Friday 30 April 2010

My Shot List

My Shot list so far:

Shot 1 (Door) - Footsteps needed added pre door opening
Shot 5 (Fan)
Shot 12 (Face - Window....I think Ferhan has done this shot) - tbc
Addition - Shot 16 (Ferhans - Look down scope)
Shot 20 (Trigger Finger Close Up)
Shot 26 (Against Wall - Bullets in - slide down wall)
Shot 27 ('Fake Shot' Hitman reloads against wall - Through wall to Target.
Shot 35 (Door - Pause - Hitman bursts in the door)
Shot 42 (Close Up of Gun swing to light)
Shot 47 (Over Hitmans shoulder - Ninja party outside. Look left and right.


BLUE MEANS COMPLETE....
ORANGE MEANS ALMOST THERE
Black is to do!

Shot 16

I did step this first but it was so quick I just thought I'd leave the post until I had a Spline block out for the animation. It seems to vary on the shot and the timing when I use stepped but it works most the time. Got this shot done in a few hours - still needs tweaking in areas - eg the right hand slides too much and possibly the shoulders. I'm happy with it so far though considering our previous rig - pre Yaniv helping us (forgot to mention that - Yaniv rigged another hitman quickly in a day - by no means its not perfect - the weights in areas such as the hands and legs were awful but he did give us a facial window and rotating shoulders around a point - Stewarts rig didn't allow this so this was a major bonus and a MUST have for this shot. This was originally Ferhans Shot however he couldn't pose the hitman correctly so we both agreed I should have a go - which I believe I have managed to do quite successfully so far.


Question is... should I lift up his sunglasses to look through the scope on one side .... or leave it... Hmmmmm discuss tomorrow. Hope Sam is in....

Thursday

Got a fair bit done today as Ferhan and I were in all day - early to late. Stewart said he was going to join us in the afternoon after he finished work but he never showed - just hope he's animating away.... Ferhan has taken one of his shots while I was weighting another character. (Ninja) which is now complete... I had a quick go at texturing but I wasn't happy with the outcome. I came home and had to do a few more website things - This weekend is going to be the last few days of that as I am going to give out the embed codes and speak to the directors individually so they can help their own teams out when the links go crazy.
Fuzzio (Ferhan) and I are planning to come in Tuesday... I think that's what we decided - he doesn't do Fridays but I'll be in dropping off cash to Carole anyway and I want to speak to Spencer... if comes in... he said he would on Monday but didn't unfortunately - not sure why.
I'm still confident that we can finish the film even with the inconsistent team being in. I think the shots have been planned well and Ferhan is now doing extra shots as he's completing his quickly and efficiently :) The animation can still be tweaked but I still think its better than last years haha.

Wednesday 28 April 2010

My Days Progress

I was in college all day today. We had a lecture from Frontier Games and Dave came up to talk to the few third years that were around. He seemed like a nice guy which was good. Unfortunately Dave missed Gnomes, Red Rock, and the recently abandoned Dummy due to the lack of people in on a Tuesday. Still I invited him to the degree show and hopefully he'll be another contact to come along. Mike said he had seen our submission for Rave Live 2010. I personally wasn't happy with it - a number of shots missing and the timing a little off - animation a bit dodgy as well - but we've been working on that for the last 4 days and I think we now have a MUCH better standard to render off I'm happy to say.

Other News:
Website:
Website is almost done now. Spent about .... 12 hours straight - with a few breaks of leaving college and driving and eating food and drinking and.... you know... a few 5min breaks.... but I've been altering things today on the website. Its finally taking shape - We now have e-mail addresses of the Directors except for Red Rock as I have still received nothing from them for their project page so I figured no point in doing anything for them if they aren't bothered.

Final things to do still .... add personal contact pages E-mail Address for each person under the project and sort out whats happening about a number of people.... eg Quirke, PB (believe he's left now unfortunately). Also have to contact Max AGAIN to get those top heads up the top for animation. Mind you I believe that if he doesn't do it by Friday - there will be extra images as Sarah is planning some doings with me tonight about extra photos for the site.

Anyway... enough about what I HAVE done... now what I haven't....
I feel bad for the team that I have been doing only 'admin' style stuff and NO animation or rendering or anything. I haven't been animating today or Monday too much - feels like I've done bugger all this week so I just felt that I should apologise... I'm finding time to criticise and tell people exactly whats wrong with their animations but I don't seem to be able to sit down and do any myself. I think I should be doing it along with the team - getting as much done as possible.

