Special Effects For Tom

Tom's Animation and my knowledge of After Effects make this... Just one of many different things I want to get my head around before the year is out!  Its not great in anyway but its the beginning of my learning into SFX and After Effects.  Could have done it in Maya particles however AE was probably a better choice considering Maya just slows down everytime you attempt something with Particles... maybe I'll give it a go and compare the two.

The End... Or just the beginning

And so the project for Team Authentic has ended now.  Its a shame really as we worked so well as a team.  Its the end of the project however I feel the Blog shall live on.  I think it'll be good to keep a blog going throughout my projects and different pieces I create so that future employers may be able to scan through and see my work style.

Did You Know...

Each One Of Team Authentic Features In the final piece... our pictures are in the finer details... whether it be on a wall, bottle or sign....we are all there. Try and Spot us :p

Heres the Textures we applied!

If I were to do this project again...

Looking over what we have acomplished is quite an impressive list.  Working in this group has allowed me to assess other peoples working styles and other team members qualities.  Each of Team Authentic had some great qualities which no one else had which was good ... I won't bore you with the details but only let you know that it worked well and each person brought knowledge and enthusiasm to the team.  If I were to do the entire project again I'd have experimented slightly more with rendering out and compositing.  I'm a little upset with the quality of animating that well all had time for however as the project isn't based on this its not a neccessity this time... Maybe next project in the new year.  One of the major bummers I've come across is the scale which the team decided to work in - HD 720... clearly too big for what we are working on and this just made massive file sizes all over the place which were hell to keep track of and made everyones computer slightly laggy at different points.  Looking back across the final piece we've made so far (not quite final final as it needs a couple more shots and sounds on Monday) I think the problems with rendering were to do with the camera.  Many think that it was duplicated Geometry however, checking the outliner there was only one of everything.  I think it had something to do with the Scale tool which Jared refered to as 'Lethal'... so I'd keep an eye out for that in future and look into working on a different scale where I didn't have to scale everything I create (eg a camera of box) by about 10x or 15x!!  That was a major bummer.  I know we had problems with rendering left right and centre with glitches due to something and I think thats what the group settled on blaming.  Other than that the gruop itself worked very well on the whole.  There were disagreements occasionly however compramises were made which everyone agreed on were for the best.  Each person in the group learnt how to texture, animate, model and light their own scene as in Team Authentic we believed that these would be key skills for everyone to have.  One of the great things about Team Authentic.  Another would be that if anyone person had particular interests they would be allowed and promoted to experiment in the initial stages of the project while it was in its infant stages however due to lack of time we had to cut the majority of them out *sigh*

The time frame which we were working in was not quite good enough for us and therefore I believe setting personal deadlines is the best approach to any team as each individual knows how long it takes for them to work on each part - eg a quick animator can take 10 mins to get a small scene spot on others can take 10 hours!  Another lesson I learnt - TIME PLAN YOUR WORK!!

I'll hopefully upload a You Tube Link to This post so others can see what the group has accomplished.

Night Fever

Just found this image... Classic.... Our guy exiting the night club....what a legend. ... we were experimenting with lighting to see which one was messing up our render....we couldnt pin point it however we had a chuckle at this shot ;).... I believe I or Alec said "ITS OK ....ITS THROUGH THE TELESCOPE!!!" so that solves EVERYTHING.... we'll see 2mr.

hope everyone else completes theres on time too :)

The Race Is ON!

It would appear that students being students, even with a (slightly tempremental) Render Farm have to leave all their work to the last day!  I'm glad to say we've managed to do most of our rendering now - even if some we are having problems with some of the Glitches going on in there is no longer time to re-re-re-re-re-render them again so we'll have to make do with what we have.  Its not hte best animation as its VERY rushed but as we are not marked on this side of the piece, and majorly on the environment I'm fairly happy with the outcome.  Tomorrow the team minus Simon as he's away in Wales will be finishing off the final renders tomorrow and choosing what makes it into the final render, with sound and with fades and transitions.  The titles I have FINALLY finished I think and hope... just waiting to check the render... Came out ok but I can't quite tweak this one thing which is REALLY annoying....but hey....It's ok...guess I'd just like it the best it CAN be....Ach! Nevermind...I'm tired...and have to get some sound FX together now.... Alec and I stayed behind and got a few more recorded sound effects for different areas using different materials... just trying out different things.  Was fun and pretending to be a pirate is always a laugh!!! HARghArrrghARGH!!!! A few Videos from it :D

  

I think we're going for the whole story as well which will be nice - I think Alec is starting to believe we can finish this which is a MAJOR bonus as he'll crack on now a lil harder - only about 2 shots left to do and we've rendered and converted most to AVI's.

