Reflection

At this stage the animating had been nearly completed, we still need to render of the shots which we have not done due to delays and alot of render problems. we found out that we were not able to render alot of the sort because of the viruses we had switching data from mac and windows. 

Due to this we were not able to finish in time for the degree show but we will be possibly fiish it for our showreel.

I found myself making an animated film, not an easy task for the first time. You need to be organized and dedicated to completing it. I found my self organized and dedicated at the first stages of the production, then when problems and errors came in, it just went down hill. Myself and shuhel Amhed took on this product for the first time being Co-directors of this project, most of the time i felt it was only me doing everything keeping the project together and group. I never knew it was going to be this stressful working in a group. There were sometimes i felt so burn out with so much to do. I think if i had of worked under someones project, it would of been easy for me to concentrate then directing. I have learnt alot through this journey of work, this third year. This will definitely benefit me next time when taking on such a role.

Hand in Tomorrow!

the hand in for the aniamtion folders is tomorrow where we have to submit your work that we have done for the three folders for mike smith unit. I gatherd all my work for the three folders taken from my blog, my main folder was the Animation folder, but i felt that my Artist folder was abit more stronger and better. I try my best with the animation which takes time if you want to acheive good animation. My group had delays due to communication and several maya problems, that at the animating stage we only had limited time because of the delays. I used the richard williams aniamtion book which i did use first term to animate my shots with the timing of the animatic. 1 Second = 24 frames. Measuring the number of frames needed from the animatic.

I have so any problems with rendering my shots and texturing missing due to rendering on my laptop. maya  applicantion crashing several times which very piss me of. i really felt that i should of stayed with maya 2010 then upgrading with everyone else in the class. i do believe the file of the enivornment which was from the trish and kirsty is corupted. maya was crashing all the time that i had to saving every 4/5 minutes.

We had a class meeting with Daniel Dalli about how the folders had to be done on Dvd/Cd ready for tomorrows submission.

Dvd/Cd
Animation Folder  50%
Artist Folder          25%
Technical Folder   25%
Blog Link

Rendering Layers in passes

Here i did a test of rendering layers in passes which we had to do because it was taking for every to do it in layers as Tiff. I had never done this before so i looked up on youtube to find out more information on this. These are some tests i did a couple of days ago.

Difuse Layer

Occlusion Layer

Speclar Layer

Shadow Layer

Layerd together. Final Layer

Rendering

Shuhel was to be our main guy who was going to deal with alot of the rendering and lightening. I believe that shuhel did have alot of problems with doing the rendering and lightening because of the file that trish and kirsty gave us for the environment. Me and shuhel did try to tackle these problems which didnt help at all with the time we had left. Rendering was problem we had where it a crashing all the time. we felt that we had to take out some bits in the scene which was unnessurary. i think we could get some shots rendered hopefully. 

Rendering too long.

Over the weekend the decided to render a shot taken from the animatic. this was rendered out as a quicktime time file. I left it on over the night to render and it had only do 10 frames, i definitely knew we had to think of another option of rendering out in time for the degree show.

Animating using the Graph Editor

I found the graph editor very useful when i had block out the poses in maya. I then used the graph editor to change the tangents about. it takes time to get the timing right to how you want it to react. Plus its easier when you know your translate x, y, z rotate x y z of by head, and also - and +.

graph editor will become your best friend doing Character animation for a couple of weeks.

i learnt alot from the first term doing animating, where it made it easier for me to know what to do when it comes down to animating.

Animating Clip 6

Animating Clip 5

animating Clip 4

Animating Clip 3

Group Meeting: Animation Progress

Here we use Dropbox to exchange files and have a look at the progression of the work so far done.

Production Plans.

Finish Animating ASAP.
Finish Lightening ASAP.
Start Rendering Shots.

Some Lightening Shots

Shuhel did the lightening for the the envirnoment and hall way which was good. I liked the blue colored effect he did thats made it look dark and lonely.

Here i did some lightening for a couple of shots. i took the shot 3 i did the lightening for this shot. The lightening that shuhel had done for the environment wasn't good enough for this shot of joey at the desk typing away. 

This shot above is too dark to see joey working at the desk.

joey is suppose to be working night at night on the computer type alway. So i decided to put a spot light to make that the focus point of attention of joey typing. i think that this works best where i did try several others lights that didn't quite work. 

I also added some area lights to help light up the environmnet abit better.