Forecast:
Tomorrow I'm going to be 90% Animation (I hope). Its going to be a LONG day lol.
Sam finally posted up some images of the exterior texture. There are a number of colour changes I personally would make as at the moment the eye is drawn to the wrong locations... but I'm sure Sam is now aware of this and will be fixing it over the next day or so.
Still waiting for Spencer to get back to us about the textures of the room - the FINAL version. He says its finished however we still don't have them. He said he would bring them in Monday however he didn't come in. Hopefully he'll pop in tomorrow (Wednesday) as Ferhan and I are planning to do a LONG day of animation which will be good.

Oh and before I forget I have finally picked up a copy of 2009 Imagine Animation Directory considering that Dan Dalli was going on about. Just got to open the first page and get some good companies interested. Going to call in Sam and Simon I think and get them to give me a hand too - speak to James Taylor tomorrow about an e-mail going out from Inside Out - possibly admin@insideout.co.uk or whatever it would be sending it out... send this to companies to spark an interest and have a browse round the site... the NICE AND SHINY WORKING SITE!!!!

Tuesday 27 April 2010

Cheeky lil bit of compositing

http://vimeo.com/11099712
Enjoyed watching this however it crosses the 180 degree of action line in one shot just before the end which made me get a bit lost ... but its still pretty cool for compositing and lighting on the shots.

Monday 26 April 2010

Website Update


So I was at work today and after about an hour in heat of the poolside chair I was beginning to think about project work... I went out after for a few drinks... but I the main point... was that I had a brain wave - I won't go into the in's and outs of what I've done but .. basically a number of conversations I had with people and a number of different things I have tried today have WORKED... and the links work... so - in theory the site is SO nearly ready for industry - all we need now is every students work - I'm going to put up pictures... with links to their pages so that we no-longer have to wait for Max to put the images at the top - THAT I can't do. I'm glad I finally figured out a lil HTML coding - I'm not perfect by any means... but I'm really getting somewhere now (maybe I'm being a bit over confident here...)

I was actually itching to head home from the drinks tonight to try this... so i'm glad it actually worked. I'm updating the Whack'd Teams personal pages eg Mine, Sams, Joshs etc... and next up I shall be putting up Phils considering he was so ready to have his images up both persoanal and project.

Phil/Sam/ANYONE if you read this - would STILL love for you to help me out with those front page words. Please e-mail any suggestions to my e-mail.
d.w.shufflebotham@rave.ac.uk
Dan :)

Sunday 25 April 2010

Development of Shot 1

Trial 1


Trial 2


Trial 3


Trial 4 - Final version... Ooo... not too bad... at least I think this might be final... so yeh... I might set it 2 render... but get Double D to have a look at it as well.... Obviously it'll cut earlier than it goes on this playblast though


Saturday 24 April 2010

Today is a Saturday

Been fixing my previous weeks animations... with some extras that are going to look Shweeeeet. Update hopefully coming later.... depending on my girl friends internet.

Also things to blog about - Frontier Games Nick Rodgers.

Read... the image?

These initial concepts on the left were drawn by either Sam or Josh... the renders on the right were composited by either myself or Sam - credit must be given where due :)

So yeah... we got the Rave Live submission in A-Ok. We have an uncompressed copy of the trailer - although its not the BEST animation in the world we can now improve on that. We had actually animated 1 fifth of the film in just a couple of days - GO TEAM!!! WOOP WOOP! looks like this film is getting made. Mind you it seemed to JUST be me rendering currently.... and the rendering was all done FULLY - (not right) Simon made me realise that we should be having stills behind our character to cut down the rendering time - why render out 100 frames of the same image... SILLY. so yeh we are doing that. I had done it once in the previous renders but it just DIDN'T click until I had finished rendering most of them lol. Nevermind - Ben was a tricky one to find - had a heavy night I believe at the Rave Live fundraiser - but we still got it in to him pre- Industry Day happenings.