I'm just so glad Alec is bringing in his Laptop with C&C Red Alert 2 on as Simon and I are rendering a lot and therefore freezing our computers and the Render Farm takes ages to que and we need to test so we're on and off 5 minutes at a time.

Its all down to the last day now.  5 o'clock hand in.... LETS DO IT!!!

Tonights Work Is Done

I've finished the Final sequence for the Titles... all I need now is the Music to add to it and away I go.. depending on what time I feel I should go to sleep tonight I might work on that in a minute... I don't want to do EVERYTHING last minute.. or do I...**CLASSIC STUDENT**!! haha

I took into consideration what Alec and Simon mentioned about making the Titles slightly better and now I'm finally happy with them myself.  Even if the sequence is going to take quite a while to get through at least it shows off some of Alecs work in a nice way as well as presenting ourselves and our project.

The Last Week of HELL

A Poem about Render

Rendering - Not Cool. Render - Not Fun. Rendering....

The End.

Yeah sums it up. We've had some major highs and lows while rendering. Last night I stayed late trying to do bits and bobs and sending things off to the farm. Unfortunately the shot I sent off wasn't any good as Jared said it was overlapping files such as two boxes consuming one area. This was not what it was at all. I checked the outliner and checked the Hypergraph. It was infact the near clip plane too near so we bumped this up a wee bit and it worked a dream. EXCELLENT news so that we don't get any funky distortion anymore.

I was looking through some of the files coming out that we HAVE rendered and while exporting as AVI's I found that they were very laggy. Alec says it is due to the FPS I'm rendering at. I have just changed it to 24fps from 30 and it worked a dream.

The images that we are getting out are encouraging however I hope our animation we are doing looks good too.

Been Working On The Title Sequence/Ending

Not entirly sure what this is going to be... what I've been working on tonight.  I'm not going to upload it onto here as I don't want to spoil the supprise but believe me... its looking quite nice :)  The title sequence is what I thought it would be for however its Very long... it'll be about a minute... for a two/three minute piece... lets see what the guys think tomorrow.  I'm very happy with the outcome.  If they decide that its not worth keeping I'll upload it... if not I'll keep working on it.  So far I've done Tom and Alecs Titles, Simons, Mine and TEAM AUTHENTIC to do!!!!

Just A Taster

Me just playing around a little ... maybe a teaser for whats to come if the guys in Authentic Like it... I may get the job of the title sequences ... I have idea for them but will explain it only to Authentic Members for now... Think it has potential though :)  So much to develop within it.

The First Scene

The Top image... its getting there but I still need to tweak a little bit in After Effects which I'm happy to do as after this it will look IMENSE!!!! Very happy with the images coming out and we fixed the light inside the bell (as it looked like it was coming out OF the bell) after a days work we are now rendering over the weekend.  I'll let you all know how it goes.  By the way - the moon... its a cheap trick with two moons so that we could keep the detail in the front moon but add the Glow given off without losing the details.  Alec and I worked on this shot together but I sorted all the camera angles and the moon after a great deal of grief.  The flag waving.... Alec taught a cheap trick using a deformer (wave) which'll simulate wind flowing in one direction by just animating the Offset and putting the infinity on Linear so it just keeps going throughout the whole scene.

Either way... I hope shot one is done now .... I'm excited to head back to Uni (sad isn't it) as not only is there my render waiting but also Simon's Occlusion pan around our set will be waiting.  We got a brief taster of it at 4 before we left and it looks great so far.  Its a 180 degrees spin around the front of our docks.  Took a long time to render and perhaps now we should test the Render Farm next week!!! Monday Morning I aim to render another test (the First scene again) just to get a comparison to see what happens between the one done on the local pc and then the one on the Render Farm, and just how much hassle will be involved.

Roll on Monday!

Thank You Mr Jones

Me and MR.....MRrrrr JONNeeees. We chatted for a while about a number of different Maya related things - all of which were really useful to know.  He showed us things which we had never seen before in Maya and taught us so much in his four days he dedicated to us.  I honestly cannot thank the man enough for all the effort he went to for us in an attempt to get the best out of us no matter what situation we put him in - messy outliners and messy files.  I'm glad we had him in and I dread to think where I'd be in a year from now if he hadn't of come in to speak to us.  He taught us so much in such a short space of time I just hope our paths cross again in the future.

