Production Diary 16/03/12

It has been a while since I posted so I should probably update you as to where I am right now.

Well, I have finished all of the modelling now, after a kick up the backside from Mario I am on to rigging. Which I hadn't enjoyed in the slightest during the last few days as everything seemed to go wrong. joints weren't doing what they were supposed to do, controllers were disappearing and eyes were falling inside heads!

Now however things are moving along much more smoothly, I have one rig almost finished...only 7 to go!

Oh and the character textures are finished and applied, so they have a littler more life to them now than they did before.

Here are some images of my recent work.

In between modelling, texturing and rigging I have been also working on my essay and action plan work. Mat and I have also attended one of the futures seminars and area attending another on Monday.

Characters

I have been a busy bee over the past week and the set is completely finalised, it just needs the textures adding when they are finished. I have also finished modelling 4 of the 8 characters of the CG side of our animation. 

(left to right) The grandfather, the father, the boyfriend and the girlfriend. 

I still have 2 kids and a grandmother to model, along with the main character Rookie. Who has a very similar build to the father, so I may recycle and adjust parts if necessary. However at the moment we still have 14 weeks left so I don't need to be cutting corners just yet!


Next week I hope to finish all of the characters and get started on rigging them! It all seemed so far away just 4 weeks ago, and I am surprised with how fast things seem to be going. We haven't hit any major issues yet (fingers crossed, touch wood and all those superstitious things!!) and I have 5 back ups of my work, which some would call overkill but I'd like to be safe!


Mat has been working hard and throwing out textures this week, he also blocked out another shot so things are also moving on well for him for the time being.


Instead of having to model about 20 characters I have found a rig online that can be used in student work. You can change his clothes and hair and general appearance, we are going to use him as the background characters, as they won't be seen too close up. Such as waiters, passers by, stall owners and alike, these characters will help the whole place feel a lot more 'real'...things are sounding more and more ambitious...we're quietly confident though!


Until next time.

Lighting

The set designing is unfortunately still taking longer than we had anticipated...however we are getting somewhere. We're almost at the point where things are starting to come together quickly and look awesome!


I have been working on the lighting and I am using a rig that was given to me by a friend on the games design course (James Burton). I got it last year but didn't really understand it so I didn't end up using it, however with a littler more knowledge of Maya, I now understand the main functions and how to achieve some great results with some small tweaking of certain attributes.


Here are some text shots of the set with the lighting and some of the adjustments I made to achieve them.


The initial lighting rig gave the results below, which are a lot more impressive than any lighting setup I could make myself! However it was a little too blue and cold for the scene we wanted to set.

So I simply adjusted the colour of the directional light to a warmer 

However we thought this was a bit too dark and orange so I made the colour more pale and increased the intensity slightly. I seemed a little dark in the shadows too, so I increased the intensity of the bounce light as well as it's colour to one similar of the directional light, with just a small hint of blue.

I tested some renders on other parts of the set too.

I took a little more orange out of the main light source and very slightly increased it's intensity to give this final result, which I am very pleased with, but still feel it will need tweaking before it's final. Once all of the textures are in they will give us a better idea of how the light is reacting with the objects in the scene and what adjustments might need to be made. Once I show the lecturers there will need to be some changes as usual, however it's better to get a third and fourth opinion and get it right.


Until next time.

Set Almost Done...Finally

As the title suggests, the set is almost finished! Unwrapping for the current scene has been done and I have handed over all of the UV Mapping files to Mat so he can carry on texturing, while I finish the rest of the scene. There isn't much left to do now, only a stall, the chairs, parasols and some table items for the 3D side, and all of the previous items with the addition of tables for the 2D side.


We plan on having the whole of the set finished by the end of this week, a little behind schedule but we have some spare weeks throughout to compensate for times like these. 


Mat has been spending a lot of his time creating the textures for the set so hasn't had chance to start his side of the animation as of yet, however firms plans are in order for Monday to start the long process! 


Things are already taking longer than we had anticipated so lets hope we can make up the time somewhere else...I don't think that will be anytime soon however, as I have about 8 characters to make in 2 weeks, and I have a feeling we might lose a little more time around about then. Good job we have some extra time at the end of our schedule for editing.


Until next time, when hopefully I'll have started the characters and Mat will have a shot or 2 down! Fingers crossed for us both!

Back Into the Swing of Things

Hello again!

It's been a very long time since I last blogged and I thought I should update you all as to my current position.

Since starting back I have been completely immersed in the design aspect of our set, which is a little larger than our camera plans would have you believe. We have designed both sides and the whole set is almost modeled in Maya now. Mat's side is textured (or there abouts) and I am in the process of unwrapping and mapping all of the UVs for each object in the 3D side of the scene. This is taking a looong time!! And I think it's slowly making me mad...

I have now handed over a lot of UV files for Mat to start texturing whilst I finish unwrapping the others. The bridge needs modeling still, oh and also the characters. Which need unwrapping and rigging after they're modeled...such a long process. However we have been speaking with Mario with regards to a time table and time frame for us to finish our work in. I don't think it is very realistic though. We have (I think) 6 weeks for editing, when I don't feel it will take this long, and things are already eating into our time...like this annoying unwrapping. I can't wait to start animating!! Still a long way off.

I am going to finish unwrapping the rest of the set this week and model the bridge in the center. Then hopefully I will be ready to start modelling the 8 characters!! As well as helping Mat with the texturing.

I'll upload some images of the set soon so the few followers out there have a better understanding of what it is going to look like a finished product.

For now though...more unwrapping!

Ormie

I found this brilliantly made animation on vimeo. About a pig trying to get some cookies off the top of a fridge, but everything he tries fails comically. It reminds me a little of the animation Mat and I are going to make.

Here is the link from vimeo Ormie

Mime Animation Research

I found this mime animation; one of the first that I've found where I thought the idea was quite good and it was quite animated well.