Week 41 - Starting Monday 21st July

Monday 21st July
Started and finished shot004 today.
I used the technique of filming myself act out the shot for use as reference, in the same way I have researched how animators in the industry might use this process to create reference for a shot. Such as this example from animator Jeff Gabor at Blue Sky studios for the film 'Horton Hears a Who' (2008):


Myself acting out this shot:

I also thought it was interesting to see how the shot had progressed from the storyboarding stage, to 3D pre-vis, reference footage and then final animation:

Shot 4 final animation:

Raised the dog's head and features to show his shock at the bird eating his biscuit, then lowered everything again with his eyebrows to convey his disappointment.

Created some blendshapes for the ball for when it deflates and to fit the football in the dog's mouth better, as if his mouth is squashing part of it:

Football blendshapes.

I also decided to zoom the camera in slightly to make the shot more of a close-up:

Camera - old position from animatic.

Camera zoomed in to make shot a close-up so the expressions on the dog's face are the focus of the shot.

Found out today that AfterEffects doesn't use .exr files, which the film was being rendered out as, so advised Kirti to render the film out in tiff format.

Supervisor meeting today:
Received some feedback for my animation in Shot 6, maybe not have as much bounce in the walk as he seems quite heavy footed, maybe try zooming in the camera to cut out his feet?
For the last shot when the leaves go past the screen, is there a reason to it? If not the leaf could fly past the dog and up and past the bird, to connect the two, as they are now friends at the end of the film.

Tuesday 22nd July
Finish tweaking shot006 after feedback from yesturday.
Couldn't zoom the camera in too much to cut his feet out as it also cut the biscuit out. I did zoom the camera in slightly though to frame the shot a bit better.

Previous version with camera further out.

New version with camera zoomed in.

Took some of the bounce off of the hips to help make the walk lighter. I've also removed some of the rotation and not lifting the paws as high to give him a lighter footfall. The tail is also not moving side to side as extreme before:

Had to redo the football and blends in Shot 4 quickly as the UV-map seam was facing right towards the camera which meant the texture didn't look right, so turned it around.

Gave Sheng feedback for Shot 14:
-Bring the bird's wings slowly down when landed, so they aren't static.
-Add subtle animation at the end to keep life in the character going till the shot cuts
-Could curl his body and features in more, he's very sad and hungry at this point, and to help make the audience feel sorry for him, bringing in his body language can help to make him look small.

There have been problems with the renderfarm, something to do with errors about V-ray and Renderman even though we aren't using these settings... Kirti seeked some advice about it and it's maybe something to do with the cameras, so I am importing and setting up new basic cameras for each shot before they go to rendering.

Helped Georgios set up shot 2 for animation, imported the characters into the shot 2 file which has Kirti's dynamics leaves as the human which Georgios is animating interacts with the leaves in the scene as she is raking.

I've taken shot 11 which includes the final human animation in it, to start animating the bird and dog in their tug-of-war.

Wednesday 23rd July
Been working on the animation for Shot 11 today. Had to work out how to parent the characters together so that they both follow the biscuit.

Ended up parenting the biscuit to the dog's mouth control and the bird's beak joint to the biscuit. This means the bird's head goes where the dog's head goes, but I can still move the bird's body around to give bounce to the flight cycle.

Also drew out some thumbnails in my notebook, trying to work out what pose to put the dog in for the tug-of-war:

I've decided to start the dog and bird's animation in a clean scene, to create a cycle animation for the tug-of-war, which I'll then import into shot 11 and key the global control to translate them across the ground. I used the post and pre-infinity curves in the graph editor to create the cycle animation:

Also today helped Kirti with some rendering problems with the characters eyes not looking quite right, too dull and reflective.
Gave Sheng some feedback for Shots 19 and 20 and replaced the bird house in shot 20 with the final model bird house.

Thursday 24th July
Sorting out the character's eyes which had too much reflection... Recommended to Kirti to render out just the eyes with the head as a black hole so that it can be added on top of the composition that has already been rendered:

Too much reflection...

Less reflection...

Even less reflection... which looks better.

Gave Sheng some feedback for shot 8, more force needed in the bird's takeoff - some anticipation? The bird could also enter the frame with a hop step, to help it travel the distance it needs to in the short time. Showed the blog post where I had some reference footage of bird's hop stepping.

Feedback to Georgios for Shot 2 - the human's body could be rotated slightly to help look like her weight is on her right foot, and rotate the toes slightly as if taking on this shift in weight.

Been working on Shot 11 animation. Added in the bird's wings cycle.