Thanks Rob Lee Jones, This Blog Post Is For You :D

The Moon, Boat, and Opening Shot

Just a quick playblast... if the guys are happy hopefully we'll be able to render this shot soon ... maybe even tomorrow :D excellent!!!  Tom did the animation on the boat and I'd been working on the moon as I've already mentioned... we all attempted to create a moon however we all decided that mine fitted the storyboard (and we really liked that originally anyway) the most.  Woo hoo! Its all coming together.  Today we also finally put all our scenes together and Simon being a Saint went through Alec and Tom's Hypergraph and really cleaned it up!! IT WAS NOT PRETTY! We, Team Authentic, have now started animating, Alec is doing the Crows nest as I was really struggling and he is Lead Animator for the group while I'm doing the bell and other such bits and bobs.  Tom has animated the guys on the ships however I feel they are hardly visable in this playblast... they will be later on in the final render for definate.  Simon has begun to work on shot 4 man tying up his boat ... Shot 2 is Alecs crows nest and Shot 3 is the Telescope view of EVERYTHING.  I really can't believe that its all come together so well.  We are now getting renders out and Simon, whilst tidying up the Hypergraphs and Outliners Created Layers and set the different sections into layers so now we can render different areas for different shots.  I'm so impressed I'm going to stop typing now.  Just two more words - Happy BUNNY!!!!

Rob The God

Another day passed today with Rob Lee Jones.  Was great.  We did some 'house keeping' as he called it.  Basically we went through all of our files and renamed, regrouped and just generally tidyed up all of our scenes so taht we can render easily in layers which is very good news obviously as now we don't have to have THE WHOLE BACKDROP that Simon's been making (which looks awesome don't get me wrong) in the background when it won't  be seen.  Why have something being rendered if its just going to be covered by something else in shot?? NO POINT.

Rob basically explained to me in depth about a number of things such as Alpha Maps, Adding and Multiplying layers in AE, the importance of working to a set project as well as the use of referencing well in order to work sufficiently in a team.  No doubt in it I will be taking all of this into consideration next time I start my group projects... another day with Rob tomorrow'll be another good one I'm sure.

I don't know how, or why but at the start of the day - we could'nt render, at the end of the day we were getting some Great results... Rob's magic touch obviously.  Unfortunately most of the class didn't benefit from Rob being there as not many turned up but hey... I'm not complaining, it just meant that he could see the groups that were in more and help us all out more.  Was brilliant and Team Authentic walked away with a set number of things to do tomorrow as well as a good feeling that we felt all around with the number of renders we got to work!!!

WHeyyyy!

Moon Experimentation

The development of a moon....obviously none of this is the final thing but it gives the impression of the moon we are aiming for which is cool.  I started with just a white blinn and then went ahead and added a glowing one behind - I found the Glow wasn't enough without losing the indents on the moon if I just had one ...I therefore put another behind and added the glow so it poked out around the edge :) 

In One Word - Describe Today

'Hell' be that word!  With almost no positive outcomes of today we really struggled to render out any good shots.  We did however have a chat with Dan Dalli (or was this Monday I can't recall) about sorting out our project and textures.  We have now all finished the textures and modeling now and all we did today was tweak and reset the file's textures when importing with one another.  We saved them to the Public drive which we no is risky as anyone can delete but we have a back up on the Vanguard (Render Farm)  We struggled to set this up with our textures on but we managed to after messing around for an hour or so.  Strange thing is we are having a serious problem with Rendering in that we set something to Render and NOTHING comes out... it fails.  I may try and Render out a shot from Tom's and Mine together and then a Shot from the scene with Alec and Simon's in (the backdrop) and see if I can somehow Render it like this in two files (exporting the camera movements from one to another) and then render it ... compile in photoshop as different layers and possibly using an Alpha Mask.  Would really like to ask Rob Lee Jones about this problem however I'm not too sure about when he's coming back.  I think thats what I'll be doing tomorrow if I'm not animating the Crows Nest Shot.

Tom has been finishing his texures and models today while Alec has been practising his animation skills on a horse which looks great :) of course it does - Alec is doing it :)  Simon's houses again, top notch and adding more and more detail for the backdrop... however it all adds to our render time which apparently even the render farm can't handle.  I'm determined to get it going properly though.  I will try to Render the large scene in one, one more time and then move on to the split idea I had and see if that works.

