Its the start of the last term and the last ever project of the course. Approximately 15 weeks long, the project is all about focusing on my main areas of interest in the CG Arts pipeline and taking it to the most refined level, to produce a final piece of work that showcases the best of what I'm best at.
I've already started to get organised for the task ahead by simply writing a list of what I do and don't want to do on this project.
I've also formed my own timetable for the next few weeks, and another, very general one for the duration of the whole project. I might dedicate a whole page of my blog to have the timetable, once I know exactly what I'm doing. Although to be honest, things are always being shifted about throughout the whole project anyway!
More to follow…
A Flock of Pixels
Tuesday, 31 January 2012
Sunday, 22 January 2012
Atom Pancakes - The Final Chapter
This really is the final chapter of the project. Its been a tough but ultimately rewarding 4 months as today I present to you, our collaborative animated short, The Final Chapter.
You can find more information at the Atom Pancakes Official Blog.
For me, the highlights of this project have been how I've managed to take what I've learnt recently and apply them to this project. Most notably, the rigging, but also the lighting / rendering. It has also been good to get back into animation again.
Since I have been more secretive about showing animation in progress, now that the final animation is completed, I've decided to release a selection of play-blasts showing the stages of the parts I've worked on.
Pencil Sharpener 01
Pencil Sharpener 02
These pencils were handled with dynamics.
Pencil Draw 01
Maid Walk 01
Maid Walk 02
I never quite got this right. The bottle slips and the hand is holding the bottle awkwardly.
Maid Idea 01
Maid Idea 02
Maid Idea 03
An alternate end to the maid walking, which I quite liked but ended up changing.
Maid Attack 01
Jamming 01
Jamming 02
This was one of the last shots, and effects wise was the most challenging for me.
I had posted earlier in the year a test with pouring liquids, which I was able to replicate in the beginning sequence of the animation, but splashing the liquid to go where I wanted it to go was a bit more tricky. I'll let you in on a little secret, the liquid in the bottle is not the liquid coming out of the bottle! Trying to force liquid through the bottle was making the liquid go everywhere so instead I put an invisible lid on the bottle, and had a second set of liquid particles emitting from just outside the bottle. This was easier to control. The bottle itself was animated traditionally as I knew it would be difficult to control with dynamics and so avoided using dynamics where possible. The flames, while simple Maya particles, had some more effects applied in After Effects to make it look a bit better too.
Burnt Work 01
The has a really silly over the top bit of animation on the character. I completely restarted animating him as I was not happy with this. I don't think I even showed Ruben or Jordan this version!
Burnt Work 02
Burnt Work 03
Burnt Work 04
This was a very tricky scene to do as it was the only one to have three characters in the scene. I focused on one character at a time, going between the three, and gradually refining each of them in turn.
Arguments 01
Arguments 02
Arguments 03
I have to mention that there is something that isn't quite right with the first interior shot, where the camera pans across the room. It is intentional though, and you probably won't spot it unless I told you what it is, but my clue is that it is absolutely crucial for the story!
A Flock of Pixels
You can find more information at the Atom Pancakes Official Blog.
For me, the highlights of this project have been how I've managed to take what I've learnt recently and apply them to this project. Most notably, the rigging, but also the lighting / rendering. It has also been good to get back into animation again.
Since I have been more secretive about showing animation in progress, now that the final animation is completed, I've decided to release a selection of play-blasts showing the stages of the parts I've worked on.
Pencil Sharpener 01
Pencil Sharpener 02
These pencils were handled with dynamics.
Pencil Draw 01
Maid Walk 01
Maid Walk 02
I never quite got this right. The bottle slips and the hand is holding the bottle awkwardly.
Maid Idea 01
Maid Idea 02
Maid Idea 03
An alternate end to the maid walking, which I quite liked but ended up changing.
Maid Attack 01
Jamming 01
Jamming 02
This was one of the last shots, and effects wise was the most challenging for me.
I had posted earlier in the year a test with pouring liquids, which I was able to replicate in the beginning sequence of the animation, but splashing the liquid to go where I wanted it to go was a bit more tricky. I'll let you in on a little secret, the liquid in the bottle is not the liquid coming out of the bottle! Trying to force liquid through the bottle was making the liquid go everywhere so instead I put an invisible lid on the bottle, and had a second set of liquid particles emitting from just outside the bottle. This was easier to control. The bottle itself was animated traditionally as I knew it would be difficult to control with dynamics and so avoided using dynamics where possible. The flames, while simple Maya particles, had some more effects applied in After Effects to make it look a bit better too.
Burnt Work 01
The has a really silly over the top bit of animation on the character. I completely restarted animating him as I was not happy with this. I don't think I even showed Ruben or Jordan this version!
Burnt Work 02
Burnt Work 03
Burnt Work 04
This was a very tricky scene to do as it was the only one to have three characters in the scene. I focused on one character at a time, going between the three, and gradually refining each of them in turn.
Arguments 01
Arguments 02
Arguments 03
I have to mention that there is something that isn't quite right with the first interior shot, where the camera pans across the room. It is intentional though, and you probably won't spot it unless I told you what it is, but my clue is that it is absolutely crucial for the story!
A Flock of Pixels
Monday, 9 January 2012
Atom Pancakes - The Final Stages
Rendering, setting up files for rendering, and animating is all I have been doing these past few weeks. I'm kind of reluctant to show much of it when the main article will be finished in just under two weeks time, but as usual, here are a few tasters of whats to come!
If only rendering could be simple. Some might consider this to be overkill, but in order to maximise control in post production, I've been splitting up my renders. Most notably, the character, which is set to be split up into its various body parts so that I can adjust the colours of say, the skin, or the cardigan.
This is one of the master renders of the characters in one of the scenes.
And if you are wondering, the side characters purposely have a completely different light setup! You'll just have to wait for the final animation to see why!
Then there is the facial hair of the middle character rendered into its own image.
To illustrate just what kinds of things can be done to a render, this is what the face looked like before...
...and now after.
Perhaps it would be better to just get the colours looking more or less correct in Maya, but it just as fast if not, quicker to do realtime colour adjusting in post.
Interesting facts and figures! (well I think so!)
I've spent the last few days working on a scene with three characters to animate. This has of course meant that the amount of images I'm getting at rendering triples as all their parts have been split up individually! For just one frame of animation, I'm getting over 25 images. Thats well over 10,000 images for just 17 seconds approximately, which if you are wondering is the length of one of the scenes I'm working on. Luckily I'm not short of space, and thankfully the images will compress well afterwards. And the really cool thing is this has not increased render time in any way, as it is still only rendering each frame once, and would take exactly the same time to render just the master image.
Of course someone still has to manage all these images when compositing :(
Oh well.
So that was a little insight into the rendering process for the animation, 'The Final Chapter'. Visit AtomPancakes for more on the animation.
A Flock of Pixels
If only rendering could be simple. Some might consider this to be overkill, but in order to maximise control in post production, I've been splitting up my renders. Most notably, the character, which is set to be split up into its various body parts so that I can adjust the colours of say, the skin, or the cardigan.
This is one of the master renders of the characters in one of the scenes.
And if you are wondering, the side characters purposely have a completely different light setup! You'll just have to wait for the final animation to see why!
Then there is the facial hair of the middle character rendered into its own image.
To illustrate just what kinds of things can be done to a render, this is what the face looked like before...
...and now after.
Perhaps it would be better to just get the colours looking more or less correct in Maya, but it just as fast if not, quicker to do realtime colour adjusting in post.
Interesting facts and figures! (well I think so!)
I've spent the last few days working on a scene with three characters to animate. This has of course meant that the amount of images I'm getting at rendering triples as all their parts have been split up individually! For just one frame of animation, I'm getting over 25 images. Thats well over 10,000 images for just 17 seconds approximately, which if you are wondering is the length of one of the scenes I'm working on. Luckily I'm not short of space, and thankfully the images will compress well afterwards. And the really cool thing is this has not increased render time in any way, as it is still only rendering each frame once, and would take exactly the same time to render just the master image.
Of course someone still has to manage all these images when compositing :(
Oh well.
So that was a little insight into the rendering process for the animation, 'The Final Chapter'. Visit AtomPancakes for more on the animation.
A Flock of Pixels
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