Friday 25th July
Finished the cycle animation for Shot 11:

Imported this into the scene. Had to group the characters so that I could rotate them without them all rotating on their own axis and coming apart. Also having to be careful with keying the global control to translate them as the ground is uneven. Working on getting the pacing right.

Fixed camera in Shot 1, 8 and 20 for rendering.

Talked over ideas and plans for the credit sequence with Rebecca who will be working on this, figured out what images and files she will need from our team to do this:

Weekend
Wrote descriptions for Shot 13 and 15, for additional animators for our film, to use as reference:

Shot 13 - Owner bends up into shot, holding the dog in her right arm, and holding the biscuit in her left hand. She gazes off ahead of her (watching the bird fly away to the fence). She is surprised by what she has just seen (a tug of war between the dog, biscuit and bird). The dog is looking in the bird's direction also, eyes focused and mouth glum, he's annoyed at the bird.

Shot 15 - Owner feels sorry for the bird as she now understands he was just hungry as well (Previous shot shows bird looking sad and tummy grumbling). She has a thinking face as she and the dog look at each other, then she looks at the biscuit still thinking. Her head lifts and looks in the bird's direction, she has an idea! Dog looks confused.

Shot 5 - Owner pushes the bin into shot and crouches down to the bin bag at her feet. The camera pans down with her, she is startled to see the dog sitting and staring at her, begging for another biscuit. The dog's eyes are sad and wide and his mouth is sad. Owner reaches into her pocket and throws a biscuit. Dog happily chases after it out of shot.

Extra information I gave out with shot 5:
There probably isn't enough time in the shot for the Owner to turn the bin around, like she does in the animatic, before she crouches down. The bin can just be left facing sideways to the camera when she pushes it into shot.
If it is too difficult to make the dog sit (his back legs are a bit troublesome to put into a sitting position), or go from a sitting to running out of shot, just keep him standing for the shot instead of sitting.

Week 40 - Starting Monday 14th July

Monday 14th July
Interviews and filming in the studio, teaching Georgios the essentials of 3D animating in Maya, and teaching Sheng how to use blendshapes.

I've been going through all the shots which Kirti has combined with the final environment and lighting, and re-setting the timeline to the correct length, and checking the animation settings to be at PAL 25fps, moving the new characters to roughly where the animatic ones were and adjusting the camera if needed, as the ground of the final environment is slightly higher than the animatic environment. Then turning the visibility of layers off before saving to make the heavy file more manageable to open and move around in:

Screenshot of Layout

Tuesday 15th July
Finished setting up all the shots ready for animation:

Created an Animation Shotlist to keep track of who is working on which shot and character:

Sheng discovered a problem with the bird rig, need more control on the arm joints to fold them back. Seeked help from our rigger Georgios.

Should we use bump maps to add more texture to the plants and bushes in the garden? Don't think it looks right for our film. (Not final lighting and effects just added to the center plant):

Bump depth: 1.000 (Too strong)

Bump depth: 0.038 (More subtle)

Bump depth: 0.263 (Still quite strong)

It's the simple things... trying to find out how I can view my animation through the camera whilst still working in perspective view - tear off a copy of the panel!

Wednesday 16th July
Looked over Sheng's animation with her.
Also worked with the team to determine what to do about the look of the plants and bushes in the garden.
Concerns about the render pipeline, renders are taking too long at the moment.

Thursday 17th July
Trying to get the dog to sit is a troublesome thing...

His legs go through the floor and I've been trying every control and joint to move it but it just distorts/looks unnatural. So going to avoid having the dog sitting in shots to avoid this problem unless it looks fine from the camera angle.

Managed to get the sitting pose look more natural but know thinking that for this shot the dog sitting won't be suitable, exported it for use in a different shot:

Checked over the shots Sheng and Georgios are animating. My feedback to Georgios for Shot 11 was to make the human's expression neutral, then smile after she has turned to glance at the dog in tug-of-war, then turn back suddenly with the smile disappeared. Shot 7 has been complete.

Friday 18th July
Been working on shot 6 today. I tried two versions of shot 6, one with the dog sitting and one with the dog standing.

Dog sitting version:

Dog standing version:

However making the dog sitting look natural didn't seem to be working, plus it didn't make sense for the dog to sit down, when he was about to get up again to go and dig a hole by the tree. So went with the standing version.

Week 39 - Starting Monday 7th July

 This week was mostly working on the dog walk cycle and getting started with Shot 3.

To begin with I started analyzing the footage I took of my own dog for reference...