If all else fails... playblasts... deleting history and try again.  Possibly delete history before and see if that makes a difference.  Either way I got pretty annoyed at the rendering situation as I sat there for the majority of the day sorting out files and watching Maya crash and burn as I hit 6 and it attmpted to load textures - I can't even check they work properly as it crashes everytime.   Maya is a good thing when it works how you want it.  Its like Oil.... works in your car and keeps it running most the time but can set alight and blow up with the strike of a match!!!!  Weird analogy but hey... I'm pretty shattered and it's been a VERY long day full of bad renders.

Summed up - got a few layers out of Mine and Toms however need to perfect how I will add different sections to the layers (eg Toms and mine ADDED to Alec's and Simons work).

I sit here now waiting for yet another Render to test on my slow Mac ... and now I have to paint weights again as Tom unfortunately did something to his Rig to deform areas of him BADLY.  Luckily I have a saved copy where I started painting them and can work on that.... here we go again....

Face Of Me

Now Its TIME for the MATHS :-

This 

Plus THIS

PLUS THIS AS WELL!!!

Equals THIS....

Wasn't too impressed with today.  Lacking the idea and spur to go on to be honest.  Have work in a moment so that's nothing to look forward to either especially when my renders I'm attempting to get out just aren't happening.  This is what I got out above and as you can see nothing too great really... *sigh* - *Blank look slapped accross Dan's Face*

Hey....at least it might render....eventually....this wasn't done correctly Though

FishEye Test

Using After Effects I managed to create the feel of a Fish Eye and our Desired Telescope (Buldge AE) along with the darkness around the outside... might be quite nice to have a rim or something around the outside... as I havn't really looked down a telescope in a while I may have to do a little research - if time... and if the group wants it.  Shall discuss it tomorrow providing everyone is in..... We came up with this to distort the image to cheat on walk cycles a little bit and therefore save time animating it properly... not that we WONT not animate it properly... just this way we can make mistakes and get away with it haha. 

Ok...I'll upload it again....soon as that clearly hasnt worked HAHA! 

'Why Not Post It' said the chicken to the frankfurter?

Blend Shapes...working at it a little bit.  Only spent a quick 10mins on it mind you so its not THAT much different.  I think I understand the kind of shapes I need in the middle of the ones I have at the moment though so hopefully this will be able 2 fit inbetween and make it look LOVELY....  haha.  And I also added another texture...clearly not visible in the playblast but just thought I'd mention it.

Literally Wacked On a Texture...

And there it is... done in the space of 5mins.. now I'm tired... Bah!

Telescope man... Untextured.

Hope you don't take it personally Tom... but I deleted most of your boat so that we could save on Render Time considering that it won't be seen in the shot that I'm working on.  It is a lovely boat yes... and we do need it yes - it'll b used in the first shot as you know however not the shot looking up at the 'telescope man'.  So yes anyway I've been working on the shot - just getting the finer details such as Blend Shapes - still need to do that... and playing around with lighting.  I think it'll look quite nice textured :)  As you can see from the images theres a range of lighting so the guys can pick their favourite and let me know how light to work in.  This might change once its textured but as long as we're all in the loop it'll be good.  Backgroud sky probably added in after effects but have not yet discussed it with Authentic Personel.

The Grog!!

This will be one of the shots (bell moved though) with a water plane and the silhouete of the boat in the distant background.  The Character will move along and pick up the Grog and check to see if its empty (blend shapes yet again for the Fluid) and as its not he'll take it with him on his journey!!! 

Nest

A little Taster... Don't worry I'll make it good :P

As I said...it needs work and I WILL make it better :)

Late In the Day But More Research:

Below is a sequence going from the final image composited to how they have developed the image itself.  I'm not sure exactly what Game these images are taken from as my Girl Friend found them and photocopied them for me....bless her lil cottons.  Anyway it shows the development from the simple block out to the detail in the houses and then onto the detail in the roads.  This can be looked at in another way - Rendering in Layers as you add the finer details and tweaking of roads etc to the end.  Also it suggests how we worked at the very beginning of blocking out our simple layout so we all worked to the same scale and the same style.  This I feel gave us an advantage so we did not have to resize with any major difficulties.

Below is another Image photocopied by my girlfriend Rach.  These two are useful.  Before characters are introduced and after.  You can also notice that the path has been added as they probably did some fine tuning of the image.  I could probably take a guess that there is about 4 or 5 layers of set in these images which were rendered out in different stages.

