Just about there

So we spent 40hours straight in finalising renders, compositing and mastering the film.

And teh end result...well, lets just say it could be better.

There is simple stupid mistakes like flowers missing from one scene, charlies eyebrows moving from caryns paint job and the colour continuity issue which I argued with damien for ages over...he now finally sees, when its too late ahah.

Anyway...alot has been learnt by me from this experience of this film.

I can see now that we had taken on a very ambitious project in one hand IM so very grateful as there is stuff I have learnt about maya such as shaders, lighting, camera, special fx and dynamics and then there is also the compositing aspect - that I have learnt and I believe my animating skills have come so far in just this last year too.

Titles and Credits

Friday, October 10, 2008

Titles - section where the caterpillar is going down the line...{Fade in}The Griffith Film School presentsA Team Composure film{Fade Out/in}Down the line...Credits -A film bySascha FournelCaryn GirardiDamien WongOriginal Concept by Damien WongCharacter Modelling, Rigging, Shaders & Lighting
Sascha Fournel
Creature Modelling, Rigging & nCloth simulationCaryn GirardiEnivornment Modelling Sascha FournelEnvironment LightingSascha FournelCaryn GirardiAsset ModellingDamien WongSpecial Effects & DynamicsSascha FournelEditing & CompostingSascha FournelDamien WongMusic and SoundAndrew McLellanAnimationSascha FournelCaryn GirardiDamien wongAsset TexturesDamien WongAsset ShadersCaryn GirardiWe would like to give big squishy hugs for thanks toAndrew Martin, Liam Hoskins & Chris Dai for Technical helpOur Mums, Families, Friends and GF/BF for their patience and encouragement.GFS logo etc

Monday, October 6, 2008 - The groups aim for the week

Today Damien and I discussed what we as a group really need to complete by the end of this week being Sunday 12th of October...

Find a fix for the hair - Sascha
Remember to set keys on the aim locator for the DOF camera (check that Caryn has this camera)
Do test renders on the DOF to see its not too blurry
Complete the sprites, flowers and black goo, cut clothesline for scene 9&10 - Sascha
Textures to complete - Damien
- Interior and Exterior Walls
- roof - windows - use shader form CGI assignment (Sascha has one)- balcony- potplant - Sascha- cockroache - Sascha- Fix Charlie texture
Buildings for final scene and textures - Damien
HDRI or environment sphere - Caryn is doing this we think?
Day Lighting to be finalised hopefully by Wednesday - Caryn
Finalise Scene 3 with lighting and textures and render out
Give Fog Scene rest of group - Sascha
We are hoping to meet Wednesday after life drawing to finalise:-
Scene 3 with fish, lights, textures and render layers
Damien to give Sascha Buildings for final scene
Sascha to give Caryn & Damien Cockroache, Fog and dynamic Clothesline
Caryn to give us - Lights for environments and show us how to do the ncloth with fish
Check that misenscene for all scenes is the same for everyone

WE can do it!

Saturday night with Andrew

Well this was the most interesting day of my year so far...a freaky caller at work, followed by a fire alarm at uni, followed by my scooter getting stolen...was nothing compared to seeing Andrew in action in front of the big mixing table thing.He is good...he is real good and patient with us raucous animators...I had just as much fun gathering all my junky bits and peices together for our night of recording as I did actually being able to make sounds with them. We had a rather very successful evening between the hours of 8pm and 4am the next morning...being able to record majority of the foley and also the music tracks.It was way cool to see how Andrew works...its definately an art form in itself...and was alot more full on than i ever imagined.

Friday, October 3, 2008 - eye CTRL issue

ok so i may have come across an issue with the eye CTRL...but all sorted...If you look in the attribute editor for translate and rotate you'll see they are highlighted in green.select all Translate X, Y, Z and Rotate X, Y, z and then right click once selected > break connections.Voila...you will find you can now key and CTRL the eyes as per normal...not sure why that happened...All im glad about is I was able to fix it...Damien next time you get that Head CTRL issue, see if its doin the same thing...and see if the above remedy works for it too...out for now...OH yeah...

