A Flock of Pixels

The Major Project - More Progress

2012-02-13T18:10:00.017Z

Here is my progress so far.

These were some of my initial monk sketches...

… and these were my last few attempts of the monk design shown in the last post, although I still prefer the original. Since then, as you will see further down this post, I have drawn him many more times in the story boards.

I've never drawn kittens before, and finding out what makes a kitten look cute is difficult. I'm sure I'll get something that works well eventually!

To find out how to draw kittens I started by looking at the book - Cartoon Animation by Preston Blair, which served as a starting point. These were the first three drawings I copied from the book.

I tried slightly altering the pose above in this drawing.

From that, in no particular order, I drew these. Some are quite bad and lack detail, but it seems that whenever I draw more lines they look more like cats rather than kittens. There's a few there I like the look of though.

I really like this drawing in the bottom left corner, only he looks more like a cat than a kitten… Maybe save for another adventure.

I have also gathered some photos of kittens for further reference (which some of the above were based on) and even a few videos from Youtube, which will probably be of more use later on.

Lastly, I have started doing some story boards. They probably won't make much sense at the moment though because they are not complete. I'm just testing ideas currently.

I will continue to refine my designs and get more boards done.

A Flock of Pixels

The Major Project - So Far

2012-02-09T20:37:00.008Z

Tuesday was the first official tutorial meeting, where I was able to discuss with the tutors my ideas for the project.

Having spent the previous week doing a lot of brainstorming, I was able to go to the meeting with lots of ideas, although we ended up only discussed one of them. The rest didn't get much of a mention, but that didn't matter as I seem to have come up with something that we all liked the sound of.

The idea - The place where lost things go.
That's it in a nutshell!

I want the focus of this project to be on animation, so what I've come up with is the idea of a world in which all the lost things of the real world appear.

They will fall from the 'sky' of this made up world and float to the ground.

It is then the job of 'the finder of lost things' to identify who the lost item belongs to and return it back up through the 'sky'.

The story is going to come from the things that could fall from the sky.

Because the core idea has the potential to generate many scenarios / adventures, I would quite like to treat this as making an animated 'pilot' for a series rather than a one off animated short.

So, firstly the character, I almost had no idea what the character should be, and initially though of constructing a character out of free floating random lost items.
As one of my tutors pointed out, there is a saint called Saint Anthony, who when prayed to, returns things that are lost.
A Google search reveals him to be depicted as a monk. I must admit I was sceptical about casting a monk as the main character, but after a few sketches I came up with this...

...which makes me think it should work, and so I've already made some decisions about how the world works, having now discarded plenty of ideas which didn't seem to suit the monk character.

Working Concept -
Lost items fall out of the sky.
They have name tags.
He has a huge address book, with everyone's names.
He looks them up, and sends them back in a basket, lifted up by a candle powered flying lantern.

His way of returning lost items is kind of old fashioned, but then that's his character.

However that's not the story... This is the story... The day a kitten falls out of the sky!

For now that is where I am leaving it until I can better understand how the story is going to work... but I'm still coming up with more ideas.

A Flock of Pixels

The Major Project - The beginning

2012-01-31T11:47:00.001Z

Its the start of the last term and the last ever project of the course. Approximately 15 weeks long, the project is all about focusing on my main areas of interest in the CG Arts pipeline and taking it to the most refined level, to produce a final piece of work that showcases the best of what I'm best at.

I've already started to get organised for the task ahead by simply writing a list of what I do and don't want to do on this project.

I've also formed my own timetable for the next few weeks, and another, very general one for the duration of the whole project. I might dedicate a whole page of my blog to have the timetable, once I know exactly what I'm doing. Although to be honest, things are always being shifted about throughout the whole project anyway!

More to follow…

A Flock of Pixels

Atom Pancakes - The Final Chapter

2012-01-22T14:40:00.014Z

This really is the final chapter of the project. Its been a tough but ultimately rewarding 4 months as today I present to you, our collaborative animated short, The Final Chapter.

You can find more information at the Atom Pancakes Official Blog.

For me, the highlights of this project have been how I've managed to take what I've learnt recently and apply them to this project. Most notably, the rigging, but also the lighting / rendering. It has also been good to get back into animation again.

Since I have been more secretive about showing animation in progress, now that the final animation is completed, I've decided to release a selection of play-blasts showing the stages of the parts I've worked on.

Pencil Sharpener 01

Pencil Sharpener 02

These pencils were handled with dynamics.

Pencil Draw 01

Maid Walk 01

Maid Walk 02

I never quite got this right. The bottle slips and the hand is holding the bottle awkwardly.

Maid Idea 01

Maid Idea 02

Maid Idea 03

An alternate end to the maid walking, which I quite liked but ended up changing.

Maid Attack 01

Jamming 01

Jamming 02

This was one of the last shots, and effects wise was the most challenging for me.
I had posted earlier in the year a test with pouring liquids, which I was able to replicate in the beginning sequence of the animation, but splashing the liquid to go where I wanted it to go was a bit more tricky. I'll let you in on a little secret, the liquid in the bottle is not the liquid coming out of the bottle! Trying to force liquid through the bottle was making the liquid go everywhere so instead I put an invisible lid on the bottle, and had a second set of liquid particles emitting from just outside the bottle. This was easier to control. The bottle itself was animated traditionally as I knew it would be difficult to control with dynamics and so avoided using dynamics where possible. The flames, while simple Maya particles, had some more effects applied in After Effects to make it look a bit better too.

Burnt Work 01

The has a really silly over the top bit of animation on the character. I completely restarted animating him as I was not happy with this. I don't think I even showed Ruben or Jordan this version!
Burnt Work 02

Burnt Work 03

Burnt Work 04

This was a very tricky scene to do as it was the only one to have three characters in the scene. I focused on one character at a time, going between the three, and gradually refining each of them in turn.

Arguments 01

Arguments 02

Arguments 03

I have to mention that there is something that isn't quite right with the first interior shot, where the camera pans across the room. It is intentional though, and you probably won't spot it unless I told you what it is, but my clue is that it is absolutely crucial for the story!

A Flock of Pixels

Atom Pancakes - The Final Stages

2012-01-09T20:41:00.012Z

Rendering, setting up files for rendering, and animating is all I have been doing these past few weeks. I'm kind of reluctant to show much of it when the main article will be finished in just under two weeks time, but as usual, here are a few tasters of whats to come!

If only rendering could be simple. Some might consider this to be overkill, but in order to maximise control in post production, I've been splitting up my renders. Most notably, the character, which is set to be split up into its various body parts so that I can adjust the colours of say, the skin, or the cardigan.

This is one of the master renders of the characters in one of the scenes.

And if you are wondering, the side characters purposely have a completely different light setup! You'll just have to wait for the final animation to see why!

Then there is the facial hair of the middle character rendered into its own image.

To illustrate just what kinds of things can be done to a render, this is what the face looked like before...

...and now after.

Perhaps it would be better to just get the colours looking more or less correct in Maya, but it just as fast if not, quicker to do realtime colour adjusting in post.

Interesting facts and figures! (well I think so!)
I've spent the last few days working on a scene with three characters to animate. This has of course meant that the amount of images I'm getting at rendering triples as all their parts have been split up individually! For just one frame of animation, I'm getting over 25 images. Thats well over 10,000 images for just 17 seconds approximately, which if you are wondering is the length of one of the scenes I'm working on. Luckily I'm not short of space, and thankfully the images will compress well afterwards. And the really cool thing is this has not increased render time in any way, as it is still only rendering each frame once, and would take exactly the same time to render just the master image.

Of course someone still has to manage all these images when compositing :(
Oh well.

So that was a little insight into the rendering process for the animation, 'The Final Chapter'. Visit AtomPancakes for more on the animation.

A Flock of Pixels

Atom Pancakes - Sneak Peak

2011-12-23T19:07:00.008Z

AtomPancakes have been progressing with the animation. We still have a fair way to go, but there are one or two scenes which are almost ready for rendering.

You can see some of my animation progress on the AtomPancakes blog here (and from there you can click to the home page to see the rest of the groups posts), but if you are just looking for the latest sneak peak then jump to the end of this post!

Apart from animation, I've been in charge of sorting out the rendering for this project. While raytracing has been a constant enemy (increasing render times to over half an hour per frame) I have been finding ways to break things down, optimising settings and so on. While this has made rendering less than as straight forward as pressing a button, it has meant that we can still maintain the quality while now only taking a few minutes per frame.

Using Mental Ray's Rasterizer mode has enables us to use quality motion blur on the character, and by separating the character to its own layer, we can render everything else without motion blur, using Mental Ray's scanline (default) mode. (Which renders the environments much quicker)

We are also going to be splitting up the background so that we only have to render one frame of that, assuming the camera doesn't move, and utilising soft depth map shadows instead of raytracing them.

The only thing holding us back (but not by much) is getting all the scenes animated in time, and a few more textures that need to be painted to complete the environments.

I think we shall manage to get everything done though.

So here is a sneak preview of the character dressed as the maid from one of the dream sequences, with the cold dead body under the spotlight!

(Click image to enlarge)

That's all for now, and probably this year.

A Flock of Pixels

Atom Pancakes - Arthur Rig Demo 01

2011-12-04T17:39:00.006Z

All I have been doing these last few weeks is rigging. It's still not entirely finished even now. I've been having problems fixing the way the shoulder deforms, and that is what still needs fixing.

The rig itself, ie, the controls and its mechanics are all working fine though, and whats more, my rig has a custom interface too.

Ok, this could end up being one of my long winded techy posts, but to reduce the words, I've got a video to show some of the things it does, followed by some descriptions of how some of the things work. More, shorter videos showing specific areas it greater detail will follow later on in the year.

So, first things first, the way you set keys for animation on this rig is slightly different. What we've all been used to is posing the character using the controls on the rig, then clicking a selection button that selects the controls on the rig and then hitting the key button. Well instead, using the interface I've made, rather than that, I've created check boxes, and anything that is checked will have a key set when the set key button is pressed. There are two useful things with this method, one, you only have to press one button to set a key (rather than hitting a selection button before hand), and two, you don't have to lose your current selection. Meaning that, if you are blocking out the character, you can check everything (except maybe the face and switch controls) and just pose, set key, pose, set key and so on, not worrying about the selection at all. So that's the first main difference.

The second difference with this rig is that I have put 3D controls on the hands, face and feet. I've tried to make this rig more about posing in 3D, rather than channel box sliding. This is especially important for our characters hands because it needs to type and pick up objects easily. The finger controls work in a kind of IK / FK mode at the same time. So in the video, you will see that they not only rotate into position, but then they can also be picked up and moved, making pressing things easier.

This is the first fully controllable face I've rigged, which kind of leads in to the next big difference. In the interface I have a tab for preset poses. While manipulating individual controls is great, it isn't so good for blocking out quick poses, so with the buttons on this tab, you can assign common poses to the characters face and hands.

The rig also has IK / FK switching arms and legs, however you might have noticed that the legs had something else. There is another switch that controls the IK legs a bit differently. Instead of using a pole vector control to position the knee, there is also a twist attribute, but also, the leg doesn't flip when lifted up high. (it does flip in one position, but I couldn't see the character ever doing a backwards kick. and even if he did need to, there is the pole vector version of the IK leg rig to use instead.)

The last main thing is the 'dress up' tab. As our character will be acting as a butler, a maid, a chef, and a detective, and himself, he needs a slight change on clothes! This is where you control what costume he is wearing.

As an extra, at the end of the video you can also see the hair dynamics built into the rig. Although by default it is switched off to improve playback in Maya. You might have noticed me trying to move the monocle control with interactive playback, but (as I have just found out) if there are already keyframes on the control, you can't actually move it even with interactive playback on!

Its been a long, but enjoyable experience rigging the character, however, the worst bit is still to come. I've got to fix the shoulders!

The plan is to start animating with the rig as it is, while slowly improving the deformations on the shoulders with blendshapes, and then updating the rig in the scenes at the end.

I hope this has been interesting. At some point (possibly over Christmas) I will be creating a technical document on the rig and its interface. Next on the to-do list is animation!

A Flock of Pixels

Atom Pancakes - Bits and Pieces

2011-11-29T18:42:00.018Z

What have I been doing for the last month? Rigging, scripting, and blendshapes. Rigging our main character, Arthur Winters, has been a right pain to do. It actually started off quite fun when things were just working, but then after about 2 weeks of rigging and dissertation, and almost nearing completion, things started to go wrong. And so for the last few weeks it has been a long tiresome battle with blend shapes and scripting. Not that I don't like scripting, its actually quite enjoyable when it works!

Anyway, I will be showing the rig in great detail when it is totally finished (which I hope will be soon, considering that we all want to animate by Thursday).

I do however have something else to show today. While rigging, I have done a few other things toward the project. Firstly, some lighting tests, and secondly some liquid dynamics. Jordan has been busy modelling and texturing the main set, and in fact you can see the render he did using Mental Ray's Final Gather lighting on his blog. Visually it looks great, and so the only real problem with this was the render time. We don't have the time to render at 4 and a half minutes a frame (which is how long that render took), especially considering that the render times will increase with the rest of the props and characters are added, so my goal was to use this image as a guide to faking this type of lighting. During the summer I came across a few new lighting techniques which I'm now using everywhere! I'm not going to say that these are our final lighting setups just yet, but here are some of the results of the tests.

Day

Night - (there is an imaginary lamp light by the window)

Possible dream sequence lighting

and slightly darker... possibly too dark actually.

The exterior (no textures yet)

Apart from the exterior, (which took slightly longer) they rendered in about 50 seconds each.

Onto liquid dynamics. Now I've actually been familiar with Maya's liquid nDynamics for quite a while, and have probably done what seems like a million tests already before this project, and realise what it's limitations are when compared to other (more expensive) programs like Real Flow. The first major limitation I've found is its speed when calculating with millions of particles. The main issue is that nParticles aren't multi-threaded, meaning that it can't use multiple processing cores that you find in computers these days. The simple answer to this is to sacrifice the quality by using less particles.
The next issue I've found is the mesh that Maya generates around the particles for rendering a solid fluid. No matter how much tweaking you do, it always looks lumpy, like porridge. I don't think lumpy whiskey is going to look very good, so it was imperative that I find a fix for this issue, and I don't think I would have found the answer unless liquid dynamics was needed in our animation.
I very useful node called the peak deformer from the free plugin SOuP provided half the answer. It makes the blobby appearance of the liquid sharper, by creating peaks. The other thing which improved the mesh was to use Maya's own average vertices tool. This helped to smooth out some of the blobs and the peaks to create a liquid shape which looks a little more like water or whiskey.

Before

After

The video

It's never going to look 100% perfect though, but its a darn sight better than this...

Of course these were only tests, so I'm going to have to recreate the sim when we have the scene finished and the bottle correctly animated. Apart from that, all it needs is a good shader!

Now I think it's about time I get on with finishing the rig… once and for all!

A Flock of Pixels

Atom Pancakes - The Complete Typewriter

2011-11-06T19:11:00.005Z

The typewriter has been finished for almost a week now, but have only just found the time to post these images of it. I am currently in the middle of rigging the character.

Things seem to be going according to plan for a change, which is nice. I've experienced a few minor issues with rigging, but I've been able to figure out those problems... eventually!

My next post will no doubt be showing the completed rig, or the progress on it.

A Flock of Pixels.

Atom Pancakes - Typewriter Progress

2011-10-26T19:44:00.012+01:00

While writing my dissertation, and working on an animatic, the typewriter has been slowly coming together. This has got to be one of the most complicated things I've ever modeled! Anyway, here is are a few sneak previews of what to expect when its finished.

Since this image was rendered, the proportions have slightly changed, but it does give a good impression of what it will look like. The middle section, (one of the most complicated parts) has been modeled separately, and then attached to the rest of the typewriter. Having done that, I realised that I should have modeled the middle bit first as I then had to tweak the main structure to house the middle bit, which couldn't be changed as that part was functioning correctly.

and here is a close up of the mid section.

Notice the many keys that are centered around the ribbon that is suspended in the middle. (not that the ribbon goes anywhere at the moment) Well, as you will see in the next image, the letter blocks have been added and rotated so that when the keys rotate to the center, the block always hit the ribbon upright, and unfortunately for me, the long metal bits had to be manually bent to the position of the blocks one by one!

I had to spend hours looking at so many typewriters before I fully understood the mechanics of the mid section, and only then could I have modeled this, but it was well worth it. I just need to keep seeing where things can be simplified, but remain functional, while adding small amounts of details, like the screws. I'm aiming to get this finished by the end of Friday so once the typewriter is finished, I will be in charge of rigging the character.

I may as well post these too.

The books!

and a filing cabinet.

Later this week all the props will be uploaded to the Atom Pancakes blog with wire-frames and uv's.

A Flock of Pixels

Atom Pancakes - Props

2011-10-14T18:18:00.020+01:00

The animatic is almost ready, so just a little bit longer to wait! At the moment the sound is being added so hopefully it's going to be uploaded by the end of the day. Meanwhile I've been modelling some props!

First we have the lamp. This is finished apart from organising the uv's onto the map area, but it is unfolded!

This is what it looks like from the back.

and under the light. (the bulb isn't exactly fixed to anything but no ones going to be looking there!)

Here is the switch for it.

and some clean beveling.

and another fancy connection.

and amongst all this greyness, a nice clean blueish render. All it needs are textures and shaders.

Then we have the glass and bottle. Both finished, but need to be uv mapped.

The pencil sharpener is a work in progress.

Not sure about the side bits though. hmm.

Then we have an alien battle fleet!

Actually they are the buttons to this typewriter.

Again, this is another work in progress. I've stopped working on it for a while because I was unsure of how to model the complex mechanics on top. However since then I have found even more useful references, which should hopefully make the process easier.

Of course our typewriter doesn't need to be quite as complex as this, but at the same time, it needs to be fairly realistic. At least its not necessary to model and rig the complete mechanics of the typewriter. That would be a nightmare!

Ruben is going to start modelling the character tomorrow so, it wont be long before I'm rigging that!

Don't forget to visit Atom Pancakes.

A Flock of Pixels

Untitled

2011-10-06T15:15:00.005+01:00

As some may have gathered, my blog has been inactive recently. I've been spending a lot more of my time working on my dissertation, so there has been little to show in terms of project work. Although very soon I shall be posting an animatic for the animation, but at its current stage, it doesn't actually make any sense. Missing boards, no sound effects and music make it only watchable to me and the rest of the team. We are running about a week behind schedule due to needing to spend a little more time on the story, however we are all confident that we can catch up. Next week we aim to get started on production, while also finishing off whats left of pre production.
Although I have had less input in pre production artistically, I have done my best to keep the project on track (being the time manager!) and as some may know, my dedication to the story hasn't gone unnoticed! Although the last couple of weeks I have been trying to be more open to other ideas and have been seeing how things pan out.

Once production is underway, I imagine this blog becoming more active and as soon as we have our first draft animatic, you can be sure it will be posted here first!

Begin Year Three - Self Initiated Project

2011-09-23T18:17:00.006+01:00

It's Friday of the first week of uni, but it really doesn't feel like it. and why?
I've been working as part of a team for my first project during the summer holidays! Yep, I'm working in a group again, and we are making an animated short.

This time I am working with Jordan Buckner and once again with Ruben Martins.
Their blogs can be seen here.

http://jordanbuckner.blogspot.com
http://rubensblogpage.blogspot.com

As part of the group project we have formed ourselves into the production company, Atom Pancakes. Which did seem rather fitting when we decided on making a science fiction comedy. Unfortunately, the story idea we had for that ended when we disagreed on how it should end. I won't get into that now though, but basically what we are now making is completely un-sci-fi related!

So if its not a sci-fi, what are we making? Well, in short, we have a crime writer in the 1930s, who doesn't know how to end his latest book. We are aiming for it to be about 3 minutes long.
For more details you can also visit the Atom Pancakes blog.

http://atompancakes.blogspot.com

The first part of the project involved not only coming up with a name for ourselves, but also creating a visual identify. Here is the company logo and ident.
The logo was Jordan's design...

...however I did create the ident for it.

So far on this project, my main contributions have been with the story. We have worked as a team in generating ideas, and then I have been writing the actual scripts, based on what we have come up with in meetings. I say script'S' because it has gone through so many revisions and rewrites!

I have also been working on some prop designs, while my other colleagues have been handling the character and environment concepts.

Desk

Chair

Lamp

Electric Pencil Sharpener

Our group blog will be more active and up to date, but I shall be keeping this blog relatively up to date with my contributions to the project.

More work to come!

A Flock of Pixels

Narrative - Invisible Cannibals Trailer - The Complete Edition - and a bit more

2011-07-25T10:51:00.010+01:00

I just posted this on the CGA course group blog a little while ago, but for all people not following that, here is the project that I have been working on over summer. It is the trailer for the (imaginary film) The Day of the Invisible Cannibals from Beyond the stars!
A project that was assigned during uni year two, and was never totally finished for the original deadline.
Now the trailer is being re-released with all new scenes (the stuff that was never rendered in time), and tweaked editing! Although note that the trailers animation has remained untouched to preserve the work, and the re-release is just to show how the trailer was going to look if the rendering didn't take so long.

As a reminder, the trailer is supposed to be like a 1950s British B movie trailer, made rather cheaply.
This was a group project. The team consisting of Ethan Shilling (Me), Ruben Martins and Shahbir Hameed.
Anyway, here is the trailer.

For those who are interested to see how different it is, the original can be seen here.

Of course, I haven't just been working on this over summer. Actually most of my time has been spent on learning more technical stuff. One thing being Maya's Embedded Language, Mel for short. I have created a tool that makes the joint creating and orientating a whole lot easier and less confusing.
The second involving learning new rigging techniques. Both stuff learnt from tutorials and also a few techniques of my own!
Not showing any of this now, but I might do a video demonstration later in the year or maybe even a tutorial!

Right now though, I am collaborating for my next project and that studio blog can be seen here at Atom Pancakes!

A Flock of Pixels

Maya Tasks Final Weeks - End of Year 2

2011-05-30T17:51:00.071+01:00

Here are the last of all Maya tasks for this year.

Dynamics - Week 2

Softbody - Flesh

In this example the skin around the chin has been made a softbody. A softbody controls mesh with a particle for every vertex. The particles around the chin have been weighted so that they are attracted to a copy of the original mesh shape. By making it, for example, half weighted, the flesh around the chin wobbles. We have control over a few other attributes to fine tune the effect.

Softbody - Cloth

The cloth has been made a softbody. The ball collides with a dummy plane just underneath the cloth plane. the particles in the cloth collide with the ball. The particles conserve is set to zero to leave an imprint.

Softblody - Snow

The snow plane has been made soft. This is similar to the last example. The particles have been made to collide with the shoe. With the conserve attribute set to zero, the particles stop moving after the release of the shoe.

Softbody - Water

Here a water plane has been made a softbody. This has been made to ripple like water with the use of springs make the motion of the ripple travel.

Softbody - Bubbles

Here the bubbles are begin deformed by their own individual lattice deformers. The lattice deformers are softbodies that are being affected by dynamic fields.

Here is a video showing the above effects.

Dynamics - Week 3 to 4

For The last two weeks we looked at the nDynamics System in Maya. nDynamics divides into two parts. nCloth - for cloth simulations. nParticles - for advanced particle simulations. The beauty of this system is that the particles and cloth work together, so particles can have an effect of the cloth as much as the cloth can have an effect on the particles. The particle system is even more advanced than the standard particle system in Maya, as it has additional features.

The first task was a introduction to cloth with a pretty standard set of flags blowing in the wind.
The flags were made cloth objects and the wind atributes in the system node (nucleus) were set accordingly.

The second example show how we can cache two simulations and blend between the two. In the first cache the bouncy castle was set to be deflated. Then in the second, to be fully inflated.

This example shows how a simple piece of cloth can be used to influence a more complicated piece of mesh. The netting (made up of cylinders with lots of polygons) is influenced (by wrap deformer) to a flat piece of cloth (hidden). Some nParticles were added into the scene for the netting to collide with.

This next example was particularly complicated. A combination of techniques was used here to achieve a dynamic rope bridge. two plat planes were used (one above the other) representing the lower and upper ropes. The ropes and planks are influenced by the cloth planes. The vertical ropes are constrained by both ends of the horizontal ropes. The cloth planes are held at both ends by transform constraints.

Here is a video of the above effects.

Yeah, I went a little further and experimented at destroying the rope bridge. It worked surprisingly well.

Now for the last three examples.
The first demonstrates how you can use cloth to simulate other objects such as balloons. The string has its own settings as does the balloons. They are constrained together at the join with a component to component constraint.

This example demonstrates a very powerful aspect of the cloth simulation. You can make tear-able surfaces. We can control the exact time in which the cloth tears by animating the glue strength on the cloth.

A similar thing can been seen here as the bag splits apart. nParticles have been filled inside the bag and have an M&M instanced to it.

Here is a video of the above effects.

Match Moving - Week 2 to 4

Week 2 Automatic tracking

This example shows what automatic tracking can achieve. The spheres are added in to test how they match in the shot.

The software detects where the camera is moving and reconstructs it by following points of high contrast (in theory). The downside to this is that it can't distinguish between static objects and moving objects so anything that moves has to be masked out to avoid the software getting confused.

Target Tracking

In this example I have manually picked the points for the software to track. I've picked several points from varying distances to the camera so that the software has enough information to calculate the approximate perspective and movement.

Masked auto Track

This example shows how masking the tracking area can localise the automatic tracking calculations. This has been done in reverse so instead of the tracker calculating the camera movement, it is tracking the movement of the car.

And so this car has now been turned into a wind up toy car!

High Res Body Modeling - everything for this year

The head

The Body

So next year we will be finishing it, with the feet, arms and hands. There may be one or two areas that need a little clean up or more detail, but it's at a good stage so far.

For any previous tasks view the Maya Tutorials link to the left of the page.

A Flock of Pixels

Work Experience - Butch Auntie Profile

2011-05-29T19:52:00.005+01:00

I've been working for Butch Auntie for work experience. They provide visuals including projections for live events such as parties and festivals.
They are usually provided with a themed by their clients and for that reason have over many years created a vast range of professional visuals.

The company was founded by Butch Auntie's Directors Steve Brown and Pete Wallace. Before this they both worked on major feature films and TV commercials.
Prior to Butch Auntie, Steve has had experience in traditional stop-motion and 2D animation. They express that both their quality and skill shown in their work has achieved them a status 'above the average VJ outfit'.

You can visit their site at
www.butchauntie.com
for examples of what they have worked on.

Like I said yesterday, I did email some questions to Pete too, as there was little else on the site, but I can guess that he is very busy at the moment.

The questions I asked were:

when / how was Butch Auntie first formed?
how many people do you employ at any one time? are they all freelance?
What did you and Steve Brown do before forming Butch Auntie?
What is the difference between Butch Auntie and Microchunk?
Is there a story to where the name Butch Auntie came from?
Whats the future for Butch Auntie?

If and when I have some answers I'll of course update the post.

A Flock of Pixels

Work Experience - Evaluation

2011-05-28T20:22:00.003+01:00

For my work placement I worked for Butch Auntie. While doing work for them I have had to take on new skills and approach projects with a different attitude, because for the first time, I'm not working on one of my own projects, I 'm working for someone else who has the task of providing content for other clients.
With that comes the need to communicate regularly, and as a result my email inbox has never been so full until now.

The work I have been producing I've not always been so happy with, but that's not to say the times been wasted. As I gradually discovered, it is usually almost impossible to create something right first time, let alone for someone else. We usually started with briefs that were very general at first, and from providing something within a day or two, we could then get feedback on what they like and dislike. This way of working was something that took a little getting used to.

I have been so used to taking the first week of any given assignment slowly, just getting ideas together and figuring out what I want from my own projects, that at the beginning of work experience I was quite panicky. Luckily this soon went away as I got into the swing of things. I think that was an important experience to take from this.

I have to say though, that most of the other difficulties encountered were mostly technical. I found myself making silly errors, which are usually only made when under pressure. Like in the last week of a project deadline. I think because of the way I have had to work to get things done I have been more prone to making mistakes. As a result I didn't always complete the project deadline in its entirety. I wasn't particularly happy with myself for this, but I guess I can learn from my mistakes.

I have been happy with most of the work I have produced, and I have learnt a great deal more on particle dynamics in Maya along the way. I think though the project I enjoyed the most has to have been the Jazz themed visual. I am particularly happy with what I produced considering I didn't use Maya and found it the least stressful project.

I am glad to have had this opportunity to experience work in the last 5 weeks of year two. I think I would have found doing another five week project a step backwards, so I think now I am ready to move forward into year three.

A Flock of Pixels

PS - Company history and profile is slightly delayed as I asked some questions directly to Pete to accompany the rest of the text, but haven't gotten a reply. I don't expect I'll get one now as I can assume he is very busy, so I will probably just post what I have some time tomorrow.

Work Experience - The Final Week

2011-05-23T16:46:00.009+01:00

It's been a busy few weeks. We've been working on two projects at the same time. Swapping between the two every few days it seems. Although for both I have been using particle effects, which have proven to be a right pain. All my particle disk caches have been over 50 gigabytes and is not very handy when backing up files. I have had to keep excluding them from the backups. That, and separating things in render layers and composting in AE, has become ever so confusing.

Anyway, one of the projects is a company re branding party in the form of a projection in a church. Lots of particle and geometry effects needed for this. I should be able to blog this soon, but if not I'm sure you can wait until this Thursday when I present my work at the crit and talk about my experiences.

The other project is to create some visuals (in my case, particle based visuals) for another company. Again this is all going to be shown at the crit. But just to give a little detail without showing anything, the task is creating some musicy visuals with particles, emitting and or morphing etc. This has proven to be the most complicated and frustrating stuff I've worked on over work experience. It's all fun until things start playing up, or renders fail. Ok, I'm blaming my tools again! I guess it's all part of the learning experience, some things just work first time while other things constantly fail.

At some point this week I will be sending an email to Pete with some questions about Butch Auntie and forming a post about the company I've been working for.

A Flock of Pixels.

Work Experience - Begin Week Three

2011-05-09T19:30:00.019+01:00

I've got something to post on work experience!
Before that, lets recap. I've done two weeks official work experience, plus whatever was done in the holidays. So far I've worked on two projects, however the first one I haven't blogged yet as I'm waiting for the go-ahead, so the second project is what I'm posting now.

So last Friday was the day of one of the events that I was making visuals for.
In this case it was a posh party with the theme of 1920s - 1930s New York Jazz / Cotton Club.

A blank J shaped wall in this venue was to have visuals projected onto it.

No music was involved in the making of the visuals as it was meant to be a kind of lighting and decor. Nothing too distracting. ie, no timing to fast beats etc.

So to answer the brief I created this visual, a minute in length, and loops.

Jazz City 01 from A Flock of Pixels on Vimeo.

The whole thing was done without Maya or any kind of 3D effects. A mixture of edited photos and other images were used within After Effects to create the shadows / silhouettes that cast over the cityscape at night. For those that look closely, you might find a few duplicate buildings, but knowing that it was going to be spread across three walls and only looked at every so often, I think I was able to get away with it!

Making of:

Before I started this I did some visual research on the themes.

This was a mock-up I did in Photoshop before I went ahead with the final video.

I did start constructing this in Maya, but came across a rather large problem with both the Maya Software and Mental Ray Renderer in Maya, and that is that they can't render shadows (depth map or raytraced) cast by flat planes correctly. Weird!
Basically I created a wall, then positioned a small card with the silhouette cut out just in front (exactly parallel), then created a spot light and aimed it from one side. I expected it to cast a distorted silhouette shadow, but alas, the shadow was undistorted although appearing larger. Thinking, "is this how the real world reacts?", I did a test with a real torch and a card and the shadow was indeed distorted on the wall (a bit pedantic but I had to make sure!). So there we have it. I was amazed that I couldn't find anything on this on the internet. Whether other 3D software or different renderer's have this same technical inaccuracy is another question entirely.)

At this point I decided to do the whole thing in After Effects, using lots of edited images.

Lastly, here is a video of the video projection at the event.

A Flock of Pixels

Maya Tasks Week 26 - Dynamics and Match Moving

2011-05-09T18:43:00.019+01:00

Dynamics - Rigid Bodies

To begin the next set of tutorials we are now looking at rigid body dynamics.
In this first example I've created a chain, that swings down with the force of gravity. The chain links collide with each other as solid objects to create the swinging chain. Stand-in objects of lower density of polygons were used in the simulation an higher quality chains were used for rendering.

This next example is of an earring that swings much like the chain, except that the objects are attached to each other via Pin constraints instead, because they don't collide in the same way.

The next example is of a catapult throwing a rock at a brick wall. This one was slightly more complex to setup, but was quite fun to watch in simulate.
First the ground plane was set to be a rigid object that isn't moved by dynamics. (Passive Rigid Body) Then the bricks, catapult and rock were set to be dynamic objects. (Active Rigid Body)
To propel the catapult, a spring constraint was used. Dynamics done the rest.

Lastly is the Cradle. The idea is the end metal balls are supposed to bounce off the pack. This seemed to require more luck than anything else, but basically the balls are Active Rigid Bodies and are held up by a pair of Nail constraints. It was then a matter of tweaking with the properties of the balls and gravity field to get it to work. Even then it only managed a swing or two.

Here is a video of the examples above.

Match Moving - Still Camera

This is matching a filmed shot in 3D for the purpose of adding in CG elements.
Well not exactly match moving yet as the camera is still, but this is sometimes the scenario. That also means that you can't use software to calculate the 3D space in the image so in this example the camera had to be positioned manually with trial and error.

Anyway, I had to use what is in the scene as visual cues to work out approximately the 3D space. One of the first things to work it is the focal length. This can partially be figured out but how much objects shrink into the distance. First of all the camera had to be roughly positioned, then a few cubes were added to the scene a positioned where the buildings were. From then on it was a matter of tweaking the camera position, the focal length and the models until the whole set was mapped out in 3D space.

A few spheres were added into the scene to test how things fitted in and then an orrery was put on top of the bricks in the center.
Lastly the lighting was figured out (approximately) by looking at the shadows in the scene.

Next week we look at a moving shot.

Oh and here is the progress on the high res body modelling tutorial which I started during the holidays. Not finished yet, but getting there.

A Flock of Pixels

Work Experience - Update

2011-05-03T10:55:00.003+01:00

Back again, with not much to say, but I've still been working on projects.
First of all I finished and handed in my most recient essay, I've also ploughed through the rest of the Maya tutorials and am now almost up to date. (I'll blog them later)
The last project I was working on as part of work experience has finished, so I'm sure that I will soon be albe to post my stuff for that soon. Another project was also briefed during the holidays. This is going to be projection for a jazz themed party. I think that event is this friday so its a tight deadline. That also means that some time after then I should (in theory) be able to post my work on this too.

(Too much text!!! :( )

A Flock of Pixels

Work Experience - First Week Over

2011-04-15T20:44:00.011+01:00

The first week of week experience now over, but all the rest of the weeks are still to come. Its been a good week all in all. I've done three initial animation loops and a few other tests in Maya for the project that I and a few other people are working on. I assume we all will be getting some feedback over the weekend, although in the coming week I'm not going to be at a computer or with internet, and have said that I wont be able to do any work in that week.
I've practically finished my essay, which is good because all I have to be doing from now on are the Maya tasks and any projects for work experience... and relaxing over the holidays!!!

A Flock of Pixels

Work Experience - Day 3

2011-04-13T19:13:00.005+01:00

It has been a bit of a shaky start to the first project. Yesterday I had one of those mental block things, which pretty much messed up the whole day! I guess I just didn't get what I was doing or I was over thinking. I did sort of, kind of, accidentally, in a way, miss the first deadline! (Oh dear!)

But today has gone much better. Although I can't divulge the specifics of the project, I can say that it involves creating abstract content of a particular style and within Maya and it is very different from the sort of projects that I've done I've the past.

I wish I could tell you more! Actually I don't yet know what I am allowed to say, but I know I can't post any images of what I'm creating.

I'm sure more will be posted later on.

A Flock of Pixels

Maya Tasks Week 24 - Dynamics and Mental Ray

2011-04-09T18:03:00.020+01:00

In this weeks dynamic tutorials we continued with particles.

The first example is of mud sliding off a golf ball. The particle render type was set to blobby surface to make the particles a solid mesh that would deform over the ball. Various scripts were used to control the way the mud slid off the ball.

The second example uses particle sprites to create magical dust. A sprite is an image and in this case its an image of a bright star like glow.
Scripts control the look of the particles, from colour to size and rotation etc.
Then it was taken into after effects for further adjustments.

Mental Ray

Caustics

in this rather short tutorial we tapped into some caustics. Caustics are what cast bright hot spots when light refracts through materials such as glass or water.
This example shows how caustics has an effect in this scene.

No caustics

Caustics added

Notice the bright white glows mixed in with the shadow.

Mia Material X

The Mia Material X shader for Mental Ray is a very versatile shader. It can be made into almost any type of material. In this exercise we looked at all the preset materials. You can see that they can be made to look very realistic.

Before

After

HDR Image Lighting

In this exercise we looked into Image based lighting with HDR images.

-colour gain
-colour offset

With no image based lighting

Default image based lighting settings - 0,1
Looks like night time

With an offset on colour gain and colour offset by 1 - 1,2
A reasonably good looking render

With an offset on the colour gain and colour offset by another 1 - 2,3
Slightly blown out.

I found that keeping the settings within a range of 1 kept the colours neutral.
When just increasing the colour gain alone the image tinted blue! - 0,5

Tweaked settings - 1.3,2.3

Physical Sun and Sky with Portal lights

A default sun and sky set-up works great for outdoors, but not so with interiors, as seen in this render.

Not enough light seems to enter through the window of the room, so to fix this we use portal lights. A portal light focuses the light into entering the room.

This is how a portal light positioned just outside the window, helps improve the image.

I then experimented with some ambient occlusion.

Also in the occlusion settings is a colour bleed option.
Here is the final result.

The Physical Sun and sky

This exercise went through some of the more advanced features of the Physical sun and sky in Mental Ray.

Here we have an island scene with the default sun and sky.

First that was tweaked was the horizon line.

Then the sun position was changed by rotating the directional light that represents the sun.

The sun disc size can be changed to. In this case I made it slightly bigger.

Now the sun is changed back to early mid day, I shall go over a few of the other settings.

The haze attribute affects how much atmosphere is in the scene.
from left to right you can see how less haze is clear and adding more haze gives us something more overcast.

The Red / Blue Shift can be used to similar effect.
a range of -1 to 1 can be used in this channel.

The last key attribute is the Saturation.

Most of the effect changes can be seen in the sky and in the reflections of the sky.

Shadows can be tweaked also. This is the default.

After increasing the softness grain starts to notice more.

So increasing the samples helps remove it.

Last but not least, I have finally gotten round to finishing the weight lifting animation! I am quite pleased with how its come out, considering only a day was spent on it. Usually for something like this I would spend at least two days.
The video starts with the keys in stepped mode and then the final animation.

I think if I had that extra day I could have spent more time in the curves editor, fixing all of the overshot curves etc. Most of what you see was done without going into curves editor at all except for fixing a rotational glitch in the wrists.

I think that should be all the Maya tasks done for this project.

A Flock of Pixels

Work Experience

2011-04-08T19:19:00.002+01:00

Had first meeting with Pete, who I shall be doing work experience for. He is associated with two companies as Head of Production and Art Director, namely Butch Auntie and Microchunk.
They deal with live event visuals and projections. He talked about the sort of projects that I would be working on. He showed some reference material so I know the style of work he will be requiring.

I will mostly be using Maya to create visuals to be processed in After Effects for various projections.

A Flock of Pixels

Transcription - Finalising the Project

2011-04-07T17:17:00.048+01:00

Edit: Sorted out the video. It previously stopped working because bandwidth limit.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;

The Making Of Document

My Pillow the Making Of

Tech Document on Maya Fur

Tech Document on Maya Fur

The Demo Real Shot I created a turnaround for my bear character. It shows both a clay render, wire frame and a fur render.

Here are the Blank DVD covers Business cards etc.

Business card

Disc

DVD case

These are the designs specifically for the 'My Pillow'

DVD case and Disc.

DVD case

Disc

Now time to rest.

A Flock of Pixels

Transcription - Bits and Bobs

2011-04-02T12:08:00.011+01:00

Just a quick post today!

In the animation, there are some slippers riding the ghost train as well as the bear and pillow.

Here is the final model of the slippers, complete with texture.

_________________________________________________

Here is the scene where the bear and pillow are under the tree.

Here is just the set of the cave with its textures. (not lit yet)

_________________________________________________

I've also been thinking about re designing A Flock of Pixels.
Here are a few test logo/idents made in Maya.

This is actually based on an idea I already had when I first thought up A Flock of Pixels.
Using cube pixels with 'bee wings'.

Animation is almost done and the rendering is well under way.

A Flock of Pixels.

Transcription - Ghosts

2011-03-29T14:32:00.010+01:00

For my project I needed a ghost. So I created one.

It consists of a piece of cloth with some eye holes cut out, over the top of a pillow!
Pretty scary huh?

Well maybe not, but it was a good excuse to do a cloth sim!

So in two ghost Train scenes I needed the pillow to be covered with a sheet that would be pulled away by the bear. (Still haven't thought of a name yet)

This is what I have come up with.
I created a flat plane, and nClothed it. After letting it drape over the pillow, I then set the deformed mesh to be the default position. I then created a constraint that is animated to pull the cloth off the pillow. From here I did a few tests.

The first test I did (after some tweaking of settings) I got pretty good results, but wanted the sheet to be pulled off quicker.

I moved the ground plane further back so it didn't fall out of the scene and made the constraint pull quicker. Sadly though, a little to quick and due to the plane being CG smooth the cloth slid right off anyway!

One final test and I got something that I was totally happy with!

If anyone is wondering how animation is going, it's going fine. Some scenes are better than others. So far I have three favourites. The rest have far more room for improvement, and depending on what time I have left, depends on how well they look in the end.

Here are a few screen shots, from some of the scenes. (not necessarily final render)

Notice the fur looks a bit different after the splash. I animated some of the fur attributes.

A Flock of Pixels

Maya Tasks Week 23 - Dynamics and Mental Ray

2011-03-25T16:16:00.037Z

Here are the latest Maya tutorials. They will be the last for a little while. You will be seeing some Transcription project stuff soon.

Dynamics

This weeks dynamic tutorials further expanded upon particle instances.

The first example are instanced Gold Fish. The new thing we've learnt is how to apply animation to instances, that can be offset amongst the individual particles. This way, they don't move at exactly the same time. This technique involved duplicating a copy of the goldfish for every frame of the animation. All the geometry is played back in sequence in the particle instancer.

The second example shows robots all walking on the ground. The same technique was used to offset all the walk animations. The addition of a script was used to make the feet stick to the floor better.

The last example shows spider crawling along a surface. The fact that the surface is not flat was the challenge in this exercise.

Here is a video of the above effects.

Displacement Maps

You can use displacement maps as a way to add more sculpted detail to geometry. With bump and normal maps which can add surface detail, displacement maps actually deform the geometry.

