Week 35 - Starting Monday 9th June

Monday 9th June
Supervisor meeting with Sharon.
Had a lot to catch up on!
Points from the meeting:

• Arrange a group meeting to discuss sound - but each team member bring to the meeting the 3D animatic a sample soundtrack on it that they think would suit or work for the film. That way we'll have four options to pick from and some ideas, and also have something to show a sound person as an example. Unless we find suitable royalty-free soundtrack to use.
• Soundtrack ideas - ukulele, acoustic, mandolin?
• Sort out soundtrack before final animation, as the animation might be timed to the music.
• Arrange a team meeting with Sang to ask technical questions, better to sort this out now to avoid trouble ahead.
• Arrange our seating plan in the studio so our team is sat nearer to each other to help produce an efficient working environment.
• Which shots to animate first? Start with the first and end shots as they should be the highest quality. The last shot is not very close-up so the animation would have to convey well the dog and bird being happy and eating. Then move onto the tug-of-war shot as it's quite complex.
• The dog and bird in the tug-of-war scene need to be at least twice as big. Make it into a panning shot?

Back in studio:

Re-edit Shot 11 (Tug-of-war shot) to bring the dog and bird closer to the screen. Also added a camera move to help reveal the dog and bird:

However, I then thought the shot would work better as a still shot as it adds to the humour of the situation. We're in the Owner's space for this shot, and at this point her world is calm and uneventful, which the still camera mirrors. And it's more funny that the camera stays still when the dog and bird enter the shot as this allows the audience to spot them themselves and not be guided by the camera, and then share the owner's reaction at the same time, allowing for a more immersive and interactive shot for the audience to be with the story and film.

Plus the shot before has a camera move in it.

Also reviewing and suggesting some slight adjustments to Kirti's model of bird, before passing to Giorgos to uv-map:

Straightening out the bottom beak so when the beak is closed it matches up with the top beak.

Splaying out the toes more and making slightly rounder.

Tuesday 10th June
Whilst working on the blendshapes I noticed that some volume was being lost in the front legs of the dog when the foot was moved:

Adjusting the weight paints to fix the volume in the leg when bent:

The wrist had a similar issue:

The weight paints just needed to finish before the sleeve of the jumper:

Worked on the 'blink' blendshapes today. This was the start creating the full blink:

However it travels right through the very round eyeball...:

Tried creating a half-way blink to help:

Wednesday 11th June
Sheng and Kirti have now moved to the desks opposite mine, hopefully this will aid to a more efficient working environment now that we don't have to call on each other from opposite sides of the room :D
Had a team meeting to discuss the soundtrack (we have set ourselves homework for next Tuesday to all bring examples of music that might be suitable for our film), sent an email to arrange a technical support meeting, and discussed what we're all working on.

The weight paints on the Dog's front legs are now fixed. Showed Georgios what I had been doing to try and fix it, then handed the file to him to finish.

Discovered a UV mapping problem with the dog. The dog was rigged on the non-UV-mapped version. So have halted on blendshapes until this is sorted.
I have been testing how to transfer uv's to the rigged character, no luck yet.

Thursday 12th June
Today I've been working on sorting out the Dog and Bird models, to make them ready for rigs, as there's been some problems with UV maps and Normals.
I imported Georgios's uv-mapped dog into a new scene in Maya and there's a problem with the normals on the eyes. Just one ring of polygons shows up black, which was telling me the Normals were the wrong way round. However, when I revesed the Normals, the UV map then showed up those polygons as the wrong way round:

Unsure how to fix it I moved onto the Bird, however there seemed to be the same problem here but on a slightly bigger scale. Decided to try and fix the Bird first before going back to the Dog. Went back to original model and checked all Normals and reversed ones that were the wrong way round, resent to giorgos to uv-map:

I suggested that the quickest way to UV-map the feathers was to UV-map one of each type of feather, then transfer the attributes to the others. Got transfer attributes to work by using these settings in the tool:

 The outer eye on the left was correct but the outer eye on the right was not acting like it should (Normals wrong way, then corrected, but then started looking weird). I then decided to duplicate the correct outer eye and replace the one on the right. This lead to learning a tool I hadn't used before called the 'Align Tool' (found under the Modify menu):

Every piece of geometry on the bird I checked for correct 'Normals', Deleted History, Froze Transformations, cleaned up the Outliner and the Hypershade. It was then ready to pass to Giorgos for rigging:

Going back to the Dog, I opened the original model file and found where the reversed Normals were and corrected them:

Sent back to Georgios to UV-map the inner and outer eyes. Then I imported them back into the file and cleaned the whole file up like I did with the bird:

Friday 13th June
Finished all of the eyebrow blendshapes, plus a nose sniff blendshape, for the dog: