Reflection On The Week (Week 28): Starting Monday 21st April

Monday 21st April
Going Live Meeting:

• Me and Kieran going to be main speakers at Axis presentation.
• Made a list of all areas need to cover in the presentation.
• Created a new folder in the shared GoingLive folder for everyone to add all their development and final work to be included in the presentation, in order to collate everything into a powerpoint/video presentation.
• The film has now been made live online here: https://vimeo.com/92521991

Also today, had to install an updated version of the animation picker on my laptop.

Added a few things to Shot 1 in the 3D Animatic, including some clouds and 3D text for the title of the film:

Started sketching out a layout plan to work out where the characters move to and from within the environment, also sketched a new idea for the shot where the dog goes back to ask for another biscuit:

Tuesday 22nd April
Talked to Kirti - the Owner model is being aimed to be done by Monday to pass to on to Giorgos to rig.
Sent a message to Giorgos to ask about starting dog model this week as he had said before that he was interested in doing that.
I carried on work with the Tug of Biscuit Animatic, working on Shot 2 today.

Wednesday 23rd April
Spent today setting up my model for Going Live for a turnaround. It involved some re-modelling in order for it to sit flat on the turntable. Also been working on some rigging screenshots/renders for the presentation and assessment.

Thursday 24th April
As we are compiling all of our Going Live work together for next week's presentation, I wondered if there was a better way to present rigs instead of just a screenshot. I searched for a way to make rigs visible in renders and came across a relevant tutorial and article.
These are the steps I went through: Click here for relevant blog post link.

Group Meeting for Tug of Biscuit:

• Had a look over the human model Kirti is working on. We all decided a simple mouth with no lips would work well with the cartoony style. Also discussed how the scarf/snood should look - it will help cover the join of neck.
• Also looked at the dog model Giorgos has started. We were worried that it was starting to look like a bull dog again, but we thought it might just be an illusion, as it's a cartoon dog, some of its proportions have been exaggerated which might be making it look bull dog-ish.
• Sheng is going to continue working on the environment model, before starting texture tests.
• I'm continuing to work on the Animatic.
• We also agreed that a production bible should be put together before the end of this semester, so that all pre-production is completed. Need to write out a list of props and do some plant and foilage designs for the garden.
• I wrote out a calendar so I could see all the important dates in the one place:

Starting to pencil in our new up-to-date production schedule - the human model is due to be finished for next Monday by Kirti, and then passed to Giorgos to start rigging.

Discussed the Going Live Presentation with Kieran. Started by writing out a bullet point list of everything that needs to be covered. Then started putting a PowerPoint together and worked out what additional material is needed for the presentation, turnarounds etc. We've decided that I will be talking through the Pre-Production work, and Kieran will talk through the Production work.

Friday 25th April
Spent most of today collating everyone's work and putting it into the PowerPoint Presentation for Going Live:

Ran through the PowerPoint towards the end of the day to the rest of the class, to check with everyone how it was looking an if there was anything missed out.

Creating a Visible Rig in Renders

As we are compiling all of our Going Live work together for next week's presentation, I wondered if there was a better way to present rigs instead of just a screenshot. I searched for a way to make rigs visible in renders and came across a relevant tutorial and article. Link Here. I passed on this tutorial to others in the class to use for their rig renders also.
These are the steps I went through:

• Press F6 to go into Rendering mode.
• Select curve.
• Paint Effects - Curve Utilities - Attach brush to curves.

• Look in attributes, turn on 'Forward Twist'.

• Work way through all Nurbs curves.
• Select all 'strokes' in Outliner.
• Paint Effects - Share one brush.

• Attributes - change Global Scale to one.

• Modify - Convert Paint Effects to Polygons.

• Ungroup brushes in Outliner, delete the strokes.

• Group all the brushes and rename to 'Rig Visualisation'.

• Center Pivot, Freeze Transformations and Delete History.
• Hide Nurbs curves.
• Hypershade.
• Create and apply coloured shaders.

• Select all shapes of same colour and apply shader.
• Select F3, quadrangulate in polygons menu for shapes.

To make the Visible Rig move with the actual rig:

• Group all rig geometry and parent to Global Control.
• Select Nurbs control, turn visible rig back on, select rig geometry, then Parent Constrain.

For rendering, I created an Ambient Occlusion layer:

I rendered out the rig on a layer by itself with some directional lights surrounding it:

I then composited these together with a background in After Effects:

Followed the same process for the view of the back: