Third Year Film: 2012

Saturday 26 May 2012

QC, what I learned from the media students

describe my problem solving of using one channel of colour to combat the issues we had with qc reports

encodeing - what i learned from framestore!

describe what I have learned from my time in the Framestore MCR

as far as chiaroscuro will go!

describe my time analysis and why i have called an end to chiaroscuro for the minute

developing the lighting/rendering of Chiaroscuro

modeling the chiaroscuro environment

compositing a live action animatic

creating cg animatic for chiaroscuro

describe creating the Animatic in maya

chiaroscuro project concept

describe how because i am not really doing any effects in going down, i want to do another project

The tie

describe how it was a late decision to use dynamics with the tie, and how the rig worked fine

testing the rig with my animations

rendering pipeline

describe my part in the render dev pipeline, tweaking lights then passing the files on

an exterior too??

describe how quite late i found out i had to pick up an exterior shot aswell!

lighting the lift

describe my simple approach to lighting the interior of the lift

rigging more or less done

describe how we have finished the rigging, and the animators are all set up and ready to go

setting up specific rig controls

describe in one post all of the specific rig controls such as high/low and animator specific

texturing the lift

describe my approch to texturing the lift

modelling the lift

show my progress on the model of the lift, from block out to completion

ive taken the lift

describe how i've taken on the whole lift, the modelling, texturing and lighting

office concepts

describe how there was some confusion and me and dave both did blockouts

working on going down rig

SOOOO i have been working on this pretty much since i started 3 days ago and its more or less set up to give to the animators!

So as ive already mentioned, I will be putting both characters on the same rig. I have started this now, in the same way i did the wizards for spellbound. To be honest there is not much different in the process apart from i am a lot more confident in what i am doing now than i was before! both characters should be rigged up basically soon so the animators can start blocking in their work!

block out lift!

So the animators wanted to get started right away so I have blocked out a lift for them to use and they have started playing with the characters we have already got.

what i gave them was literally just a cube, extruded outwards to form the basic dimentions of the lift. Detail will come later as they just needed somthing to animate to and our pipeline is focused on me getting the rigs out sooooon!

lift concepts, ref images

So I have been given the lift to design and model which i am quite happy with. Its not quite the cool effects work i wanted but i guess its somthing! I have looked at a bunch of lift pictures on google, and have seen that most lifts have a huge mirror in them!

not wanting to complicate things I am vito-ing the mirror from the lift and I am going to design one without.

no effects, so getting into environments!

describe how instead of spells and effects, i will be modelling, texturing and lighting!

planning for a new project!

so the new idea involves 2 characters, that are more or less the same. a guy/intern at a company, and a zombie, about the same proportions as the guy. the guy leaves work for the day and gets into a lift, only to be attacked by a zombie.

the end isnt quite worked out yet, but i'm sure we'll get there.

any way since the characters are the same proportions i will be rigging them both on the same rig. The animators should therefore only need to wory about one rig file, and any changes i make to one character will carry to the second. Its really efficient!

There may be some modelling to do too as i wont have effects to do any more.

pitching new ideas for films

So we have all had the christmas to think and come up with new ideas for our third year film. With only two terms to finish a film, its a risky move to start fresh, but we are all keen to work hard!

So we have all come up with story ideas. Mine involves the characters we have previously worked on, I'm trying one last time to keep it wizards as I love the idea.

We all pitched ideas and mine was dropped and so were 4 others. The idea we landed on was a simple one, Just two characters, 1 maybe 2 environments, and no effects...

i was very dissapointed about that last part. I wanted to work with a group who would be ambitious and daring to try some risky things, but i guess time is not on our side anyway so we are going for a safe option instead.

the film has been dropped

So although we tried to rectify the gaps in out narrative, i think we just made them worse. We simplified the story to an extent where it just wasnt readable any more. I think half of the problem was that we were trying to create a story for our cheracters, instead of characters to fit a story. Either way, we have taken a risky move and have dropped our current story in search of a new one. We have a group meeting soon to disscuss possible new ventures

troubles with the idea

After pitching the work we have done so far just before christmas, there have been some questions raised about the integrity of our story. I have been awear of these myself, but I didn't pay too much notice to them as I kind of figured for our group we were mainly technically minded. We have been re-working some of the elements of our story, and have dropped a character, a town and many props and really simplified it down, ready to pitch it again!

pitching my work to my group

So i think i finally have my fluids to the standard at which I am very happy. I have already taken on a lot of comments about the look and motion of them, however now i am ready to pitch them infront of the whole class, and to the tutors too.

I'm not too worried and more anticipating some good hard feedback. I have really enjoyed working these up and would like to get some professional views from my tutors and views from people at framestore also.

working up the fluids in maya

I have been working up the fluid spells in Maya and I am quite happy with how they are looking now, I have been mainly working on the vein wizzards spells which are to be floaty and cloudy.

The main concern at the moment is render time for fluids. I am still currently using my MBP that I got at the start of Uni, so i will be looking to upgrade my technology soon!