Industry Day - networking opportunity and obviously a change to get the Degree show invites out.... well not the invites but we can hand out the business Cards we have currently - cheers Chelsea - she... and Jodie came through and we got a stash of them now. Handed some to Jared as I saw him walking past. I gave one to the young lady from Media Molecule (I keep forgetting her name), Simon was offering one to Splash Damage and then finally I managed to give one to the lead lecturer (think hes a journalist) while Sam was giving another to the gentleman from EA! Woop. The lecture itself was unfortunately very similar to everything we had heard before but - obviously all very relevant to all the 3rd years and anyone attempting to find work now. I think it kind of dawned on a few people in the lecture that WE are not 3rd years.... WE need to find jobs.... Obviously one man was not afraid to jump out of his seat at the end - JB like a rocket up there to speak to them... elbows raised (I joke) but he was pretty quick off the mark I'll tell you that... a lil like road runner ... pretty sure I heard a MEEP MEEP as well.

But yeah.... thats all cool... now just gotta perfect some animations I've already done - DO all that After Effects magic again I did for the trailer - as well as a SHITE load more problems to deal with I'm sure.

I'm not going to lie - I didn't pick up the animation book - Dan Dalli was talking about - I'm starting to feel a bit **** about that tbh. I asked Sam to help me out ... he said yes but I could tell he wasn't feeling it ... so I told him not to worry. I just wish we had an up to date list ... or we just DIDN'T have Mike Smiths list (that was already dated.... and told us our list was dated....bah) nevermind - misunderstanding on all our parts I'm sure. So I'll get on that after some naps and snoozes over the weekend and obviously....a HELL load of work.

Thursday 22 April 2010

Logo.... Which one?





Ok so Rave have a new logo... fair enough .... some people don't like it... some people have grown to accept it.... what I want to know... is .... why can't they STICK with ONE logo... and not just get some child to make another version? THEY AREN'T EVEN BEING CONSISTENT NOW.... come on.... do you want to be treated as a joke?!

Note - look at the angle of the third triangle across to the right - doesn't match. Both taken from 'RAVE' websites.... PAH! This annoys me a little - we are considered to be people graduating from a PROFESSIONAL institution that doesn't one Logo... but a few triangles you put together and HOPE it will look like what symbolises Ravensbourne - I duno if anyone else has noticed ... but nevermind. My rant is over... for now.

Next up THIS will be the logo - ' ||| ' - can't you see - its the logo from the side?
ok... NOW the rant is over.

Well...

What an interesting couple of days!!!
If you havn't been in college much you may have missed out. Had a drop in from Loren H who is taking over from Laura Bell for animation I believe. She came and promoted the Industry Day to us. I have had previous contact with her as I had already been attempting to contact a company - Gamolia - which I managed to talk Sarah into applying for as well (I hope) - if you don't try you don't get in this world :p. Anyway - she popped in to our room and reminded us all about the different sessions going on and reminded us it was all for our benefit - I doubt many will listen but I sat up and gave her the time of the day. Not only for politeness but what she was saying was interesting. Sparked my interest actually and got me thinking. A number of industry contacts - great Networking event and of course a great opportunity to get people to come to our degree show. I finished off a render at Rave - transferred all the files I needed and headed home. Whilst packing up I was talking to Si about the bits and bobs we all need to get cracking with for the degree show - Contact list - going to get on that this weekend I hope (I aim to anyway) and of course networking in general. Then theres the money collecting which is going slow. Got a few names crossed off - some which I wouldn't have thought of but all the same - they got it done and I won't hassle them again for the cash.

Heading home I was thinking about the Industry day tomorrow - networking ... and then for some reason the business card I had in my bag - given to me from Chelsea Palmer (Graphics Rep) jumped into my head - industry contacts need to know about where we are going to be and WHEN. SO LETS TELL THEM. I got on the blower to Chelsea and asked if we could have some to give out tomorrow - and she kinda went... 'OH SHIT' good idea - surprised they missed that opportunity - GO ANIMATION! so hopefully... Chelsea can get them off of JODIE who has them ....at her Dads house who's... moving?.... ..... don't ask.... I didn't lol anyway - Chelsea assured me they will be ready for collection at 9am - I said we don't need them til 10 but cool!