The software renderer can use displacement maps but its functionality is limited.

(Click to enlarge) Figures 1-4

Here a flat plane is used, to demonstrate what can be done in the software renderer. Fig 1

After applying the displacement map image, this is what the default settings give. Fig 2

After upping the samples of displacement you can see what its supposed to look like, but there are a few little mistakes left to fix. Fig 3

After a bit of tweaking I got this result. Fig 4

_____________________________________

Continuing from the last example, we then learnt about how displacement maps should always both extrude inwards and outwards, so that the object being displaced doesn't appear to explode only outwards. To do this, means telling Maya where mid grey is. This can be done by adjusting the Alpha Gain and Alpha Offset attributes in the image file node. The rule is that Alpha Offset is always minus a half of the Alpha gain.

Here are a selection of images demonstrating the effect the attributes have on the displacement.

Alpha gain 1
Alpha Offset -0.5

Alpha gain 2
Alpha Offset -1

Alpha gain 3
Alpha Offset -1.5

Alpha gain 4
Alpha Offset -2

If you open all the images and flick though them you can see exactly what's happening.

It is interesting to note that when comparing these images that the words and board punch out the most, while the the noisy area stays more less in the same place. This is because the words and boarder are white in the displacement image, and the middle bit is grey with noise, ie the mid point.

In the next example we look at refining the displacement results using the Mental Ray renderer, which has some extra options for creating good displacement.
The way to achieve those kind of results is with what's known as the Approximation editor.

___________________

Mental Ray Approximation editor

In this example the letter M is used. The white area is what's being displaced.

No Displacement map.

Default Settings. (as usual is a mess)

Changed to Alpha Gain 0.1
Alpha Offset -0.05

Tweaked with approximation editor.

_____________________

Dice Example

(Click to enlarge)

Figure 1 shows a die with no displacement.

Fig 2 shows what default displacement gives us. Its exploded!

In Fig 3 the approximation editor is set to the polygons or Sub Divisions setting.
this is the result. But it seems we've lost most of the displacement now.

After adjusting a few settings we get the spots indenting. Fig 4

Upping the Max subdivisions fixes the stepping effect as shown in the image below.

_______________________

Nurbs Tube example

The last example is with a nurbs tube.

The approximation editor has a specific section just for Nurbs objects.
This is what we get.

After some tweaking we get clean results.

____________________________________

Indirect Lighting

Now onto Final Gather

With final gather you can light a scene without using any actual lights. In the example we used the environment colour to light the scene.
What it does is it shoots final gather rays from the camera and bounces them around the scene, and where ever they bounce they add light. So naturally, places that would be in shadow will end up being darker than areas fully exposed.
Because the rays bounce around the scene, it is being lit indirectly.

Final Gather has render diagnostics.
The green areas represent the tighter areas of calculations, where the light bounces the most.

The dots can even be viewed in 3D.

After tweaking some settings a result like this was achieved.

Now on to Global Illumination in Mental Ray.

Where Final gather deals with bouncing light, Global Illumination will colour the scene based on the other colours around it. Photons are emitted and bounce around to colour the scene.

After a little bit of setup and switching on global Illumination a test render will result in something way over exposed! The white spots are photons.

Using Final Gather in conjunction with Global Illumination will help to smooth out the render as you can see.

After adjusting some other attributes in Global Illumination you can achieve a result like this.

You can view photon dots in the same way as Final Gather.

So this is the beginning of how to render scenes with realistic lighting effects.
I'm sure there's still plenty more to learn.

A Flock of Pixels

Maya Tasks Week 22 - Dynamics and Mental Ray

2011-03-25T07:42:00.022Z

First is the dynamics.

The first tutorial was on creating lots arrows and then fire them across the screen. To do this, one arrow was instanced on particles that were emitted. The aim rotation was set to velocity, so that the arrows aimed in the direction they are going.

The same thing was done to these rockets, except a secondary particle system was used to emit smoke from the particle rockets.

This scene demonstrates how one particle system can have its particle rotations based on several different calculations. ie some arrows point at a fixed location, some are born with a random rotation in X axis, and some aim in the direction they are going. At birth, one of these options is chosen.

The last example shows a way of creating masses of randomly placed trees using particle instancing. In the tutorial, we were shown a way of placing trees in specific areas based on a texture map on the surface, then using the particle emission texture rate to emit from only the white areas from the black and white image map. Rather annoyingly, that bit didn't work for me. The same thing happened in lesson too, and the suggested fix, (restarting Maya) didn't work for me either. Although I have seen other people have managed to get it to work, so I'm can only assume that it is a Maya on Mac problem. I'm sure that if it came to it, there is probably a way to get it to work, but at least I know that this is a feature that exists to use.

Here is a video of the above effects.

_______________________

This week for rendering we looked a motion blur and depth of field.

Motion Blur

With the software renderer you can use two kinds of motion blur, 2D and 3D.

In this scene we have an example of 2D movement, meaning that 2D motion blur can be used.
There are multiple ways of changing the amount of blurriness in a render.
You can either use the blur by frame or blur length to control the strength of the directional blur. Alternatively you can also use the shutter open and close controls, which are similar to actual cameras.
They all do much the same thing.

Then there is the smoothing value, which basically blurs all the pixels a bit.
And there is also blur sharpness, which also does exactly what it says.

After tweaking all the attributes I got a result like this.

One other thing to note. I'm missing the '2D blur memory limit' options. Don't know what's happened to them.

_________________________

In this next example we looked at 3D motion blur in software, with this wheel.

To illustrate, here is the problem of using 2D motion blur for a 3D movement.

All the bars are blurring in one direction, and not in a curved direction.

Here's what the wheel looks like without blur, and with default motion blur.

And again. we can control the amount of directional blurring by adjusting most of the same attributes. Although there is also a way of adjusting the blur, directly on the cameras themselves in Maya.

___________________________

Lastly there's mental ray's motion blur. (which is 3D)

Default settings will give this result. It looks familiar. (like 2D motion blur)

By increasing the motion steps, it is looking at the movement in minor increments, to smooth out the curve of the blur.
Unfortunately, mental rays motion blur, is very slow by default.

A speedier way is to use mental rays 'rasterizer' renderer. This happens to be better a dealing with motion blur. and offers quicker results.

The only way to remove grain in the image is to up the samples, which will always slow the render down, but then, who's going to notice any grain if its moving fast!
It is still considerably faster than the scanline renderer (mental rays default).

__________________________

Depth of Field

Both Software and Mental Ray can do depth of field.

First lets see what Software can do.
By adjusting the focal distance, the focus can be tweaked to the distance of the subject.
The F stop controls the amount of blurring, while keeping the subject in focus.
Maya Software isn't very accurate though, and doesn't handle edges very well.
This is what comes of adding blurring as a post effect.

The way fix this is to use mental ray.

This renders it correctly, although by default, it will appear very grainy. By lowering the anti aliasing contrast, the render will come out smoother.
Any more smoothing required turning the sampling up (as usual).

Mental Ray also comes with some specific lens nodes.

One of them is the Bokeh lens node.
With it, you can achieve far more realistic depth of field.
It has much the same controls as the other depth of field.

After some tweaking I got this result.

A Flock of Pixels

Maya Tasks Week 21 - Dynamics and Mental Ray

2011-03-21T20:50:00.017Z

In this weeks dynamic tutorials we looked at particle instancing.

The first example is of a crowd of robots moving forward in one direction.

The robot cycle animation is controlled by scripts and the robot itself is instanced on particles that move forward.

The next example uses particles instancing to create bubbles. The sale of the bubble geometry is controlled by the particles.

Then we come to meteors. In this, the instanced meteors rotation are also being controlled.

In this example, an attribute called object index is used, so that the particles emitted, choose between a selection of instanced shapes.

In this final example all above attributes have been applied. The rotation, scale and object index has been applied to a selection of people, generating a crowd.

Here's the video of the above effects.

___________________________________

Now on to some mental ray stuff.

In this task we were shown how to take depth map shadows rendered in software, to Mental Ray by converting the shadows to their depth map equivalent.

Software Shadows

Although the switch is not perfect as shadows won't appear to render in mental ray, until you tweak the softness attribute. So I take the softness right down.

As you can see, when the softness is decreased you can begin to see the shadows again.

After tweaking the softness you can get a result similar to software, in the mental ray renderer.

In the second exercise, we were using mental ray to render this scene and using its diagnostics tools to understand and tweak settings for optimum performance and speed.

Although to be quite honest, I didn't have much luck as far as tweaking went.

The main focus of the tutorial was on something called BSP, which stands for Binary Space Partition. Although I'm not about to have a long discussion about what that is right now, but for what we were doing, we had to tweak the BSP size and BSP depth under the 'Regular BSP' setting in the render settings. It was just the depth actually, but the idea is to try and find a balance between the two and in theory, quicker render times.

Lets just say that my results after about 4 renders were kind of exactly the same.

In terms of speed, Regular BSP was slightly faster than BSP2, although changing the BSP Depth, or size seemed to have no effect. Although to be honest, I can't really complain about in rendering in 43 seconds, because that's actually pretty fast anyway.

Render 1
45 seconds
BSP2

Render 2
43 seconds
Regular BSP
BSP Size 10
BSP Depth 40

Render 3
43 seconds
Regular BSP
BSP Size 10
BSP Depth 50

Render 4
Regular BSP
43 seconds
BSP Size 10
BSP Depth 60

Render 5
43 seconds
Regular BSP
BSP Size 5
BSP Depth 60

I finally got a result that increased render time by 1 second

Render 6
44 seconds
BSP Size 1
BSP Depth 50
These were its detailed results
RCI 0.3 info : max depth : 50
RCI 0.3 info : max leaf size : 66
RCI 0.3 info : average depth : 38
RCI 0.3 info : average leaf size : 4
RCI 0.3 info : leafnodes : 2089268
RCI 0.3 info : bsp size (Kb) : 114652

…and if you compare that with the second render…

RCI 0.3 info : max depth : 40
RCI 0.3 info : max leaf size : 191
RCI 0.3 info : average depth : 34
RCI 0.3 info : average leaf size : 7
RCI 0.3 info : leafnodes : 531119
RCI 0.3 info : bsp size (Kb) : 31804

Here is a comparison of the BSP depth size
40

50

This is the actual result of the render.

More Maya tasks soon!

A Flock of Pixels

Transcription - Creating Digital Sets

2011-03-18T19:58:00.008Z

The last couple of days I have been doing some set modelling.
I have two sets to show.

The first is the Ghost Train.

The skeleton graphics weren't done by me. Not the originals anyway. I found some photos of a Ghost Train that I had taken a while back, and borrowed them, but edited them to fit my 'bear' Ghost Train. This was my an attempt at converting the human skeleton faces to bear skeleton faces.

Yeah, I know, not brilliant, but not bad.
Anyway, that's the Ghost Train.

The other set is the River Splash, which is luckily just a wall and a sign, so it didn't take as long as the Ghost Train.

Animation wise, I've decided that I will organise all the shots into some sort of priority, so that those that require the most attention will be done first, so that I can get them done, knowing that the rest of the shots shouldn't be as difficult, so if I need to compromise anything, it won't be the most important shots.
Of course everything is important though!
This way I am making sure that I can hit the deadline, without sacrificing all the animation.

A Flock of Pixels

Transcription - First Pre-Vis

2011-03-16T16:42:00.027Z

Sorry for the delayed posting, but I've now got a workaround for playing the animation with sound, without messing up my Youtube account.

Presenting a pre vis today. It's really just the key poses of the animation, and is only rough, but will eventually become a refined animation. There's not much in the way of sets and props, most of them are stand-ins or just unfinished sets. There are also a few scenes that I haven't even started yet and are therefore missing.
I have however found out that my rigged bear has a few limitations, that make it a pain to pose.

Here is the pre-vis.

&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;

This pre-vis has helped me see that there are still many timing issues. You may have noticed that the River Splash scene looks different. I found that there isn't enough time to have the bear walk into the ride and walk out, all wet. So instead he takes one step, then splash! The weight of the soggy pillow pulls the bear to the ground.

So what of those limitations I mentioned. Well, the elbow joint is too far up the arm (oops), which is causing some problems, in that it was impossible for the bear to hold an ice cream in front of his big nose. His arms were too short, but it didn't help that the elbow wasn't a decent distance from the shoulder either.

This also caused problems when the bear puts his arm around the pillow (which is for most of the animation.)

The arms were again being a problem when I had to pose him holding a golf club.

So basically I have a bear that manages to fail to do mostly everything that is required of him for this animation. And its all down to his short arms with an elbow right next to his shoulder! Never mind. I know for next time right?

On a more positive note, I have spent a little bit of time on creating some dynamic feathers!
Luckily we had our first tutorials on particle instancing which have come in useful. Although I have messed around with particles for a while now, I've never really looked at instancing until now.

Here are a couple of tests.

I don't know why I would want to fill up a glass with feathers, but I couldn't resist. (if anyone else is wondering, this used the nParticle system in Maya, which makes self colliding a whole lot simpler. Using nParticles is probably not necessary for most of the feather effects though.)

OK, now the second one is more useful. Here I am shooting feathers into the atmosphere. The feathers then drift downwards slowly. This is basically what I need for the opening shot.

No doubt though, that I will need different set-ups to achieve some of the other feather effects.

More to come.

A Flock of Pixels

Transcription - A Furry Bear at Last

2011-03-14T16:30:00.029Z

Its taken a lot of tweaking, some painful fur combing in Maya, and then scrapping that and just doing it all in Photoshop, and now the furry bear is completed.

Now I know what you are all thinking. How does a bear go from flat n' grey to gold n' fluffy!

Well simply adding fur to the bear and changing the colour and length etc gives you something like this.

Which is mostly great, except for the visible seams where the edges of the UV shells are on the UV map and the hands particularly have too much fur.

Now to fix this, the most important attribute in the fur is the fur direction. This has to be painted in Maya. Little did I know at the time, how unintuitive and time wasting it would be.
Every time I did a test render, the fur direction map, would not always update, and so I would make changes, render, see no changes, try again, and so on. Switching renders or Saving As seemed to fix this. Although that's not what I found unintuitive.

The display fur preview (the 3D view), was set at 128. Any higher and Maya just couldn't handle displaying such dense fur in the preview. But that's fine, as there was just enough fur to see what I was painting. The point is that, I set the image map resolution size to 1024 by 1024. Both in the fur settings and the painting settings. So as far as I was concerned, it was painting at a decent resolution.