As for the look dev I have pitched this to my group mates and they replied with many comments and I have eventually worked up this final design

rigging with animators in mind

So now that the animators are happy with the arm and leg controls, they have asked that I move some of the joint rotations.... A bit of a pain as this basically means re-rigging, but I am whole heartedly rigging with them in mind! So I have implamented these changes for them!

the animators requests!

So the animators have asked for the rig to be set up with both IK and FK options that are independant of each other, so if they wanted one arm to be IK and one FK, and the legs to switch between the two half way through ect.

I have taken this to heart and I have implamented these changes into the rig. This meant setiing up switches on the rig controls that allows you to choose which method of joint solving you are using at any one time.

a creative back!

I have tried to be creative with these rigs.

I felt like 4-5 back controls is too much, it would be better to just position the top and the bottom, and let the rest of the back go where is logical! so i did this, i used my own system of constraints and control objects so affect the back at both points from both controls, with an extra control in the middle to teak the position

I think this worked well, but the moment I pitched it to the animators, they said they didnt like it and I tryst them, so i have also added the regular back controls as neccssasary

crafting the rigs

So i have also been working on getting the rigs set out for the two characters we have got right now. I'll do the third character as soon as it is available.

The rigging has gone well. I'm corresponding with nick and joe and then directly responding to their useful feedback. I think the best thing to do is know that they know what they want. what ever they ask for, they get (if its possible!)

So here are the rigs so far!

houdini too hard! back into maya!

After submerging myself in Houdini for weeks, and learning all about how you set up fluids in there, I have decided to come back into Maya

This is because although I have made progress with my learning, I don't think i will have as much control as i would like to have by the time that the deadline for the effects comes.

Since maya has a fluid system which is a lot more begginer user friendly, I think I will just use this.

houdini tests

So i have painfully creeped and tiptoed my way into partially understanding houdini's pop and fluid networks. They are very difficult! in a word. Because every node has a different piece of script attached to it, they all do different things. each node may only have a few lines, or it could have a whole page, depending on how complex the opperation is that the node achieves!

Here are the tests i came up with in houdini, they are not great but they are a start!

fluids in houdini

So after doing some fluids in maya, i have gone into houdini to work. i is actually so much different though. instead of some gui forms that you adjust attributes on, you have node trees in which each attribute is its own node more or less.

I have looked at tutorials on line but its still hard to get my head around what i'm supposed to be doing!

I have had a play though with the different elements and come up with the following test.

I have also taken some geometry from maya into houdini and used a geometry cache to preserve the animation on it. I will use this for practivcing the spells in houdini! I shall update on how this goes!

maya vs houdini!

I have been talking to some of the TD's at Framestore, and they said that they rarely use fluid systems in maya as they take a long while to cahce and compute. instead they recomended using Houdini by side affects.

houdini is a procedural node based program which is a lot more set up to deal with effects work and simulations. If you change one part of your simulation, you dont necessarily have to cache the whole fluid again!

It is a completely new piece of software so i will need to learn this from scratch, but it shouldnt be too bad as I am familiar with the concepts laid down in maya, i'm sure they are not a whole world different!

planning each characters spells

so i have come up with an idea of what i want the spells to look like.

Handsome wizard:
Floaty, fluffy, cloudy, light, bright, glowing, happy, energy,power, beautiful valor, auror, blue, purple, red, smokey, magical, delightful, sparkley

Crude wizard,
Sludgy, goo, dripping, wet, cold, foul, odor, stench, horrible, old, festering, green dark, deadly, skulls, juju, foggy, murky, dirty, ghastly, garish

using these words i have crafted a couple of concept designs for the spells

different characters, different spells

it has occured to me that since we have two characters that use magic, with two personalities, we could and should have two different styles of magic that reflect their personalities. Since one is handsome and one is crude, theyre spells could reflect this.

one set of spells is sludgey and dark, the other is floaty and light!

this will be really interesting as it will require me to develop two opposing styles of fluid spell! I also think think this will aid the narrative and help build the characters personalities well.

I would like at all times for the audience members to know whose spell is whose.

3 characters defined!

so our three characters have been defined, we have 2 wizzards and an old man:

The handsome wizard:
This guy is the tall, broad shouldered, muscly strong, jawed
The rig will need to reflect this, the joint chain will be evenly distributed with the joints closer to the inside of folds such as under the shoulders. this will accentuate the buldges of the muscles when he moves his arms

The crude wizard:
This guys is spindly and hunched, he might also be tall if he stands up straight but he is crooked. he has long limbs and a long tall head, so his jaw will be enlongated. he has long thin fingers too. the joints will sit in the moddle of the geometry to make him move like a skeleton

The old man:
Small and compact, this character is like a box. small limbs, big smile, no neck archeched back.
like a hamster on its hind leg. short steps. the lenght of the joint chain will need to reflect this.

I will begin rigging as soon as i get the drafts are in and the dimensions are decided

multiple rigs

for the spellbound project we are planning to have 3 characters, two tall wizzards and one small old man. This will mean that we have to create multiple rigs to suit diferent models. This will require starting right from the joint chains, so i will need to rig the models in the same way for continuity in controls for the animators to deal with.

This will be tricky, and a lot of work but as the theory is the same for all characters, its just the lengths and exact keyed attributes that really matter.

