working on its head rotation whenf it speaks, but no actual facial movement, then the body, normally the upper chest rotation and then the arms. Then I add the hand gestures if it all looks good, then move onto the next character, and get all the body movements working on all characters before tackling the eyes, facial expression and lip sync. The problem with this sequence is there is an actual interaction between characters, with the shake, therefore both need to be animate at the same time to reach the same position. For example I animated Ian’s head first, forgetting that the chair and body would move when going for the shake, therefore I had to readjust frames of the head at the end since he was no longer facing Darren.
Anyways the shot seems much easier that I originally thought. However I may also adjust the camera that pans after. It may be better to have a still camera instead of them both in shot.

Saturday, 18 June 2011

2011-06-18T01:46:00.002-07:00

I have not posted in a few days. The work is going very well. Shot 21-22 where Darren flicks the green object into the box in the end fit perfectly to the sound. My initial worries of the shots sound needing adjustment was short lived once I had blocked out the character and the movement of the green object. In the end another bit of trickery was adding two green objects, one in hand linked to the hand and one thrown unlinked, so I could really produce some nice bounce to the object without worrying that the hand of Darren’s keys as it moves back again would force the object back.
The last shot rendering shot 44-52 is still rendering, taken 20 hours or so, so far and another 40 to go. But in this sequence once the zdepth is added I will change the zdepth to black and readjusted the ceiling lighting, so I can really play with the glow effect of the lights. Then render off the actual zdepth after. The render schedule has been thrown up in the air somewhat due to spotting mistakes in the sequences, and having to also re-render them. I am unconcerned at the moment, I still have untill December to get all the film finalised.,
I finished shot 25 – 26 also, a small shot of Darren looking to his left at Ian and then through his eyes checking Ian out and what he’s doing. For this I imported his sequence from shot 23, where he leans on his hand, and then deleted the keys until the final moment he is positioned with his arm in hands. Therefore enabling me to work from the final pose in 23 to the beginning of 25. The camera I linked between his head and eye control, therefore giving a direct view of where he really is looking in the film , also giving the first person view a little more believability..
I also have finished shot 28-29, where Darren surveys the room. I was unsure on this shot to add some trickery of all the scene fading out and leaving the plant on its own. But after tests it works much better without. Again I purposefully imported the sequences from the previous shot so I had there starting points, and worked through the animations again. Animating all the characters in the sequence, even off camera, to allow me to move the cameras if necessary and put the characters in there positions for the next sequence. I actually spent the most time on Ian in this sequence, who is never actually seen in the shot! I tried adding the camera to the face and eye ctrls however the movements of the eyes, how it tends to dart from chair to chair, was too jarring for the camera and I wanted a smooth flow across the office to survey the scene. Lining up exactly with the sound I added one of the background workers coughing and everyone’s reaction to this. Is he ok? Is he chocking? Etc. It works well.
Now I am on with shot 30-32. A shot with a lot of speech from Ian and Darren and a hand shake at the end. This really needs to be times perfectly with the sound and I wonder if I have given enough time for the shake while talking…. Or do the characters shake while talking,,. It will be an enjoyable shot to animate, as with all the characters. I think that’s it…
Onward!

Tuesday, 14 June 2011

2011-06-18T01:46:00.001-07:00

When adding the zdepth to the previous sequence 57 (the one spoke about in the previous post) I noticed the camera was clipping the branch. This may be a cause for the flicker problem. Either way I have re rendered the sequence with the camera adjusted. It pulls the 3 characters closer to the camera but I think it should be ok.
Looking through the whole film I am tempted latter to slow down some of the clock shots, since the amount of time spent on them is far to jarring and difficult to really think over. Its something for latter in the film when complete.
I am currently about 6 weeks behind but catching up slowly. I have done some small cheats in the next sequence to speed up the process of the 4 second shot. Instead of redoing the animation for all the background characters I have imported the best movements of flicking the objects into boxes from previous sequences and it works quite well.
This shot is when Darren flicks an object into the box from the side slowed down. I have adjusted the camera s and added sound however I feel the sound is out of sink to the movement he would portray and the camera. The sigh he does and the movement of the green object when it hits the box. So I am going to create the animation of Darren, then test it out with the sound, edit the sound to suit, then add the facial animation and edit the shot for the final. I am hoping is a 2 day sequence.
Also I had an idea for an initial poster and final image for the website.
Basically Darren sat in his chair from behind, depressed as the large clock ticks by, with Darren’s elm’s reflection in the clock looking back, warrior like. Adding the white glare around the edge of the clock. I think it would be quite effective and portray the idea of the story in one poster.

Sunday, 12 June 2011

2011-06-12T09:25:00.000-07:00

It has been a few more days working on the shots 44-52. I should have the sequences wrapped by tonight. I am just finishing off Audrey’s lip sync. I am a little worried about Ian’s lip sync since you can’t really see under his beard before rendering. So hopefully the mouth movements are enough.
A little trickery I moved the camera of the end of the sequence of the close up of Darren so that it tallies with the start of the next sequence of Darren Elm, so the eyes and face are in the same place. It should produce a nice effect.
On the shot 57 cave sequence I had it all ready when I noticed on one shot Darren Elms teeth flicker. Looking online its possible it’s a light map issue so have increased that to 100%. Its possible this may be a fix. I also tried the lights to make sure they weren’t causing the problem with the shadow effects. Since one light uses mental ray shadows and the rest ray traced. However they do not appear to be the cause. Hopefully I will find the problem soon since the teeth flicker is quite noticeable, funnily though it doesn’t do it in the close up at the beginning only in the rest of the cameras when he talks.
I have noticed latter that it seems to be a problem with two shader’s, that use the same parameters. I don’t think it’s a light map issue which is suggested online, after rendering the same thing occurs and believe it may be a problem with that shader which was copied for the bone shader of the cowl that also flickers. Funnily though it doesn’t do it with the helmet that although in a completely separate shader set it was copied from the tooth shader to begin. So I am thinking if I redo the shader’s completely for the character it should work and it’s a bug with that shader set and those shader’s in it. Anyways I am testing it with default parameters, and if that works I am half way there.
http://www.digitaltutors.com/forum/showthread.php?18801-SSS-Flickering-please-help-!
It didn’t.
Ok some looks around the web latter and trying changing the render setting to Lanczos and min and max samples to 4. This didn’t work either, another post was on final gather settings, so I am trying rendering out the final gather map every frame, with this settings it may be easier to calculate the fall off generated on the character from the omni light and its falloff. It seems to be a fall off problem of the shadows.
http://3dsmaxrendering.blogspot.com/2008/04/why-does-my-animation-flicker_02.html

this didn’t seem to work and since I wasn’t using final gather to begin im pretty sure it wasn’t the problem. However I may try it again latter if I cant find the problem, in using the map pre-calculated then rendering off the whole sequence. However since I don’t really understand the setting I am unsure if this would work with a moving object. Anyway if the next test doesn’t work I will try that.

As off now I have increased the light map of the shader to 100%, the samples to 128 and turned on scatter indirect illumination. Hopefully this may work, but since the lights differ so much in the scene, with animated light sequences and moving skin, I worry that using a final gather pre calculated map might not work. But I am a novice in those areas so learn as I go I guess.
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif112&id=10061676&linkID=9241177

http://ankitsurti.blogspot.com/2010/08/creating-final-gather-map-and-its.html

Another solution online was a problem with a combination of working out the light values in mental ray while the camera moves. So each frames it works it out again and causes some flickering between frames as the light is worked out differently. In final gather there is a process where it can work out the difference between 5 or so frames, therefore stopping the flicker. However for some reason in this sequence it isn’t working, even with a fixed camera.

