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

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

Narrative - Behind the scenes playblasts

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

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.

Narrative - The Last Four Turnarounds - All In Full Colour

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Narrative - Spaceman Progress

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.
_______________________________

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.

Narrative - Space Station Miniature - Basically Modeled

I've started and I suppose almost finished the space station miniature model.

I've provided both a wire frame and non wire frame screen shot of the space station, in both smoothed and unsmoothed preview mode.




Just a side note. The middle ring is very chunky and isn't a perfect ring. (it raises up at the side parts.) I had this idea that it would be made out of some sort of modeling clay or plasticine. Then in the bump map we could give it giant finger prints. That will certainly make it look small!


And just for good measure, here's the underside view.






OK. Things that need doing are the UV mapping. I haven't even started that yet. It does mean that I will have to delete some of the repeated shapes, UV map them and re duplicate them, but that's fine. The only other thing missing from this compared to the space pod are the bits of glue. I have a rough Idea of where I'm going to place it. I also need to make sure some of the parts are stuck on irregularly, to get red of the uniformity.

So how is the space pod coming along?
Well. I've added a bit more glue around some other parts of the objects. Unfortunately I am going to have to accept that there are more polygons used in the glue geometry, than there are in the rest of the model. Even if it is from a reasonable distance on camera, the obvious lumps of glue really add to the overall look and is something that a really decent texture alone could not do.
I'm tempted to make the glue even more visible by making it more chunky. I suppose I've got to not over do it though, and get the balance just right.




I've also done a bit of re sizing the UVs, but I still haven't figured out how to fit them into a square. I'm not even sure if I should put the textures over several map arrangements. The thing is that I'm not sure whats the best way to go about it. I especially don't want to be wasting space on a half used square. I'd really like some help on this at some point. Maybe tomorrow as it's all day Maya.



Here is a link to the pod in the previous post.