After a lot of painting, and still having seams and random fur splodges that wouldn't go away I decided to look at the image file it was creating. I almost wanted to laugh at what Maya had done, but at the same time I wasn't in a good mood. Take a look at this.

A 1024 resolution image, with a 128 pixel size (and with a lot of random splodges). The display settings for Maya actually have an effect on how it renders, because the file that is painted is stuck at that resolution, no matter what actual resolution you change the map file to.

This was when I decided to paint it in Photoshop. It took me a while to work out what the black and white values represented in terms of fur direction.
Here's a diagram I made to show what it all means.

White and black are down, and all the levels of grey are the 360 degrees of rotation. Simple really. With that knowledge, I painted this map.

And together with a base and tip colour map, and a length map, I got the final bear.
Fur Length Map

Fur Base Colour Map

Fur Tip Colour Map

Here are three images showing how some of the variations in length.

I might still need to make the eyes more visible, but its basically done.

So what I've learnt from all this is that fur isn't really that hard after all, but Maya fur IS hard.

I was still in for one last surprise though. I wanted to apply the fur to a bear with some animation, to see how it all deforms.
I created a new scene and imported the bear rig with out fur. Applied the fur preset and attached the map files. I then baked the map files and Maya had one last change to make. When baking the files, the images were up-scaled to the intended 1024 resolution and smoothed out. There was only one problem with that. I didn't want my images to be changed. If you look back at my direction map, you will see that the body is half white and half black. (still technically the same rotation value). Up-scaling the images, blurred the crisp line, (producing grey in-between) thus producing a seam.

Also when baking, the clumping seems to be more noticeable. You will see that the squares of clumping are quite noticeable in the video.

Although I'm not sure about the clumping, I do know how to fix the image up-scaling problem.

Anyway, for all those good enough to have listened to me for this long, and maybe even learnt something you didn't know before, I leave you with a video of the bear running with fur.
And just for fun, he is being chased by an invisible cannibal!
(might need to go to fullscreen HD to see the benefit of the fur)

I copied the animation of one of the invisible cannibal characters run cycles, and quickly adjusted some of the curves. It's not a perfect transition, but for the purposes of this test its good enough.

While all this fur stuff has been taking place I have also been blocking out the whole animation. The idea is to have everything roughed out first. Then I will go back and refine every shot one by one. In theory I should be able to finish this within a day or two (the blocking out) and present a sort of pre-vis pretty soon.
And from then on, its animating like crazy!

A Flock of Pixels

Maya Tasks Week 19 - Dynamics - Normal Mapping for Games - UV mapping

2011-03-11T09:09:00.023Z

This weeks tutorials were on normal maps. They are a way of adding extra surface detail onto objects without needing hi resolution geometry. Perfect for games.

Here is an example of what a normal map does.

Believe it or not, this is a flat surface. The pyramids aren't really there. Check out the next few images.

The cool thing is that the pyramids generated by the normal map react to the light as if they are really there. Of course it has its limitations as demonstrated in the above image.

This example was created by creating a flat plane, then duplicating it, and on the duplicate, extrude out some pyramids. The software then compares the two and makes a map for the flat surface, based on the detailed surface.

This is it's normal map.

Here is another example of a normal map adding extra depth.

Before

After

This example however wasn't generated in Maya. In Photoshop you can make normal maps based on textures. (requires a plug-in like Ndo)

This is its normal map.

Here's one final example of a complete scene making use of the extra detail normal maps create. These maps were done in Photoshop too.

Before

After

Here are the normal maps.

Next is the game character. This week was UV mapping.

Nothing new to add really, other than it is even more important to make use of the full UV space for games as it's all about optimising.

_______________________________________

Now for the dynamic tutorials.

Here particles are used to create rain. when the (rain) particles collide, they die off and new (splash) particles are born.

Then we have some 'Riged Body' Dynamics. A bowling ball is made solid, and is effected by gravity. and so are the pins. The ball is given initial velocity, which tosses the ball down the ally.
To save on computer calculations, stand in objects were used. The ball used the sphere stand in and the pins used a cube stand in.

This example uses a combination of Rigid Body dynamics and particle dynamics.
Particles created around the metal object and follow it wherever it goes. (to do this 'Soft Body' dynamics were used. This create particles for all the vertices and the metal object was a 'goal'.)

When this particles collided with the floor, spark particles were emitted.

Here is a video of the above effects.

:( I didn't get a strike...

That's all for now.

A Flock of Pixels.

Transcription - Rigging AND Skinning Done

2011-03-04T15:38:00.019Z

Yep. I was so close to having both done within a day and a half, but due to some complications, I had to go back and edit a few mistakes, but now, after about two days worth of working, I have a ready to animate bear. He's still missing his fur though, but that's for another day!

On the last group project, we had seven characters. All of them rigged by Shahbir, and, I think it was three of them had IK - FK switching arm rigs built into them.

Anyway, I wanted my bear to get the same treatment, so I had a go myself. I had a rough idea of how it worked, but wasn't sure about any of the little problems that I might encounter.
So I had a go... and... it worked! Basically the technique was to rig an IK arm on one set of joints, and an FK on another. Then constrain the main joints to both the IK and FK joints. Then create an attribute to switch between them.

Here is what the rig setup looks like in FK...

...and IK.

The skeleton

I've also made a video demonstrating nearly all the controls on the rig.

Notice the pole vector controls. They actually point to the IKs they effect. It's a remarkably simple little touch I added to the rigs. Just use an aim constraint.

With this new rig I thought I better test it with a pose.

Next on my list of things to do is set and prop modelling, while starting to animate, or at least work out in rough how the shots are going to work.

A Flock of Pixels

Transcription - Final Bear Model

2011-03-02T14:34:00.022Z

Today I have finished modelling the bear for my animation.

It's take quite some time with a lot of tweaking in places, and am now happy with the outcome.

Since the last update I've tightened the join between the face and the nose and added a few bumps on top, to make his nose appear more squashed against his face. Not that I ever showed you a smooth preview of the bear before, it did originally look like his nose was just a blob coming out of his face, with no real definition.

The ears are now stuck to the head properly. They were originally separate bits of floating mesh.
The hands are modelled. (like mittens)
There is geometry underneath the feet now.
The curves are ever so slightly more shaped, and he has an extra bump under his nose. (which gradually dispersers around the neck)
Generally the whole model has been tweaked to fit the character better.

There were also some issues with the geometry around the arms which have been adjusted.

One of the main things I like about the bear is it's simplicity. (the look) I've tried to keep the use of circles in the drawing, consistent in the model by keeping the body and the head relatively spherical.
The main difference with the 3D bear is the length of the legs. I purposely made them longer than in the storyboards, so that they would be more practical to use for walking etc.
I still kept the overall shape the same though.

I've unwrapped the UV's too, although this time I'm not so worried about straightening the edges for ease of painting as I'm going to be using fur. And from what I know, I have to have very evenly laid out UV's, with minimal stretching, so that the fur is evenly distributed over the mesh.

I'm sure there will be more to come soon.

Oh, and one more thing. Here is the second (and last) animatic. It's got the title 'My Pillow' although it's likely to change as it's not necessarily the final title. It's just there to fill a blank space for now.
Talking of blank spaces, there is one other snag with this animatic... It has no audio :(

Unfortunately, I hadn't realised at first, but an automatic email was set to me from Youtube, saying that It had detected content that is owned or licensed. Although nothing had actually happened yet, I wasn't going to wait and find out so I've taken both versions with the audio down.
After speaking with Alan, we came to the conclusion that it is just something that I have to put up with. Basically, its never going to be seen with audio on the blog (unless anything changes). Which is a shame.
This explains why I posted the second animatic and then very promptly took it off the blog.

Of course when I'm in Uni, I can show it to anyone if they ask.

A Flock of Pixels

Maya Tasks Week 18 - Dynamics - Games Modelling

2011-02-27T10:20:00.010Z

Here are the third weeks tutorials completed.
We learnt about a few other functions with the standard particle system.

Here we created fireworks, by creating particles that emit more particles. The first set of particles created the trail, then the second created the bang. The usual attributes control the colour etc.

Then the second technique learnt was how to emit particles from a surface, with a texture controlling where the particles emit from the surface.
It was also an opportunity to create a fire effect as well.

The second barrel of fire, is the same as the previous render, but edited in after effects. It's surprisingly very different and a bit over the top!

The last example is demonstrating how particles can inherit the colour of the surface when they emit from it.

With the coke can, an animated ramp texture was used to control the emitting particles, which gives the impression that the can is disintegrating from top to bottom. Dynamic fields were controlling the motion of the particles as they disperse.

Here is the video of the above effects.

Here is the progress made on the game character.

His body is now completed, and the edges on the entire surface have been hardened or softened, based on where creases should be in the mesh.

A Flock of Pixels.

Transcription - Quick Update on the Bear

2011-02-26T19:14:00.004Z

Just a small post this time.

I've got a little bit further with the head. Although I'm still convinced something could be done to improve the edge flow.
I think the shape of the bear has come out well in 3D, especially considering this isn't even smooth previewed.

I will be continuing with this tomorrow.

A Flock of Pixels

Transcription - Modelling the bear (and Question for Alan)

2011-02-26T13:11:00.006Z

I've started blocking out the bear character for my animation.

So far the main body is blocked out. He is missing his hands/paws, and the soles of his feet though.

Here's the drawings I'm modelling from. I've lengthened the legs slightly to enable better control for walking etc.

The head is in the process of being modelled, although I've been finding it tricky to figure out the correct flow of geometry. Unfortunately his ears aren't by the side of his face, so I can't follow the basic human head edge flow. I can't even follow a CG bear model as I can only find realistic CG bears, i.e. my bears neck is coming out of the top, where as a standard four legged bear has his neck coming out from the front.
I have a rough idea how it should work, but am not totally sure.

Alan, if you could take a look at this and see if I'm going in the right direction, or if not, tell me where I'm going wrong, I would be most grateful.

The second animatic is on its way!

A Flock of Pixels.

Transcription - First Draft Animatic

2011-02-22T21:48:00.012Z

I don't know why but I find it so difficult to write a short post!
Perhaps it has something to do with less frequent posting. Hopefully as I move into production there will be a more consistent flow of work.
For those of you who just want to watch the first draft animatic and skip 1000 words, scroll downwards to the embedded video!

So over the last few weeks I've been refining the story. Drawing the story boards and compiling them into the animatic.
The story boards would all seem rather random by themselves, so its not until now that I have something that is in a semi finished state to present.

Although before you watch the animatic, here's just a quick reminder or update on the idea.

_________

I'm transcribing the song, 'It must be Love' by Madness, into a short story about a bear who loves his pillow. They do everything together. The animation mostly show all their happy times together. The animation takes place in a sort of dreamscape land, constructed out of bedding. Yep, the whole world is a giant bed.
The sea is made of feathers, the land is made of a mattress, the hills and sandy beaches are the bedsheets. You get the idea. The only realistic things are the bear, the pillow and the amusement rides.
Again, although the world is a giant bed, the particular place is a sea side. (Which explains the amusement rides.)
Reasons for theses choices will become more apparent when you watch the animatic.
_________

Now because it isn't finished, I already had in my head, some changes that I wanted to make before I was able to present it at this weeks tutorial.
I'll explain mine first, then say what was discussed in the tutorial.

In fact lets watch the animatic now, and I'll explain the rest afterwards.

So there you have it. The first draft animatic.
There are basically three things which I know I wanted to change.
One. Nothing happens with the ice cream.
Two. The second golf scene, nothing new happens. (we don't learn anything)
Three. I don't like the idea of the bear just running to save the pillow.

So with the second golf scene I want to establish that he is consistently failing to pot the ball. He didn't use enough force on the first go, so it makes sense that he over shoots this time. I can also show a few other golf balls on the ground.
This way it is also emphasising the third shot.

The pillow is drifting away and at the moment he is just running in to save him.
I would actually like it if the bear has a fear of open water. (or in this case, a fear of falling off the edge of the bed.) So I might have the bear test the water, (dip his toe in). or he could just hesitate before he runs in.

However I thought it would also be even better if I could suggest this fear earlier on. It might not be totally obvious, but enough to show the possibility.
This is the change I want to make to the ice cream scene. If I shoot the bear and pillow from behind, I can have them sitting on the beach and the water splashes his feet. He can retract and scrunch up with the ice cream out of shot. for a brief second. then when he goes back, the chocolate flake could be missing.
It would be yet another trick of the pillow!

At the tutorial I showed this animatic and explained basically the above.

It is to be expected that I can't pick up on all the problems there might be. The most important part of any animated short is that it reads well.

And Alan really focused on directing my attention to the ending. The part that people remember! The scene where the pillow is drifting away and the bear goes after it, didn't read well. Not as well as in some of my previous ideas.

It just looks like they go off into the distance. It probably didn't help that the feet were represented by two circles, but I don't think that was the point he was making! Basically, the bear and pillow need to be falling down out of sight, with a dreamy fade to white. I was then thinking that it would mean that he would have to fall right off the bed in the real world, but Alan said I shouldn't match the events so rigidly, after all, it is still only a dream.
There were a few other minor things mentioned too and I won't go into all the details.

Perhaps the only other major thing to consider were the ghost train scenes.
And I think I might need some other peoples views on this as I'm really kind of unsure.
The one fundamental gag running through the story is the pillow messing around at the bears expense.
The one thing which I want to achieve with this animation is a performance. A bear that has as much opportunity to act as possible.
This is why the gags in the ghost train are all about the bears reactions to the pillows mischief.

It was suggested that the staging of these shots could be better if they were completely side on. (front of the ghost train)
And I can see exactly were Alan's coming from. I've seen this type of thing in Scooby Doo, in the mine chases, where there are three platforms with mine carts dashing across the screen and the characters are switching places etc.
The only problem I can see in something like this is that you will only see one character in each car as one will be behind the other. Also it then wont be possible to show the reactions of the bear. Instead it would be the cars rapidly going in and out, with perhaps the characters switching places or some other gag etc.

I'm not going to dwell on this, and instead plan to start production once I've tweaked the other elements of the story. If anyone else has any suggestions they are most welcome.

A Flock of Pixels

Maya Tasks Week 17 - More Dynamics - More Games Modelling

2011-02-18T19:21:00.014Z

Here are week two's dynamic tutorials.

First is a ring of fire works. In this particles were emitted from a circle curve, with the emitter set to 'omni'. This meant that particles were emitted from the circle's eight control points. The the particles themselves were controlled be ramps and expressions. Lastly per particle emission rates were used to vary the amount emitting from each point. (I don't think mine is a good example for showing that though, as they all look identical!)

