the scene in full sunshine

yesturday after i sped the rendering up, i wasnt happy with the old spot lights on ray trace shadows as its slugish for rendering, yet looks so nice. Anyway today, i passed the scene to Kiril and he added a sun and a sky dome, which looks really nice and i have added two directional lights with only one with depth map shadows and have set them at 5000 resolution, but still needs some tweaking in the bias etc. (shud have posted the pik before the last post)

dogzz

well now ive finished the scene off, i need to start the animation process, and so, im starting with the dog. As i have already attempted a walk cycle and was pretty pleased with it, i now need to start him walking, then running and jumping all in one, so as to research have been looking at videoas of animated dogs etc. some are usefull and some are quite amusing.
dog walk crap

Ambient F*****G Occlusions!

As you can probably tell, it has not been a good day for me. It all started this morning when Jason showed me and kirill how to easily plug in an ambient occlusion shader to the existing shader of an object, it is a very simple and yet effective way of getting realistic lighting. I had a go, did some tests, (which are below, one is without the plug in and one with- you probably may tell by the subtle lighting in one), then after these tests i decided to have a go at it for the actual scene that i have come up with, and it worked, looked really nice, and immediately was transformed and i was blown away by it. However, rendering was a nightmare and from here on, i had loads of problems with the appauling amount of time that it took, even for a 640 x 480 size render! This was really confusing me, when after when i had unplugged the ambient occlusion shader it was still taking a very long time to render. I have fiddled with a lot of settings and was still having trouble, for a render size of 64x48, it took 40 seconds!!which is ridicules. I had found out later, that some how the mental ray data for the ambient occlusion was still taking an effect and couldnt find a way of stopping. I tried deleting all history, optimizing the scene size, then went into the hypershade and deleted all unused nodes and repeated nodes, then Chris suggested i deleted all unnecessary objects in the scene, via the Hypergraph and again was still taking a while.
After all these head traumas (upgraded from headaches), i decided to head for home and have another crack at the problem. I tried exporting ONLY the scenes objects and importing into a new scene, and low and behold, it renders quicker! The only reason why i didnt try this earlier was the fact that it was taking forever to render a single frame on a different scene altogether, so i just thought it may have been the network or a bug in the system. Just pleased that it is rendering stills much quicker and at 16 seconds- but only at preview quality tho.

getting there

well i have been spending time editing the main scene, and i am pretty happy with it, i feel the overall look is almost there. There is a slight more tweaking that needs doing obviously, like bump maps need to be altered and the contrast on some colours of the textures. something that Anna was mentioning to me last week was the similarity of the buildings and how it would be good to break up the irregularity of them, so i have done that as well, before i did the last textures on the factory. Need sleep now.

scene almost finished

well i have been working solidly for a couple of weeks on the main scene, and it is almost done. Meanwhile i have been researching the movements of a bag and how it moves through the air. I have actually seen few in leeds yesturday and had notied that they dont tumble much, they just more or less drift, which will save time for animating etc.

some videos for the previous blog post

dog run cycle test 1

Today i have been yet again refining my texture problem, i have solved it, as rendering does seem a lot quicker now for a still image, as ive reduced the resolution of the images, which does blur the image a small bit. I have fixed this problem, so all is going well. Meanwhile Kirill has been working very hard on the rigging and creation of the individual characters. He gave me a copy of the dog that he has just recently finished rigging, and i have just been having a go at a dog run cycle. Of course it is only a test at this stage, but i feel it is very highly accurate of the dogs movements of it legs. At this stage it does look a lot robotic, but this is the result of some filmed footage of my dog running up and down my garden chasing a toy. So i have done my research.

feeling terrible but must blog!!

Yeah not bee so good today but i still intend to try and do some work at home. Anyway, Anna showed me a good example of the very style which we are wanting to go for. It is an early video that Anna posted on moodle, i had just forgot about it.

Dynamo
Uploaded by biftoury

progress

Well today again i have been re-working the textures for the buildings as Anna pointed out to me the fact that the wooden door textures that i used in conjunction with the cardboard textures, that i needed to think about more the styalised approach that me and Kirill are still wanting to pursue. I had thought about this before, as i felt that it did need to re-work it. I am still working on other objects in the scene, as i need to get them to fit in with the other objects. However for now, i feel like i have just about finished the buildings texture. Oh and i checked that the bmp file was 59 mb!! so i had to make this smaller, just converted it to a jpeg, and its now 2mb.

i want to blog, but i don't no what i want to blog about. I think ive become randomly obsessed by blogging. The reality is i am just waiting for a test still render to complete. For some reason it is taking longer than usual, i am curious to why. Praps its the the size of the textures, the resulution of the buildings texture is 300, because i needed the extra space. I really am not a massive fan of texturing.

more textures

i have just successfully finished a texture for the car, and i am quite happy with the way it looks, just need to texture the wheels. After this i intend to texture all the other 3d models and start to think about some rigging.

buildings texture

Well frustratingly i have been spending more time than expected on the textures for the building in the street, probably, all in all a week, trying to get the bump maps right, the colour of windows and the sharpness and clarity. It has been taking me a while to get it right, and now it has, i am fairly pleased with the texture. At this moment in time i have been working on other 3d elements. I am rather pleased with the cra that i have made, it has a rather cartooned look to it.

the street

i have been working on a texture for the street, and it has been taking me a while, mainly because there is a lot of detail involved. I have also been using my wacom tablet, which has helped a lot made the building look a lot more like a street scene. However as it is a very styalised look to it, i dont want it to look too real. However i am wanting to add a feeling of an aged and dirty feel to it, as it juxtaposes the clean recycling factory. At this moment i am still unsure that i like the tesxture for the street, im still thinking what else it needs.