Saturday, September 27, 2008 - Idea for climax scene

I was thinking while animating tonight that just as the rope gets cut we could have like a vingette of images to show what's happening rather than animate it out. For example we could have a cut to Charlie shocked and then a cut to her in a running pose, hand outstretched with same look on her face, then another cut of her hand trying to grab the rope and then fade to black. Then fade in to her sitting on balcony with rope in her hand upset.
This is a cheat yes but it will cut the time of the film down as well as render time being single frames etc.

I have pretty much finished Scene 9 - just need to do some final refining of the animation and turn the clothesline into a dynamic to simulate it falling when cut. Oh and decide on what would be the best resolution for the goo at the door.
I also did a test batch render today of 74 frames of teh camera truckin in to the balcony through the fog. I haven't composited it yet... but did 3 render layers - Occlusion, software and mental ray, so will hopefully get around to that tomorrow.
Also tomorrow I want to:-
Start animating Scene 8
find a resolution for the music sprites and soft clothesline
do flowers for scene 8
model flower pot and cockroache
Titles
Moon cutaway

Thursday, September 25, 2008 - We have foginess

Using 3D fluid containers I managed to get a hazy, cloudy, foggy sort of look. The cloud containers can be animated and colours can be changed.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008 - Some feedback and new thoughts...

Showed animatic again tonight to Mark and Mum...they still are wandering about teh whole past and future thing as Peter, Andi and Anthony Lucas etc did/do/does...So Im wandering if perhaps the image on the black card could use a universal symbol representing the past some how...Or a thought I had just like 2 seconds ago...What if the animated picture on the first black postcard re-enacted like a bad memory of Charlies...i.e something dramatic...like september 11 or a parent dying or seeing someone have a stroke..something real dramatic that would stop her from wanting to go outside and living...hmmm.What I accomplished today...I thought i had a fix for the eyebrows...well I guess i still could...but for some reason or another the shader wouldn't stick to the mesh on teh new eyebrow area once moved for the first time...It might be some kind of hierarchy thing...maybe Darren or Liam might know.
I created the DOF camera and have had some interesting results see below...http://maya3dtutorial.com/blog/maya-tutorials/depth-of-field/ to find out more about how to get the most out of a DOF camera.

• Created a new lattice and motion paths for the door scene and started animating Charlie running into the door.
  My Aim for Tomorrow...
  To finish rough animation of the scene
  Come to some agreement/fix on eyebrows
  add jiggle to hair spikes?
  See if Damien can finish bathroom scene
  Set up scene folders for everyone
  http://en.9jcg.com/comm_pages/blog_content-art-149.htm - test this for foggy background and paint effects

More researching stuff I did last night-

Fog/Cloud - WE have Charlies unit in a vast expanse of pretty much nothing for majority of the movie. We are sort of after a foggy look with shadows in them to suggest that they're could or couldn't be something else out there.So I did some testing with spotlights and adding fog density...some nice effects, BUT i can't get it to scale up enough to look really volumous...even adding 3 more lights doesn't seem to create anymore fog or layers of it. I also tried enclosing it in a sphere...but just looked the same. Will add examples later as they are on my mac...So I am considering perhaps having a look at the paint effects for clouds and seeing what that gives us and renders out and time etc. I know Damien was also thining of doin a matt painting for the background which would really look painterly and gorgeous...that in conjunction with the cloud effects could be an interesting look.Another idea that just crossed my mind litereally just then was transparent image planes with Damien cloud paintings on them...ta da! that could be it...ill do some more tests.Depth of Field and Z depthCame across a couple of tutorials which may add some more realistic film feels to our short film, rather than it being completly stuck in 3D land...going to set a DOP camera up and render out teh differences between frames to see fi it would be worth it. Damien had an ingenious idea that we would just import it if it work and parent it to other camera so as not to loose original camera moves..wOOT WOOT!Oh also came across this really good looking tutorial from highend 3Dhttp://www.highend3d.com/maya/tutorials/rendering_lighting/general/Rendering-several-maya-scenes-and-cameras-261.html
It opens with this statement :-
You need your animation rendered by the morning. You have 3 scenes to render each scene is saved in a different maya file and one of the scenes you have two cameras, you need both of them rendered and you are a tired artist not a programmer.
IT could be very handy later on for us...
Getting a Workflow happening...
So I watched the animatic a few more times last night to see if there were any simple scenes that we could possibly just animate and get out of teh way now where we didn't have to worry about texture, much lighting etc etc...the most obvious ones that stand out straight away is the
Title/Credits
Bathroom Scene - no textures needed, very limited animation
Scene 1 - writing the first letter which leads into title scene.
There are obvioulsy alot of cut aways too to CU of charlie expression we could also do if we could lock off what we were after in each scene??
None of these really need textures...we could do a final render of these now and hence have less to worry about, render later. It also gives us a realistic project to work on to test compositing stuff etc i.e. animated letters, overall look of B&W part of film and other compositing stuff we wanted.
Are we still doin blue hearts???