The second effect was a shock wave. Again, particles were emitted from a circle, but this time the emitter was set to 'curve'. This allowed for a ring of particles to be emitted from all around the curve. The circle itself was animated to grow outwards.

This example demonstrates a preset effect called curve flow. As the name suggests, particles flow along a curve path.

Lastly for dynamics, particles are emitted from a curve that was created, based on two bits of geometry intersecting. In this case the island and the ocean.

Here is a video of all the above effects.

So in the second week of games modelling I have refined the head of the character. The only thing I've just realised that I have missed out is adjusting the normals. At the moment they are soft all over. I'll sort that out when I present next weeks tutorials.

(Don't worry, he does have eyes! They've just been hidden to show the geometry)

One final thing. I haven't forgotten about transcription. I'm slowly but surely working my way through storyboarding at the moment. Although remarkably I think I've spent more time on the 'framing practice' essay. However, having done most of week three's Maya tutorials, I intend to spend the next three days working solidly to get to a stage where I have a completed animatic. Before then, I will probably post 'the final idea' for the project. The ideas for it have kind of evolved slowly over the three weeks, but now I have everything worked out in my head.

Transcription - Storyboarding has Begun

2011-02-11T17:38:00.023Z

Today I started story boarding, although not straight away. I spent the firstly half of the day drawing bears, desperately trying to come up with the right kind of bear, while also learning how to draw the same bear consistently, and in different poses.

Once I'd got past that, I was ready to begin story boarding.

So far I've managed to do the very first part of the story, and in seven boards.
I'm certainly pleased with how the drawings came out, and was worth practising. Unfortunately though, the drawing phase didn't last any longer, as I struggled to draw the bear again. I never should have taken that break!
Although I think it was mainly because I couldn't draw the bear at a certain angle, and I wanted to be very specific.

So instead of that, I finished by scanning in the boards, (and the sketches for the blog) and assembling them into an animatic. So as of now, the first 13 seconds are done and in the animatic.

Here is what I've boarded so far.

And exclusive to the blog, some of my other sketches. The practice ones!

I hope to continue boarding over the weekend, adding to the animatic as I go along. It's probably best done that way, as it is a music piece, so timing to the music is crucial.

One last thing though, because my film does use a song by Madness, I'm a little concerned about putting it on Youtube. The music video I blogged (off of someone else's Youtube account) was shortly after, removed, and the account deleted. I've also seen on other videos with just music in, have their audio removed from the video. I'm just wondering what might happen if I ever post the animatic or final piece with the music in on Youtube.
Admittedly though it isn't the full song, but still, I'd rather not risk my account being deleted or anything like that. Does anyone else know more information on stuff like this?

Transcription - Story Progress

2011-02-09T17:01:00.015Z

During the 2nd tutorial with Alan, I discussed yet another idea. Having already gone through a phase of scrapping the first song and staring from square one, then back to the first song again, I was hoping that this time I had something more concrete. I got a green light of sorts. It was decided that there were just a few things that needed resolving, but the core idea is there. And yes, the bear is in it, but not with slippers. No, this time, its with a pillow!

Anyway, I have been working on (as suggested in the tutorial) a detailed storyline of events, which have both the lyrics and timing synced with the new story. It also has some basic camera and compositional notes next to it too. Its in the form of a table.

While I have typed up everything that I was thinking of (with a few of the suggested changes from the tutorials too), it is incomplete. There are a few gaps where I'm undecided of what or how the action on screen will take place. Some parts in in greater detail than others.
Over the next day or so It will gradually become more complete. Of course feel free to post your thoughts on what's here so far.

This is what I have so far.

Transcription Story 1st Draft

I'm thinking that while I try to fill in the gaps, I will begin storyboarding some of the other scenes. Particularly as the last few posts have been rather wordy and is about time I blog some drawings. Any other suggestions for the story are most welcome.

Maya Tasks Week 16 - Intro to Dynamics - Game Modelling

2011-02-06T12:29:00.015Z

For the next few weeks were are learning about the various dynamic systems in Maya and also how to model for games. ie low poly modelling, starting with a character for a game.

To start with, all these dynamic simulations are achieved with the standard particle system in Maya.

First is a cloud, constructed from drawn particles on a wavy surface (its hidden). Then an air ship runs through it and the cloud particles collide.

The second effect is smoke. This time the particles were emitted from a volume emitter. The look of the particles are much the same as in the previous example, except a few extra things were changed to create the different behaviour. For example, they fade out and grow in size as they are lifted into the air. OK, this is shown slightly different in the tutorials, but I experimented a lot before I settled on this effect.

Then there is the fuse on the cartoon bomb. The sparks were emitted from an omni emitter, attached to a curve path that was animated with the fuse.

The last one is an explosion. I spent quite some time adjusting attributes in the sim, so in the video there are a few variations. Basically particles were emitted from one point in all directions, and the colour of the particles were changed over the total life of the particles.

Here is the video of all the effects.

Modelling for games is slightly different for films as you are limited by the amount of polygons in a model. In the first lesson we have started modelling a characters head.
Much of the same rules still apply with edge flow etc.
I didn't follow the tutorials as much with this example so the results are very slightly different.

That's it for now.

A Flock of Pixels.

Transcription - More Ideas

2011-02-04T14:31:00.024Z

Hey everyone reading. You know sometimes while brainstorming you just can't think of anything, then a few days pass and suddenly an idea will just pop into existence. Well I just listened to the song that I am transcribing for probably the millionth time and this idea just came to me.

If you haven't listened to the song, you can hear it in the previous post.

OK. For starters, lets presume I'm sticking with the bear as the character that is in love.
This bear has this car. A car that he loves so much.
Unfortunately, the car was involved in some sort of crash and is probably better off as scrap metal.
Nevertheless, this bear is determined to fix his car and get it looking good as new.
The film begins with him and his car that is in disrepair.
We see him going through all the trials and tribulations of fixing his car.
Several attempts are made at starting the car as well.

Then when he really thinks it is all finished and ready for the final test, he has now gone and lost the key.

He then goes through this process of retracing his steps, trying to remember where he left the key. He ends up falling asleep. (so much hard work!)

He wakes up, having remembered that it was in his pocket, or something like that.

Rushes to the car, and checks everything else is all ready to go.

He turns the key in the ignition. It's not working, so he keeps re turning the key.

The car starts up. Hurray... except it zooms off in reverse and crashes! (off camera)

The end

In effect, you could watch this all over again as he is right back where he started... with a broken car!

In terms of transcribing the song, I think this idea fits better than the last.

I was also thinking that in the lyrics, I could take some of the words more sarcastically. E.g. "how can it be that we can say so much without words" And we see him trying to fix the car by understanding the cars problem, but nothing is working.
Then, "bless the bees and the birds", birds could be dropping thier mess all over the car, while the bees are buzzing around the other character. (ok, this is just me thinking off the top of my head now, but you get the idea anyway) Perhaps in this universe the bears car runs on honey!

So... any thoughts on this idea? Please leave a comment.

Transcription - Initial Ideas and The First Tutorial

2011-02-01T17:31:00.055Z

Got a few things to post today. Firstly, I have created a project timetable, which breaks down all the tasks ahead, into manageable chunks.

Note that it is only in list form, and is subject to change. As soon as I've put it into a table, I can re post it.
___________________________________________

Not including Saturdays and Sundays (reserved for Maya tasks first)

2 weeks pre production - 1st week ideas done + story board done
2nd week animatic done – character designs done

2 weeks production - 1st week characters modelled
2nd week characters rigged, skinned etc

3 weeks animating - 1st week
2nd week
3rd week

1 week rendering - 1st week – lighting and texturing while setting off renders

1 week post production - 1st week – finish off renders while post editing what already done

Last week - 3 days - other bits that need doing
___________________________________________

Secondly, after a chat with Phil, I finally settled on a song to transcribe. So for this project I am using It Must Be Love, by Madness.

//Edit: Can you believe the music video I posted here has been removed from YouTube due to copyright infringement! Lucky it was on someone else's account!//

The lyrics are as follows:
___________________________________________

I never thought I'd miss you
Half as much as I do
And I never thought I'd feel this way
The way I feel
About you

As soon as I wake up
Every night, every day
I know that it's you I need
To take the blues away

It must be love, love, love
It must be love, love, love
Nothing more, nothing less
Love is the best

How can it be that we can
Say so much without words?
Bless you and bless me
Bless the bees
And the birds
I've got to be near you
Every night, every day
I couldn't be happy
Any other way

It must be love, love, love
It must be love, love, love
Nothing more, nothing less
Love is the best

--Long Bit of Music--

As soon as I wake up
Every night, every day
I know that it's you I need
To take the blues away

It must be love, love, love
It must be love, love, love

It must be love, love, love...

___________________________________________

Thirdly, the evening before last, I was discussing story ideas with my brother and dad. I decided first that I would like to explore the possibility of an animal and its connection with some inanimate object.
The first and only thing I was thinking of at the time was a bear and his slippers. I don't know why, but I guess that there were a few cue in the song that caused this to pop into my head. Like where the singer says "every night, every day", the slippers came to mind. Reinforced by the fact that it kind of needs to be a love for something trivial. The line "and I never thought I'd feel this way, the way I feel, about you", as if he wasn't expecting it.
The choice of a bear came second, and I think was caused by the line, "bless the bees". Bees = honey = bears.
Anyway, it was a starting point, so my initial ideas centred around this combination.

A draft story was formed.
___________________________________________

It starts with a bear in his bedroom, waking up. He finds his slippers next to his bed and puts them on.
Then we see all the fun times with the slippers, but at the end of each night, when they are taken off, they are gradually seen getting more worn.
They are too old, so he gets some new slippers, but they are not the same.
As soon as he wakes up (for the last time in the song), he goes for his favourite slippers, but of course they are not there as he has a new pair.
Then at the end he decides to chuck out the new pair and rescue his old pair, even though they are old and worn.

The main part of this story is that in the song, it goes "every night, every day," and I wanted to show at the end of the day, the slippers looking a bit more worn, until he comes to the hard decision to get new ones, but then goes back to the old ones right at the end.
___________________________________________

That is the basic story, although I thought of many variations, and the ending isn't exactly concrete. For instance, were the old slippers put in the bin, or at the back of the closet. Then there is also the problem that the new slippers get thrown out, so they don't get their happy ending :( Which I kind of want. Although I did think up a partial solution by introducing another, younger bear that likes the new slippers, and then at the end, they are given to him.
Exactly what condition are the slippers at the end. Just tatty, or almost dangerous. If the latter, then he needs them fixed before he can wear them again. As you can see, what was a simple story, still has many unsolved parts which kind of make it overly complex.

It's also less of a comedy too. While it might have its humorous moments when he is enjoying his slippers, it isn't exactly a laugh out loud comedy. Although I'd rather it has more a happy ending regardless of any twist at the end.

Anyway, yesterday morning, I knew that my main Idea, (which had been adjusted and re adjusted four times already!) was not a perfect story. With a one to one tutorial this afternoon, I thought it would be sensible to wait and see what was thought of the ideas. In the mean time, I looked at some images of bears. Both real and cartoon.

I did a few sketches of bears, hoping to generate more ideas for the current story, but it was also good drawing practice too!

So, yesterday afternoon was the first official one to one transcription tutorial with Alan. I took this opportunity to present some story ideas, generated the night before.

Although I've set the deadline of storyboarding done by the end of the week and animatic by the end of the following week, I suppose I should really be more realistic. Alan reminded me today that this bit cannot be done quickly, and is something that evolves over time. The main problem I face with my first story idea is that it simply doesn't have an ending that works well. There are too many loose ends created in the first half that don't draw to a close. A common symptom of thinking up the story in one go from beginning to end... in the course of one evening!

Anyway, a few suggestions to take away from this meeting is to just experiment with anything. Replace the animal, replace the object and to switch who's perspective we are seeing the story from. This all merely as a way of generating lots of ideas, so there is more to work with.

I hope to come back with some more ideas by the end of the day.

Transcription - Stuff

2011-01-31T11:07:00.006Z

Transcription begins and I know now that I definitely want to transcribe a piece of music. However I have decided that I don't want to do a marathon lip sync, as I'd much rather create a character, where I can just use expressions to convey emotion and tell a story. So the solution is to find some music that has a lot of varying moods or stages, transitions etc. I would like to design one, possibly two animal characters and focus on them and the animation. For environments, I've already thought about how to achieve them simply, by using key props that represent an environment. Eg a kerb with a lamp post would represent a street, a park bench would represent a park. It would either be in a white or black environment... although in saying that, depending on the music, the colour of the background could alternate on the mood.

So I have quite a few ideas, but no music to transcribe into a story.

For someone who doesn't read novels or listen to music, it is kind of difficult to know where to start, so I am totally relying on what people suggest. I've listened to some of my dads CDs, and had a few suggestions elsewhere. I'll report when I decide on something... According to my timetable, I'm supposed to have a finished storyboard by the end of the week! I'll be lucky!

Narrative - Behind the scenes playblasts

2011-01-24T23:41:00.008Z

OK. I just thought I would add on the end a select few play blasts of when I was animating for the project. Apolgies for the glichyness of some of them. Blame Maya 2011 and its array of bugs!
Also ignore any sound as the play blasts seem to be stuck at 24 frames per second and it goes out of sync.

So there you go. There were a million of other play blasts, but it would be impossible to show all of them, even if I wanted to. So now all that is left is the finishing of the 'complete' trailer.

A Flock of Pixels

Narrative - Tying all the Loose Ends

2011-01-24T22:50:00.013Z

As the Narrative project draws to a close, there are just a few more things left to blog about.

Starting with the Maya tasks, I have finished modelling the car. In the last few days I've had to catch up from week eight on the car video tutorials, although thankfully they didn't take so long to do compared to the first few, which were all about blocking the overall shape. The details weren't so difficult to finish off. I'm glad its done now, as modelling cars isn't really one of my interests in 3D, nevertheless, it has taught me many new modelling techniques as has the character modelling tutorials.

Now the last time I blogged about the character tutorials was when I was at the modelling stage. Well, he is now fulling rigged and skinned, and is just waiting to be animated. Rigging, I still found rather confusing, although much less than the first time, last year. I think it was the spine rig which not only seemed random, in its rigging process, but also weird to animate with. It was then that I decided that the characters for our group project would be better off with a simple FK rig. After all, I was the one that had to animate for that project.

