Final Word

As a final word on this blog, i just want to recognise the whole team;

Jonathan Pryce [Director]
Jenny Morgan [3d Artist]
Giles Pease [Technician]
Dan Hayes [Lead Animator]
Ben Griffin [Concept Artist]
(...not to forget Yemi Adelekan, Rebecca Morgan, and Alistair Primrose)

for their outstanding commitment and dedication to the film. As a team we worked well, effectively and professionally together, and not forgetting the fun we managed have along the way. This film for me has been and character building experience to say the least, and not only have i enjoyed making the film but the company i've shared whilst doing so. Its been fun and clearly rewarding and we should all be really proud.

Well done guys once again and all the best.

Rob
[Producer]

Final Output

The film has finally been completed and all that is left to do is output the movie with sound from premiere. I did this for hand in today and found that an uncompressed Quicktime movie with stereo sound was 6.33GB!!

So i decided to compress with the soreson3 compressor available and stuck with stereo sound (as i believe it plays a massive part int he movies feel, and therefore must remain as higher quality as possible) and the file size dropped to 455MB, perfect for hand in.

The Edit

The edit has been progressing since January, and finalized about a month ago. All i had to do this evening was take the final renders of the film and place them over the top of the playblasts we had done prior to rendering in the edit and ensure they we're all the same as the previous edit; this was to avoid any discrepancies with the sound. It went pretty well other then a few issues with a couple of render notes we had taken when rendering out our playblasts were not quite accurate. but a bit of clipping and we were there.

Organizing and creating the credits, with Alistairs music also

A slightly frustrating task I have to say, since everyone wants to be credited for what they have done. Which is fair enough, however, as advised by the tutors not a good idea regarding that we want our viewers to leave the film feeling excited and remember it for its good points; as apposed to the long drawn out affair of some boring rolling credits. Therefore, after looking at the word of Saul Bass and some good advice from our tutor Jared Taylor, we decided to shorten the Credits to specifics as much we could and come up with some designs for them.

Reciept of Alistairs adjustments, and final output

Today we received the final draft of Alistair's score, and it was fine. we still had to adjust a few levels in favor of Beci's sound effects, but other then that it fit perfectly on top of the film. The music certainly does create a exciting mood about the film and aids the fast paced tempo we were aiming to achieve in this film. Nicely done Alistair, really nice work.

Received sounds from Becky and from Alistair

Today we received all the music back from both Beci and Alistair and placed it on top of the final edit with all the renders already inserted ( a quick and easy job that was finished yesterday morning). Although both sounded fantastic on their own, I suspected that they wouldn’t sound as brilliant together and some levels would have to played with. Therefore, Jenny, Jono and myself, once again sat down and played it over and over and over again until our heads went numb trying to find the right levels for both tracks at their significant parts of the film. This was a long process, and one part of this film where opinions seemed to be more varied then ever. But non the less, we nailed it and in the end were all happy with the final out put of sound.

However, one more thing needed to be sorted by Alistair, as once again he hadn’t quite timed one section correctly. Therefore a quick phone call got him back on it and we hope to receive the file tomorrow. Which as before the levels (which we now know where the changes need to be made) need to be adjusted and a final out put can be assembled.

Organizing Renders

Whilst the files were being rendered, I used the time I needed to organize the renders that had been completed into scenes and shots, to make the transfer to the edit smoother and quicker. I found that by doing this doing this the task of dropping them into premiere was such an easy task and I am very glad I took that small amount of time to organize myself as a result.

Meeting with soundtrack composer

Today me and Jono went to see our score artist as a result of the audio file we received last night. The music, although very good and clearly right for the film, had no sign of timing or understanding of what was in shot. The music seemed to be out of sync and after talking with Alistair it was some what deliberate. Therefore Jono and myself saw fit to spend a good few hours with him in order to give some direction on the what went wanted the audience to feel at certain points. Although our presences probably frustrated Alistair, from a creative prospective, we certainly new what we wanted and once the piece had been out together Alistair agreed that it sounded better and made more sense. Therefore we left him with the rest of the film and a better understanding of what we wanted, with somewhat of an excited feeling inside.

