PlayBlast_Upload

Half of the shots I got through just to get an idea of different cameras we can use!  Think we'll be changing the idea from mine to Alecs to be honest - Sorry about the poor quality it didn't want to upload a big file so I ended up shooting it on my phone and re-importing it all - have to do it the long way!

Friday Friday Friday....Please I Don't Want to Render!

So we were looking at a compiation of all the files put together, talking about camera shots and what not today.  Tom had unfortunately left at this point however we still looked at his work as a three as well as our own.  Earlier in the day we had Mike Hirsh's Contextual Studies lecture about composition and about how to draw the eye.  This was really useful as we needed to start thinking about our shots in terms of composition for when we finally render.  If its not in the shot we shouldn't really need to model it/texture it that detailed/well.... If you can't really see it who's going to notice?!? haha.

Anyway We came up with a D/Loadable storyboard - on the Authentic - extract from the file and then it should open like a dream.  Alec did all the leg work of drawing which was good as he's a great 2D and 3D artist.  I personally am very happy with it so far and think it has a lot of potential.  We also looked at how we can lower the Poly Count and delete some unneccesary faces and things that wouldnt be seen.  Alec mentioned a reduce Polygon tool which I'm going to look into.  This could save our renders from crashing!  I had a majorly-Render-burdened day with every time I was attempting to render out a Occlusion Pass it jst came out blank white.  Not too sure why as a single frame works on my file and then I put it into the Render Farm and nudda.  Anyway - We'll deal with that later on.  We went through a few of my models and decided to rid of a couple here and there and simply re-model some things so they have fewer polygons - plus they'll be easier to texture!! :D I still think the team is working REALLY well together and i don't think I'd change it as everyone is pulling their weight now and this once - Simon's Vision has been shared across the group and we have realised that we've done something that looks quite good considering... at least we think so! haha.  Just have to keep on cracking on!

Been Texturing 2night:

I'm not too happy with these ladder textures as of just yet but I know they are kind of impossible to texture as the model is modeled a bit... specially to say the least.  This might have to either make it again or to make sure the camera doesn't see some parts of the model - a lil tip I heard from Rob Jones :p

Whhhhy?

Ok, SO i attempted to render out some 'cloth' floating and flapping in the wind however I got home from work and it had only done about 40 frames.... so I kind of canceled the Render... Yeah.... wasn't going to hang around until midday tomorrow to figure out how it looked when I could either use the Render Farm of Simply do a Playblast for starters.  I was Just practicing Rendering Using Passes though :D I know how to now!

When It Was All going so well...

Everyone loves to laugh at technical faults... heres just a couple I've just experienced:

My Manipulator went a bit spaz on every object... this was after texturing those Damn nice sheilds ...nice and easy but was just gettin the hang of it lol  Problem solved by....  Quitting Maya and re-booting it.

This one was easier to get out of  I was working with the Old best plane Texture Tool.... all I had to do was click the Arrow to get back to normal... Still it stumped me for a few mins while I figured out why everything was almost flashing when I clicked it on....off....on....OFF...>ANNNNDDD THEN I KINDA WENT INSANE A LIL BIT.... 

A Part of me that used to like the colour yellow died a little.

We've learnt how to Render in Passes!

AWESOME!!!  - See my Technical Journal for details on how this is done.  Was a really good talk we had with Rob Jones though.  He's a very knowledgeable man when it comes to Maya, Rendering and Compositing and I'm very glad that he came in to talk to us if only for just a couple of days at a time.  I just wish there were more time with him allowing us to gain more and more from him.  Simon and I (as I'm sure everyone else were that attended) were very happy with the way he took the group as if he'd been teaching us the time and did the best to see everyone the way that Jared does.  Glad he was knowledgeable and he could answer our questions we had when it came to Maya even though he covered most of it in his lecture!  Was a very useful lecture - THANKS!

RRrrrrrENDER

This Data goes with the above image.