So thats another upper....
oh - I forgot to mention - rendering is underway - at least for Rave Live. We have a total of... 9 shots I believe well underway and we are now struggling with the hitman and the briefcase and lighting and all kinds to get a reasonable render to hand to Ben Keswick in the 2nd year. We have a version finished now actually ( 20:00) but needs a little work - so requested until 11am 2mr which he was very happy to give us (Cheers Ben). So tonight - Rendering Joshes shots - which I've just done and they look SWEEEEEET so far and also gathering SFX for the teaser. Shouldn't be too difficult to gather the SFX as I have the SFX hard drive.
I managed to alter some of the timing with Sam - only for some of the shots. Not happy with my previous rendered versions so will re -do one of them from scratch probably and the other (shot 1) I am quite happy with.

Sam is keen on changing a lot of shots as he gets it though - I'm very against this as it messes with timing of the animatic and pacing of the film. YES there are better shots we could - but I'm not entirely sure they will work considering Lewis is now working on the music to HIS animatic ... the one which is a bit fast paced and I originally said that it was but let it slide considering everyone in my group said it was ok... We can work around it though - we will always find a way through.... even if we change the animatic AGAIN.

In other news I've been doing some 2D effects in After Effects - you'll see in the Trailer in submission (may post it up here eventually) Things such as Grading in the first shot (Sam helped here initially) and the fade from black and the light under the door to start with rather than the entire room.... and the screens turning on inside the briefcase... IF YOU CAN SEE WHATS WRITTEN IN THERE - brownie points. I wrote it but most of it is absolute **llocks. lol. But yes - a productive day - and I unleashed the Power of AFTER EFFECTS on Sam which he was a bit weary of. Sam and I kept checking Fuzzio (Ferhan). His animation is really getting better which I'm glad about and I'm thinking that if we run into trouble at all with any shots that say myself, Sam or Stu run out of time with he said he would be happy to take them up.
We are still waiting on Stu's rendered shots he started last Friday - hes got him shutting the door and walking a few steps into the room. Looks ok but I wish it was rendered already :p for Rave Live 2010. Other than that.... Josh has been working from home as has Spence but finally Texturing has been completed in the Apartment - need a target texture still - but I think Spence might cry when he see's the lack of WRISTAGE and NECKAGE - which I'll have to re-assure him I can fix in AE.... which I REALLY hope I can.

I think thats all my thoughts down for now. Just checked one of the renders of Josh's.... I really like the floor ... not quite sure why to be honest but I am happy with it :) haha. and the lighting I did in the room - am liking it which is Cooooool.
HAHA...checked the second render - on another Mac - I'M RENDERING NOTHING....Oooo joy :p hahaha funny now.... wouldn't be if it was a week prior to deadline!!! lol DAMN THOSE LAYERS SOMEONE HAS SET UP - eugh...always check that.... MUST CHECK THAT *slaps head*...right.... got it.

Oh and sorry if this is all jumbled up in this post.... sleep and me don't go well together these days.

Wednesday 21 April 2010

Shot 4 - Blocked out...ALMOST

Ok.... so I've rendered a version of Shot 1 for the Rave Live doo-bree - I've also added some AE magic to it - looks pretty hot now so is staying off the blog. Heres Shot 4 though what I've been working on in the mean time.



Still needs plenty of work - I know. Work in progress so... all is good. Timing is a little off as well in a few areas. Need to sort a number of things though. Will get on it in the morro - tis 1.30 and I want to get a good nights snooze 2night. Night late night world.

Tuesday 20 April 2010

Invites

Just when I was in the FLOW of animation... BAM - Chelsea from Graphics give me a call and cuts my flow RIGHT out. BAH. Ok so it was sort of important.... havn't a clue how or WHO she got my number off but nevermind about that for now.
She was ringing to talk about invites and she wanted to show me the printed version of their invite and they wanted someone from Animation to OK the digital version or whatever - shall see tomorrow. Anyway even if it isn't exactly what we are looking for we can alter some text etc - but I think it should be fine - meeting tomorrow and got her number as well incase we can't find her. Going to be BUSY bees tomorrow in Rave!

Shot 1 - Animated


My first animated shot for now.
Shot 1 so far - I may come back to this shot later on in the day and look back and change it ... normally do with a fresh pair of eyes. But for now... Next SHOT! Lets set it up and get cracking :)

Ok - Too much wiggle in the hips.... lol will change that!

