Project Finished

The rendering was very fast, almost instant compare the my last project. This is the most success of this project I think, which is the management of the files and ...pretty much everything within this project. Simple the best. So...yeah that's about the rendering.

I was most happy with the lighting. As this is my first try out after Sultan's fantastic tutorial, I will continue my practice on lighting during the summer. There are some awsome lighting chanllege which Sultan adviced us to join. http://www.3drender.com/challenges/index.htm

For modeling and rigging, well, maybe I should had chose a thiner charactor since I encontered some problem when rigging. I'd say, I learned the importance between a good model and the rig. A good rigging also affect on the animation for sure. This is the dependency of the production chain.

Speaking of dependency, I find it sometime rather inconvenient for us students. As this is an indivisual project for most of us, we all have to do a whole production. Say for example if a person is very good at compositing or animation, if he can't model or rig he won't be able to show his skills. Luckly I was quite aware of this problem so I was very open on learning new stuff. So in the end, I learned a lot through out this project. hmm... maybe a little pressure is a good thing after all?

Anyway, here is the final schedule. Rendering time has been reduced to 1 day.

Animatic/Playblast

Animation

Animation was fun. But there was an accident which took me hours and hours. I mindlessly deleted the history. :/
I can't really understand how Maya works, but it is cetainly not user-friendly. Delete the history = deleted the link between rig and skin which means I had to redo all the weight map. And I also made a stupid mistake that I couldn't just go back to the stage where everything was fine because I saved it over the old one. Although I've got 15 saves so far on every key stage of the project, I failed to save this one.
Well, sh*t do happens and I was ranning out of time for ROA.


and, after all the crying, complaining and drinking...
I did all the weight map agian. Here is a little test for animation

I was inspired by Sultan's lighting tutorial. I like the idea how he said that in pixal the lighting people would create 3-4 spot light around the charactor and group them with the model. So instead of creating environment lightings that effects on the charactor, they create lights that only for the charactor.

By using the light linking editor, I created charactor lighting that would only light up the charactor; and evironment lighting that would effect on the charactor.


First spot light on the charactor.


This is the final result. 7 lights on the charactor.


Link back to the 'In The Jungle' song. I really liked its background because it was simple and clean. I tried to create an simillar effect by using 2 spot lights to expose the background.


Here's the result. Without using any texture maps I did this. The very best advantage is that it renders fast. I surely had took the lesson from my last project. For the Ravensbourne project, a single frame took a maximam 20 min to render. That created huge problems not only in the rendering stage, animation stage espicailly. So this time I was very careful on the RAM, technical side of this project.

Texturing result

nothing to comment. I'm happy

Scheduel update

The main thing is... rigging has been separated into two mini taskes. Skeleton and Weight Painting. As I just started to learn how to use the weight painting tool, it takes extra time.

Texturing test.

I didn't want to use my old method of texturing which is to.... do an UV snapshot and edit it in PS. I followed Sultan's tutorial and decided not to use UV. Since my charactor is a penguin, the texuturing should be simple enough to be done using 3D paint tool.

weight painting finished.

Here is the final result.
Have to say, I picked a fat charactor and that was a really bad choice for my first try out on weight painting/rigging. It still worked. My main aim for this project is not on rigging though, but to get the production chain moving I had to learn the stuff I haven't done before and even I dont want to.

But in the end it kind of paid off. I'm sure not my next rig would be much better and faster.

Rigging and weight painting

So As I continue to work on the rig, i found the proxy solution didn't really work out. I grouped the proxy mesh with the skeleton and it worked fine, but i simply can't find the button to skining the two mesh together. Well... I should find that tutorial again but I didn't. Instead I tried to learn how to use the weight paint tool and it worked.


When I first binded the skin, maya automatically generated a weight map which I find very annonying since it doesn't work and need to take a lot of time to be fixed.
The thing is... once I replace an area with a value of 'zero', it will automatically sent the value to some other joints. Luckly there is a hold/unhold button which designed to fix this problem.


This is the weight map for the stomach.

The music I made!

I bought my new iMac 2 weeks ago and this is a music I created for the penguin dance in Garageband. I haven't discovered how to screenshot on a mac system yet, so counld show you any image during the making process. I wanted to create this in Logic Express, but then I found this free Garageband software which is much more easiler to use.(less controll though)

Production Schedule 3

The schedule has been updated. A lot has changed due to many delays. Camera shooting will be future delayed as my new brought camera has broken down. I am considering a change of plan for the backgorund design.

Rigging has got problem.

I didn't realise having a fat charactor could be so painful. I should have noticed and thought about why the tutuorial always use charactors thin like match sticks, because they are easy for rigging.
The weight on my penguin seems to need extra bones and joints to support. Or there's another way to do it, that is to creat a 'proxy geometry' to simplify the mesh. Then bind the skin to the proxy, parent proxy to the real geometry.

modeling

Here is the final version of my penguin. The modeling process didn't take long as the design was quite simple. It now does not have the sence of personality yet. It is hard to bring the 2D spirt into 3D. Maybe after textruing and rigging it could feels more alive. Yeah...maybe it's just because of the T-pose.


An eariler stage of modeling, this is before smoothing.


Notice the lines on the body, it took me a while to place them in an organised order.


This is smooth version of the penguin before I re-organised the edges and vertex.


And here's the earilest version. Low poly, didn't fix the lines yet.

Concept

This is the very first drawing of my design to the charactor. I just want to create something rounded, fat and somehow have a big nose. And yet it has to be simple.



Eventually, it became a penguin look like charactor with a big nose. It has a angry face and fat body. I liked this design because you can almost tell its personality by just looking at him. Lazy? maybe.



Fat but still can be a good dancer. I'm going to make him becomes Tom Cruise.

Production Schedule 2

The new schedule. Only one change made as I don't think scripting is needed for this project, so I deleted it. Concept have finished.

Production Schedule 1

This is the production schedule for this project. As Jared said, the schedule will be constantly updated so this is just a rough planing.

Research

The idea is to create a simple charactor and make it dance. I hope the whole sequence could be a 30 second loop. The main focus will be on the animation. Modeling and Rigging are also important as they are the preparation. As I have never rigged before, I need to do some more research into that. As for the animation, I have found some interesting videos from Youtube...


Tom Cruise dances in Tropic Thunder. This is the first video that poped into my mind when I thought about dance. Almost like a animated charator with a lot of exaggeration movement.


And here's something totally different in its setting and tone. Don't exactly know why I put it here...think I just really liked the acting by Al Pacino. Beautiful scene, prefect timing with the music. It feels like...when the high beat in the music comes up, there is a sence of power that breaks out from the actor. Then theres a sence of control over that power. Charming! really loved it.


Well, I know people have seems this a million times. Just look at the dog.. good animation, good timing and funny. And very simple! even no background. Oh yes this is inspiring.


Hey hot girls! yes! this is acutally the kind of stuff i wanted to do in my first year. But after I got my girlfriend, hmm....not so interested anymore. They are still good animation though. A little slow in terms of the music and some of the moves. Since the project has a 30 second limit, everything must move fast!!


WARNING! I'm warning you, if you don't like the big head/bubble eye japanese girlish stuff, DON'T watch this. I personly can't stand the cuteness of it, make me feel like girl by just watching it!! But must say, this is a well-known and succesful piece of animation. It's one of the first initial ideas that pops into my mind.
Simple, powerful. Although it's power is to make people feel weak..


Right, Let's have something more manly. This is...
well, I don't really know what's going on here, but this will work for my animation!


Some penguin dance. I like the charactor design, especially the little one at the end. It's simple, funny and fat, quite like Tom Cruise's role in Tropic.


Here's something really random. The most importance thing: it's short and still make sence. 30 second clip the same as my target. This is really ispiring.

Brief

This unit is aimed to produce a 30 second clip to be shown on Rave On Air. Project will be done independently by myself. It will include 3 main elements: A charactor, An environment and a piece of creative sound. Thoughout this unit I wish to achieve:
1.To explore charactor modeling and animation skill; (6/10)<--focus point
2.A development of skill from the last project for the environment; (3/10)
3.A sence of understanding in the 'handshaking' between sound,image and timing. (1/10)

MS Project will be used to control and manage the time and the progress. A detailed production plan will be done and being updated every week when using MS Project.