I even went to the effort to break it up for you:

Red = Forground - most detail for this shot

Yellow = Mid Distance

Green = Background - Least detail in this shot

Orange Dashes = LONG distance background eg sky and hils in the distance.

Blue = Character - added last obviously

Water Reflections

Phil (DDP Productions) and I were trying to experiement with Ocean Shaders and attempting to get reflections. I managed to get the scale set up appropriately however the reflections are still not quite correct which is a major bummer. I've been playing with specularity and the size of the waves. I attempted to move the lights and change the reflection and refraction limits. Above are those results. I'm really not happy with it just yet as I want more reflection. Considering Cheating and mapping it down once in after effects (cheat a little bit). More experimentation is needed still!

I'm getting too much light underneath the actual dock area which is where I want to get least light and more light out to 'sea' .... Hmmmm need to invert it somehow.... but HOW!? Its a thinkier...

Bell's and Bits

This image (Above) has been changed - its now less Gold... as you can see below :)

So yet again it's evident what I've been doing. I'm so close to finish texturing now... Hopefully I will have it done by the end of today and I can start Weighting my Character ... AGAIN. I found that the Gold I used as a texture didn't really work to start with as it was TOO gold for the look I was going for. I therefore went into Photoshop and played with the Levels. I didn't want to settle the original image as it just didn't fit. I'm glad I changed it as it will be essential for the opening shot.

The lights I think have got the correct texture now. I had kind of been putting them off as they had been combined together to make one model (along with the candle - even though I would like to do this better as well) and therefore was quite annoying to texture it. The Occlusion layer is just to test as Dan Edgley was having problem with his Occlusion Layer when he was rendering. Initially he thought it was because he was rendering with Mental Ray but I was as well so this ruleld it out. He copied the settings I used and still he was getting a pitch black screen. Finally I asked him to scroll out of his room and BINGO we found the problem. He had a Dome on top and therefore it was stopping all the directional light coming through and therefore NO occlusion could be created. I beleive he is now in the process of solving this problem which is good.

Telescope

The Telescope I've been developing... Its getting there but the Timing will have to be changed...and CAN be easily. Created using blend shapes Niiiiice and easy!

Ta-Da. Tom Modelled it to begin with and I alterd it with blend shapes to fit the drawings of Alec's Animatic.  Will soon investigate looking at Fish Eye Lens' to give the effect that was mentioned by the team to miss animating essentials close range.... our little way out of getting out of animating as its not essential for this project haha.

Today Today AGAIN textures? Nearly done now.

OkAyyyyyy. So today I did a wee bit of Lifedrawing with Sammy-boy Saunders which was great even if I wasn't too hot and quite out of practise.  Model seemed really 'draw-able' if you know what I mean without sounding weird or perverted... Anyway it was good even if I didn't like one drawing I did.  In the morning I managed to get a bit more texturing done.  Tomorrow I aim to finish all texturing and modeling (I can hope) and then move on to the painting weights on one of our character.  I know I need to model a bell for the stunning opening shot that Alec has set up for us.  Although I'm looking forward to the final render and completion of this project I am not looking forward to the terrifying problems which lie ahead - and I'm guessing theres going to be a few considering we are guinea pigs with the render farm - and Alec is unfortunately ill now (get well soon mate).  At least he's let us know - was good of him :)... good communication guys :D Overall the project is coming along I just wish it was moving slightly faster.  Unfortunately I keep working a lot as my contracted days seem to be this that and the other when I would much rather get cracking and stay behind for a few hours and do a bit more Medieval Maya modelling at Rave... Alas time is well spent when we are there.  I was fed up of waiting for about 2 mins for a render preview so I started using IPR renders to start with but still I couldn't really be bothered to wait around for that.  In the end I found myself looking at the Render Settings and going hmmmm what can I change - PRODUCTION QUALITY....Hmmmmm lets go 'draft'.  Considering the main image I was looking at was always in the foreground I really didn't need the amazing pixels in the backgroud looking really nice and textured so I set to draft and managed to get my Renders down by half the time.  Today I added a bit of variation in the arches (took a chunk out here and there) to make it less..... Samey (I HATED that in some older games - same texture and same model 5times in a row down one stretch of walk way you HAVE to take so you HAVE to see it.... anyway...).  I've also textured the cloth drapped over the stall with a cloth texture - how convinent.  Anyway I think it looks ok.  Had to repeat the UV's quite a few times but I think its ok.  Not sure about the Bump map just yet... might alter that a little bit.

Bored of typing now... so lets stick some images up.