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.

Problems Incurred

Issues arose with lost files recently and now i am behind on both this project and an animation for another module, meaning my time scales have been skewed and im now in a slight bit more of a rush, and unsure if i can even recover the files at this point.

I have now lost project files from brief one and my 3d character models for this project, however i have been working on alternative means.

i have been recruiting back up actors incase this plan does not work, they will be the fighters.
but hopefully it wont come to that and i can pursue this green screen method.

the basic idea is i will use real like objects or toys/toy fighters and either simply green screen them in and make it cheesier than planned, or stop motion green screening them in.
This does complicate the project but not completely, this is an equally fascinating approach to creating FIGHT!
The stage has been set and i will either 3d track object using this and then pop them onto a matte painting, Or i will 3d track toys, and either move them manually or use stop motion possibly.

creating the shadow boxes gave me a few more ideas, and then i began to think about the time scale, as well as i want to do this project i cant look past the elephant in the room, what is worse than a boring project, is an incomplete project.
The aim is keeping it simple at this point.

I will continue experimenting with these ideas before settling on one to pursue to the next stage within the week and hopefully getting myself back on schedule.

Characters

Once i had experimented thoroughly and decided 3D was the way to go i had a discussion with an ex colleague on our easiest rigs, i realised standard primitives were just sitting there like the tea pot in the HDRI imaging project. I could simply have one fight the other off, their character design void, but their movements similar to a sack animation, popular in the Disney golden age and Don bluth studios.
The characters simple, saving me massive amounts of time modelling and even more rigging, however i will rig and move them appropriately so that they will be full of life and be perfect alternatives.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/d3/d6/80/d3d6802ba08920c752f179f32ea1aa80.jpg

This new character idea also pushed the ending development along, when i storyboarded this out, i now know how i can get away with a goreless ending, shocking but not blood smeared.



Because i may be back on track, time wise thanks to these shape characters, i think i could pursue the 3D work in Maya, a programme im vaguely familiar with but would like more portfolio work to show.

I modelled characters first as i always would have, they were  simply standard primitive shapes, beveled around corners converted from polys, smooth mesh, standard subdiv (subdivision levels)

This movements were really inspired by the Sack aniamtion projects as i said so the ball was hyper and bouncy, the sqaure jagged and slow, and the bigger sqaure similar but even slower and bigger, hopefully showing off personality?

Making the rigs wwas trickier than i remember when  i previously used maya, so i partially regretting using maya at this point, but once i had learned to group the clusters (similar to maxs vertexs if on smooth) progress wasnt as slow.
Used a simple lattice rig, when i applied a standard lattice deformer upped the ffd divisions to 6
disparced the envelope influence to 2 at the top 2 at the middle and 2 at the bottom to equal deformation,

(lattice point is essentially vertexes with smooth/soft selection/radial selection on at all times, it took alot of attempts for me to get it right unfortunately)

so by that i could select different sections i wanted to control independently, by selecting the lattice points and made a cluster.

essentially parenting the lattice points to the one point, i then created the controls, by using parent scale and oriente constraints
I went on and did this for each shape individually and thats my characters modeled and rigged and ready for animating. (at last)

Starting Points

I decided after weighing up my options that FIGHT! was the right idea to pursue for 'make your own' brief for the main assignment.
As this is 60% at least of my final grade i want to emphasis the planning and development process to be sure i have covered all the foundations in preproduction before starting the actual short.

I have looked into similar games, and taken the style and inspiration of theme to further the development process, i have research similar shorts, unfortunately there arent many, a few on youtube use green screen but im still undecided if i want to pursue green screen or 3d.
I will start on character design to be sure, both in 2d and 3d.
although id prefer to sue green screen im sure the actors i have available to me wont really give off the hunger games, battle to the death style you normally see in these games, neither fitness or appearance. and the finishing moves are still debatable, all the research seems too violent and im not sure how it would hurt the marking process, things i wouldnt have felt i needed to consider in previous years.

A little bit of research:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0olv6_d8KNo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekKStI_HUqM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZYnBxdThvU&spfreload=10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CgX2koc8VY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUrsL58u6Vo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P974Kdmz0Xo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMqbzbWreKs

The actually fight moves and sequences might be embellished, im leaving room for creative flare come time to film or animate, but so far i have a fair idea about the elements and 2s assets i plan on developing from now until the storyboards final and ive started animating or filming, i have started to prepare and experiment for both.
once i have a better idea which specific techniques ill use i will start the definite parts, like the matte paintings before moving onto the characters.

brainstorm

I have been brainstorming each brief and giving myself pros and cons of each, then narrowing the ideas down to those that are both interesting for learning purposes, decent enough for portfolio pieces and long enough to plan properly.