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=13823260&linkID=9241177

I have decided to render off the sequence as is, and come back to it at a latter time. Otherwise I will fall behind more with the sequences.

Wednesday, 08 June 2011

2011-06-08T14:47:00.001-07:00

Working on shot 44 to 52 still. Its taking a while, this is the most amount of character interaction I have done but its working quiet well. I think I tend to preview more, since I worry about working with so many characters. I think this shot would lend itself well to a nice step by step of the animation process. Block out, body movement, eye movement, face movement, etc. I think a short video of this would look really well and be useful for other students also.

Anyway the eye movement is finished. All body movements and looking at the beginning of the facial animation tomorrow. I am really happy with the interaction and think the shot will work very well. I am tempted to drop all cameras just to show all the 4 characters bouncing off each other. But then this wouldn’t fit with the rest of the film. Will leave that for the how I did it video on animation I guess.

HMMM. Ok also for note for myself I did a little trickery. I had re animated all the objects that move from Ian and Darren. However the opacity needs to change when they fall through the desk and then are re picked up by the character (it would appear in render that they fall in the box and they pick up a new object, but in the animation there is actually only one object that they flick, falls through the box and appears back in there hands). The problem was to animate the opacity I had so many other key frames for the box movements I could not really toy with the opacity keys, so added a new piece of geometry and added the material to that and worked with that animating the opacity in the correct sequence, therefore not having the woes of all the key frames for the green objects.

On the rendering side of things I am still rendering off 53- 57 and had to restart it a few times. Firstly Georges beard wasn’t animated and secondly the pipe was way to bright, almost popping out the scene with its brightness, (as shown in the previous post) so therefore added a new light just for the pipe with a lower multiplier. Now the characters with the lighting seem to fit great and I don’t think there will be that much tweaking after.

Tuesday, 07 June 2011

2011-06-07T11:29:00.001-07:00

Still working on shot 44-52. I took a preview render of the actions of the characters on the previous sequences, to make sure everything flowed. Audrey and Ian’s body movements are great, and so are Georges and I am just finishing off Darren’s before working on the facial animation’s. I have to say this is maybe the longest shot to involve so many characters. Yet I am getting there! Its fun to work with the interactions, and hopefully this will be shown in the film. Anyway I have had some troubles with Ian’s Earphone wire. And in a latter sequence Ian takes the earphones off and on and I do worry on the movement of the wire. I can see me spending a day trying to get it right alone.

Looking at the latter shots and how I organised the schedule I think it will be increasingly easier as time progresses. I am at the moment a few weeks behind, due to illness. But I am slowly catching up, and since I began rendering earlier this year I am pretty much on top of the render schedule that I initially had planned. for the end of the film (off course some elements may have to change when the film is complete, and viewed for critique before final hand in.) Therefore it leaves me at the moment a good 4 months for the dissertation. However this may be 3 month by the end of the film.

Today I also re-worked on the lighting for shot 53-57. The cave in the tree section. Having viewed some cave shots in films I decided it would look a lot more … colder, and damper if a more blue light was used for the Elmies, and push out the Specular some more. I could have adjusted the character skin but decided to do the majority of work in post, using layers of black and Specular for the objects.

Here’s a comparison of the shot before and after light changes.

Friday, 03 June 2011

2011-06-03T03:30:00.001-07:00

I am working on sequence 44-52 and also testing a nice glow effect for the ceiling lights in the office. However at the moment feel it detracts from the scene having the lights with glow effects.. I am currently rer-endering sequence 1 again with the name sameolthing.inc changed to same ol thing. And testing the glow effect of the lights of the ceiling. It’s a pretty simple matter changing the glow, by adding a new layer of white around the lights of the ceiling. Basically a new texture with the same light sequence on the roof with sell illum, and then blurred latter and added as a second layer with screen. So it doesn’t clip any objects I take the zdepth falloff and change that all to black except for the roof. Therefore there really isn’t much tinkering needed to add the lights. But again the brightness may detract from the rest of the scene, with the eye automatically going to the brightest spots. Anyway a test render of the sequence should show what I think.
On 44- 52 I have created George animations and facial movements and began Audrey. I think I will change some of the camera angles some more latter, since when George is woken slightly (heard in the sound) by Audrey’s snap at Darren you don’t actually see it in the scene and left to guess. Where as it would work better and the shot laid out better if not only Darren and Audrey but George also featured in that shot.

Anyway onward,. Here’s a test render with the lights on for the ceiling.

The ceiling lights seem to work in the sequence. So will go with it. But again if it becomes to distracting latter will take them back out.

Thursday, 02 June 2011

2011-06-02T03:52:00.000-07:00

Finished sequence 43 and rendered and compiled the film and uploaded it to you tube at ..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojjlIkkDITA
the only real problem with sequence 43 were just getting the lip sync to look realistic on some visimes. But in the end it looks quite good and im happy to move on with it. Next is sequence 44- 52 a very big shot over 30 seconds of talk and character interaction. I have made a small change between the camera shots to this and the aniatmic since for Audrey to walk to the enxt camera within the allotted time is impossible, and decided to leave her where she is and in the sequence where she looks at the caravan you can also see Darren and Ian in the shot. Which in the end has more meaning I think.

As an experiment I added some lens flares to the star, which looks great I am quite happy with the effect., All I used was the preset setting in the lens flare, of some of the parameters, Didn’t change the colors or anything of the star effect, just choose the right effects such as glow, rays etc. Seems to look quiet nice and will add the same effect to the other sequences of the star latter.

Looking through the film so far there are a lot of small mistakes.
Firstly I think changing the name Sameolthing.inc to Same Ol thing is more poignant, This I am re rendering now.
Seems far to much blur at the start sequence.
There are no green objects in Darren’s box at the start
The star effect
George Elms beard in some places seems not to move. Almost stuck. And a adjustment to the sim should solve this.

That’s it so far. Going to continue on with 44-52 now.

Wednesday, 25 May 2011

2011-05-25T06:52:00.000-07:00

Began working on the next sequence over the last few days, sequence 43 where Audrey talks to Darren about “one day…. One day”. However stalled with problems with sequence 66-67 rendering. It appears the tongue was far to shiny and reflecting light from outside the mouth. In the end a quick fix was to tone down the Specular on the skin shader, and also rework the teeth shader. Finally the tongue clipped the teeth of Ian at one point and therefore edited the animation slightly so it wouldn’t.
Onward with sequence 43!!

With teeth problem and tongue clipping and tongue lighting problem and fixed on the right

Tuesday, 17 May 2010

2011-05-17T12:23:00.000-07:00

The Movie so far
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5i_iSICQcgM

Thursday, 14 April 2011

2011-04-14T08:08:00.001-07:00

Finished sequences 23 and compiled the video together as is and uploaded it. I will try and get some more sequences rendered in the next week but for now I have decided to stop animating while getting ready for the hand in.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkhRjJsSNWc
So I guess this will probably be my final post of April, until my work is ready for hand in. And my final post of this semester.

Wednesday, 06 April 2011

2011-04-05T17:39:00.001-07:00

Was sent this in a link yesterday, a great look at the puppetry of war horse.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7u6N-cSWtY
Also finished sequence 66-67, with the clock appearing behind Ian and Daren, I think its one of the best scenes so far. I am learning more and more over time in animation, and at the beginning I wasn’t aware of what I didn’t know, yet now over time and watching animation dvds and books, I am becoming a lot more aware of techniques in animation. And applying them hopefully successfully. I admittedly maybe a bit to anal. Especially trying to keep the clock to be the right time in every shot. Even when not shown, but it’s a little quirk that adds to the atmosphere in the scene.

Sunday, 03 April 2011

2011-04-02T17:41:00.000-07:00

Renders off a few more sequence and began animating sequence 66-67, where Ian discusses how fast the day is going with Darren. Its hard graft today, for some reason I just have not been with it and making little progress, which is annoying since I am still about 2 weeks behind. But I am going to work for another hour and see if I can get at least Ian’s body working and then work on Daren and the lip sync tomorrow.

Its been very slow and problematic with the rendering. The simulation of the light with physiques was causing a lot of different problems when used through video post in a sequences of the different cameras. In the end the easiest way was to render off each camera individually. Sometimes the simulation would get caught in the moth, or just when the camera moved it would bob more, and therefore I couldn’t add the zdepth and white layers to the sequence since they were not exactly the same. Finally I got it though however this was more with luck than anything. I doubt I will be able to get all the sequences rendered by the end of April for the hand in. But will do my best.

Anyway here is a still from the last sequence rendered.

Thursday, 31 March 2011

2011-03-30T17:56:00.001-07:00

Finished sequence 27 where the clock appears large in front of Darren. The sequence works well and I decided to go for making the materials turn invisible slowly in the scene rather in composition, therefore being able to see reflection in the surface of the clock etc. However when rendering it comes apparent that because of the hair opacity and the gradient opacity of the whole sequence it takes way to long to render and therefore have decided to go for the second option of making the opacity blend in composition. This also makes setting up the zdepth much easier.

I don’t think I mentioned it before but I have stopped using reference videos of myself now and prefer acting out the actions then replaying them in the scene. Its just a little easier and makes me less self conscious. Of course if I come up to a brick wall in the scenes will record myself instead. But for now I am quite happy with the results I am getting with the animation. I have tried not to over exaggerate to much with the animation. Trying for a more realistic and subtle approach.

Monday, 28 March 2011

2011-03-28T19:16:00.000-07:00

Re rendered scene 53 the cave sequence and added z-depth blur. It’s hard trying to get the blur right in this sequence, with all the character talking at different levels, but I think its ok. I also noticed that the fly may have to much Specular when it moves. So will re render that section of the animation with a toned down specular map.
Now I am up to shot 27. The last of the clock shots of the week. I am just wondering the best method to create the sequence, where the office disappears, and just leaves Darren, and the large clock in front. I could do this with composition, it would be by far the easiest method. However it would miss the nice reflections in the clock I could get. Also I am unsure of what the background would be in the larger clock. Possibly either a bright white or a brick wall. I think in the end I will use a brick wall, as the small clock would be hung on. Now its just trying to get all the materials to slowly turn invisible at the same time.

Monday, 28 March 2011

2011-03-27T16:33:00.000-07:00

Rendered off sequence 57 the last 2 days due to a problem with his hat and the lip sync. This should be finalised by tonight, and then just the zdepth layer to work on before moving back onto sequence 87. Not sure exactly how to edit the cowl without disturbing the animation. I am thinking adding a edit mesh over the top of the skin wrap in the stack may work, however it may also cause a crash and cause everything to slow even more down.. I will try that latter anyway, I m just trying tog et a bit more ahead by doing all the clock shots. These are all the close ups of the clock. I have made sure the characters are still performing and in place just in case they are visible in the reflection. They may be subtly , but I think its worth that extra half hr setup just to make sure all the character are in the place they should be at that time. Making sure the continuity is right.
The clock is pretty easy to set up now since I rigged it so that u move each hand and the rest follow in turn exactly how they would. So if u move the second hand around a minute the minute hand will also move a minute and the hr hand as well. Therefore I can work out the time it would be after 9 on each shot of the clocks and add that time. So the clock will never be out, unless of course any other shots may be required latter.

Friday, 25 March 2011

2011-03-24T20:39:00.000-07:00

Rendered off a few more sequence and finished the next scene. I am quiet happy with it at the moment, however I need to re render off sequence 87 where the light falls down and tames the moth, because Georges cowl was intersecting his body. Hopefully there will be a quick fix for it tomorrow and I can render off again over the weekend.

Tuesday, 22 March 2011

2011-03-22T17:18:00.001-07:00

Ran into a big problem with the rendering today, where the opacity maps show the full polygons through the fog. If this latter become a problem with George elm beard etc, then I can render it off without fog, and use a zdepth as the alpha with a white layer underneath to create the fog. Here’s a summary of the problem online anyway

http://forums.cgsociety.org/archive/index.php/t-74208.html

I am going to try this effect now with the ear lashes of Darren, and if it doesn’t work I can always delete the lashes in the troublesome shots.
Luckily the work around worked. I may need to use this latter in some shots if any more cause troubles, but for now everything seems to be going ok.

Sunday, 20 March 2011

2011-03-20T20:04:00.000-07:00

Still working on the same sequence, its tough going trying to get the movements believable, and I have run into some problems with the rig, and how the arms move on Audrey’s rig. But I am getting there slowly. I may stay up tonight and work through to try and get a lot of work done. Quiet behind at the moment to be honest.
I rendered of sequence 68-79 and discovered some faults in the disappearing helmet again. Its alright with the background, as before it showed a silhouette, but when it moves over leaves, that are using sss, its cause again a problem. I believe this is to do with the fog more than anything. A quick and dirty way round this is to re render the sequences up until his hat changes, and removed the invisible hat. Which I will do next.

Saturday, 19 March 2011

2011-03-18T18:20:00.000-07:00

Finished the start sequence with the entry into the factory and began the next sequences also. I have been ill the last few month or so and therefore fell behind in my work, but beginning to catch up again now. At the moment I am taking two sequences combined and working on them and should be finished hopefully in a few more days. At present I am 3 weeks behind, but really working hard to catch back up. no renders at present just a lot of elbow grease.

Friday, 04 March 2011

2011-03-04T10:29:00.000-08:00

Finished the last sequence now with the Elmies and Darren looking at each other.

Everything seems to be working alright. It was a technically difficult scene, but as with the last scene of the Elmies and the factory together it eventually worked. The lighting seems to fit and even though they are completely different sequences and sizes it gels well together. I maybe could use putting a small flare onto the actual light. Of the elm. But its something to think about latter.

I am now onto the next sequence which is the first sequence of the camera panning into the factory. Its actually two shots with the camera moving through the door and then the second shot with Darren sitting down with Audrey next to him. It has two walk cycles, Darren sitting, and the background characters. I am going to try adding a bit more personality into the walks. Anyways onwards!

A really nice look at Blur studios and autodesk facial animation setup.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38wh5Fn4WEs&feature=feedrec_grec_index_more

Wednesday, 02 March 2011

2011-03-01T18:15:00.001-08:00

Created the first sequence with the background characters. I am really not happy with the unmoving characters but really it’s the quickest and best method. So will just have to go with it. Hopefully it will just look like the characters are thinking or sleeping, or just lost in own worlds!!

Tuesday, 01 March 2011 (little latter)

2011-03-01T15:32:00.000-08:00

Here’s a render from that sequence testing if all the character render in the same world (thankfully they do)!!!

Tuesday, 01 March 2011

2011-03-01T09:22:00.001-08:00

Currently working on the next sequence 111. Where the Elmy flies across Darren’s face. Again this will be done in composition, and I therefore have created a object to replace the Elmies for now, so I can create the animation of Darren’s face in awe, disbelief, realisation, as he sees himself as the elm in reality.
Anyway I was a little confused on what expression he should exhibit. And decided a very slight eye opening and mouth drop would suit best, and show the slight realisation. Which I am currently working towards.
The last shot came out well with the Elmies flying of at the end, yet there may be some lighting issues that I will deal with in post. Currently it is set up with all the lights the same as the factory exterior, yet I dunno how this will look with the two different sized objects. This will become more of a problem with the next sequence, where the interior lighting is setup to light darn and the elms. And since its interior and cant rescale anything, it may not look right with the Elmies, since they will be about the same size as half the factory floor. Therefore the lighting will be completely different. I figure the best way to work on this is a still render from the sequences before rendering and compose them, and adjust the to suit.
Also I discovered yesterday I have far to many models in my scene for the factory. With background characters its way to much for the system to handle and crashes. A few way rounds this, such as animating a few at a time and composing them after. But I decided a quicker way is to animate just a few of the background characters, and hopefully the ones that are just as edit meshes wont be noticeable.

Sunday, 27 February 2011

2011-02-26T17:36:00.000-08:00

I have been really rushing the last two days trying to catch up a little. Not to much as to lose quality in the animation, but enough to start catching up. This sequence should take a week and I hopefully should have it wrapped by tomorrow night. It’s basically the end sequence where Darren rides of on his bike and the moth also rides off. I was worried about the composition. And how to make sure they sit well in the same world since it would be two different sequences overlaid. In the end I created a preview of the first sequence of Daren riding of on his bike, then previewed it and used that as the background to a new sequence of the moth animation. Enabling me to animate it while checking it in the same world. Anyway its working alright so far, and hopefully will have the moth and Elmies complete in the next two days.

Friday, 25 February 2011

2011-02-25T04:03:00.001-08:00

the Animatic with pre rendered sequence so far.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUsDwBi3-FQ

Wednesday, 23 February 2011

2011-02-23T15:24:00.001-08:00

I unfortunately lost a bit of work this week and had to revert to an earlier save, and therefore became a few days behind. Just a silly mistake with moving key frames and forgetting about the previous few seconds of the shot. Today I am just wrapping up the last of the elm tree sections, hopefully finishing by latter this evening, and can upload the new video tomorrow. (I stayed up last night to try and get back on track)

Anyway while previewing work I stumbled across a great site featuring some wonderful animated shorts.

http://www.smashingapps.com/2010/01/22/absolutely-incredible-short-animations-that-would-make-you-say-wow.html

Thursday, 17 February 2011 (daytime )

2011-02-17T10:42:00.000-08:00

Added some gallery images to Sameolthing.com over the last few hours and now going to work on the Moth animations till late. Hopefully can get these sequences wrapped by Monday.

Here are the images i added to the gallery

Thursday, 17 February 2011

2011-02-16T17:31:00.001-08:00

Saw Barry Purves for a lecture today, was very good, then a tutorial with my tutor. There is still some problems with the moth which I will tackle over the next few days. I am off to Manchester Saturday but hopefully I should be able to get all the elm sequences wrapped by Monday. I have fallen about two weeks behind, which is ok with the buffer I have at the end of the animation schedule, but I am worried that I am slipping way to much, so I may do a few all nighters over the next few weeks to really get the schedule back together.

After I have redone the moth and elm animations I need to look back at the render schedule, and get those sequences rendered. My last render schedule I failed to stick to when having to re work those moth sequences and I could just leave it till the end and render then, but it means I wont have any finished sequences rendered by the April hand in and just preview renders.

Also during the tutorial the music was again looked into. I initially was very happy with the music I recently choose, but my tutors suggested taking another look for the more trumpet old coronation street factory music and place in a nice factory whistle for the beginning. In the end I found a piece that reminds me of inception or social network, while still having the factory feel with the trumpets. It soo suits the feel of the piece more than the music I had chosen and am really happy. I am going to leave uploading a new sequence until the moth animation is complete. But the music can be found here

http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/84795

track 9

Monday, 14 February 2011

2011-02-14T17:54:00.001-08:00

Reworked the moth animation again, taking the run in it does in the shots when it chases Darren. It appears a lot more menacing being less graceful and more forceful with it wing actions. I am going to try working on how it moves forward now, try and get some consistency with is straight ahead action. At the moment I am happy with it, but it cant hurt to see if I can push the moth animation further, without it looking to comedic.

Anyhow I have plenty of reference, but torn between a realistic moth, where its so scaty, or how I want the character to be, a hunter out for Elmies. So I will try a combination and see what looks best.

Sunday, 13 February 2011

2011-02-13T10:24:00.000-08:00

A great vfs short on sushi!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qa1GMAmYd8I&feature=related

Only a one minute piece, but what a cool idea and so simple but affective.

Saturday, 12 February 2011

2011-02-11T16:58:00.000-08:00

After searching far and wide I have found a song!!! It isn’t exactly what the tutors had in mind, but does emphasise the theme of time and suits the music through out in the piece. So I have chosen three others to test also, but I am pretty resigned to this piece.

http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/72659

It perfectly suits the whole theme of time and the clocks. I could have gone for more industrial but then it would have clashed with the latter pieces. But I think I will render of separate tests and see what sounds best in the end.

Oh also the sound was mentioned. I think the difference between the factory sound and the plant has not been emphasised enough so will work on that a little.

Friday, 11 February 2011

2011-02-11T13:27:00.001-08:00

We had Tim Searle for a lecture today, and he took the time to look at my work after. Had a really good crit on my work, and he and my tutor mentioned a few areas I need to improve. The way the moth moves again, more weight and make it flap as normal not slow mo, also the start music just doesn’t suit the animation, and doesn’t lead u in well. Also perhaps an internal monologue of the main character would suit the piece more. So it is more clear what is actual happening in the piece. It’s going to be difficult to record the voice of the main character again since he has moved away for university. But I am sure I can come up with something. I liked the ambiguity of not knowing if the Elmies are real or imaginary. Yet still the audience needs to follow the plot and not be lost in what is going on. I need to think on it and decide the best option to tell the story without anyone being too confused.

Anyway I am spending the night listening to royalty free music trying to find the right piece for the beginning.

Thursday, 10 February 2011

2011-02-10T14:22:00.000-08:00

Working well on the last elm sequence. Going to miss them :) should have this sequence wrapped by sat.

Anyway a nice animation from vfs on ballet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LDpU5ik2rA&feature=feedrec_grec_index

and while on ballet, here’s some nice ref of some ballet moves, just for future ref

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQ0L24YbGGI&NR=1&feature=fvwp

Wednesday, 09 February 2011

2011-02-09T19:13:00.000-08:00

I have reached dvd 13 of the animators survival kit by Richard Williams, on dialogue. I was getting a little worried at first, if I have been animating my dialogue correctly, but it seems I was pretty much doing the same thing with only animating the main sequences and not getting to anal and restricted by animating every possible mouth movement… the flappy mouth syndrome!!

Some nice anims of the day of u tube

a true act of kindness - a lovely piece from Vancouver film school
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0lynZYyshg&feature=rec-LGOUT-exp_fresh+div-1r-10-HM

awesome clay mation work
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuUTkvfPpsA&feature=rec-LGOUT-real_rev-rn-2r-21-HM

Tuesday, 08 February 2011

2011-02-08T14:22:00.000-08:00

Just working out how the moth would come of the plant for take off in the final sequence of the Elmies before they emerge from the plant. Because the moth has 3 peoples on its back, maybe it should push down a little first, then expand upward. I am looking at a u tube video of a moth taking off to see how that looks, and referring to my older work of the moth taking off when the light moves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6EGtUIY2PQ

I think it would benefit more with a stronger downward movement to begin to show the weight, the struggle with the 3 characters weighing it down before lift off

A little latter I decided it would look better if the moth as on a path therefore more fluid movement, and I could do the old oh its gone off the branch and falling trick, yet flies off safely in the end. Therefore deleted the animation so far and have began to rework it.

Currently the moth is on a path, dips nicely, and goes up, with the abdomen flexing in accordance to the movement. I will work on the legs tomorrow as it comes off the branch, then the wings… which will probably take a few takes to get looking ok, then finally the character interactions.