I will be directly trying to rig with the animators in mind so i will be asking for their feedback and updating the rig accordingly

rigging the characters!

As well as effects, which i've concentrated on mainly so far this project, i am also the character rigger. I have been given the first draft of a character to play with.

I have done some rigging before so it is quite familiar to me what the process involves. Here is my current level of understanding:

To Rig Characters:

1) start with the mesh of the character in maya, plan out where you will place main joints such as shoulders elbows, knees, ankles ect. plan these out with locators for snapping later.

2) build a joint chain around the mesh and the locators, rename the joints as you will need to identify them later

3) use rotate plane and single chain solvers to map out where joints will need to rotate around, use RP for inverse kinimatics, and SC for forward kinematics

4) with thes Ik handles set up and named, a control system needs to be built around them

5) as the mesh is mainly going to be polygon geometry, it makes sense to use curves as they can be isolated away easily

6) add any extra attributes onto the rig such as set driven keys, blendshapes and pre-animated joints

7) skin the rig with the geometry and paint influence via a weighting system

8) TEST!! always test, adapt and improve, get feedback!

So here is the test rig i came up with for the animators to play with and get back to me on about improvements for when i make the first character rig for spellbound!

going with fluids!

I have been doing some experimenting in Maya and I have found that fluids are definitely the way to go with the spells I am going to be making.

Particles are very useful for some things, but simply cannot be used for everything. I have some experience with emitters of that kind, however fluids are completely new to me.

A fluid in maya is generated by creating a container that is full of contingent parts called voxels, each voxel is sort of like a coordinate system that plots many dimensions of movement, pressure, mass thickness, temperature... many many things.

For this reason they are very computationally heavy, and require a lot of technical training in order to understand how to utilize them properly.

I will be immersing myself in Maya over the next couple of weeks to try and understand the many aspects of how to control these elements

particles vs fluids

give a description about how particles and fluids have different attributes that can benefit spells

I have been looking at different methods for creating spells in Maya. It seems like there are two viable options for the kind of things i want to achieve. I really liked the style of the spells in harry potter that i included in the last post, however i'd like to push them more.

In harry potter, the spells are quite subtle as they need to intergrate well wth live action in the real world setting. as our film will be set in a 3D environment, with a more cartoon like style, I think bigger, more exaggerated spells are more what I would like to achieve.

I have found the following videos that have given me a hell of a lot of inspiration and scope into what is possible in 3D. Particles and Fluids seem to be the way to go, but I'm not completely sure which yet.. I will need to experiment and see which methods product the best effects, literally!

planning for spells!

So I am to be making spells for our film. At the moment i do not really know exactly what they will be visually, or how they will be used, but I really like the spells in harry potter. They are simple, yet very effective. usually just being an extrusion of smoke, or a flash from the wand, but sometimes being elegant huge spiraling towers of fire or fluid. I think as these are quite contempory films, they will be my main source of technical inspiration. they all look very nice, even when freeze frames on every frame, so i will study them carefully to see what aspects of them i like, and which i think can be improved on.

what i want out of spellbound

i would like the experiences on this project to teach me a lot about effects, by that i mean that to give me experience in creating fluid containers from scratch. I would like to learn about voxel fluids particle fluids, particle simulations, rigid body simulations, cloth simulations. I would also like to try out conception and previs for effects, then doing them, as this will teach me how to take a concept given to me by a director or client, and work it up to a final effect that could be used in a film or commercial.

i would like to develop my artistic skills, and get an eye for composition and color, as this will help me in the future in setting up shots to maximize their presence on screen.

I'd like to build my team skills, and have experience of working different roles within a pipeline of people. i have worked as a freelancer before, so i am familiar with doing everything myself, but i would like some experience in working a specific role of a job. Learn about dependencies, and how they can affect deadlines and the work of others.

I would also like to get a lot of nice showreel pieces for my portfolio. I am looking to move into effects at some point, so it would be nice to have enough by the end of this project to build a first real effects reel.

dividing roles!

So for this group project, instead of us all doing a bit of everthing, it preserve continuity, we will each be taking on specific roles in the group. My roles are to be the character rigger, and the effects TD. The responsibilities of these roles are as follows:

Rigger:
I will be in charge of giving the characters a control system and and skeleton, and set them up for the animators to use in our film. This involves first taking a model, and laying out a skeleton like joint system around each joint. These are then set up with a moveable set of pivots with specific attributes called an IK system. As this IK system is a little hard to get a hold of, you can then set up a control system on top of this to make a user friendly GUI for an animator who does not have a technical understanding of character rigging to use.

Effects TD
TD covers a wide range of jobs, and my other ole on this project is mainly concerned with effects and simulations. There will be a lot of spells flying about and complex prop animation to do, so I will be using a wide variety of tools such as partical networks, rigid bodies simulations and partical/voxel fluid containers. This also involves a lot of rendering and lighting knowledge, so I will also be setting these elements up. Often spells will also need to be physically animated with keyframes and animation paths so, as well as props need to be modeled in a particular way, or stand in props may need to be made for other reasons.

So a lot to do, but I'm very excited about this project!