On Your Own seems to be the brief i've setteled on so far but not specifically an idea.

The Mini Greats: the mini greats is what ive named an idea i have as a lead off from one of my Greenscreen weekly projects from brief one, I recorded a baby as chewbacca an edited him into a scene from Starwars, this went down a hit when showing my brief one submissions to peers, The overall basic idea is to edit the baby into other great/classic movie scenes, similar to the  'when dads are left alone with the kids' type of videos, classics so far include godzilla, scarface, mission impossible, ace ventura and more, It would be interesting and involve a good number of the techniques from brief one, mainly green screen, matte painting, 2d tracking, perhaps some camera mapping, each mini great would have its own potential for each technique.
Although matte painting and green screen where my favourite techniques learned in brief one, i need to really improve on them to succeed in this brief, lighting would need to be better, cooperation from the baby slightly more, costumes and backgrounds will be correct but kept simple as i want to keep as much original classic footage as possible, so i am actually compositing the child into the film rather than just a reenactment.

Bobble Love: a silent 3d movie, green screening possibly, 2d tracking definitely, but mostly the techniques learned in hdri imaging and 3d tracking would be used in this project.
the basic idea is a blue slightly dented bobble head has a curious infatuation with the new pink and shiny bobble head, the characters and rigs should be easy, the uv wrapping and texturing would be very interesting, the scene however i would probably want to keep as clear and well lit as possible, especially as its primarily a romcom with shiny desk ornaments. i have the idea it should be a short with upbeat tempo, possibly original depending on how much time i have in the end, the story follows from a sad lonely blue bobble head on the desk, he sneaks about the desk and computer to meet the shiny new pink bobble head, after a series of mishaps and failures he resigns himself and tries looking for love on the imac on dating websites for bobble heads, thats where 2d tracking and photoshop will come in, theres several storyboards so far but they all end up with the blue bobble realising the girl bobble head is just as weird or likes his clumsy weirdness and getting together in the end. Although it is the cleanest idea and most of the techniques would be used, it is also the longest and im worried about rendering times and tries. I believe Maya might be best to model and rig the bobble heads as its better for that kind of simple but fluid animation, it would be quicker to animate but i would have to relearn how to use it with the brief one techniques.

Halo: although not reenacting halo, it is what ive called my second favourite idea, ive called it this because it was what i was playing while i came up with it, the basic idea is i have first person shooter type footage walking around the city/town i will have it storyboarded to know when to stop and shake, or possibly just stop and shake the camera later in after effects. I will have both 2d and 3d in this, possibly matte paint the background but that would require rotoscoping out the sky, i will have a 3d gun and shot effects, 3d and or 2d characters getting killed, at this point im thinking aliens, but that will come later in character development, 2d assets made in photoshop as the closest layer to look like the first person shooter has a digital helmet on, similar to the majority or war and futuristic games. the pros are alot of the elements could be easily made to professional standard, ie the digital camera and the 3d gun, however i am weary of how i would achieve 3d elements tracked in footage, although i know the theory i only 3d tracked a still model indoors and even that took me three different types of footage to get the one that would track correctly, not only am i hesitant on my abilities to really achieve the style im looking for, i also think this particular project would need to start filming very soon otherwise id run the risk of running out of time to reshoot the footage if and when needs be.
This feels too be the most time consuming because it will involve the most techniques, which i hope would be worth it but im undecided as i cant run the risk of not perfecting each of those techniques to succeed with this particular idea.

Fight: On the subject of games my current favourite idea is fight, a mortal combat, street fighter sort of game, two opponents, on either side of the screen, the idea is based more on the original games rather than newer remakes and similar recent fighting games.
there would be a matte painting in the background and the characters will either be green screened actors or 3d characters, there would be explosions etc going off in the background and particle simulations to give it a more realistic setting, there would be intro 2d titles and assets around the screen, such as the health bar and possibly the hit/collision noises (very 60s Batman) the background and title sequences will all be just as important as the actual fight scenes, however im undecided how i should go about the ending, most of the original 80s and 90s fighting games are extremely gory and im not sure how well that would be looked upon for a serious university project.
Although i want to have fun with this project and learn new things that i could possibly use in future, i also want to be cautious, as im not sure if first and second year humour within the work is appreciated as much in final year.
The reason this is my favourite is it feels like it would be the right length, give me the right timeframe, include plenty but not all techniques, however because im so interested in the other ideas, this one is harder to storyboard and finalise.

discuss project 2

Brief two is slightly more complex and from even early brainstorms i can imagine will be time consuming, each brief is different and full of potential but every time i think of a plan i keep coming into dead ends, mainly surrounding the timescale in which to do the project. although 7ish weeks seems a feasible task, i also have to include work a child and two other university projects, all of which require alot of attention, the last thing  i want to do for this project is take an easy way out, i want something short and decent enough to go in a final year portfolio, so time management and accessibility all needs to be taken into account when brainstorming each brief and choosing which i can not only achieve but do well.

The music video, fan video brief appeals t me as i could really work with current vlogs and pop culture, theres an abundance of fan films and fan theories that i could warp to my own short film, off the bat im thinking something small but funny, parody like, using green screens primarily, camera tracking, and heavy on the effects and compositing, however unless i come up with or come across the right script i would spend too much time in planning and developing than i would editing which is the time consuming aspect of this brief.

The cheesy horror/sci-fi short was my next choice, possibly a very easily rigged characters, like a fanged slug/worm or possibly a 3d character i already have, however thats basing the entire script and storyboard around current assets, otherwise i need to account of asset modeling and rigging times, this brings up my own personal acknowledgment that although i enjoy 3d and what i can produce, i know myself i am far too slow considering my current workload, which makes me think this isnt the smartest route, although if i did it would mainly be 3d tracking, i would have to really go out of my way and script to add in any extra techniques i learned form brief one, although that may sound lazy, my point is it would ruin the end effect and look less like a portfolio piece and more like a school assignment that was less creative and more checking the boxes and piling techniques together for no reason, id like to avoid that outcome if possible.

It is early days in the assignment but i want to be sure im not biting off more than i can chew at a crucial time in final year but also not cutting corners, this will be a chance to push a few boundaries and techniques i am not used to but i need to account for panicking time and plan this project accordingly, without proper foundations it could end up looking like someones a level project and be worthless to both portfolio and grade.

Project One

This post is just a little jist of where we are so far in the module and where we are coming from, we are moving on to brief two after brief ones 6 weekly projects.

Each weekly project gave us an insight into a category of Digital compositing,

such as...

HDRI imaging, where we used a chrome ball, took several shots, including still, moving and in an array of contrasts, popped them into hdr shop (which was stupidly difficult to install for some unknown reason)then onto use them as materials in 3ds max so that a 3d object (mine was teapots as i was very time limited and not used to any of the software after a LOA) would look more realistic when composited into a photo/real life scene. 

example images of the chrome ball and scene below, having issues finding the final files and movies on the computer i was working on at the time.

Camera mapping although i found surprisingly difficult (likely the photos i was using, as the photos and project files i used from places like digital tutors all seemed to work) but eventually using an outdoors scene and cutting corners slightly seemed to work. 

although i know and understand the process which is very handy and i will more than likely use it in practically every project in the future just to add some depth to my work, this particular weekly project just didnt seem to to want to work before the deadline for me. after wards tho i could get it to work on a number of images, leading me to believe after effects just didnt want to be my friend that week. 

https://vimeo.com/199399859

Green Screen, although i found it one of if not the second most difficult, i actually enjoyed the process overall and the end result so much i would actually be tempted to play about with this technique in future just for fun, Although im sure there is many ways you could use green screening, i kept it simple and comically bad using tools and assets i had close at hand, like a teddy and my son who i had to involve or it just wasnt getting done on time (besides the cat wasnt co-operating!)

Star Wars, Starring Robin: 

https://vimeo.com/193810633

Jurassic Park, starring dexter: 

https://vimeo.com/193810970

Matte Painting, is interesting and i see its benefits but for this project i wasnt sure what specifically was expected so i tweaked one image with very little, and one with a little too much going on, just incase it was an either or situation. 

2d Camera Tracking i thought would be the most complicated as it was one of the tutorials i couldnt keep up with in class, however i mustve been having an off day, as it turned out t be a simple process as long as you remember key points, such as turn the tv off (otherwise the different lighting in each scene will dramatically warp the 4 points) and preferably dont let the tv or whatever your null object will be based on to wander off the screen, otherwise again.....dramatically warped.

At this point ive used my child so many times im sure you are all thinking i mustnt have childcare.... i dont, moving on, this was adorable and although i was for doing something very nerdy and weird with 2d tracking, neither my digital compositing game or Robin/Baby would co-operate. 

Robin is the eye of the tiger, ADRAIIIIIIN

https://vimeo.com/199398920

3d Tracking, was the worst, i was able to follow tutorials online and digital tutors however when it came time to 3d tracking something i had created and then put a 3d teapot ontop of it, it all well staggered and jagged. i didnt like the final output but that was entirely my fault for maybe not planning the shot or not knowing enough about 3d tracking, example to be continued as it was done on the same computer as the other 3d work. 

overall i am proud of my project one outcomes, they were all simple but difficult for a beginner, they definitely got the brain cogs turning on which i could use and how for brief two!