Tuesday, 08 February 2011

2011-02-08T06:08:00.000-08:00

I just thought I would take a small break from animating and show you some of the things that inspire and have helped shape the short so far. Really I should have included these videos when I found them and used them and I will in the future.

Anyway

Ok firstly this is a great little animation showing superb skill in 3D. I tend to always sway towards 3D animation since what I want is a career in 3D art and animation. Perhaps as a generalist in games, knowing rigging, character and object creation and animation. Or as a 3D animator in a animation studio. Either way I am trying to be versatile enough to be of interest for employees in the field of 3D. This animation really captivates a great fight sequence with little build time yet still a superb piece of work

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAxi38FE8xo

Next we have to have a Pixar short. This is a rare tennis commercial which beautify demonstrates all the principles of animation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Zv9vRz4QYM

Next a Machinima demonstrating superb use of the tools in hand in a WOW movie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCwmG7XYKp8

Next, completely off subject but I have to put it in, Vanilla sky is one of may favourite films, a man confused upon realities, here is Sigur Ros nothing song, I latter used one of there songs (royalty free) for my show reel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqWEkam9H4w

Here is a great animation just showing thinking out the box a little when creating a piece and inspired me a lot in my own work

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5FwMqync5Y

Gollum

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUNYCGZMtI8

The superb 3D short Happy by Michael Lewicki. So clean, well animated, beautiful

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLvDz1zkNXo

Some digital painting tricks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beM99eFb76c

Next here is a piece that put the seed in the idea of doing a masters, from a friend called Toby,. His short from when he did his Masters

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l146fQfzE7A

Next a live action piece, well thought out and beautiful camera work and direction
Batman dead end

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCnYSQDSawg

Now I just put this up as its my favourite musician and the song inspired the yellow bike in my own short, Saez yellow tricycle

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYbVZWwGmw4

Now some research material, looking at flies first and how they move and fly in slow motion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6EGtUIY2PQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlgrBeGX8w0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZu_qSGoAMc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlYRvWNE5kE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1bi-8uRCaU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnmhYD5UadE

Next a great lecture, if u have time watch it!!! Achieving your childhood dreams. Mine is to work in a good studio in 3D, somewhere where I can learn and grow as an artist!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo

Next a lecture on the history of Pixar, very good

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjSExqtiIyg

the nose character that I helped a bit on while at thing 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h48SaiP10Z4

Looking at run cycles

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3XrLfA2TXs

Next some moth reference for my moth in the short - there a re plenty of reference for moths but this was the best for examining how the wings move and body moves when in flight.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtWeTb8to7k

Next looking at acrobatics for when Darren Elm jumps from branch to branch

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KZlKrv5Mjs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2qWgL19sJc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TORuQ7fj5ZQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z82NuYltia0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7jp-7uLUhM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1E-TVAkSxE

Anyway that’s it for now. I am going to spend a little bit more time putting here what I find inspiring and what motivates me as well as the every day diary of the short, to show how it shapes and grows as I animate, and how my head can be :)

Sunday, 06 February 2011

2011-02-06T13:31:00.000-08:00

Here is the Animatic with some pre rendered sequences

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8dFVdXi3tI

Saturday, 05 February 2011

2011-02-05T13:39:00.001-08:00

I nearly finished the moth animations. I looked back on the research I did when creating the moth animations in the beginning and noticed how the wings turn when moving up and down. Most noticeably how they tend to bend inward instead of outward when moving up and down, and how the abdomen moves as well, where I had it moving in the wrong direction. Anyway I redid the moth sequences and a few tweaks here and there to some other parts of the animation. I will uploaded it tomorrow since it takes a good few hours to upload and its getting late.

Friday, 04 February 2011

2011-02-04T15:02:00.001-08:00

Here is the image for the website. I am currently working on redoing the moth animation and tomorrow will upload a new video with edited moth effects and the new scene.

Thursday, 03 February 2011

2011-02-03T11:17:00.001-08:00

Ok I have wrapped up the next sequence and am very happy with it. I am taking a day off from actually animating to create a new front page for the website, and do some research into bird/moth movement so I can get the moth looking as good as I can. I am probably a week behind, but even if I don’t catch up I have a four/five month overrun time although it does run into my dissertation. I am not worried anyway. The next sequence should not take to long, but I don’t want to cut any corners to speed up my work.

Anyway I will update either latter tonight or tomorrow if I have a new front page image. I will upload the new Animatic with the new sequence tomorrow.

Wednesday, 02 February 2011

2011-02-02T09:11:00.000-08:00

I have had a bit of a problem with the next scene. pretty much wrapped it up and was back on schedule before I noticed I was working at 30fps instead of 25 on the animation preview. Therefore all the lip sync is out of sync. Anyway this will probably set me back 2 days at least. Then I need to rework all the moth animations since they just don’t look right with the flapping motion of the wings. Therefore needing to re render a number of sequences. Some little problems, but its not to much of a worry.

Wednesday, 26 January 2011

2011-01-26T14:02:00.001-08:00

I have uploaded the Animatic with more shots from the pre rendered sequences. At

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuSdkYtYHno

also nearly completed sequence 99-106. Next will be the facial animation then it pretty much wraps it up and on to the next. I am maybe a day behind if I am finished by Saturday.

Tuesday, 25 January 2011

2011-01-24T16:45:00.001-08:00

Finished the block out and body animation of shots 99-106. Tomorrow I will work on the eyes and finally facial animation. Hopefully I can be finished by Friday and then I am back ahead again.

Sunday, 23 January 2011

2011-01-22T17:59:00.001-08:00

I have began 99-106 the last few days, but still need to recompile the preview videos for upload, since there is a little fault in it. Making Darren Elm climb onto the back of the moth was quite hard, yet I managed it eventually after a bit of research on horse mounting. Anyways bed now. Will compile the vids tomorrow morning and upload it.

Tuesday, 18 January 2011

2011-01-18T14:49:00.000-08:00

I finished that sequence and also rendered off another sequence. I am maybe 3 days behind right now, which is a real problem. I have enough buffer at the end so its alright, but I still need to get my work compiled for the April hand in which will take a while also. Its going to be a lot of juggling in April.
Anyway shot 53-57 is ready to render with zdepth. And shot 87-93 is done, lit and ready to start rendering. No real problems at the moment.
I will upload the next sequence of previews tomorrow. Then begin 99-106.

Sunday, 16 January 2011

2011-01-15T19:08:00.001-08:00

I have nearly completed the next scene with little problems. I am maybe 2 days behind, but I am catching up slowly. I am rendering off the cave scene at the moment too and I plan to compose them together near the end of April so some of the film will be finished at that time for the hand in. Worked on the walk cycle for George Elm today and the breathing for the characters. Tweaked the moth movement a bit also and some subtle animations to Ian elm. Tomorrow I will be working on the eyes, the lip sync and the lamp movement. Which I think will be a combination of the simulation and hand animation.. Or perhaps just heavy tweaking of the simulator. Either way its all coming together in this scene, which has all the characters in it again so its taken some time. Its only going to get harder with the animation work on the characters, since when it gets to the office scenes there will be background characters to work on as well. But I am pretty confident.

Anyways I am of to bed. Been watching some great animations the last two weeks also. Especially the thief and the cobbler and how to train your dragon, boy do I have a lot to learn!!