Rendering was started and order was organised.

The rendering proved to be somewhat frustrating where once again we were restricted due to hardware. The only pc that seemed to be able to render was Giles’ and therefore to ensure it was all done, we had to man the PC all day, everyday for the last week, rendering each scene end on end. Other then that the rendering went well and only a few problems arose like random missing textures, which mostly were sorted in Adobe Premiere by my self and the defects were not visible at all.

Since the temple was all being rendered on Giles’ pc, I thought I utilize my own to finalize and render the Kitchen scenes. It seemed that neither Jenny nor Jono’s laptop could handle the Maya file either which was enormously frustrating, but irresolvable at this point. Therefore, my time was now spent manning the both my own and Giles’ PC’s to ensure both of them were rendering constantly. Albeit not the most taxing task, but a very boring one, and I spent a lot of time watching numbers ticking over on screen.

Spent an evening lighting the main chamber

Yesterday was a continuation on from the weekend, where once again I found my self with Jono and Dan finishing up during the early hours of the morning after a long attempt to try and light the main chamber within the temple. We took some time concentrating on the lights themselves, but realized that we needed the accompaniment of fog to acquire that dingy dark chamber feel.

This however made todays work a hell of a lot easier as we had decided to keep a similar style running throughout the whole interior. The problem we had was the lighting of the corridors. The justification of light source is hard enough in a large chamber, but in corridors with no light holes it was hard. We decided to place spot lights at either end of the corridors to simulate light flooding from the chambers either side. Furthermore we used a series of low intensity ambient lights to soften the harsh shadows we were getting on our character, which was restricting our view of the characters face and body. The fog node worked throughout and created some pleasing results.

Organizing drop in files and animations

The last couple of days have a been rather stressful due to the size of the files I’ve been dealing with, which has resulted in multiple computers crashing on the event of opening the files. My aim was to take all of the animations out of their environments and place them into the textured/lit sets, along with the cameras, but was seeming an impossible task, since it was only Giles’ PC that would open any files (due to its immense hardware specification). However, the problem of months of Maya binary and data being copied and pasted and exported and imported meant that a large amount of baggage was being held within these files. Although un-necessary history was being deleted along the way if not by me by everyone else, and the geometry that wasn’t being used was deleted, a lot of data still remained in the outliner. Only during the last couple of days have I realized this. Therefore, whilst preparing the files, I found myself deleting shed loads of history and data that wasn’t needed from these files, which not only time consuming but very demanding on the computers being used to do it. Never the less, it was sorted and I was able to open the files a lot quicker and they appear to run smoother now.

Receipt of texturing

Today, Jenny, Dan, Jono and my self brought all our textures to see if they matched in style and fit nicely into the environment. The sets were primarily meant to be dark and the style of Jono’s walls along with my floors really helped get that feel across. Although I felt that maybe the chamber had more of a somewhat medieval feel to it, I loved the way the stone walls and the dingy floors set an eerie ambiance in the set. Can’t wait to see it lit.

Final Bllitz on texturing

Today we started the texturing of the temple interior. We knew this would be a long job, however, with Dan free from animation and Jenny always at hand, Jono, Jenny, Dan and my self all took a section; along with a selection of colour swatches and a few methods we all agreed on to produce a consistent style throughout. The jobs had to be organised first and then delegated to each one of use. Jono for example did all of the walls for the two chambers. Jenny took on the assets, such as stones rocks and plants (which had already been done) and the Dan took on the walls for both corridors. He also took time to texture the assets in his area which really helped Jenny meet her deadline for her textures. I my self textured the floors throughout along with the altar and the statues either side.

Lighting on the house left to Giles

About a week ago, Giles found himself at a loose end during the texturing process so I asked him to finalise the lighting for the house interior. This went well and we were happy with the work. However, today when I came to prepping the set for rendering, the lighting had strangely changed and half the lights were turned off. Therefore Jono took on the task of finalising the lighting for this set. This took a while and the results were not bad.