Got a TIGHT deadline

At the moment team Whack'd are attempting to meet the Thursday Deadline for Rave Live submissions.
So far I've done One out of the three shots I need to do. Have not yet rendered any mind you- Shouldn't take too long to render them but still... will be nice to have a few in the bag - I think I might go back and re-render the starting shot again attempting to get it better at a later date however this will be ok for a trailer I think :)
I'm happy the way I've picked up the animation again - I believe I'm getting better an better at it all the time and I'm getting more and more keen on it. Originally I was a lil sketchy as I didn't really understand it but as mentioned previously - I some how remember all that Dan Dalli, Mike, and Jared have taught me in year 1 and 2 of animation and I think it's beginning to pay off ... I hope. Either that or Dan D and Mike are going to read this and say - well he clearly hasn't because his animation is **** ... but hey - I'm getting better I feel. Can't wait to do a bit more.
The group - Josh and Sam were having issues with the hitmans wrists as well as the briefcase - for my shot I parented the case to the wrist - however they want to remove this parent. They couldn't seem to figure it out. Wasn't too difficult to figure out and Josh managed to after a few hours of playing and giving up and playing again I hear. I'm glad he managed to do it on his own :) Sam I phoned and spoke he through it and said it would literally take like 2 mins. The group need to use the Outliner more. It all makes sense in there (most my files do anyway). In the end I left a new Hitman with the briefcase OPEN ready to take parts out on the ADrive for the group in the correct folder. On top of that I posted a help tutorial kinda thing for the guys describing how to use the briefcase etc.


Website
I keep having to stop and do other bits and bobs ... admin styleeee - website stuff. Got most of the 100 words now but have given up chasing them and left them for Double D to run after. I have now sent out an e-mail requesting images from peoples bloggers and told them useful info about what to put on project pages / personal pages. I gave them a deadline of the 3rd May - so that its not TOO late it'll interfer with their other deadlines.
I still need to hunt down Max - but I know hes got Rave Live to organise as he's head of online - this is for the heads at the top of the page - its not user friendly as of yet - eg you can't navigate without changing the address in the 'www.' section :p. Not entirely sure how difficult it would be to alter the site with the heads- could be a copy and paste job from moving image/graphics and then altering images and links to pages in the HTML - which I'm getting quite quick with now....


Dan Dalli requested that I take out Dummy off the Animation screen .... easily done - already changed after a few hours. The page still exists - just the link will hidden away for now.

Other
We had a fundraiser yesterday and again managed to raise a fair bit of cash.... we currently have £100 in pound coins.... + a fair amount of notes (not guna say how much) We did quite well yesterday however I think we couldn't have sold many more - 18 dozen ... is about our limit I think guys! lol. Thanks to all that helped out - Simon and Sam especially.
Need to get on the ball with the degree show list asap now. Have been letting that one slide for a long time. I may ask Simon to give me a hand with it - I think he's helping render for PO atm so if he could do some degree show stuff - take the burden off me would be helpful... I assume you'll read this Si :D you lil blog-watcher.


In general - I'm feeling a little better about it all now - maybe my brain is blocking all the important deadlines we've got coming up... or maybe I'm just being ignorant in thinking things are going smoothly - most likely.

Saturday 17 April 2010

Playing

with textures and blendshapes of the hitman.... again didn't take long as you can imagine but I'm kidna happy with the results and freedom we have - considering he mainly just gets p**sed off most the time anyway :)

Friday 16 April 2010

Shot 1 - stepped


only about an hour or so's work but you can see whats going on.... I hope. This is the full amount of time I have according to the animatic... and thats with a fade in at the start as well... :s

This was me experimenting with the import and referencing .... my theory worked. Shall explain later.

Wednesday 14 April 2010

Todays uni day


Ok so today I managed to do a rough texture of the brief case for the hitman as well as dealing with learning to CODE HTML - its a joke having to change every image from 400 x whatever from blogger to 500 x whatever... to keep the aspect ratio the same I have to go through and add each and everyone to the site - with its own unique code however when you click on it - it comes up in a NICER render - eg the blogger version FULL scale.

Also been working on the STL thing tonight - possibly make all 3 at once - but that would mean they are smaller - need to talk 2 the guy about scale.

THIS turntable is wonky - bah!