MY aim for today is:
Test DOP camera and add to scene
Block out and add refined animation to my scene
Sort out music sprites - Damien mentioned youtube ipod+coldplay for inspiration
add growing flowers
model cockroache
Over and Out - Coffee grabbin times

Testing with Render layers to avoid changing shaders

So after lots of wind being expelled and brain cells burning out, I think we may have found a solution to our mental ray not liking our skin shader problem...but will it save time or add it t0 our already time short budget?

Bascially Chris Dai and Asian John Do overheard me in class today discussing my dilemma with Arash. I queried with Arash whether we could use Render Layers from some tutorials I cam across on the net, I just wasn't sure I had the right understanding or know how to do it. Arash believed it was not the way to go to resolve the problem as he thinks i should redo the shaders and lighting for Charlie. I really didn't want to as we are completly happy with how she looks...


So Chris and "John" said that yes I was right in thinking that i could use render layers, but I would need to make sure it was set up in the render globals...so I came home to test it out...

So I set up 4 layers - selected the objects that could only be rendered out on Maya software, then did the same thing for mental ray and selected everything for Occlusion layers...the trick is you have to setup overrides before you batch render. But it took about 5 minutes to render out 1 frame...but remember i was rendering out 4 different methods - software (charlie), Mental Ray (remaining Assets), Occlusion (everything) and the Masterlayer..which I probaby should have turned off, althougth it does have some nice reflections and major shadows from the harsh light, but also alot of artefacting...that may be more to do with the lights though...anyhoo after a bit of compositing in shake...and very basic mind u...i got this...

Ok so its a bit dirty looking in comparison to the photoshop manipulated one, but i also am not that proficient in Shake...yet. Although, in the above image i did manage to roto around the eyes to brighten them up a bit and blur on of the images to make softer shadows...obviously we can do alot more as well...Oh and actually, I didn't plug in the shiny reflection one btw...i just used the software render of Charlie, mental Ray of everything and the Occlusion render.


P.s. whats the go with the eyebrows? LOL thats the next thing i have to fix i guess.

Our Final Postcard image for Screening night

OK so i used the bluer image but also rendered out an occlusion layer. With Damien's help, we selected some highlights and adjusted them to simulate that of the sprites reflecting and the moon.

I went through and painted her lips a little more, added some glow on teh moon and teh fishy to give them some luminace which was lost in the layers.

I quite likey aloty and hope we can aim to do this for our final renders.

Test Renders for Screening

So been muckin with paint effects to get stars and some glow shaders for teh moon.
This is rendered in Softward Render as I still haven't managed to get the shaders to work with mental ray...I dont think it looks that bad.
This is meant to be the scene where charlie follows the Music sprites into teh unit...i thought they would be illuminessent and so decided to add a blow light to the scene (top image) to try and act as the glow reflect off her sking...the bottom obviously is alot warmer...although i think the top blue one works with the night feel...meh...see what everyone else tinks.
Prob could add a halo or something to the moon to soften its edge.
Left Walls with teh material assigned as this scene will be fairly bland until the sprites start palying music through the gramophone.
Also gave Charlie a little smile which she is tryign to hold back..s.hould it be more...or even less?
Oh yeah suggestion for fishy is that it has the a blue reflective dot in the middle of its eye, matching scales on back...been studying my siamese...and both ahve that little pearly dot in there eye..might give it more character too...???
Also bump map for hair perhaps???
More colour on lips, finger nails and redo eyebrows?