Colouring the rest of the explorers

Using the colouring method we decided to use for the explorer the other day, Jono and my self sat down to colour all the files that had been animated prior to the realization of the wrap problem. This took some time due to the tedious nature of the process, however it only took half an evening and by making it a race between the two of us, it got done quicker then we thought.

Reciept of Animation

On Friday I received all the animation files, from Yemi, Dan and Ben. The animations were spot on and I proceeded to produce all the play blasts needed in the final cameras in order to produce a final and timed edit for our sounds designers. I did this with the hep of both Dan and Jono, who both helped me decide on the absolute final cameras and timings for the final edit. Dan’s persistence and effort was much appreciated here, as he lives far away and stayed with us all through the night; something that a lot of the group members haven’t done with me and Jono on our many VERY late nights. Thanks Dan.

We started Saturday morning and finished tonight (Sunday). It didn’t take a large amount of time due to Dan’s experience film his film studies A-level and the advice we got from Kev a couple of weeks before. Tomorrow I will be meeting with Beci (Jennys sister and our sound designer) and will email the file to Alistair tomorrow afternoon.

Rendering the jungle shot

The rendering went pretty well on Giles’ PC and it only took two days. There was a slight problem with one of the cameras where one key frame that shouldn’t have been there was jolting the camera; consequently the shot had to be re-rendered and replaced. Fortunately, the edit allowed for a break in the middle of this shot and therefore we only had to render half the amount of frames. As annoying as it was at the time, we managed to get the renders re-done and into the edit with no problems at all. Fortunately all the animation hasn’t been done for the explorer character yet. So new Coloured rigs can be issued to Dan to save time later on.

Finalising the pan shot

The jungle production had been left entirely up to Jenny and Jono who have both done a fantastic job on the layout, textures and modeling. However it seemed that the final shot of panning up through the canopy to reveal the landscape above was proving difficult to achieve. I joined the two of them to try and make it work. It didn’t take much more then a pair of fresh eyes to help them realize they were pretty much there. I suggested that the fog planes that they had put be taken away and we used Photoshop to achieve a similar appearance. All in all, the canopy shot was pretty much done and with a little tweaking we pulled off something we didn’t think we’d be able to do. Well done guys.

Canopy (Daytime)
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Canopy (Dusk)
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Lighting the pan up set. Was quite hard to get it right, even though it was just a spot light; placement seemed vital in this shot, to not justify the source, but to create a pleasant image.
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Shot of canopy pass
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Wrap Problems

Today has been really stressful. I spent a lot of the day with Giles trying to organise some of the jungle files that needed to be rendered. However it started to become apparent that the files containing the Explorer character would not open on any pc other than Giles’! The problem seemed occurred when the calculation of the rig was taking place and the whole file would crash. After a little bit of discussion and some realisation of time available and the work load still to achieve, it was somewhat an impossibility to go back to the drawing board and ask Dan to animate them again once the rig was rectified. Therefore we decided to open all the files that had been animated under a wrap and delete the wrap. The only problem that derived from this idea was that the character had not be UV-ed; a consequence it seemed of the dissertation, where Jono lost a lot of time. The only solution to this problem was the character had to be coloured by selecting faces and applying lamberts to them. Albeit a little primitive method, it worked better then we thought.

Finalising the lighting for the Jungle shots

Tonight Jono, Dan and myself sat down and did some of the lighting for the first jungle shot, which although took an hour or two to complete, was well worth it and the results were great. Jono had previously come up with the idea of light rays coming down through the scene and having spots of intense light hitting the floor and leafs etc around our character sitting down. The holes in the canopy were lined with plants to give the light patches a realistic feel rather then a random round patch.

The best thing about last night however was the realization that rendering was less then 24 hours away and we are planning on spending tomorrow tidying the set and preparing it for the render.

