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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Tidying the house set

The next task I felt was important, not only for the progression of the project, but also for the moral of everyone on the team. Questions were arising of when the rendering will start and although very clear within the schedule, the general worry was the render time itself. I took some time with Jenny to set up some basic lighting in the set and placed in all the available assets in order to get some render time estimates.

The next task for me was to create a texture for the walls and the carpet and finally the screen and paper map that will be resting on the sleeping character.

Camera Angle Adjustment

The other day I received an email from Gareth Munden (a tutor whose specialism is cinematography) with a brief comment on the animatic I had uploaded onto my Facebook page. He stated “there are a lot of shots from behind” and suggested that we should take a second look at the entire initial shot. Gareth wasn’t working with us this term and therefore wasn’t at our disposal. I then branched out to a contact and good friend of mine who graduated from Ravensbourne last year, and now works as a camera man for various companies. Kev spent an evening with me to help determine the main issues with our cameras and furthermore rectify. It seemed to be a slow process in some cases due to his in-experience with 3D software and the communication of visual ideas became a slight barrier. Nevertheless the issues were clear and from the knowledge picked up from tutors and a book I value highly (called Shot-by-Shot) Jono and myself spent an evening finalising cameras the following day. Kev reviewed the camera adjustments later on and confirmed for us that they we’re much better and created a much more dramatic and brisk tone to run sequence.

During the camera adjustments Jono and I felt it would be helpful to get an idea of some lighting as this would enable us to film the set in accordance to this (an idea deriving from some information on the live action processes that Kev took me through). Some idea renders are shown below.

Old Cameras...


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New Cameras...

Dressing the main chamber

Today I spent most of my time dressing the chamber with the plants that Jenny made for the jungle set. Due to there not being many initial concept designs for this I just had place them where it looked right and build up the feeling that it had been vacant for a long time. The altar set was what I found most difficult as I wanted to create a close environment of plants etc to eliminate large areas of space around the altar. I had to be careful due to the cameras we had set up and the animation that we are going to receive from Dan later on (the animation was only an issue because we didn’t know exactly where he would be stepping, so a large area in front had to be kept clear).

Had a quick jab at lighting the set to see what the lighting we wanted would look like...I think it works really well
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