Client Project - Positively Compositing

After my feedback on Monday, I spent the entire of Tuesday morning, afternoon, evening and Wednesday morning (until 5am), fixing the parts of the animation that needed addressing. This included the...
- ears
- feet not touching the ground and sliding
- front and back body not showing any weight
- head not rotating enough
- tail not loose enough

I sent it back to Smoke & MIrrors, they were happy with it and were kind enough to render it for me using their incredibly powerful renderfarm. So i'm back in After Effects now putting all the pieces together again.

I plan to render it and send it back to Smoke & MIrrors tomorrow to get the final judgement.

I'm still not completely satisfied with the ears because there isn't enough weight. I know why though... I realised earlier hat I tried to animate both ears at the same time! Bad move because it's better to animate everything individually!! But, overall it's a good piece of animation (and going to be a fine piece of compositing too) so unless they ask me to redo the ears, this composite will be it. I don't mind if they ask me to do it again, as they said I could use the renderfarm another time too so it won't take me long to make the changes. As many people in my group have experienced this term, rendering has been the time consuming factor!

SPP3 - Eight Images for the Exhibition Catalogue

Here are the 8 images I am submitting to the first half of Assignment Two, although I may still change one or two of them before they go to print...











Soundtrack: Weather Report - Cucumber Slumber

Client Project - Good News and Bad News

Just taking a break and thought i'd post an update...

Today I showed my completed rendered and composited footage to the class. There wasn't a lot of feedback only that the animation needed improving, specifically the head up/down movement, and the feet not reaching the ground (though this is because the plane on the shadow pass wasn't high enough to meet his foot.

After the class I sent across the footage to Smoke & Mirrors for my clients opinion too. I received a great list of things that needed improving in the animation, lighting and compositing stages. I then received some uber awesome advice from the one of the animators at Smoke & MIrrors and the animation is beginning to look better ten fold!

So the good news is that I got some useful feedback...

The bad news is that I have to do SO much work in such a LITTLE space of time. It means another all-nighter tonight, which is going to be really hard as I didn't sleep much last night (because I was working).

Oh well. I guess this is what happens when you show the completed final work of a project. People see what it's going to look like and straight away see things that they don't like. Which is completely fair, but in an ideal world these criticisms could be mentioned earlier on in production!

Break's over. Back to the grind!


Soundtrack: Antonín Dvořák - Serenade for strings in E - III. Scherzo: Vivace

Client Project - Final Composited Animation

Here it is! All in glorious HD (which my computer managed to cope with in the end). I know it's on of the shortest video in the world, but this is all I could do in the time span. I did all the Modeling, Materials, Rigging, Animating, Lighting, Rendering and Compositing. Half of it was completely new to me so I have learnt SO much!

Next on the way is a turntable video of visuals from the different stages I went through (and outlined above). I might have a go at completing all four shots (this being the second) of the robot dog animation. If i have the time, it will give me the chance to explore refine my compositing skills as this is literally the first time i've done any compositing.


Soundtrack: Frank Zappa - When Yuppies Go To Hell

Client Project - Full Speed Ahead

As you can see from the above picture I am well into the compositing stage now!! I wanted to use Nuke, but with so little time left I decided it would be better to use After Effects instead (which is still a very good piece of kit).

I was able to get a lot of help from Rob who is particularly good at compositing. I'm doing a bit of masking/rotoscoping now and already added some blur, noise and colour correction effects so very close to rendering out the finale finale fin fin finished finito DONE!

The next stage of Client Project will be to render out (which I should've done in the beginning!!) the Bones, Wireframe, Mesh without Materials, Mesh with Materials, Mesh with Lights and Animated dog. All of which will fade into the next one on a "turntable". Then from the last turntable position, the dog will jump forth into the scene that I am compositing.
So some editing still to be done but this should hopefully demonstrate the process I went through in order to achieve the video clip.
Damn I want that first!! I'm going to put in many all-nighters if I have to, starting tonight!
I also want to have it all packaged nicely in a DVD case with two DVDs. One DVD will be the final footage that will play automatically. The second DVD will contain all the files, assets etc. that I used to complete the project.

Wish me luck - 6 days to go!!


Soundtrack: Dweezil Zappa - Electrocoustic Matter

SPP3 Images

While my Client project is rendering (so far 15 hours and still going!)...


...i've had some time to think about my SPP3 project.
I have to...
- write 75 words which will sit as an 'about me' in the catalogue,
- include 8 images of my own work at 11x11cm,
- write a 1000 word rationale describing and reflecting my selection of images and text supplied
- supply a catalogue portrait photograph (which is currently being generated by Sarah).

Here are some ideas for the animation images...





Soundtrack: Cinematic Orchestra - All Things To All Men

Round 6

Website: Here
Development Blog: Here



This is sooo coooool!!

Found it via Zap's Mental Ray Tips blog. Made by Snowball Studios. This would make a brilliant game! But it's a short film in the style of a cinematic for a game. A bit like The Running Man meets Zombies meets Rudy.

Client Project - Render Passes & Compositing

This is just a very quick small render of the dog, still in Maya, but with all the light settings looking pretty fine I think. I'm working out how i'm going render out the dog, lights and plane (with shadow) in different passes so I will have full control in compositing.

I found this very useful tutorial via What's On Media on how separate render passes should be layered in the different blend modes:

• Specular: Add/Linear Dodge (Add)/Screen
• Diffuse: Normal
• Shadow: Difference
• Reflection: Add/Linear Dodge (Add)/Screen
• Diffuse No Shadow: Normal

By tonight I should hopefully have rendered out every pass in HD ready to begin compositing tomorrow.

Update: Glorious HD...



Soundtrack: Nick Cave, Shane Macgowan, Kylie Minogue, Pj Harvey, Anita Lane - Death Is Not The End

Client Project - Tracking, Lighting and Rendering

It's a been a long haul getting the dog to this stage, but i'm very happy with my work and have progressed far in a short space of time. I'm now synching the run cycle with the backplate (2D footage), lighting and rendering. I'll hopefully finish this by tomorrow so that if there's anything else the client wants me to do, i've got a week to make any changes.


Soundtrack: Gentle Giant - So Sincere

Client Project - A Gigantic Leap

Last night I was stressing out so much because of how far behind I am. According to my Gantt Chart I should be compositing and I still hadn't got my rig working!
...It's all about time management; an art, nay, a craft!!

I've been working on the PRP artefacts and SPP essays/research while working on the client project and having to find time for everything has been a challenge. So last night I presented myself with two options; stay up all night and rig the dog, or talk to smoke and mirrors about all the problems and ask to use their rig. The latter however, to me felt like I would be cheating, so full speed ahead, I threw myself into the rig setup.

And I did it! =)...


This meant that I could finally start the fun part: ANIMATION! As you can see from the screen shot above, I have started blocking the run cycle. So I really feel like i'm moving ahead with things now.

Update (06/03/10):
Again last night and this morning I started work on the materials. I'm using 'Mia_Material_x' with Mental Ray in Maya 2009. As you can see the colour is not quite there yet but the plastic/metal material is making it look more robotic now. I need to get an image from Smoke and Mirrors, that the head uses as refraction.

So basically Client Project is out of my hands until Monday. I will finally be able to present a run cycle to my tutorial group first thing Monday though. I'm looking forward to showing it and getting feedback.



Soundtrack: Rush - What You're Doing