Walk cycle - this walk is quite curious and cautious, the approach to the biscuit is slower and the head lowers as she sniffs the biscuit out before she gets to it, reference for shot 6 when the dog approaches the 2nd biscuit:

Shot 6

Searching and sniffing - she is actually around to find more biscuits/crumbs as she just finished eating one. This is good reference for Shot 3 when the dog re-enters the frame to find his biscuit gone and starts searching around for it:

Shot 3

I also tried slowing down some of the footage I shot to analyse it better:

Run cycle (slow):

Walk cycle (slow):

Analyzing the footage by drawing over it, simplifying shapes (such as the bouncing ball animation exercise) to better see the bounce of hips/shoulders/head, and movement of legs:

This is a quick animation test I did on my iPad of a dog walk cycle - this helped work out the key poses and timings of a walk cycle:

I also tried out a quick run cycle test:

Working on the 3D character walk cycle:

Keyframe all feet forward...

...then keyframe all feet back.

Then grab keys of different feet and move to offset from the others.

Next I keyframed the paws lifting off the ground - the passing positions.

Rotated the paws just as they hit the ground.

Adding rotation to the hip joint and start it moving just slightly earlier than the foot moving forward, which should help the illusion that the hips are driving the movement.

Translating the hip joint up and down - should start moving down just after the foot hits the ground.
Did the same with the shoulder root joint for the front legs.

Added slight rotation on head joint going side to side.

I rotated the head up vertically as translating wasn't producing a realistic movement. Also added in the ears animation, reacting to the movement of the head.

Adding movement to the tail to swing along with the walk.

Final walk cycle turnaround:

It's a quick walk, so I tried grabbing all the keyframes and stretching them out in the graph editor to slow the walk down slightly:

Slowed walk cycle:

Also this week...

As shots for animating were being handed out I realized that the final characters still needed to be scaled into the environment. Kirti worked on this and I noted down the final scales for each character just in case any animated characters need to be imported into the shots.
Dog: 0.137
Bird: 0.085
Human: 0.414

There was also a problem with character texture files not matching to the UV's which was spotted and sorted on the Friday.

Had a look over the environment with Kirti, the environment was gamma corrected, but then looked too bright, tried to adjust in Photoshop with saturation and exposure. Then decided that how it was looking before was a better look for the film. So everything was un-gamma corrected. Maybe except for the grass, which used to turn out more yellow...

Week 38 - Starting Monday 30th June

Monday 30th June
Had a meeting with Phil to discuss feedback from last Semester and the assessment process for this semester.

Discussed the dynamics leaves with Kirti and which shots to add them to. I thought it would be good to have them sweep in and then down with the first camera pan in the opening shot. This sets up the scene as being set in Autumn and helps guide the viewers down into the garden. I drew over the shots to help Kirti to show where the dynamic leaves could go. She had a great idea of having a bigger leaf sweep past the screen to create a swipe to the next shot - I have illustrated this below:

Discussed the look of film with Kirti and Sheng. Kept referring back to the concept art and the watercolour/2D style of it and how we could achieve this in 3D.
Got a copy of all assets and textures to experiment with.
Found an article which looks at visual development and making a 3D animation look more 2D: http://www.bloopanimation.com/visual-development/
This effect, that is written about in the article, is created using a wobble deformer and toon outline with some noise:


Found a walk cycle tutorial for quadruped which I could follow to create a walk cycle with the Dog character: http://www.cgmeetup.net/home/quadruped-walk-cycle-tutorial-by-samy/
There was also another one on Digital Tutors for a biped, but tells how to translate an on-the-spot walk cycle: http://www.digitaltutors.com/tutorial/354-Creating-Walk-Cycles-in-Maya
A run cycle tutorial for a quadruped: http://www.digitaltutors.com/tutorial/1505-Animating-Quadrupeds-in-Maya

Tuesday 1st July
Went to the library today to research a book 'The Illusion of Life' by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston. Sketched out some of the drawings from the book to use as reference, but also I feel like I take in the information better if I draw it out instead of just reading/taking a photo of it:

Animating the tail and eyes

Dog walk and run cycles

Also had a look through 'The Animator's Survival Kit' by Richard Williams, which I have a copy of, and contains work on animal walk and run cycles which will be very helpful!

Experimenting with the 3D environment in a 2D-style:
To help the scene run smoother and renders run quicker, halved the size of all the textures. Also made sure all the texture files were in the SourceImages folder together. Then used a script from the internet (link) to help re-root all the texture paths to the same place - this should solve the problem of textures disconnecting when the file is moved to a different computer:

For the look/style I was trying for the film, I didn't see the need in using Mia Material X Passes shaders, so switched them all to Lamberts - as they should be an easier shader to deal with:

Also halved all the texture files as they were very big and slowing down the scene and render times. Will remind rest of the team to do this before final renders!