Texturing the Floors

This week I’ve started the textures for the temple. I’m a little shocked at how long it is taking me to do some of them, however I believe that I’m being a little to picky on what it looks like, so I’m taking a more laid back approach and stop being such a perfectionist. The floors have almost been done and then I can start on the walls.

Exterior House Creation

After looking at the “to do list” I saw that a fair few of the jobs (ones in grey) were quick to do and some of those surround the exterior shot of the house. I agreed to allow no more then two days to this shot with the consideration that it was a static 8 seconds shot. The only issue I ran into was the trees behind the house and the hedge in the foreground. It seemed that to match our style I was unable to complete before the second day was out. Therefore this has been left for a later date and those things have remained unchecked on the to do list.

Note: if anyone is looking for a skydome texture this website is awesome…
http://mpan3.homeip.net/earth

Animation deadline finalisation

After this delegation of work, Jono and I had to make it very clear that in order to have the sound ready and perfect for deadline, not to mention render time, we would need the animation by the 30th of May. This went down well with the guys and I am confident we will receive it all back for rendering by that weekend.

Animation Workload Problem

It became apparent to us today that animation was becoming very tight, and almost not doable with one person. We took some time to discus with Dan what was still needed to be animated and how long he proposed it would take. We decided on his judgment that we would need at least another animator to make our animation deadline, two to make it a comfortably. It was by chance really that two days ago we had a call from Yemi (another friend and animator on our course) saying he was finished on his own film and was happy to help if we needed him for animation. Our other group member, Ben Griffin, recently decided he also wants to specialize in animation, and although a lack of confidence in his ability, we gave him a section to.

Rendering Scene1Shot1

The render was set back a week due to Ben tardiness with a few of the asset textures, however, once delivered were good and fitted nicely into textures already there. The set was then ready and using a spare laptop we set it rendering over night. The renders came out well and only took one night to process. Having said that once placed into Adobe Premiere the shot seemed extremely dark and lacked contrast. However using a few colour correction nodes available in the program I was able to create the initial look of the shot and it has been consider a finished shot…1 down 9 more to go…aarrrggghhh!

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Texturing the Sleeping Guy

The sleep walking character was pretty easy to texture due to the original design. The design consisted of a sky blue top with white and blue stripy bottoms. Bare feet and hands and that were it. The trousers although started off as a chore to do, but did not take to long in the end. All the textures were hand painted using a graphics tablet.

Normal Texture map for guy
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The Burnt Texture map
(only half textured as not all the body was seen in shot)
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Screen Shots of the mesh textured
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Rethinking of Schedule

Over one sleepless night (possibly due to the slow diminishing organization of the timetable) I decided to make a list of all things that needed to be completed in order to finish each individual shot. This seemed to help clears heads immediately and helped me sleep that night very soundly. Although there seemed a lot to do, it is to say the least doable and all that was needed was a little consideration of not only the important jobs, but more so the tiny ones that fill the holes.

Texturing the walls and floor

The wall and carpet textures weren’t a problem and with the lighting already in place it was easy to know what was needed in the textures and could place it in and test with a render shot to get an idea of what it would look like.

Creating the pause menu screen and the map

I used Tomb Raider as my main influence and mimicked the design for our own paused game menu. I produced the background in Photoshop and created a 3D render of the golden cake spinning, with the intention of playing an AVI on the screen, to give the set a more animated feel.

It seemed however that some technical issues with Maya and lack of knowledge on how to solve it created a barrier. After a little deliberation and time thinning, I decided that it wasn’t overly important to the story that it moved and was own in the interest of aesthetics; therefore I created a static 2D texture in Photoshop using one of the render stills as an alternative.

The map was a simple job and took an hour or so to make, with pleasing results. The aim was to produce an indication of some kind as to what the explorer or perhaps the game character in the TV would need to motivate him to race through and explorer an ancient temple.

The map didn’t take long and to be honest I really enjoy it. I’ve always enjoyed using Photoshop and this sort of work is more like light relief from the 3D work.

The Game Menu with new logo
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The new Aztec Escape logo
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Golden Cake Render
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Background image
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