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.