Pages

Friday 29 April 2011

Testing of things so far....

Another hectic week in which a lot has been learnt, took a day or two but ive got a skin texture im happy with so spending time researching and looking into subsurface scatter has proved worth while, the bedroom is complete except for the posters and medal, the earthboy is also done except for some tweaks to the hair. The next couple of days im going to be focusing on getting the moon up to the same level so by monday I can focus all my attention on lighting and rendering and try and get a decent first cut out for the 10th of may deadline.

Texturing:






Problems:


Turns out the render farm is down and unavailable, which sucks however I had a feeling that if anything were to go wrong it would be this. So I decided to see what the Uni pc's are capable of and rendered a relatively simple sequence full HD with a poor lighting set up (have since found tutorials) these 4 seconds took 3 hours to render so getting 3 mins out on time is going to be tight seeing as theres still a couple of weeks work to go into all of this. Another added problem is that they auto power off after 20mins of inactivity and that cancels the render so leaving work over night also seems impossible.



Deadline:

Now ive got a gauge for how long the rendering will take and the work that needs to be done in post the 6th of may has become my absolute deadline for work to be completed and ready to render/tweak lights etc. Unexpected shift in dates but hopefully something thats realistic providing there's large quantities of caffiene available.

Wednesday 27 April 2011

Subsurface Scatter Tests

Today I learnt about Sucsurface Scatter (SSS), the top photo is how the boy looked this morning with a flat horrible lambert, so I tried to figure out how to get some texture and life into the skin, the 2nd image is pretty much the default maya/mental ray SSS shader - all waxy and horrible. 3rd is the latest incarnation, getting there still got to play with the specular highlights etc... but the bump and colour maps add a lot of detail, shall continue with this experiment

Monday 25 April 2011

Bedroom Textures and Lights


Finishing up the bedroom textures and starting to play around with lights.....

Friday 22 April 2011

Update on everything and yet nothing in particular...

... been a long and busy week but theres been a huge leap in progress and a massive drop in stress levels which is awesome.



Animation:
The majority of the animation work is completed and Ive been able to get some help from Scott MacDonald on some of the shots I was struggling to get ready on time.
Texturing:
The bedroom is very close to being completed just got a few things to finish up like the posters and stars and tweak a few things here and there. Matt Sutcliffe has helped an insanely huge amount with this and has got things looking awesome, needless to say I would be really upagainst it with out his help the last few weeks.
The Moon is very much WIP but ive finally got a good indication of what i want it to be like which has been a real block the last few weeks.
Lighting:
Is my new nemesis.
Audio:
FINALLY found a composer who sounds genuinely excited and interested in the project and had some amazing tracks that are being used as a start point, played a few over the film and it added so so much, really looking forward to getting the 1st edit which i think is gonna arrive on time for the first cut review.
Edit:
I also managed to playblast and arrange all of the sequences into the first edit of the latest version of the film and its improved hugely, the pacing is loads better and from the feedback i've had its working as a film at last! Another bonus is that in the way ive structured the projects through Maya, After Effects and Premiere providing I stick to correct file naming conventions and folder structure the edit should remain untouched for the most part and just update with higher quality visuals as the project comes to completion. Render times are becoming concerning along with my total lack of lighting knowledge but if i can have another couple of weeks like this one then i should get something out that im happy with.

All in all collaboration is good and I wish i'd asked for help sooner.

Tuesday 19 April 2011

Texture Preview


not lit, just ipr default stuff to check things applied properly... they sort of have

Monday 18 April 2011

Test Edit with 1st pass animation and blockout


Moonboy Test Comp for review from Stacie Hawdon on Vimeo.

Everything so far in one sequence to check pacing, see how the new shots work and whats left to do, Clean up is taking longer than expected but having a HUGE helping hand with textures means I can afford a day or two longer to get this looking really good. 

Friday 15 April 2011

Shotlist Update

Midway through animation clean up, the bedroom should be completed by the end of the weekend and the moon will hopefully follow soon after, also getting a few textures going here and there so will get some render tests and better quality WIP shots posted asap

Studio closed for holidays... make front room studio...






The studios are closing for easter so the lounge is now the new studio so Moonboy and Puddles can carry on being made

Sunday 10 April 2011

Saturday 9 April 2011

montage seq v2

Shuffled things round a bit, feels a lot better to me, gonna block this version in asap and playblast everything so far to check it out... will post updated animatic/work in progress edit soon

Friday 8 April 2011

montage test, wanna have the camera move around a little and put in some shots further away. showing the development of the rocket slowly coming together etc
Somewhere in here is a montage I just havent found it yet... there in no particular order yet but some of the drawings i like. a lot.

Monday 4 April 2011

Tests


Been fiddling round with getting a working duvet reacting to the boy breathing/sleeping, nice little anim starting to appear (and im aware the UV unwrapping is not done yet hence the warped look on a lot of things but not everything is going to require it and for the time being im more focussed on the animation and getting the story working)


Sunday 3 April 2011

jump on bed

In an attempt to stop me doing over and over the same anim file ive set a time limit on blocking... then uploading whats ready so far. so here is the last hours work. i can see whats wrong but there simple weight shifts/adjustments/arms theres 2 looping keys on there making him look like a chicken :( (i think) and also have to rig the bed so he can actually bounce rather than go through it.

trying to get a contrast between the two jumps, found a video of astronauts jumping/playing on the moon that i used as reference but needs lots of work and figuring out the cut between the two is tricky - almost, well probably does need pose matching...

Saturday 2 April 2011

Revised Schedule

Im not going to lie... its tight. there is a lot to be done but after talking to various people and managing to recruit a couple of people this film WILL be made ON TIME and looking AWESOME.
The dissetation took a little longer than expected to wrap up but after 8437words i feel ive said my bit and am ready to get that bound and out of the way.
Getting advice/help means i can afford another couple of days on animation and the latest revision to the story has increased the amount of shots required/few technical unknowns with regards to lighting/rendering etc...
Thanks to Matt S being able to understand my rambling the texturing has started, and all files have been referenced allowing me to update the master environment/character files with the new textures as we create them (mainly Matt for the time being). This ate a few days with teething problems in the set up but ultimately saves a lot of time towards the end. During this process all of the animation completed so far had to be stripped out and reapplied to the correctly referenced rig, again this will hopefully pay off later on.