UVs and Admin Things

This morning was taken up by a LONG e-mail to Dan Dalli about things that people need to send me for the degree show website. Other than that I have been UVing and trying to keep a cool head on my shoulders whilst all this work comes over me like a ton of bricks lol. I managed to sort out the briefcase ENTIRELY - just needs a texture now which I'll be doing tomorrow as well as the Boom Box and the TV (if in the scene - I cannot remember but I know I was having issues with its hierarchy) Other than that I'm going to be animating soon... and worrying about rendering and then figuring out HOW to render an occlusion inside - Sam said he would look into it... but I don't think he's got round to it so I think I'll have a crack at it soon.

Yeah this below probably looks like a right mess - but I know exactly whatever thing is ... Its clearly a briefcase lol. This was about a third of the way through ... so obviously I tidied up and scaled things a lot. :)

Inside Out Website Bits :

This is currently our Square - but I'm sure Sam will want to alter it. Its the link on the Animation Home Page - on our Whack'd Page I have done a QUICK intro but again - Sam hasn't read it. I tried to ring him but he didn't bother answering... again :( lol

These next few images are possibilities for the website for the degree show - our page is up - just needs some HTML alterations before its how myself and Dan Dalli want it.... if its even possible lol.



All in all - the day went ok just I feel I was slightly distracted by the Website side of things. On the bright side - James Taylor kindly talked me through editing the images so I can add the front squares on the Animation home page myself so I don't need to bug him :)

Monday 12 April 2010

Monday Traumer

Today - The hitman went missing - when rendering it out we managed to somehow HIDE the entire Hitman other than his TIE, glasses and eyeballs.... this scared the life out of me. I eventually figured out how to fix - Spencer gave a good go at it as well - we were getting more and more tired, and more and more frantic attempting to fix it. The upside prior to the weekend (wondering if Clym will have a good rig done) was that at least we'd have the hitman - this upside just flipped upside down. Put me in a REALLY worried mood. Somewhere within Ferhans Blend shapes he had clicked a couple of buttons he shouldn't have - the SCARE DAN button is not a nice button and I hope he doesn't hit it again. I could see that he blamed himself for the mistake but he really shouldn't have - Maya is perpetrator here - its given us all plenty of frights before - hence SAVE YOUR WORK regularly. Sam learnt from this a week ago - he did 2 hours animation and lost it. NO SAVES - NO WORK. SOME SAVES - SOME WORK - granted it won't be RIGHT up to date but its still not from the beginning - its DAUNTING starting from scratch.

Anyway - we are all now trundelling along - I want to animate ASAP - just need Stu's rig - I requested he posted it up tomorrow - then I can do half day finishing off the textures and then half day animation ...YAY.

Sunday 11 April 2010

Friday and Saturday Rigging Events

Ok - so I was supposed to go out Friday night - get my head away from the project a bit. I didn't manage that one. I felt it would be more worth while spent doing the project. Clym Smith, our second year rigger has really come through for us this weekend. Not only did he meet the 2 and a half week deadline (he said it would take him 2 weeks ... 3 weeks maximum) he originally gave us a rig with a few problems. After pointing out some of these flaws we, as a group managed to work through it. It involved a few conversations on the phone between Sam and myself - Sam keeping a cool head and myself getting a little frantic as we need to start animating ASAP - or at least familiarise ourselves with the RIGs. On the team Blog we posted up a few of the issues we were having - Hands and Neck Cracks, eyes popping out, no head turn and no wrist turns being the main ones - not to mention the lack of hand animation that was possible. We mentioned all this to Clym upon the team blog and he has now, like a true professional finished what he had started to an appropriate state for him to hand over to us. There are a couple of points on the mesh that could be sorted out with the influence of the bones on the mesh - painting weights (Lower back as you put him in a seated position and it would appear his left wrist) however this may well be just a flaw in my version of Maya.

I have learnt that different versions of Maya have allowed for different bits to go wrong on each others machine. I hope we only find this THIS once and not again as I know that everyone is working on a variety of versions.

Clym, anyway, came back to us and altered the bits and bobs we pointed out within the next day and by the time I came home on Saturday night the rig was at the state we have it now so I'm very thankful for him for that and have mentioned to him if he wishes to animate on any shots he's very welcome to - just give us a shout and we'll work one out for him.