For lighting the scene, tried using directional lights with shadows, however this produced a very 3D-looking scene:

To try and render out a more 2D look, an ambient light was used with the Ambient Shade turned down to 0 and the Intensity turned down to 0.5:

This produced this result, which looked quite saturated and not as watercolour-like (rendered much more quickly though!):

So this was taken into Photoshop and I had a go at adjusting things such as Exposure, Saturation etc:

Things I've noticed that need fixed:

• The tiling on the roof disappears with the texture like this.
• Tree and bushes textures need adjusted/more detailed/textured more individually to look more hand-painted with the scene (for UV-mapping, just hide the seams at the back/not in most camera views)

Sheng's original concept artwork which I keep referring back to for the look of the film

Wednesday 2nd July
Director role seemed to be the main activity today.
Discussed the adjustments needed for the environment textures with Sheng.
Trying to solve problems that both myself and Georgios are facing with the blendshapes, as eyelashes and eyebrows are separate objects...
Set up a project file on the university computers that all of the team have access to, and so we don't need to keep moving files.

Thursday 3rd July
Supervisor meeting with Sharon:

• For complex shots such as the human picking up the dog, a solution was suggested for this... parent the dog to the human and switch the visibility of the dog off, then animate the human first, then switch visibility of dog back on and animate the dog.
• Don't be over-creative with our own shots that we are animating, use simple movements, then add into the animate to check how the animation flows through from the before and after shots. Then can add more into the shot after if needed.
• Have a shot of each of the characters animated first before handing out animation to others, so that helpers will have something as reference for the personality of each of the characters.
• Any additional animators needed?
• Soundtrack - even a rough soundtrack that could be listened to during the animation stage to establish the mood of the film - this might help enhance the animation.
• The conservatory should maybe be made into a wall instead, doesn't look quite right see-through/reflective. Or I suggested to paint the windows and use that as a texture.
• Make the patio lighter as it's blending in with the soil around the garden.
• Maybe adding in some brown around the edges of the grass will make the grass border look less straight next to the soil border.
• Next meeting will be 21st July at 2:30pm. Have all first individual shots animated. And the combined group one? A finished rendered shot, i.e. render and compositing pipeline finalized. Have a soundtrack.

Bird Blends I have worked on:

Bottom lid with the bottom lash line

Georgios solved the problem with the separate eyebrows/eyelashes:
Create the blendshape, move back to position of original head. Then combine the separated pieces of geomerty of both heads, selecting the pieces in the same order as each other. Then apply the blendshape, in parallel, to work with all the other blendshapes.
Then passed on the bird file to him to correct the separate eyelash geometry and finish applying the blends and adding the rig back in, so that I could carry on with dog animation work.

This is the way I set up and organised the blendshape window for the Bird:

Had a look over the blendshapes Georgios had created for the Human character, helped him solve the problem with the blendshapes not working together, just needed to be set to parallel.

Instructions for Georgios that I typed out to explain the process of copying skin weights - the same process I had used for the Dog character:

• In the correct skin weights file, detach the rig and export all of the rig as a .ma file to import into the blendshapes file, then bind the rig.
• Then import the correct skin weights file.
• Add correct skin weights model to a new layer, eg. 'old_Human'.
• Add the model with no skin weights to a new layer, eg. 'new_Human'.
• This will make it easier to select the different parts of geometry as they are in the exact same position.
• Select a piece of geometry on old model, then shift select same piece of geometry on new model - Skin - Edit Smooth Skin - Copy Skin Weights.
• Do the same for all the separate pieces of geometry on the model.
• For the head, as it is now combined with the eyebrows and eyelashes, on the old model select the head, then shift select the head on new model and copy weights. Then you may have to paint the weights again on the eyebrows and eyelashes, as I had the same problem with the dog's teeth which were now combined with the head.

All characters are now ready for animating!!!

Friday 4th July

Needed to adjust the time settings for animating, will need to make sure this is correct for all the scenes before starting animation:

 Go to preferences - settings - Time: PAL (25fps)

Then change the Time Slider to end on 25 and 50:

The start of the timeline will change to 1.04:

But you can just drag it back and it will change to 1:

Also been watching a walk cycle tutorial and taking notes. This one uses a cat but the same general movements will apply to the dog character... http://vimeo.com/79022941