A Few Final Words.

Although id have loved to add both the intended title sequence and the sounds, i ran out of time, this was due to both unforeseen circumstances and me over reaching with unfamiliar software.
Both Maya and After Effects proved to be a challenge for me, but challenges i feel were well justified and more beneficial than the alternatives, i am quite happy with the experience i have gained through these programmes and wont be as hesitant to use them in future projects. i am disappointed frills i had intended to ad later never did, like the particle simulation (which i actually forgot until it was too late) and camera mapping (which didnt seem to suit when i experimented with it in the editing process)
Although soundless/incomplete, i am extremely happy with the final output, it was probably the toughest project i had given myself this semester and in the end im actually surprised i finished it on time to begin with, and with twenty minutes to spare to proof read this and another blog.

If i was to do it again, id perhaps have done less experimental work and just stuck with the one idea and pushed through its problems instead of finding different ideas and alternatives.

Although the original plan didnt call for shapes, in hindsight im happy the project developed that way, i find its alot more comical and allowed me to be less by the book animation wise. I will add sound but probably await feedback before being confident enough to add it to my final year video reel and portfolio.

https://vimeo.com/199390053

END 

Filming and Tracking

I was so disappointed in the filming, rendering another module took too long and i wasnt able to film until the day after planned meaning the actors/people who agreed to help werent prepared, which means it was rushed more than id have liked it.
The original plan was the left actor (girl) would dress in red (hat/tshirt/hoodie) and the right actor (boy) would dress in blue, and the middle (male, player three) would dress in green to correspond with thier characters, just incase the seating or acting wasnt obvious enough.

There was a small window of opportunity before the house would fill with both uncooperative people and noise that i couldnt use, so i had to take the dozen takes (just incase one worked better than the other, or there was a horrible camera shake etc in it, i couldnt run the risk of needing to reshoot) so they never got in the intended symbolic colours.

i choose this room inparticularly because the tv is on a plain wall, so there shouldnt be anything to distract the motion track when it comes time to bring the film into after effects.
i choose a female and two males because it kinda matches the differences in the shapes.
Unfortunately none of them could help laughing, so im not sure if the fun of the game and short is portrayed through that or if it simply looks like i didnt look for more serious actors, but overly dramatic smugness and disappointment was what i was going for.

I ran into awkward but minor trouble in brief one with the points going way off and skewed in after effects because within the 20 or so seconds of tracking the tv changed scenes several times, which meant colour and lighting did too, so i kept the tv off hoping the reflection didnt do the same and it was just a hazard of the tool.

Tracking turned out to be rather tricky because not because of the problems i had anticipated but one i had forgotten, the tv went of screen, i shouldve known better since i made the same mistake in brief one but after trying to fix it i just cut the weekly project short from 30 seconds to 20, unfortunately i couldnt do it this time, so it was a long process of doing it frame by frame 4 or 5 times, the analyze forward kept messing them up, not as drastically each time, but still moving them where i didnt want.

Once the 4 point track was adjusted it was time to replace the footage to the game.

The null object was now motion tracked and the points were manually adjusted to maintain perspective, frame by frame,

i parented the null object with rendered video, precomposited the film so it was feathered round the edges so it didnt look jagged when motion tracked. feather mask

once applied to the original comp i applied a fast blur to finish it off.

edited the motion track on the end of the animated comp, some minor changes before exporting.

Once all those were done i exported out at its highest quality and uploaded it to both vimeo and youtube, with hopes i would finish another module within enough time to allow me to back track and add in sound.

The sound never happened as uploading several projects took so long with the internet speed in the snowy weather.
It was just one of those unavoidable things, and adding sound just wont happen before the deadline.

2d elements

As discussed before i used adobe photoshop for the 2d assets. The 2d elements include titles, player tags and health bars.
Originally there were a few other elements including banners which took over the whole screen and didnt suit the style i was aiming for, and a count down timer sequence that i ran out of time to finish.
It is now days until the deadline and i feel it isnt as important as finishing off other aspects of the short.

I used different layers for gauges and boarders so i can reduce the health bars etc in after effects without effecting the boarders

Once that was done i exported title sequences separately from photoshop so they can be animated separately as well.
This was because they were not native title faces to after effects, the titles are PNGs as opposed to text, as hard as i tried i couldnt find the right text without ripping off the actual games so i roughly made my own, the type is the give away at this point what style it was supposed to be following..

I took all this to after effects and twiddled about with it, using inspiration from the classic fight games, but the process is relatively self explanatory, it was mostly tweens and the original 3d animation, the only thing i can think of to explain slightly is the health bar was animated frame by frame and with a shape mask, this allowed it animate separately and not interfere even slightly with the other elements, giving the overall animation a smoother more organised appearance.

from here it should be a matter of filming, tracking, slight editing, sounds, and background noises, then hopefully if i get all that and further blogs complete i might  be able to back track and add in the opening titles to polish off the look.

setting the scene

Now that the animating is done (as you can see from the playblast from maya in the last post) i will now start the not so fun part before rendering.

Its all part of setting the scene, i messed about with the lighting, standard phong materials for characters, with reduced reflection and set up multipaths render with.

twiddled with colour paths, shadow paths, beauty path wasnt needed because ill; be compositing it.
paths are one of the main reasons maya was the better choice to animate and render in than max, it allowed alot more freedom when it came to layers and render paths.

i could independently composite layers individually, rather than a beauty layer which give me more freedom with the final look i think.
unlike in max, the layers are called paths, which i found the most confusing when researching, following and building on tutorials.

to composite images together in after effects i exported them all out in PNGs and then transferred them over to a new project and composition.
I fiddeled about with it but essentially i created a fast blur for shadows, did some colour grading, then a motion blur to take the ridgedness out of the animation and i increased frame padding.

All together it really started to come to together nicely, and i could finally start breathing again as editing it all in after effects took a substantial amount of time.

Animating

Now the characters, stage and film assets are all complete its time to animate, 

first ive set up the camera then animated.

worked on the motions this was a very twiddely and time consuming process that there was alot of back n forth on but not enough to comment on. i tried sticking to the sack movements as best i could, but i feel they may have come out slower than expected?

link to draft (testing the animation out) :  https://youtu.be/srC6mJoWfxM

Matte Painting

The Matte painting for the scene was the first i did, i kept it simple for now and if time allowing i want to go back in with after effects later and add dome movement in the background, i kept a long sky range so it could float slightly, if camera mapping doesnt work for matte paintings.
The scene is essentially mountain range with a new snowy mounatin range and a new sky and effects to give it that 8bit distance look.

All made within photoshop along side the 2d objects which are still a working progress.
Im not over the moon about this matte painting but i thought keeping it simple for the planned camera mapping was best, but if i want to be elaborate with scenes i will for the extra locations in the option menu at the start of the animation.

creating the platform

The platform was more texturing and wrapping than creating, it was a simple cube, beveled and smoothed out, i didnt want it too smooth, it was still to look like an awkward 80s arcade game.

I uved the stage within Maya but textured the stage through mudbox, i had used mudbox before it wasnt that difficult in comparison but uv mapping within maya was a whole new experience im in no rush to relive.
Although i didnt enjoy using maya, i needed to push myself in this project, although all of digital compositing is new to me, i still wanted to gain a bigger experience in this project, maya was definitely an experience, hopefully one i can use in the industry though.