The rig itself works well for what we need. Clyms blend shapes are top notch allowing for some very free animation expressions. The stretchy body Clym managed to incorporate in the end, after some ups and downs I'm sure. I think he had to learn it from scratch so good on him there - he's done a great job... hopefully all the animators working with the rig can find it comfortable to use... I think they will though.... but only time will tell. We'll see tomorrow I guess. :s

Friday 9 April 2010

Dragnov Sniper Rifle Textured







Obviously Stu's model - I UV'd and then textured it after...was fairly simple UVing as I didn't have much time and it was all in seperate pieces - only thing is it flicks out when moving certain areas - way around this is that I can combine the mesh and then delete the history - will work as I have already tried it.

Thursday 8 April 2010

Progress Report yet again

Was doing a couple of after effects tests today as well as importing fuzzios models of the BoomBox and simple TV he did earlier in the term. I was also texturing the Dragnov today - and splitting the different areas into groups so that they can be moved easily by the hitman and picked up by him. Other than that I was helping Ferhan - giving him guidance on the drink being spat out by the target. Ferhan then moved on to bullet test renders - I showed him how I would do it - even though mine would have been after effects based he is planning to use Maya which he feels more comfortable with. I'm fine with this as long as he knows what he wants to achieve from it - a clear idea in his head. I have one in my head however I just simply don't have the time. I whipped together a test version for him in about 5 minutes but this looked too easy and too simply (looked a bit basic) however wasn't TOO bad for a 5min test. He got the idea and I think he is going to carry on with the idea over the weekend. Should be in tomorrow collecting rigs from Stu and Clym (hopefully) ...we shall see!

Bullet


Tester...

Wednesday 7 April 2010

Todays work - dynamics and renders


Ferhan had created a number of examples with his Real Flow program however I feel it wasn't exaggerated enough - to create an animation we have to think outside the box and go out of the human constraints - e.g. when he spits out the fluid I want it to be REALLY powerful and almost like a spray - not a solid mesh water which we've been getting so far... after explaining this to Ferhan he said he was guna keep trying which will busy his time. I think we made some improvement today and we got it a bit further away from a REAL version - he was using reference from youtube - good that he's using reference but unfortunately not the correct reference as it was a lady spitting a whole mouthful of water out slowly - like a tap. Anyway... enough of that... we had a good day in the end.


Whilst this was going on I did a bit more work of my own - the room is now FULLY textured! yay. And has the cameras in for the opening shots :D



In OTHER News... came across a problem with Clyms rig... just on my mac tho - works on my girl friends.


I can resolve the issue but only by tweaking geometry - it is NOT the weights I don't think as Clym has used skin clusters... so.... not entirely sure just yet. Might be my version of Maya... might need to reset preferences etc.

Recap

So currently I have about 9 shots to animate - hopefully there won't be any need for me to do any of the other guys animation - possibly Lewis as he has his own film to animate as well. Today I'm at Rave conversing with Ferhan and Stu about dates the rigs will be ready. I realised that I'm not entirely sure what Spencer is doing again - Sam I believe had more contact with him than I do but I shall leave a message on the team blog to get in touch with him - need to know what textures for what characters have been done. Other than that I think we should FINALLY be ready to animate next week. Stu says the end of the day the rig should be finished. I predict that it'll be done on Friday. That gives us about 3 weeks of solid animation on all parts and plenty of time to render.... I can see we'll get it done but to what cost. I think we might have to sacrifice in some areas however it is too early to say which areas. Spoke to Clym yesterday and he wanted the whole 3 weeks to get his rig done. He gave us 3 weeks maximum and he wanted the maximum - I pushed for Friday lunch time which is now what he is working to - which I'm very happy with. Other than that Sam and I sorted the shots so thats all cool. I'd like to start again with the practice animation considering I havn't had much time - I don't know what I've really been doing with my spare time but I know that I'm going to get back on it and get some solid work loads done!!!! Been slacking - time to step it up a notch - just wish some people would be a BIT quieter in the level 3 studio - happens every day.... and from the same people - no matter how much you ask them its just who they are I suppose. Never mind - just get on with your work work and ignore. Right back to work...

Tuesday 6 April 2010

Today

Sam and I arranged a meet up with one another at Rave - we went through the shots and decided who was working on which one. I think we came up with a decent list in the end and I'm happy the way it turned out. I'm not entirely sure about a few things - Stu currently has 14 shots to animate. I know he's good at animating but I don't want him to be over loaded - so I might dish them out if we get too tight for time.