Saturday 20th

So we met today and aimed to get textures finished....After my major night aiming to finish Charlie with shaders and lights...I came in today and we found out it doesn't work well with Mental Ray...so we spent 5 hours trying to relink shaders etc in order to work, but just couldnt' get it. So moved on.
Did some textures on shelves and scrabble board...and then gave up with Maya crashed...so moved onto the clothesline.
Used Soft bodies and springs and added an air field and keyed it to simulate wind.
Haven't textured it here as it would be better to do in the scene and Im not sure if Damien wants this to also be occlusion, although i think it is.

Moving on now to pose Charlie for Screening Cards to give to Mari on Monday.

OVerall had a very productive weekend being here at uni the whole time. If all 3 of us did this we would have an awesome movie at the end, so will discuss this possiblity with groupies later.

Its Meeting Times...

So had our RUFF CUT review with Andi, Peter and Darren today....loads of stuff was mentioned...like keep an eye on cuts...use more classic cuts and more CU for reactions...Overall the story is loved although we are a bit ambitious due to the nature of the story with symboloby etc...so we need to slow it down and be a bit more obvious with links i.e caterpillar-butterfly- metamorphisis etc. We have blocked everything except for half the last scene.WE met after as a team and reedited the blocking and designated roles and prioritised what we need by next week.So Damien is doing the following:
Animations for Letters
Zdepth test
Textures - Bathroom - Rug
- Kitchen - Door Mat- Walls - Scrabble Board- Roof - books- Wardrobe - shelves- clock and alarm clock
Animating Title, INTRO/Scene9 and Scene3&4
Modelling of City for Scene 9
Caryn is:
Designated Animator for fish and caterpiller in all scenes (Bar Titles)
Lighting - Environment, Rooms (ceiling light), Charlie
Texturing shiny objects i.e a/c unit, kettle, toaster etc.
Animating Scenes 5,6&7
Sascha is
Modelling Cockroache
Special FX unit - softbody clothes
- clothesline
- music sprites
- flowers
- Moon
Lighting of night scene (scene 8)
Blends and set driven keys for eyelashes, fix smile blend, create extreme "im over it"blend
By Monday we are aiming to:
have the lighting of the environment completed
Night lighting of Scene 8
textures
blends for Charlie eyelashes
and if we have time, changes to animatics.

Foley Sound - big day October 4th - 8pm

fish - symbolic sound - bubbles?
rope
breathing
ambient noises - room and verandah - night and day
crashing of buildings
toaster
crunch toast
footsteps
bad letter/scissors
music sprites
butterfly flaps ?
caterpillar crawl ?
sketchy noises ?
clothesline wheel squeak
flapping clothes/letters
water - tap - bathroom
pegs
door slam
record player scratch sound
hmms and hoos
couch spring sound

Update from Sascha...

Well...its been a while since i posted...and that would be cause of the charlie rig...i have never ever rigged anythign in my life. In hindsight...with next too no experience in this department, it was a HEUGE job to take on with such little time for us to complete the film. To not hinder the production, i gave a basic basic rig to the group to start blockin the animation, quite a few weeks ago now, but there was an issue with teh referencing of the files, that meant animation wasn't getting copied across between rigs...so the blocking stopped until i finished the rig. Even though I know its taken me a while, i have learnt so much and actually rather enjoyed this process. Considering my limited experience I am extremly happy with the outcome. There are still things that could be tweaked like more blends and refinement of some existing ones, figuring out how to get teh orthographic camera to follow just the face of teh character so as not to hinder animation. But all in all she does the job. I shall post a test animation of the controls later.On the back of finishing the rig I have now been blocking of the entire film over the last week. The first couple of scenes i completed by last week end were handed over to Damien to start animating so we have something to show on Thursday for the RUFF CUT meeting...but IM not sso sure we will have 50% completed.Things in the process of getting done:-Texturing of assets - CarynCharlie texture - DamienTest render of environment - Damien?blocking and animating - saschaThings to do still:-animatelight environmentanimateWe have some scratch sound from our musician Andrew Mclellan. A suggestiong from him though is that he is finding that the music needs more room to breathe. WE were tryign to keep the story as short as possible due to time constraints for animating, but with this feedback along with anthony Lucas, Kevin Geiger and randoms, I have lengthened most of the scenes out. This will hopefully also help with the biggest issue at this stage, that people are being able to follow or understand the story...

Charlie model update Video