Monday, 03 January 2011

2011-01-03T13:46:00.000-08:00

It been a while since my last post, I been enjoying xmas and new year. But I also completed the next sequence 66-79 and it looks really good on the previews. However I had a really problem with the helmets. Since some have to be invisible while others are shown through the fog they were still showing up as silhouettes. But as it turns out its because the actual background was still set as black through the fog, and now it has been cleared. However it does worry me that this may become a problem with the z-depth latter.
Although I am maybe 3 days behind I think the best thing for me to do tomorrow is create a render schedule for the work, with all the layers necessary for each sequence, so I can have it all ready for post by the time the animation is complete. It shouldn’t take long tomorrow and I can then continue with sequence 87-93

Tuesday, 21 December 2010

2010-12-21T06:43:00.000-08:00

I decided that the last sequence of the chase where Darren elm says “one day” is just to much in the face, literally, and it would be more mysterious and interesting to elongate shot 41, the shot before from behind, and him say “one day” with the camera in that view from behind, making the latter sequence in the tree cave more exciting with it being the first time you see the elms faces talking. Anyway I did some preview renders, and put them in the Animatic and it works great, so solved the nagging problem I was having wit the “One day” sequence

Monday, 20 December 2010 (latter on)

2010-12-20T11:11:00.000-08:00

Began working on the next sequence today, had some trouble with the timing, and setting up the cameras for the sequence, just trying to produce the same results in 3D was difficult, but in the end I cut down the Animatic to the sequence I am working on, and timed it that way, rather than having to work everything out over and over again.
Anyways as said before here the Animatic with the 3 sequences done so far, I will probably keep uploading every few months so it shows the progress throughout the piece. To tell the truth the section where he says “one day" is nagging me, and I might go back to it latter, im unsure if it’s the camera being so fast, or just the expressions on the character, but it just seems wrong somehow.
Anyway heres the link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8buAEmaBbws

Monday, 20 December 2010

2010-12-19T16:22:00.001-08:00

I have had flu the last week but still managed to keep up with the work anyway. I have been doing alright, the initial scope of the action Darren Elm would do was a little daunting, but in the end the hardest part was deciding the best camera angle for the speech at the end of the shot. Anyways I have added the pre rendered scenes to the Animatic, and will upload it tomorrow so the tutor and peoples can view the progress so far.

Monday, 13 December 2010

2010-12-13T12:06:00.000-08:00

I finished shot 38 today, after some major troubles with the run cycle, and jump. They just didn’t look right and after a few days of tweaking it came apparent from a friend that the back needed adjusting slightly when he launches into the run. I am happy anyway, thankfully its finished and onto the next run sequence, with even more action, on shot 39-42. I think I will block it out latter tonight and tomorrow, and try and get it done before Friday, but to be honest the last shot has really slowed me down, so I may have fallen a couple of days behind with it.

I think in the end I will add the distance blur and motion blur in post, and also add some blur between the white background and leaves and branches… Making it look a little bit more dreamy.

Here are two renders from the scene.

Thursday, 09 December 2010

2010-12-09T11:25:00.000-08:00

I began working on shot 38 today, and also uploaded better quality versions of some of the videos I have created to youtube. I also updated the website with them

Here are the links

The Animatic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sF0-weZMpRc

George character test
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUv22igcNi0

Character animation tests
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGM13ZKlGPI

Rigging
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjIlO7jW708

Wednesday, 08 December 2010

2010-12-08T13:18:00.000-08:00

I have been trying different resolutions to test what will work best for the output of 720 576 widescreen. Currently I am just rendering a sequence about with the same resolution and aspect ratio to see if that is any better. At the moment with the start sequence of the zoom in, it tends to have a checked shirt on tv effect when zooming in on the factory with the bricks. And I am thinking this is something to do with the resolution and scaling it up and down to fit. Rendering a sequence at 1920 then scaling down produced terrible results with the zoom in, and at 864 a similar effect occurred, although less.

Apart from that I have completed shot 35 and set up the Animatic so I can drop in finished, or block out shots. I am quiet happy with it although I did initially struggle with the run sequence. The next shots, from 38-42 are even harder with all out action of Darren running, jumping and performing acrobatics across a log, while trying to chase a Moth
I will start these tomorrow anyway, and see if I can really get ahead a little with it. It’s a big sequence and I am rather daunted. But I gotta learn the hard way!

Here is a shot from 35

Edit – the strange effect I was seeing in the rendered animations was because the final shots were progressive, where as they should have been lower first. So it seems the best resolutions to work with is 720 567 with a pixel aspect of 1.4587…Lower first…

Saturday, 04 December 2010

2010-12-04T14:44:00.001-08:00

Adjusting the FPS setting were not as much as a problem as I thought, simply changing them in the timeline in Max didn’t affect the actual animation or timing, so I thankfully don’t need to go back and readjust it.

Changing the Animatic to a different resolution and settings was a lot bigger a problem, only due to my limited knowledge of the software. Copy and pasting the Animatic to a new project took out all the sound, which I re-added by hand. Yet if I had known I could have pasted it to a new sequence instead and therefore the sound would have been ok. Deleting the old sequence after.
Another problem I had was rendering out the final Animatic to test if everything was working alright again failed. The Animatic was rendering out at 4:3 not 16:9. After scouring the net and asking friends, I stumbled upon a website with a simple explanation, on the export settings I had not chosen square pixel, which is the standard for computer’s hence why it was perceiving it as square pixel 1.1 rather than 16:9… (I think). Anyway here is a link to the site.

http://therenderq.com/compressing-169-widescreen-video-for-the-web-and-maintaining-aspect-ratio

it also gives a nice round up of the best output resolutions, which I will use for the actual renders settings from max at 864 x 486, which is a match from the original 1920 x 1080, therefore I wont have to change any cameras in the scene (thank god). And only have to scale down slightly the resolution to fit the premiere file. I will test this out during the week anyway to make sure there is no loss of quality by scaling the renders down slightly. Again as said in the previous post the great thing with this is that it will take half the time to render.

Here a test render I did a few days back

Friday, 03 December 2010

2010-12-03T16:09:00.001-08:00

I had a wee bit of a blow today with my work. A silly mistake that I should have known has set me back a few days. I had rendered of the scene for this week at 1920 1080 as with my Animatic and other last scene, and as the tutor noticed today, I was using the wrong settings, at 30fps instead of 25fps and NTSC rather than PAL. A major problem for my work (it should be at 720-576 DVPAL widescreen). I had been working at 1920 widescreen all the way through, so my Animatic needs redoing, plus any animation I have done so far on the project.

I am going to try and finish the reworking of the Animatic again tonight. I am really hopefully that this will sort out my codex problem I was having. Such a mistake, but at least it was caught early enough to not cause to much of a problem.

Tomorrow I am going to rework some of the last animation, plus some faults with the render that needs fixing (the antenna of the centipede sim is way to powerful and the speed in which the camera exits the cave).

The good thing out of this rendering problem is my renders will be three times quicker to compile!! Considering it wont take long at all to render I may as well start rendering in the next few days, and if I need to change anything latter I can readjust it and re-render again. Gets me a little ahead with the latter part of the schedule.

Tuesday, 30 November 2010

2010-11-30T14:43:00.000-08:00

I finished of the animation for shots 53-57 today. Quiet happy with the results and so are the few I have shown it to. Of course I may go back latter to adjust elements if necessary, im just rendering of a test render, and hopefully my tutors will approve.

I studied up on the movement of flies and centipedes before animating them, and got the sharp movements of the fly down as best as I could, yet the centipede I thought would be a extremely hard and time consuming character to animate, with 40 legs to be animated in all. However I had a wee brain wave the other night of attaching the spine segments to a pathway, as said before, and then I only need to deal with the legs. Last night I had the idea of attaching the leg controllers to the spline, therefore matching the movement, and animate in one sequence all the legs moving once, and copy pasting this movement continuously to form a walk with all the legs in one. Then all I had to do was move the leg key frames around to look the most like a walking centipede. In all the biggest and most time consuming aspect was making sure the legs didn’t intersect the ground so much, and I am just doing a test render to make sure when they do it is not to noticeable.