Also if one person begins to show exception amounts of good animation with a particular rig... Sam and I might have to give them more scenes with that rig - to get a consistent style of animation per character.

Beautiful


What a lovely hypergraph... need more be said?

Depth Of Field Testers + Camera Craziness




Need to do more experimentation with Cameras and what focal length... and what VERSION of camera we are using - making sure this is the same style all the way through is important within our film - so that we as directors and script writers can make the audience feel what we want to feel - push them into certain areas of emotion that we want them to access at the right times. Hopefully this will be done with sound as well as the pacing of the film itself and COLOUR.

Anyway... there are a few images to keep some peeps happy. Pretty much finished the room now - had a few days off just getting my head around a few things - I know we don't have a great deal of time however I REALLY needed a few days off - the stress was getting quite unbearable - and it was my birthday. :) Anyway - I'm back on it now... and am very determined!!!


PS - need to alter a few textures as some are duplicates of others around the room - would look a bit better if the picture wasn't the same pic - DUhhh! and a few other things I need to change too.

Friday 2 April 2010

Spoke to STL man

Ok - the guy down in the 3D bit of Rave was telling Lewis and I that:
we should have a TINY amount of distance between objects and possibly put holes in them (eg like being put into a kilm) Z-Printer was the one we wanted - would cost around 10-20 quid I think in total... Eye sockets are ok - as long as Mesh doesn't break Mesh. If thats cool we're cool. Didn't actually ask about textures.

You can add the job submission via the Wiki on Rave Page intranet and then the Fac of Design - and job submission area.

U printer is more expensive - and we didn't see a version of that either.... so stick with Oooold Zzzzz ... hmmm sleep... it IS my birthday now... lol and I'm still up working. Bah. Good job I'm busy tomorrow :)

Yet Another E-mail

Someone was trying to track me down a few days back regarding a Musion Eyeliner for the Rave Live show.... if we can get it done I think it would be AWESOME - and really work well as a promo for our film. Lets see if it happens or not. Rig has to be done first!!!! Hope Stu is doing well with it...


- Simon I know your a regular to my blog... if your reading this it applies to Splay and PO- would be very good if you guys could get something together for it.
Lewis same to you... if you can do a trailer.... on top of EVERYTHING else we got.

Hello,  It wasn't too important i just wanted to talk to you about musion eyeliner. They want to be involved this year and we have about 1 hour of time to fill using they're software so wanted to check whether or not you wanted to do anything for it? Maybe adapt your trailer for you film? If you did the animation would have to shot on a black background with strong lighting for it to look like it's on stage, as well as the camera perspective being that of the perspective of the audience. Just thought i'd let you know.  Thanks, Emily

Thursday 1 April 2010

Cinesite Lecture

Was really nice to speak to the guys from Cinesite prior to their lecture. Was good to hear their points of view. For this reason they brought up a number of points we had not yet considered such as the line of action. We had tip toed around the subject I believe and now due to the latest animatic we were unsure if it still made any sense. I hope it does. Still I am going to go back to basics of film making and look at the line of action and check the shots don't go over the centre line.

Chat with Dan Dalli

So today I grabbed Double D and went through the website quickly. At this point I also realised how much I've been doing on it - including setting up everyones individual profiles and uploading images. Checking their names... speaking to Max - becoming an admin. That and all my Rave Live bits and bobs I am doing as well doesn't ease the pressure at all. Its a one stop work load-a-thon with me lol. I'm also attempting to collect the cash - 50 pound per head, for the degree show, along with the 100 words describing their role this year for the website and their pieces of work they want to upload to the site with the description.
Too much to do in too little time. As well as being a swim teacher for the lil ones - and seeing my girlfriend.... and having a social life (which isn't too social with this going on) I'm getting more and more exhausted....and my birthday tomorrow... yay lol

Update

Texturing is almost done but Sam and I now face slightly bigger problems of line of action. We should have spotted it before however I think we were being slightly naive. I'm going to go through the animatic Sam has recently posted and figure out where each shot is being shot from and where the line of action is.... and hopefully we don't cross it.... but I think we DOOoooo! :s

Schedule