Playing around on The Old AE!  Just me playing around with the Diffuse, Occlusion (think thats spelt right) and then the shadow layer.  I used two Diffuse Layers came out with an interesting effect.  Did not use a Specular layer as I had no Phongs/Blins so no shiny reflections would be created at this present time.  Each one is slightly different and different is good so we can choose a final style(or maybe 's) for our render.

Texturing I'm struggling with but I shall Practice I Tell Thee!

     

First few attempts at texturing - I believe its due to the modeling I've done as I didn't exactly model it well for texturing - Damn, Have I learnt my lesson - Yes.  I shall try and come up with something that looks similar to the top middle however I dont want it stretched across the middle area.  I can see this being a problem for this and a few other models I have made.  OhBoy!

Face

 

I've been modeling that Characters Face - not too well though as he's just a background chap I'll upload images one day.

Here they are now... just a couple of the character.  Not textured obviously.

And no he's not attractive as he's just going to be a background fella.

Model That Garment...Ahhhhh Yeahhh

Ok so tonight I've been playing about with Modeling the Garment which Tom drew in his sketch (see Authentic)... Its not going too badly so far.  This was suggested by Jared - Extruding the faces of the 'skin' and then moveing the geometry as I see fit.  I also thought of another way which would be Duplicating the whole mesh.  Expand it a lil and deleted the faces above below and on the end... thus making a shape of it however it would be more difficult to get this object to stay with the model unless bound and weights painted AGAIN (as well as on the human's skin itself).

Note to self. 0.27 scale once exported fits like a DREAM.

Week 6 Review:

And So another week has gone by and more work has been completed and mroe work has been found for us to be doing - isn't it ALWAYS the way.  You think you've got something JUST right and then something else comes along and you think - My GOD if we do this it would be awesome!!!!  So now we are changing the script slightly - for the better I feel.  I think the workload which everyone is doing at the moment is going quite well - but I still think we need to step up the pace slightly.  Texturing is going to be fun... :S I think I'm actually going to begin to have nightmares soon about them swallowing me up within photoshop and someone slowly rubbing me out with the eraser while I'm pinned down to a metal table - the one's like in James Bond "What do you WANT?! - YOU EXPECT ME TO TALK!?.....Nooooo Mr Bond I Expect You To DIIEEEE!" haha.  Jared spoke to us Friday which has really cleared my head on a script - which I just couldn't seem to get from the other guys but all seems to be better now.  The script previously was 'iffy' as we just all just kinda thought we'd figure it out as we go - however now we're working on the character it's kind of difficult to stylize him fit for the role he will need to play.  I'm glad we have a human Character though as I believe this will teach me to model, Rig, Paint Weights again properly.  A very handy and transferable technique.  I'm quite excited to see a few other peoples pieces of work as they are all looking so great now.  We all have to stay focused though to make our own - slave away at a computer for hours on end just for the final product so the team can say 'We made that'.  I just hope the last few weeks really go as smoothly as the rest of them have been to date.  Only time will tell now

Blend Me SHAPE Me - Anyway You Want ME

   

I've been playing about with faking cloth here... I hope it looks like that and not a lot of random distorted planes.  The idea is that I'm going to animate the 'cloth' that's actually a poly plane shapes like cloth using a series of Blend shapes.  I have actually done an animation rendered it out and everything however Blogspot really does not want to upload it at the moment (I believe my Internet is temperarily slow due to downloads on another machine in the house).  I shall attempt to upload it another day or possibly at Rave.

My thoughts on the test were that it was successful in refreshing my memory in how to do Blend Shapes however for it to be convincing to the eye to be cloth a further development stage and a lot more practice will have to take place.

Telescope Sketch

A couple of sketches which I did at home for the telescope idea.  As I can't use Maya too much at home now a days as cloth appears to be broken I can only Model and play around with geometery in the older saved files I have made - the ones pre-cloth (even though we had taken the cloth out again afterwards)  Anyway I just thought I'd whip together a sketch or two as I feel a bit Pen handy today and am in the mood of sketching!! :D