So its Tuesday, and I have pretty much wrapped up on animating 53-57. Next week it is 35, 38-42, where Darren Elm is first seen running after the Audrey Moth. Some acrobatics and much research on Moths is needed. I don’t want the moth to fly to all over the place as Moths do, but slowed down somewhat> To make it seem more menacing. I will work on it anyway,. I have set paths where I want the Moth to fly, and Darren Elm to follow, therefore the jumpy movements of a normal moth would look just strange. But maybe I can work on something in-between a slowed down moth with slightly quirky recognisable movement. The only time I really want the quirky jumpy movement of a normal Moth is when it exits the plant from Darren’s point of view. Its a lot to think about anyway.

Anyway I think its tomorrow off and starting on this next scene the day after…. Unless anything untoward happens with the render test of 53-57.

Monday, 29 November 2010

2010-11-29T15:03:00.000-08:00

A very brief update today. Happily I am still staying on schedule! I spent today working on the last sequence of shots 53-57, the 3 insects. So far I have blocked out all the insects and animated the background fly. Tomorrow I will work on the front one and begin the arduous task of animating the centipede. I linked the spine controls of the centipede to a pathway, which has made it much easier to animate the main body, with only the 100 legs to worry about. But I have about 3 days now to animate the legs, and adjust the lighting within the cave> Currently I am using 4 lights inside the cave, 3 to light each character separately, and although it gives more control the difference in lighting between character is noticeable, so I am either going to go down to 2 lights (one for Darren’s monologue at the beginning and one to light all the characters through the rest of the scene) OR adjust the levels of the lights so they match.

Oh I also changed the cameras so the main section is just one long camera move rather than 4 cuts. It works a lot better, shows more of the character interaction, and is a lot less jarring.

Here is a test render from checking if the Helmet works when placing it on his head

Sunday, 28 November 2010 (after some sleep, breakfast, etc)

2010-11-28T14:46:00.000-08:00

Working on Ian Elm and George today. It’s a little quicker given the practise with Darren first, and I have been using extensively the video recorded clips from the voice recording sessions to help with the Lip Sync. I also recorded myself acting out all the scenes, which helped with the overall poses and facial animation. Initially I had planed to just use the voice acting session video data as the sole information for the lip sync, but a method of checking the mirror, the voice actor data and checking video of myself acting out the scene all helped in producing the finished sequence.

I am hoping over time I may decide to go back over the scenes when I have learnt more, but at the moment I am happy with the results of the last week.

I decided to animate all the scene, even off camera, just in case I decided to change any camera angles or the timing of the cameras latter. This also, I believe, gives better interaction between the characters and of course is more practise for myself!

Anyway an early night for a change, and tomorrow blocking out and animating the flies, with 3 days left for the dreaded centipede (I am thinking of creating a path for the centipede, and therefore really only need to animate all 100 legs by hand).

Sunday, 28 November 2010

2010-11-27T16:16:00.000-08:00

I have been working hard on the same sequence (shots 53-57) for the last few days now. I am hoping to wrap up the character interaction by tomorrow and get to work for the next four days on the flies and centipede. Its been tough going trying to get the right action and timing. I am still not one hundred percent sure of using a helmet to show his “warrior” status in the tribe, and perhaps putting his helmet on detracts from the actual animation. Plus with the timing of the short its difficult to have him putting his helmet on in such a short amount of time.

The lip-sync is another problem that I think will grow easier over time. But for now its taken all day to do the eye animation and the lip-sync for one character, with two more needing the lip-sync created tomorrow. It’s a good experience and great when it all comes together. The UI I created is working well, and I am able to add in curves and Bezier if necessary by editing the actual ui icons rather than the morphs that are linked to them by the reactor manger.

I am just trying to add some emotion to the characters, but without eyebrows (although the controls are there they simply move the skin above the eyes) actual movement of the eyebrow controls just looks weird, and all emotion is best expressed with the mouth and eyes.
Anyway I am going to continue this tonight until Darren’s finished and move on to Ian and George Elm tomorrow.

Wednesday, 24 November 2010

2010-11-24T16:46:00.001-08:00

After some feedback from the tutors I reworked the bike entry so that he stops to take note of the sign, and then over the last few days I have been working on shots 53-57, in the Animatic they are the night scenes on the plant. I choose for the second sequence to animate one of the hardest shots, with a centipede climbing over a branch and a conversation with the three Elmies huddled in a crack in the plant. It’s hard going. Trying to get the right poses for the character with the timing is taking much longer than when I created the George short animation, but its slowly coming together. I am rather worried about my time keeping, staying on track with the schedule, its taking twice as long as I had hoped at present, but I had assumed from the George animation how long it would take, not counting I was animated more than one character. Hopefully over time it will become more second nature as I learn and progress through this animation. Also the lighting will need to be adjusted around Darren Elm, although at the start I like him coming in from shadow, I would prefer if he had some light on his whole body latter in the sequence. The best way I can see of accomplishing both in one is to use a spot light shining from an angle, rather than the omni with a fall off that I am using at present. Anyway I will leave that until the animation for this sequence is finished.

Saturday, 20 November 2010

2010-11-20T15:44:00.001-08:00

Just a brief update. I continued animating the bike today, adding in some subtle movements that I noticed when taking reference of myself riding a bike. Also reworking the grab motion of Audrey as she takes of the Staff wanted sign. There is a little problem with the animation in which Darren’s shirt is blue before he starts working at the office, so I quickly altered the texture to be black just for consistency. Anyway I am re rendering of the first scene, and will upload it to youtube tomorrow so the tutor can see it straight away. I am reluctant on putting unfinished work up, but it’s the best method at getting direct feedback sooner rather than latter. I am learning a lot, especially on using the curve editor to tweak the movements, and with that in mind I think I will wait till near the end to render of the animation. So it gives me the opportunity to rework scenes latter on.

Friday, 19 November 2010

2010-11-19T15:52:00.000-08:00

I began reworking the last shot today with some suggestions by my tutor. Mainly looking at Darren riding in on his bike from the left, to give more drama and take note of him noticing the sign. It seemed simple enough but I ran into some major problems with how the bike is rigged, with the wheels turning in the wrong direction if Darren makes a u turn, which he would do when parking. The only alternative after many woes was to look into placing it on a path. Seemingly simpler however I believed that this would not allow nice curves in the speed of the bike. Yet as it turns out adding a Bezier curve to the percentage of the path instead of the linear solves the problem.

http://forums.creativecow.net/archivethread/18/725524

So I don’t forget, the wire parameters for the wheel rotation is (830.671*Percent)/7. (length of line*percentage) radius of wheel

http://docs.autodesk.com/3DSMAX/13/ENU/Autodesk%203ds%20Max%202011%20Tutorials/index.html?url=./files/WS1a9193826455f5ff-3859b43c1215f53d0f3-7091.htm,topicNumber=d0e12397

I also had the peddles rigged up but decided to do these by hand for more control of the movements. Tomorrow i will record some reference on a exercise bike that I can use for the arms, spine and head movement. Particularly how the body moves when steering and peddling.

I decided to remove all smoke from the smoke stacks, and use particle to animate the smoke. However my version of particle combust wont work with Mental ray, so I have decided to leave the smoke out for now, and latter put it in in post if time/necessity requires. It does give the place a more dismal look with the smoke effects, but the stack painted on smoke that was stuck onto the stack detracts from the scene and is instantly noticeable. As a thought I could always create a smoke effect in 3D and use it as a layer and add it on the stack for the end and start sequence. That would probably be the easiest with just the camera tracking to work out. Oh I also made sure the actual building layer of the sky map was also tillable.