Skinning on the other hand, I have sussed completely. If it wasn't for the slightly unintuitive interface in Maya 2010, it would almost have been enjoyable. Except the hands, as they take so long to do. (I say specifically 2010 or below, as you have to click the hold weight for each individual joint, instead of shift selecting them all.)
Anyway, I've posted a video demonstration of the character rig. Both demonstrating the individual controls, and showing how the skinning looks. It's about 2 and a half min's. I double sped it so that it wouldn't take so long to play.

Here is the turnaround for the character. I used the same setup that I used for the characters in the group project. This was my own setup, based on the tutorials, but with a few of my own personal touches.

Lastly there is the lip syncing tutorials. I had actually almost finished it to my surprise, so there wasn't much left to do, although I am just presenting it as the lip sync only, I have started to take it further, but animating its body, and my scientist character is playing the part of the other voice too, but it is regrettably not yet finished. I would much rather spend some time on it and get it right, than rush to see what can be done in a day, but like I said, he is lip synced, and here is exactly that.

Although I have posted two more film reviews, I have missed Arachnophobia. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the original viewing due to the snow, and have not been able to get a copy to watch since. As I'm sure you are aware, It's also been rather hectic with finishing the trailer.
I hope I haven't missed any others, but they should all be listed in the film reviews section.

And to end I will show the trailer that was submitted, (admittedly late) at the crit. It isn't the final article though, so this is why B3D Studios will continue to finish it how we intended it to be.

Film Reviews - Mars Attacks (1996)

2011-01-24T22:22:00.003Z

Mars Attacks (1996) was directed by Tim Burton. It is an action, comedy fantasy 50s B movie style film. Despite some of the biggest names in Hollywood, like Jack Nicholson, Michael J. Fox, Rod Steiger and Glenn Close, it fails to make any lasting impression, being rarely funny and irritatingly repetitive in the way the Martians repeatedly held out the hand of friendship and then just shot everybody. This joke wore thin after the first time.

Its difficult to outline the story as the plot was a simple alien invasion, with a string of gags with very little storyline, and felt disconnected from the characters by not caring if they last till the end of the movie.

Film Reviews - Tremors

2011-01-24T22:19:00.004Z

Tremors (1990) was directed by Ron Underwood. It is a comedy, horror film. The film is set in a small desert town and begins with these mysterious tremors deep underground. The cause is thought to be due to seismic activity, but later is revealed to be caused by giant creatures that feast on any living thing. Besides the giant slug like creatures, the stars of the film are Kevin Bacon, and Fred Ward, who played Val and Earl, a couple of local handymen, who get caught up in a life or death situation.

It has the look and feel of a 50s B movie with a modern edge and a bit of humour. The film was made on a low budget, so they made sure the viewer never really sees much of the creatures by having them move underground, and only pop up to attack, so this adds to the suspense when the creatures are waiting underground. The lack of CG adds to the appeal, even more so, because it is like a 50s B movie. However the humour is not because of its 50s style, but is because it is a comedy as much it is a horror.

Narrative - The Last Four Turnarounds - All In Full Colour

2011-01-22T11:30:00.003Z

Here are the last four turnarounds, completing the set of seven characters, and all viewable for the first time, in colour!

The Generic male and General were modelled by Shahbir, and the other two by Ruben. They were all textured by Ruben and all lit and rendered by me, Ethan, i.e. A Flock of Pixels.

Now all that is left for B3D Studios to do is actually complete the trailer as it should be. That's it for now.

A Flock of Pixels.

Narrative - Three of the seven Character Turnarounds - B3D Studio

2011-01-21T21:25:00.007Z

The narrative project has ended, and I now have some time to upload some of the character turnarounds.

All three of these characters were modelled by me and textured by Ruben.
The other four will be uploaded tomorrow.

A Flock of Pixels

Narrative - The Rest of the Character Pose Sneak Previews

2011-01-02T10:52:00.010Z

Here are the rest of our characters in a test pose. Doing a test pose like this has proved useful as I've found some of the less noticeable glitches in the rig, that couldn't necessarily be found from only testing it's basic functions with only the skeleton to look at. In some cases I have also noticed a few more little problems with the skinning, but I think they will have to remain there as time is running out.

The Scientist - looking very creepy!

The Generic Female - screaming as per usual

The Soldier - he almost looks ready for battle, except he has no weapons.

The assistant - So shocked at the sight of nothing (in the space suit)

The general - fallen asleep on set

Anyway, these are our team of actors who are going to make 'The Day of the Invisible Cannibals from Beyond the Stars' a masterpiece... or a B movie disaster.

Narrative - Character Pose Sneak Preview

2010-12-31T18:34:00.014Z

I haven't posted anything in ages!

Well, over the past few weeks I have been skinning characters for the narrative project. It seems like everyday we have to re schedule because we cant keep up with a days work. Anyway, we are now at a stage where we have seven rigs, and I have just merged some of them with the skinned spaceman. I posed him, sitting down taking a rest while adjusting his battery pack thingy.

As soon as all the characters rigs are combined with the skinned files, I will post some videos on everything working.
Ruben is busy with creating the environments while Shahbir will be doing the characters facial rigging (excluding spaceman), while I will begin preparing and organising stuff for animation, and then animating.

Right now I am combining the rigs with the skin on all the characters. This is getting very monotonous, with all the joints that need parenting.
Here's another character.

Transcription Ideas - @ Phil

2010-12-16T13:02:00.010Z

Hey Phil

I've been thinking about my transcription project, but I'm not sure what to do. Phil, you said before the briefing about whether using the summer project as a basis for the transcription project. Exactly to what extent did you mean, continuing the project where it left off and finishing and refining it, or starting from scratch with a new story, but re using the concept of a sailor at sea in a storm. The thing is that the project was so close to completion anyway. most of the animation was done. The only main thing missing from it was the sailor himself. Originally (for simplicity) he was going to be seen in silhouette and only be a simple character, (since I hadn't really designed characters before, let alone modeling and rigging them)
But since now I have done a character design project and I have gone through the pipeline of modeling characters, one idea would be to take the character in the Summer project further. So the ten weeks would be used entirely on the character or characters.

Of course I don't know whether one, that is enough work for ten weeks, or two, whether designing a character really has anything to do with transcription. The transcribing has already been done in the animation.

The other thing is that it says in the brief, to think about what I want to do in the future. I know I want to do specifically animation. The summer project so far has really been more like visual effects. ie the ocean storm. The only 'traditional' animating in cg would be the character on the boat. So I suppose that would work if I actually design a fully fledged character.

What are your thoughts. If I continue the project from where I left off, I would be well into the production phase and be able to spend the time just refining it, and add a complete character. Alternatively I start from scratch, but the problem with that is that I know I wont have any time to prepare for the project over the Christmas holidays anyway. (I have seven characters to animate in like 2 weeks… it's crazy)
The only other option is if the story is extended or altered slightly. As long as nothing that I've already done is wasted.

Anyway, at least the narrative project seems to be on schedule, but only just! We may have some characters to animate before Christmas!

Film Review - The Mist (2007)

2010-12-16T10:18:00.036Z

The Mist was directed by Frank Darabont and is an adaptation of Stephen King's short novel, 'The Mist', which appeared in the book 'Skeleton Crew'. It is about a mysterious mist that spreads over a town. It is unknown how wide spread the mist is, as it could cover the whole world. When watching the film, it effectively manages to deliver the feeling of claustrophobia and suspense. However the mist is not the main thing to be concerned about as unknown creatures lurk in the mist too.

A large group of people were in a general store, getting supplies, after there had been a storm the previous night, when the mist descended over the town. A guy runs into the shop, shouting that there is something in the mist, taking people. After barricading themselves in, a series of attacks by the creatures followed. But an equal threat remained on the inside, in the form of an extreme, religious woman, who was scaring people into converting to her ideas, getting people to believe that it was Gods doing, and that they needed to sacrifice people to the mist.
So the people that weren't scared into that, had to be wary not only of what was outside, but what was going on inside.

The film was apparently done on a reasonably low budget, however it doesn't have any effect on the quality of the film. The mist kind of lends itself to low budget films as it can hide and disguise things would normally need to have money spent on, but it works for the film.

Now the ending I didn't like. I never like ending where they don't explain everything. I also don't like endings where the good guys end up shooting themselves. I enjoyed the rest of the film though.

Narrative: All Seven Characters Fully Modelled, Scaled, UVmapped and All Joints Placed

2010-12-12T21:35:00.004Z

That was a mouthful!

My blog was almost getting dusty, or is that my screen! Anyway, it's about time I posted something new.

Just to be clear, they were not all modeled by me. It's been a team effort to get all the characters at the place they are today. I volunteered to finish off the characters UV maps and placing the joints. While Shahbir volunteered to do all the rigging and has been busy testing first on the soldier. I'm sure Shahbir can fill you in on all the details with rigging. In the week ahead Ruben and I will be skinning, while Shahbir does the rigging.

Spaceman

Soldier

General

Generic Female

Generic Male

Assistant

Scientist

So we are all going to be busy next week!

A Flock of Pixels

Film Review - Dancer in the Dark (2000)

2010-11-26T10:40:00.035Z

Three weeks ago we watched the film Dancer in the Dark (2000), directed and written by Lars von Trier, in our postmodern lecture series. Firstly I have to say although it was a depressing film, I kind of didn't mind it. It is a musical starring the singer Bjork, who is known for creating unconventional music.

The film is about a young single mother immigrant in America called Selma Jezkova, who is working long hours to save up enough money to pay for her son to have an operation to preserve his sight. Their family has a history of eye sight deteriorating quickly over time, that eventually leaves you blind. She herself was going blind. Over time she has earned almost enough money, working in a factory by day and extra work at night, both requiring good eyesight. It all goes down hill when she looses her sight and her job and her money stolen by someone considered to be a friend. This leads to a struggle, which causes the accidental death of the thief.
The story is cruel in the way those certain events lead to a choice between saving her sons sight or else her being sentenced to death. When the music played, it is like we were seeing a daydream of what she was thinking and experienceing. It is her way of escaping all the troubles of the real world. Even when facing death she picks up a beat in the marching to make music and to forget the problems and worries ahead.

It is an unexpected setting for a musical. The main point to get from this film is that where a conventional musical is bold and theatrical, the setting in this film was gritty and with murky, with dull tones of colour, which make it feel more realistic. There is extreme contrast when music is introduced into the film, which doesn't appear for the first half hour or so, when things start to go wrong for Selma. The music naturally still has it's effect of feeling relaxed, comfortable and safe. This almost feels inappropriate for the film because you know that you shouldn't be feeling that way when so many bad things are happening. Of course this wasn't a bad movie mistake, but actually all intentional to create a postmodern depressing film.

Character Design - The Last Post - At 4 AM in the Morning

2010-11-25T03:52:00.019Z

First of all I'm posting these last few sketches I did for the character bible.

Some failed attempts at Turnarounds

As you can see, I struggled with the side view.

Some Reasonable Turnarounds

Now here is the final Bible, uploaded in sequence.

I'm bringing a disc this morning to the crit with two PDFs. One is the character bible and the other is my blog. Well, I'm done for this evening. I mean morning. See you all at the crit.

Character Design - Characters to be Revealed...

2010-11-22T18:09:00.006Z

...on Thursday. Sorry you'll have to wait a bit longer!

But here are some silhouettes.

I really need to concentrate on getting those turnarounds finished! That's tomorrows plan.
The only other things to do is to colour some of the props and to possibly draw more poses for the characters.

Character Design - Week 10 - The Final Week

2010-11-21T17:10:00.002Z

It's the beginning of the final week!

I've gone over some of the hero poses from the last post. They now have the complete character drawn over the skeletons.

I've had to make some slight alterations to the uniform, so he can have his arms properly posed without any armour getting in the way. I've also drawn him without a cape. This, like the villains collar, is an optional item which is worn on special occasions. You will see the cape in the colour version of the character.

I'm going to list the things I'm aiming to get done for the character bible as a minimum!
If I find myself with extra time I will of course add more stuff. Likely to be more drawings!

________________________________________
In no particular order:

Front, side and back views of all three characters. Preferably in black and white line art, but if time is short, then left in sketch form.

Three different poses of all three characters, for a total of nine drawings in sketch form.

One of the above poses for each character in full colour.

Facial expressions for each character in sketch form.

Props of each character in sketch form. One of each prop in full colour (preferably).

A short synopsis of the cartoon. (very short - Probably what I will say at the final crit)

A full, slightly lengthy, synopsis of the cartoon. (lots more detail)

Character profiles for all three characters.

All of the completed weekly tasks.

________________________________________

All of that will be put into the character bible with a front cover and specially designed pages. (although nothing too fancy)

The character bible, as a PDF, and the blog posts related to character design, as a PDF, all put onto a CD.
I can also post the pages in sequence on the blog (like we've done before) just to make sure.

Now have I missed anything? I hope not.

Character Design - End of Week 9 Updates

2010-11-20T10:33:00.019Z

When both projects briefed nine weeks back, a lot more time was spent on the Narrative project in the beginning. It's only fair that I spend more time now on the Character Design project.

I have here two days (Thursday and Friday) worth of sketching. Shown in chronological order. It took quite some time to scan and colour correct, but it's worth it as some drawings (the one's which I regard as final drawings) may be featured in the bible, and it makes the blog look better!

Most of the drawings are the poses for the three characters. However there are some drawings on the props.

Notice I've changed the sidekicks armor. Having the original chest plate which went around his shoulders was looking very flat and 2D. Also some of his poses (like the one below with an arm in the air) were physically impossible.

Notice that the poses for the hero never go into more detail than a skeleton. That's because it takes so many attempts to get the pose right. For the character bible I will trace over the best poses with the actual character.

Annoyingly the hero's feet missed the scanner! Not to worry though as this is the final pose of him shooting an energy disc, so I will be tracing over the it (with feet!) to get the final picture.

I don't know whether you'd noticed, but in these next few drawings of the villain, she isn't wearing the collar. I consider these poses to be 'attacking' poses. A collar would only get in the way. Remember she only likes to dress for the occasion!

The pose which I've attempted to re draw below is how she uses her staff to freeze people under her control. She hits it against the ground in a rage.

One last thing to note is that if you enlarge the pictures you may see little ticks and crosses. They are my initial thoughts on whether I think it is possibly a good drawing or bad drawing. I would usually scribble out the really bad drawings completely, but since using a new clicky pencil with expensive lead, (which I now find much better to draw with) I have realised that I can't afford to waste it!
Well that's a slight exaggeration as I don't scribble out many drawings at all now, but I used to!

A Flock of Pixels.