If there is one thing that i hate....

It has to be making the textures in photoshop, especially if there is a lot of detail to be put in. Im currently working on the street texture and it is taking a time getting all the little details. I had to make the image resolution bigger so then i could make images of windows really small and still have them very sharp and vivid. I also have to think about the big difference in the different shops on the texture, so have each one slightly different etc.

Also i dont much like mapping the textures and organizing them around to then take a cv snapshot and then go into photoshop. Its just a massive headache, but when you see the texture on your model, you do get that sense of great achievement, so it is worth it in the long run, as it does make your models look much better.

What i did today

Well i had planned to start making the textures for the street, but i didnt mangage to, instead i modeled a dog character which is to feature in our animated film.

Bag animation test

I have worked on a quick example of how the 2d will look over the 3d elements. I am going to do another more detailed test of the overall look, this will have the bag filled in with white and textures on the 3d scene.

2d and 3d compositing

as the project that we are dooing is going to feature a combination of 2d elements and placed on 3d, i thought some other existing examples of this highly styalised look would be good to research.

toon boom

I have just been experimenting with animating a bag in 2d, yes 2d! not 3d! It is difficult but, 2 dimensions is considerably easier. I have been working on some 3d work, so all is not lost, i have just been having a change working on some 2d, so here is an example of how it looks, more detail is to be added later. cio.

Our overall idea so far

Well over the past week, me and Kirill have been discussing various different story ideas, a few of my ideas, an idea of mine which began as Kirill's idea, and a few more of his. We have decided to go with a newer version of his original idea, which has been elaborated much more, has been fleshed out and re-designed. As Anna suggested, it is best to come up with one idea and really make it a good one, so then we are waisting no time at all. Our main story idea features a lot of comic gags which are all caused by this plastic bag, which has been thrown away by a man working at a recycling factory, which is of course ironic, but i suppose there is an overall moral in this story/ narrative, which is really interesting and has inspired me to do this film. So now you know the plot, the look of it is going to determine whole viewing satisfaction. The entire look is very symbolic and are all simple signs, for example the main character is a man from the male toilet sign, and he is featured in certain recycling symbols as well. The character is going to be virtually made of cardboard.

concept sketch

a concept sketch for the ultimate molten plastic explosion idea.

small discussion with Jason

Me and kirill talked to Jason about the idea of the environment for a subject for our short film that we want to make. Kirill's idea of plastic bags in trees, were mostly talked about the main idea of multiple comical gags. Also we talked about how they could be dark and sinister, still with comic value. From this small discussion, me and kirill have talked and have a few thoughts about it. I have been fleshing out other ideas about the short film, meanwhile, but i am very keen on the comic value of the potential of this animated film. For the bags idea, a favorite idea, goes as follows;
-A worker is in a recycling factory and has just stopped for a quick break. He reaches down to his pocket and digs deep and rustles around and then slowly pulls out a plastic wrapped branded chocolate bar.
-As his hands bring the chocolate bar into his vision, he the carefully unwraps it, and folds the wrapper neatly and then unexpectedly throws it over his shoulder, sending it flying and fluttering into space.
-The camera would now follow the fluttering plastic wrapper, it would slowly flow and land in a small opening of big industrial size paper guillotine. The wrapper lands and gets jammed in a set of sprockets, the plastic prevents the cogs from spinning around, so the guillotine jerks to a halt.
Camera cuts to outside of machine and sees the conveyor belt continuing to move and is still feeding paper, though there is no gap under the big blade, because it is jammed shut, so the paper is forcefully pushed up againt the blade and is folding and crumpling, a huge tower of recycled cardboard is towering higher and higher.
-The camera then is focused on the other side of the guillotine and zooms into the mess of huge sheets of clear plastic, which are getting bigger and bigger, as there is no card to be packaged, so it packs itself.
-Now there is a huge ball of plastic, and it rolls of the conveyor belt and lands into a fiery furnace, where it expands into a semi molten plastic fire ball. It then rolls all over the factory and destroys almost everything, as it rolls it pulls things into it and gets bigger and bigger until it finally explodes, molten plastic shrapnel is scene flying at high speed all over the place.
-Next the scene fades in to a room coverd in a whitey-grey layer of plastic. The camera does a full circle of the room and then stops at an unusual plastic lump, the camera moves upwards, more of this unusual plastic lump is revealed, then an opening of some flesh, then a chin, then a nose and then fianlly a full face with molten plastic in his hair. It is the same worker who tossed his sweet wrapper and has half of the chocolate sticking out of his mouth.

thats just one gag, starts small - ends huge etc.

Garys fall

A very humorous short animation about some scouse polar bears, its very very funny, has a very simple and ingenious script. I had to watch it a couple of times, i lauphed that hard!

Gary's Fall
Uploaded by Killstain

more research

I have found some more nice examples of short films, which i really liked and are possibly the kind of thing that i would like to have a go at.