Anyhow a highly productive day. Hit a few hurdles but got over a few more.

Wednesday, 17 November 2010

2010-11-17T14:29:00.000-08:00

I began working on shots 53-57 today (the night scene in the plant with the Elmys). I started by setting each character into the position in that scene and testing the lighting, and reworking it so its just as I had envisioned. Lighting plays a key role in this scene with Darren’s Elmy coming out of the darkness, a conversation in a dimly lit cave, and the centipede appearing after its silhouette at the end. To be frank though after doing some test renders I am very unhappy with the look of the centipede on the plant, and may decided to take it out if after animating and final lighting setup it still doesn’t gel well. I can always add another fly instead on that branch, but I prefer the less generic centipede than another fly.

Anyhow here’s some test lighting renders for the night scene. Tomorrow I will block out the poses and begin tweaking the poses. Then spend the next few days working on the facial animation. Dependent I suppose if I need to rework any of the last shots after my tutors have seen.

Tuesday, 16 November 2010

2010-11-16T08:30:00.001-08:00

I have completed shots 1 – 2 and 132, as described in the previous post, and added more lights for the characters and added the weather effects of the clouds slowly moving across. The clouds give it a nice feel, and I am tempted to take out the smoke from the stacks and animate this also, perhaps as a png image sequence, rather than particle systems that would take longer to render and be less effect. But I will leave it until all the animation is finished and I can go back if necessary.

The first sequence of animation is really only short, although 40 seconds in all it only features Audrey taking out the card briefly and Darren riding on his bike, which was all rigged up anyway to ride, so it was just a case of moving him forward. It’s a good start anyway.

I began really relying on the curve editor through this first animated sequence. Animated a short walk cycle for Audrey, and generally learnt how to get over quiet a few hurdles, the last of which was animating the weather effects. I think for the final scene where Darren rides of on his bike with the Elmies in tow, I will use this scene and animated Darren in it, saving having to rework the weather effects and keeping the motion of the weather consistent from beginning to end.

Currently I am cleaning up my hard discs for more space, taking out unnecessary incrementally saved backups. So I have enough room on my hard discs for the rest of the animation.
Next step is begin working on shots 53-57, a 20 second two week sprint which is the night scene in the animation. So it will be the first actual lip-sync, and the rather worryingly hard to animate centipede! I plan on starting this tomorrow, rather than next week to try and get a bit ahead. I will hopefully spend a week animating the conversation, and another week on the outer shot with the insects.

I am currently rendering of the animation half size to show the tutors on Friday, and if approved I will render it off full size at 1920.
I am a little apprehensive about posting online each scene as it is produced, and prefer to keep the work off youtube until its completed, so unfortunately throughout the animation I wont be posting little snippets of animation online, just still image renders.

Here’s the same render as the previous post, only with the lighting adjusted.

Thursday, 11 November 2010

2010-11-11T15:08:00.001-08:00

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.

Monday, 08 November 2010

2010-11-08T14:08:00.000-08:00

First day of animation today. I worked out a schedule for the next nine month sprint, and began the blocking of the first shot today. The first shot I am working on is the beginning and ending, where the camera zooms in to the window, and Audrey takes the card out of the window, and Darren riding in on his bike. The blocking is going ok, however some technical problems with his bike. Mainly the chain wouldnt stay on the chain when rotating, and I couldn’t resolve the problem quickly so decided to leave it and just have the chain not moving. The bike is so far away it wont hopefully be noticeable anyway.
Things are going pretty ok with the blocking out, but I lack a lot of confidence in my animation work, since I have not done a lot of animation to begin with, and the first shot requiring a walk and interaction. Funnily enough it still is one of the easiest with many lip-synced scenarios to tackle. Ah have I given myself to much!!! Perhaps over confident in my 3D skills has lead me to trip up! will see. For the beginning and end shot I have two weeks anyway, so going to leave it for tonight and beginning again tomorrow. Trying to get the timing right when blocking without going into to much detail is rather hard!!!

Tuesday, 02 November 2010

2010-11-02T11:29:00.000-07:00

Here are a few more images of the factory I rendered today to add to the 3D image gallery.

Tuesday, 02 November 2010

2010-11-01T17:34:00.000-07:00

I finished all the scenes today, lightened and added placeholder objects in place of characters with the camera movements. I think I will celebrate tomorrow, since that’s the end of the object/scene/character sprint, and finally I can start the actual animating!!! There still will need some lighting changed and key lights added to the characters after the animation is completed on each section, but this pretty much wraps up all I can do before animating with all the scene backgrounds lit.
I also decided the website needed a change, and rendered of imagery for the front page and the character profiles. It seemed sensible that the piece is a CG piece, and I am advertising it on the site as a 2D piece from the onset. So now the first thing people will see is it’s a 3D animated short. All good.

Tomorrow I will just upload some imagery for the galleries, then have a day off before beginning planning what shots I will do over the next nine months.

Anyhow renders of the final scenes.

Sunday, 31 October 2010

2010-10-31T15:20:00.001-07:00

Today I separated the Plant scenes into separate elements and began lighting. I also edited some of the branches to avoid seams that were appearing in the camera view. For the lighting I went for a very bright high contrast look that I feel really gives the scenes a dreamy look, only not using a similar lighting setup when creating the night scene (which still seems pixelated near the camera with lighting, but with placeholder characters in place it doesn’t look to bad, and is forgivable). Anyhow here’s some renders. I will create the lighting for the last two scenes tomorrow and update the website before beginning planning how to tackle the actual animation before Fridays University tutorial.

Here’s some renders testing the lighting, the braches have come out really well with the intense lighting, and the leaves, branches and fog effect looks as I had hoped.

Sunday, 31 October 2010

2010-10-30T18:20:00.000-07:00

Its been a very long week trying to get the final scenes ready for the plant interior but I finished the last branch just a few minutes ago. All that’s left is to populate with leaves and flowers and add lights to the scenes. I think I will do all this in separate files rather than keeping it in one file as I have so far. All in all its seven scenes with 30 branches. Each branch I created high poly, with normal maps, colour maps, spec and gloss maps. In hindsight I am worried that some close of shots of the branches will just be pixelated, and it may have been wiser to use tiled textures rather than one texture per branch, however when I started I really wanted to get that gnarly look that I could only really accomplish with high poly work in the normal map. Perhaps if I wanted to reedit it again, I could use tillable textures for the larger branches, that are shot in close up. But for now I am going to go with it and if it becomes a major problem and really ruins the scenes I will have to go back and rework some of the branches, perhaps 3 or 4 of them. I am most concerned with the scene at night, yet with decent lighting it may be ok.

Anyhow here’s 2 renders with the fog in the background and below that another with a shot with the twigs a little bit to pixelated and below that the night scene. Hopefully It will look better with some leaves in there to. Its very late and been a real slog trying to get this finished. A uphill struggle that didn’t seem to wain, but I got through it so tomorrow I will populate the scenes and finish them off, then I guess spend a day working on the plan of action for animating, a nine month sprint.

I always had trouble building trees.

Thursday, 28 October 2010

2010-10-28T15:29:00.001-07:00

I finished the high poly versions of all the plant twigs, and rendered out normal maps and displacement maps for each which will really help with the texturing that I will begin tomorrow. I am hopeful it will only take a day, maybe two to create all the textures, and be done with the scenes after the weekend.

Here’s a shot of the last of the finished twigs. I am thinking of using some photographic textures with some hand painted work, and add some moss to the texture and normal map as well, to add a little more colour and variety to the scenes.