Character Design - Week 9

2010-11-16T21:29:00.024Z

Yesterdays lesson was on environments. The task was to design a type of environment with a certain characteristic. Both were chosen at random at the draw of cards. I was given a 'horrible tower'.
As research I looked at cactus and leaches. Leaches I find particularly horrible. While cactus are kind of dangerous with their spikes.

I drew up a few designs.

I then drew one final design.

Basically I have teeth around the doors and holes in the walls.
Once Justin Wyatt looked at them he thought that I could take the teeth/spikes further and completely cover it like a cactus. He also suggested that I make the tower less generic.

I started by basically re drawing what he scribbled on a spare bit of paper. The drawings which almost look like a hand covered in spikes were based of his drawings.
After looking at them myself I kind of thought they were more like dangerous towers rather than horrible towers. When I think of horrible, I also think of disgusting, repulsive as well as slightly cruel. So I went back to the leach style designs. This is what I came up with.

Pretty horrible! But in a good way. It is a tower, but is much more organic. It has the horrible leach like mouth chimneys, with a few randomly placed spiky bits!

Well I was happy with this design anyway.

Now what about my characters?
______________________________

I was doing a lot of random drawings of props and character faces. This first picture is one A3 page with lots of small drawings. I was just drawing Ideas and designs as I thought of them.

I then decided on focusing on the faces, so I got a new piece of paper and drew up some more designs.

Now yesterday, there was a problem going on within the lecture theatres. Basically we had a film planned for today (Mars Attack), but unfortunately it had to be postponed. This meant that I had two hours to kill so I went back to the base room and started to draw some more refined character face expressions. I started off with the the villain.

Then the sidekick.

Then a day passed and I continued to draw the hero's character expressions.

although I did these before hand because I was trying to figure out how to draw the hair of the character. Up to now I've been drawing him with his helmet on, but I knew that at some point I would need to give him hair.

The next thing I started working on were the poses.

I was thinking of tying in the lines running through the suit with this Greek key pattern:

I really need to now spend more time refining the poses.
That's it for now. Until next time.

A Flock of Pixels.

Character Design - Turnarounds and Size Comparison

2010-11-15T20:04:00.018Z

Today I've been drawing my characters front and side views along side each other, so it doubles up as a size comparison.

I started off by drawing the basic skeleton.

My first attempt on the villains skeleton wasn't so successful, (it just looked like a stretched person) which is why I decided on not giving it any legs. As you can see, she now has a snake like body.

I then traced over the character with all the details. The villain is wearing a long dress anyway, so it doesn't change the character that much, other than it looks like she has a tail. She's alien anyway, but to us she is basically half human half snake.

I am still reluctant to call these the final orthographs but for now, they are. At least until I can draw something better. I think it looks like the middle character is leaning forward and about to topple over and in the front view his head looks like he is looking down. The villain seems very bland at the moment, which is not a good sign.

I've done a simple schedule for the rest of the project and all I can say is that there's not much time left to do anything. I am going to take a short break from essay writing until character design is over. Which is in about 9 days and 14 hours time!

Film Review - Them (1954)

2010-11-15T15:28:00.005Z

Them (1954) marks one of the first films of the atomic age. Due to nuclear tests, ants have mutated into giant mutant ants. they posed a threat to destroy mankind.

It is for its time a big budget film, which was originally going to be filmed in 3D, but due to technical errors, it wasn't!

You don't actually see any giant ants for the first half of the film, exec[t occasional glimpses. They use this sound to signify their presence. This keeps the suspense going until they are properly revealed on mass. They used the threat that the queen ants that can fly and could be anyway and not contained. They used science to backup their theories. If ants were giant, they would act in this way. At the time (1954) everyone was truly frightened of nuclear weapons, so the film would have more meaning back then.

As it stands now, it is still and enjoyable film, and the ants weren't all that badly constructed, considering.

It is also one of the first films to use the Wilhelm Scream. As soon as I heard it I recognised it. It's only up until recently that I've been able to put a name to it. Some research prior to the film. I always recognised it is Star Wars and Indiana Jones and other numerous films. Nobody every believed me!

And now just a little something to put a smile on your face!

Character Design - Colours

2010-11-14T12:23:00.033Z

The other day I thought I'd chose some colours for my characters. I've only just realised that up until now I have never had to really think about colour much in any of the projects so far. Looking back they're either in black and white (or as good as) or their natural colours. Well it's certainly the first for characters anyway.

I painted some splodges to start off with.

Hero Colours

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Sidekick Colours

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Villain Colours

I was initially stuck on what colours to use so I looked at some of Disney's Hercules characters for some inspiration.

When I was choosing the colours I didn't have any good drawn sketches handy at the time. So with just a mouse I painted a few quick splodges in the approximate shape of each character to get a very rough idea of what my characters could look like in colour.
I've shrunk the images down to a thumbnail as you don't really gain anything from looking at giant splodges close up.

The thought behind these colours are that the hero is the main character and I wanted him to stand out with some bold colours. He has a gold coloured chest plate, red cape, blue body suit, gold coloured helmet and boots. The red lines (if you look in a previous sketch of the hero) are the lines that are running all through the different parts of the suit, which are a continuation of the lines in the sandal inspired boots.

The sidekick has more natural colours. However he wears the same gold coloured chest plate (without the red lines) although his gold colour is not quite as vivid as it is old. Lost it's shine a bit.

The villain has a combination of colours which I think look kind of murky, especially with the hint of green. Perhaps the colours could be darker though.

I did try adding a metal (grey) colour to make it more spacey but it just made everything else look dull.

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Lastly, the other day I had a go at exploring the villains face in more detail. I experinmeted with eye shapes, how the hair/tentacles is attached to the head, mouth shapes, exactly how much hair there is.

Narrative - Spaceman Progress

2010-11-14T12:14:00.001Z

I've made some progress with the spaceman. I altered a bit of geometry in the legs and added more pieces to the suit.

Here are some of the details.

I thought I'd better show this image just to prove he is invisible!

Now although he is meant to be missing his head, his hands, or gloves in this case are meant to be there. What I have done at the moment is taken the hand modeled in the Maya tutorials, and given it an extra finger. For a total of four. There are however two main problems. One of which is that it looks like a hand still, and not a glove. Easily fixed. The other, more important issue is the way the geometry flows. The spaceman's arm has eight edges. So the hand has to connect to the arm with eight edges. The problem with the hand is that initially had about double that coming out of the hand. So for the moment I got the edges flowing back on themselves. Although I'm not sure that it looks that tidy. Especially on the reverse side of the hand. The thumb squashes everything to one side. There's even a triangle too. I think I may need a bit of advice or help on this when I get back to uni.

Nothing is UV mapped yet. Although what I think I will do is map the rest of the suit while a wait to fix the hand.
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We have seven characters in total, so I just felt I had to start modeling another character or at least the head. This is the scientist. Done by Ruben.

I drew a much larger version of the head so I had more to go by, its much the same really.

I have started blocking out the scientists face. It's very basic at the moment and has a lot of stretched faces, due to the shape of the head. I think I'm going to have to add extra geometry, possibly re direct it to better suit the shape of the head. It looks quite scary to be honest!

That's all for now.

A Flock of Pixels.

Maya Tasks Week 8 - Character UV Mapping

2010-11-12T21:46:00.003Z

For this week I've UV mapped the character. We learn't some new techniques in unfolding and laying out UVs. The new tool we used really sped up the process of UV mapping organic shapes.

This diagram shows how all the shapes have been individually unfolded.
Note that this isn't what the actual image map looks like. It's just a representation of the individual maps all put together in one image.

That's it for now.

Maya Tasks Week 7 - Character Modeling

2010-11-12T21:40:00.003Z

For week 7 I've modeled the head of the character.
This proved to be very time consuming, although not as much as the car tutorials.

A bit more still to come, just wait a few more seconds!

Labels

2010-11-11T22:31:00.003Z

Just a quick post. If you haven't already noticed, I've added labels to my posts. I've seen many blogs use labels and realised how useful they are. I've gone back as far as the long overdue summer project.
At some point I will go right back to the beginning so that everything is organised :)

Character Design - Week 8

2010-11-09T21:30:00.026Z

I think today was the most successful (for me that is) weekly mini project. I was certainly more confident in my designs.

Today we were divided into small groups of three or four. We were given the brief to design six characters between us for a cartoon show. (This was all done very officially) The character names and personality descriptions were all provided. Including a basic synopsis of of the show. The show was called Jet pack something or other. OK, so I forgot the title, and all the names of the characters. (except the one I designed!)

I decided that I wanted to design the character Boltz. His description read as follows.

Boltz is JJs trusty medical droid.
Due to several data core meltdowns, Boltz has developed certain personality quirks and is prone to bouts of 'odd' behaviour.

I started of with the basics. I looked at the robots in the film Robots. I looked at medical droids in Star Wars and a few other random robots and droids. Actually although I didn't specifically look at the robot in the first Wallace and Gromit, I think it may have subconsciously influenced my design. You'll see what I mean in a moment.

I started by drawing out some rough designs.

If you look at the drawing in the bottom left corner you can see clearly what drawings came before it. When designing, I was thinking of how WallE in Pixars WallE looks so much like it's falling apart and how it rattles when in moves. I came up with the idea that if Boltz ever hears about the slightest injury, he would suddenly burst into life. The light (an ambulances siren light) would frantically start flashing and it would zoom full speed, rattling away, almost as if saying Don't Panic!

So I focused on that one particular design and came up with this refined version.
He has a draw to keep things in. He likes things very tidy, which is kind of a problem when he leaves a trail of screws behind him! The light on top, is only held on by one screw! The other is in his hand! He has a little heart monitor hanging half on by his chest! Clean rubber gloves!

We then receive a pretend phone call, saying some last minute changes that need to be made to the characters. This is before they've even seen the first. We all in a mad rush, were left with just half an hour to alter the designs before the deadline.

Luckily they said that for Boltz, they wanted him to have changeable arms with different medical instruments. This kind of already worked with the design I already had.

All these spare arms (including a pair for cleaning himself with spray and a cloth) are all stored in the draw on the front of him.

Anyway, that's enough about Boltz.

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I spent some time today refining my three characters for the main project. Remember it's a mythical space opera.

I really wanted to focus on the hero so I experimented with a few different poses.

I then drew my character over the top. and looked further into the clothes he wears.

Instead of wearing those traditional sandals, I've changed it into a boot with the sandal lines over the top. The 'brush' on top of the helmet is now a solar panel. This is what makes it work and also powers the rest of the suit. The suit needs powering? Well his arm needs powering. He can throw energy discs or power up a shield that temporally protects him. The sword he caries now unfold like one of those light sabre toys.

In this drawing I've added extra lines on the characters clothing. They kind of match the sandal lines. This is how the energy travels from the helmet to the rest of the suit.
The cape only goes over half the character. That way I can still have the cape, but the silhouette still works on one side. I think it is reading much better than in previous drawings.

I did a few more sketches of the sidekick and the villain. Although I didn't focus too much on them today.

That's it for now. bye.

Film Review - The Truman Show (1998)

2010-11-06T10:38:00.050Z

The Truman Show, directed by Peter Weir and written by Andrew Niccol.

At the time of it's release The Truman Show was a welcomed break from Hollywoods typical films as the concept was refreshingly different.
It is about a man whose whole life is secretly recorded on television inside a giant studio dome .

His whole life is manipulated and influenced by the director of the show. The director could be thought of as God in the Truman show, as he is in control of everything, from the events of the day to what the weather is going to be like. Whether it be a major car accident or a blizzard. Not that that necessarily happens in the film, but technically it could as the director has that much power over Truman.

The director controls Truman's fears to keep him from traveling out of the town to the edge of the dome. There were subconscious signs everywhere telling him to stay in this little town and not to explore the rest of the world. For example, his fear of the water which kept kept him at bay, and traffic jams that magically appeared everywhere else. His fear of the the water was a pre-planned with this staged accident as a child. Then there were travel posters saying how dangerous it is to fly. They were done just like posters that say the dangers of smoking or drink driving. This is probably the most humorous part of the film as these posters were in a travel agents.

The show also acts as a means for advertising products to the viewers of the show. They used obvious sales techniques to grab the viewers attention to products. It is blatantly obvious in this film still, where the actress (within the film) playing Truman's wife is showing off this new type of knife.

So this film was about one mans discovery to find the truth, in a simulated world. Its also questioning why we for some reason like to watch real people in staged situations in reality TV. The irony of it all is that in the film we are just watching one persons staged life.

Film Review Dracula (1958)

2010-11-06T10:38:00.036Z

Dracula (1958) is a Hammer Horror production. They are a British film production company. It was directed by Terence Fisher and written by Jimmy Sangster. Although low budget, they still used good British actors of the time and made clever use of sets. It is also the first Dracula film to be presented in colour. This of course means that the blood in the film has never looked more red!

They decided not to use the original story of Dracula. Bram Stoker wrote the original in 1897. They did however use some of the original characters. eg Dracula, Van Helsing, and Jonathan Harker.
I thought the pacing was neither slow or fast, but kept steady. Meaning it just about kept me interested. I think it would have to be faster if it was presented to today's audience because we are so used to faster paced films.

It was adult rated but since then it has been reduced to 12a. A critic from the Daily Express in 1958 described it as "One of the most revolting horror films I have seen in years,"
It just shows how things have changed since then.

I think in the next film I review, I will try to write some notes while watching and not leave it for two weeks before writting.

Character Design - Update

2010-11-06T10:38:00.019Z

Just a small update. I had a spare moment the other day and did a few quick sketches.

I drew another version of the villain, based on advice in the previous lesson. I also did a silhouette test.

If you can't read the notes on the drawing, they basically point out a few things:
In the silhouette, I think you need to see a bit of the wrist in the left hand. (right in the picture)
The head is kind of obscured by the thick hair, although the hair has more shape than previously, the head still needs more definition. Overall, I think the shape is an improvement over the previous one. Note that the dress has some of it's edges torn. This is supposed to look kind of like a snakes tongue, where it splits in two.

I seem to spend more time trying to draw correct proportions of a human than actually drawing the hero. It was suggested that I draw a wooden mannequin, but I took that very literally.

That was the best pose I could get from it. The springs refused to hold it any other way.

Since my sidekick is supposed to be old, I've now been drawing him hunched over. It has taken several attempts to get the right shape. At first his shoulders kept coming out crooked. I then realised one thing I was doing wrong. The closer shoulder needed to be drawn slightly bigger, but still parallel to the other shoulder. I realised this when looking at an image, of a similar creature. (I didn't save the image though)

Well that's it for now. I'll be modeling the head of the CG character for the Maya tutorials today.