2010-02-04 – Voice acting session with John Howarth

The session went really well. John was a true professional, he seemed to breath life to the characters of Ian and George right before my eyes. It only took two hours to have everything recorded and he also allowed me to film him after the voices were recorded so I can use the data to help with the facial animation latter. I really enjoyed it but I hit the first “don’t know what I don’t know” problems, which was I should have edited the script down to just have the lines of George or Ian on one or two pages, and a stand for the paper! But I will for the next session with Dorothy who I must thank for setting this up. She has been a great help with organising the voice talent when the arrangements I had planned fell short. Another problem was the voice recording software kept crashing with a strange error message. I will bring it up with the tutor tomorrow and hopefully have it sorted for the next session. I am still short of a actor to play the boy Darren, however a friend said he knows someone who practises drama and could be interested, so will give him a ring latter. I also have another friend in backup.
Anyhow John nailed both parts, managing to sound as two completely different people and also said I am welcome to email him if I need any more and he can record it from home. All Sorted! Voice acting day 1. Sorted.

2010-02-03

Reworked the eye shader for the Cornea to give it a more wet look, a little more reflection and more spec after some crit that it didn’t look right, almost like glass eyes rather than real eyes. I latter toned down the reflection a little after taking these renders, but you can see the wet look etc.




Apart from that began getting prepared for the voice acting session tomorrow, scripts printed, concepts , bios and chocolate and drink for the actors! However its now snowing and I am rather worried that we may have to cancel. At least I have the sound recording room booked for the month, so hopefully can reschedule if it comes down to it.
Going to take in a couple of external hard drives and my usb for backup also.
Also re rendered George full body and face. Mainly so the actors have some visual reference to what the animation will hopefully look like in the end.



I was supposed to have finished George today. However I still have the objects that he has in his pockets to make. So really I am a day behind. However the actual character is pretty much finished. Taken a week and a half, hopefully I can get it down to a week for the rest since I had to create the eyes, teeth and shader’s from scratch this time.
Really enjoyed how he has turned out and really helps to clarify on paper the look of the animation.

2010-02-03 (early morning and time for bed)

Ok I have created some of the objects for George. Earphones and glasses. The earphones Ian also wears and Audrey also wears glasses so I can reuse them latter. Anyhow was worried about how the earphones turned out, was a very quick colour map for the texture, very clean no dirt, just a more detailed normal map, and the glasses were created using procedurals on the frame and on the glasses a scratch texture plus a nice glass refraction. The colour of the frame I can easily adjust for Audrey. Anyhow here’s the renders.

2010-02-02 (even latter)

Adjusted the eyes slightly around the corners since from feedback it appears the edge goes far to far back. Don’t want to take it to far forward though otherwise will stretch the normal and texture maps to much

2010-02-02 (a little latter)

Finished the hair now, quite happy. All in alphas so its not to much hassle to animate. Also added more edge loops round the arms and legs.
Next step is the objects and that’s it. Just earphones, pens, wire cutters, glasses. I can reuse the objects in the scene and with the other characters so it will save more time latter.



And the new texture map for the hair - Hair Diffuse, Hair Specular and Hair Opacity

2010-02-02

Began working on the hair yesterday. This is my first time working with alphas on hair so was a little bit concerned abut how it will turn out. I used a lot of planes to get it to look right from a few angles but as you can see from other angles it just doesn’t work right. The eyebrows look great but I think the beard has just far to many planes for rendering plus not as effect as it could be. The solution I think is to redo the hair texture map to be more clumpy and dense. Or perhaps create a new map with more variations of the hair texture.





Anyhow heres the hair texture maps so far – Hair Diffuse, Hair Specular and Hair Opacity


Here are some shots of all the textures used on the character.

First the uv map, then the normal map and last the diffuse (colour map)



And here are the last 4. Diffuse sub surface for the skin shader, Diffuse unscattered again for the skin shader the pour map (a simple noise map to create pours on the skin rather than painting them in on the normal/bump (which would look better, but not necessary for the piece) and finally the Specular.

I am going to take another go at the hair over the next few hours, and post back once its done. Also some criticism of the model was to add more edge loops around the arms and legs to allow for better twisting, so will add them latter.

2010-02-01

Created all the textures and shaders for the character. Great thing is I can re use all shaders for each characters and just change the base textures. Really happy with it so far and still on schedule, slightly worried about hair creation, will be the first time I have tried this method, using alphas, but I will be easier than worrying about hair simulations latter, and I can always rig the hair for secondary motion if I wish. Anyhow I wll add the teeth to the model then work on the hair. Happy with how the model has turned out so far. Exactly how I had hoped, and adding a normal map allowed me not to worry to much about the colour map.