This is a rendered shot of the opening of animatic which works well with the lights i added inside.

Animating Clip 2

Animating Clip

Final Environment Scenes Done.

These are some shots of the environment taken from trish and kirsty where i included the Vending Mac, Joey and Ash. I think that the enevironment is alright. i felt that it could of been better, but because of the time we have wasted on other things (disseratation), we had to move on to the next stage. we also had to delete some stuff in the scene because of data. It was too much to run moving around in the scene. 

Sharing the Camera Shots for Animating

This is a image of the aniamtic shots on shotgun where they could view and see the shots that have been assigned to then to do.

we used shotgun to communicate through which was helpful to use online.

These are the shots that the group had decided to share out amount each other.

These are the camera shots taken from the animatic which we did the first term. we decided as a group to  stick with the shots for now, but there might be changes through the process.

Vending Mac Done.

Project Reflection.

So far we are well behind on our schudule. we only got 4 weeks lefts and we still need to do the following things:

Need to do the Animation, Lightening, Rendering and Compositing and Editing/Sound

Rigging Improvement

screen shot of the how Tara made a Facial Controls for joey so that it would be easier for my group to animate.

Joey Test-Rigging Movement Clip.

This is a test clip to show that the character of joey is moving slowly.

Joey Rigging Completed!

Back-up Plan.

For the past 2 weeks i havent seen the progression of the environment. i was told that they are getting on with it due to some family issues. so i created the environment of the office and hallway that i wanted to see from trish and kirsty which i drew to for then several times.

The Office (wireframe)

The Office (occlusion)

The Hallway (wireframe)

Vending Mac punch arm ( Technical thinking)

Vending Mac Modelling

Shuhel was suppose to model the Vending Mac, but he said that he had to much to do with the roles that were assigned for him to do. So i had know other option then to do it myself. So i went back to my designs and modelled the vending mac.

 

 Vending Mac (Block-out)

Vending Mac (wireframe)

Vending Mac (occlusion)

UV mapped Vending Mac

Final model of vending mac.

Problems with Controls (Rigging)

The rigging was going well when i came across with some problems of the eye controls. this was very holding we up and need to find someone who can help me with the eye controls, weighing and facial controls. I found Tara who helped me out with the eye controls, weighing and facial controls.

Rigging So far So good!

The rigging is going well so far, i first created the joints, and then the IK handles. I started making the controls for the waist, back and foot to give him some movement. I did keep looking back at the animatic to see what kind of movement ability needed to be done, so that we will be able to animate joey.

First the joints and Ik handles

Then next the controls for the waist/back/foot...etc

Next i did the head control

Screen Shot of the Rig so far done by myself.

Begin Rigging Joey

I needed to start on the rigging straight away because my group was depending on me to complete the full creation of joey who is the main guy in the project. So there was alot of weight on my shoulders to do already. I started making the joints and placing then in the right place. This was pretty easy for me to do putting in the joints.

Joey Face Blendshapes

Here i created the blendshapes for Joey's Facial Expressions. I looked back at the Animatic and the Maya stop staring book to see which facial expressions needed to be made. 

Delays and Problems

Joey Model Textured. At last!

This is the Body of joey uv mapped this the textures applied to it.

This is the head uv mapped and taken into photoshop to be textured.

Joey completely Textured.

Problems with UVmapping..

My Texturing Materials

Learning UVmapping and Texturing.

Now that the model of joey was completed, the next stage was to UV Map and Texture joey. i believe this was going to be the first time i have ever UV mapped before which was going to be a challenge. Look into some book tutorials which was helpful, this also took up more time due to problems i had. I evertually got there with the uv mapping, then found out there was a qiucker way of doing it through talking to marious which piss me off abit.
I Should of asked other people about this stuff which would of made the learning process alot more fasting for me to pick up on things (one on one).

Group Meeting

We had some meetings with daniel Dalli who viewed us up on the progress of the film so far. it wasn't good news to tell him that we have fallen behind. So dan give us tasks to finish every week so that we could have the film finished in time. Daniel dalli was very supportive which was good from him.

New modelling of joey (Reflection)

This is the new completed model of joey which i think is perfectly modelled due to all the work i put into it. Joey needed to be modelled good enough for the rigging stage which is still to come up. i tried my best to make the surface clean and not too much poly.

Joey's Head and Body

Half of the body of Joey.

Final mesh of the model Joey