saturday

must be a weekend....im at college!

changed the image size of ALL leaf textures...each was 2000 x 2000 (unnecessarily might i add) and with about 1000 leaves in a cut down scene it was killing mental ray for render previews when on smooth preview.

Original leaf textures have been kept but please make sure if you assign colours (myself and Adam) you are using the ones with SMALL at the end of their name. These textures are 500 x 500 and have lost no quality what so ever.

Have cleaned up the history even further on all camera set up animated shots, got rid of whats not needed so render time is faster > hacked that scene right down.

Adjusted the grass texture. Matts original texture was 4000 x 4000 and once scaled down by grigsby to 2000 x 2000 displayed the massive white borders in the scene file. Myself and Adrian took the file back into photoshop and took a new 2000 x 2000 sample that got rid of the majority of the borders so the grass texture now covered more of the scene. This can easily be moved and rotated to accommodate more shots including some of the larger spaces such a shot 2 where we see from Hero's side of the garden to Machos.

Feedback to Clym, Roman, Alex Bax and email to Fahran about UVing the tree.

compositing and compression

Today myself and Adam composited shot 4 in after effects.

So in total we have 6 render layers

2 for the character and 4 for the environment.

Character layers include beauty and ambient occlusion.

Environment layers include beauty, ambient occlusion, shadow and Z depth. This is not including our adjustment layers etc in After Effects.

Z depth is now my favorite...goodbye ambient occlusion and the wonders you used to bring to my eyes everytime i saw you...its Z depth all the way. Amazing how it transported the file and gave it filmic quality. Played around with the focal distance for a while until we were satisfied and the results are fantastic!

Since the character occlusion takes the longest to render, Adam suggested getting all finished shots having this layer rendered. The background (unless camera is moving) requires one frame and the other layers take no time at all to do. Matt is now organising the eyes for the finished animations and then I will be sorting out the camera framing so that adam can render sat eve. Looks like its down to me to try and replicate Grigsby's amazing lighting he achieved here so fingers crossed.

We then took the uncompressed After Effects file and began experimenting with different compression formats in Final Cut. Its a strange thing how different colour displays and setups make the world of difference to the look of the final piece, however with a few tries (thanks Adrian for his help on compression/formats) we're looking at mpeg2 which maintained most of the colour and quality of the final film. Hopefully (and I need to speak to Dalli about this Monday) this format will work fine for making the final DVD for the degree show and we shouldn't lose too much quality from further compression.

I gotta say...its looking bloooooomin marvelous guys :)

uncompressed file from After Effects...

mpeg2 compressed file from final cut...

shot 21

havent posted in a while

back on the animation now which is gooooood news and back to shot 21.

So far so good....not finished...comments/feedback wanted as always.

Ignore the disappearing fork...again its something thats not sorted out until last until the hand/arm movements are locked down final. The throw downs are in stepped and from the punch onwards is in spline.

Heres the view from the camera. I've tried to make the shot flow nicely from one side to the other when it cuts to matt's shot 22

Dan...

Its looking good dan, the pic you uploaded was on the small size, so when i took it into photoshop it was kinda difficult to see the cracks exactly but from what i could tell its looking nice. I've drawn over what you've done and just added some smaller section cracks which will just finish it off nicely if you don't mind adding these in please. Thank you :)

set the stage...

welcome to the jungle...er...i mean garden.

Machos Area...pointy leaf colours need altering but this is a simple assign existing material click away. Machos area I wanted to stay pretty rough and hard edged...hence more pointy leaves. The gaps for the Wheelbarrow...

where as Heros area has more rounded leaves with splatters to reflect the better kept section of the garden. Mixtures of greens, oranges and reds to represent the change of seasons to autumn.

Compositing/Lighting 1 on 1

My thanks to Grigsby for sitting with me and Adam Thursday evening and sharing a wealth of knowledge on how to achieve some great lighting and compositing for our scene.

Dan showed us the fundamentals of lighting and what was needed for the scene and the characters to light sufficiently. As our scene is outdoors, it does mean a less intricate lighting setup is required and with the use of light linking there are 2 lights for the character (3 if you include the main environment directional) and a few other ambients to help the scene. Dan showed us how to tweak the textures to fit with the lighting and how some of the textures may need colour adjustment to prevent overexposure and over saturated colours.

From this, Dan rendered a single frame for the environment and the character as well as occlusions for both and then took us through how to overlay in After Effects and the further colour adjustments, sharpen masks, blurs and screens that can be added to soften the 3D visuals and give more depth to the film.

I'll post up an image shortly but the results he achieved were astounding and he's kindly allowed us to keep the file for reference and learning how to transfer the attributes/settings over. We also have a copy of his lights as a tutorial for how we should be setting up the rest of our lights for the film.

Thank you again Grigsby, its been extremely beneficial to watch you at work and learn more about creating great scene setups :)

webmail....

if i dont reply to your webmail mails...this is why...
webmail is rubbish!!

Shot 19 - tweaks

been working some more on this shot trying to tackle the feedback you've all provided.

Here i've started adding in the bend in his arms via matt's suggestion of increasing the struggle with the weight. I've shifted the keys now so he manages to stand up right a little slower to emphasize the weight, as a couple of comments hinted it seemed an easy task for him.




please ignore the strange angles the fork is going off at...haven't matched up the second arm yet until i know the first is final. Arm bend to straight - trying to add more pop to the movement from one extreme to another as if he's really pushing this last effort to do it.

of course...ive been animating from angles like this....

when our camera angle is actually from here...

again this is not the final but just updates on how this shot is going. Hasn't been as successful a day with it as dealing with the nitty gritty is a long process. I hope to have a better day on this tomorrow and be able to move on soon. Comments welcome as always

Animation make brain go mental...

work...here...not there

up....errmm....key select

that is all

Shot 19

On a break from shot 18....started this this afternoon....

This shot sees Macho lifting the garden fork. Its should display a challenge for him but not be a complete hinderance unlike the flower pot he lifts later on. Since my weight lifting skills involve lifting mars bars....my reference for this shot has come from footage like this...

Initial playblast demonstrating blocking of key poses...might shift that end position forward a bit. Dont worry about the second arm, im working on the one first then matching the second as its a nightmare with parenting the object to just one wrist control.

starting to spline it...that scary moment when thingy freak out and more keys needed

Progress....check out that cheeky grin at the end....o yeah :)

its not finished...not by a long shot but hey thoughts