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