Final Project - WIP 9

Okay, this is the latest update on Shot 3.  I fixed the crashing polygons in Maya and also changed the animation a little.  I also finished rotoscoping and masking.  Took all of last night and all of today but it's done.  Actually, I still don't like the animation very much but I think I will have to work towards my delivery dateline first, then go back and work on the animation on my own time after that.

Lighting hasn't been done and colour correction will also need to be worked on.  Will start working more on lighting tomorrow.  I experimented with it for one whole night the other day but I couldn't get it to a point that I was satisfied with.  Will work more on lighting the scene tomorrow.

Actually, I also have to do Shot 5 but Shot 5 is pretty much similar to Shot 3 and doesn't require a lot of animation or rotoscoping so that shouldn't be too difficult.



Here is a very rough cut of what the final project is suppose to look like.  The original bin isn't suppose to pop up in the first shot, I just haven't rendered out that section of the bin yet.  Also, haven't rendered out the bins in the final shot.  I cut a rough cut together so that I can tell what other problems I may have and I can already tell that I will have at least one very glaring continuity problem with will need me to figure out how to fix

Anyway, I am really, really, really tired.  So will go sleep now.  Later. :)

Final Project - WIP 8

This is another quick update.  I've finally gotten the animation of Shot 3 more or less down.  For some reason, the rigging and skin painting on one of the polygons got totally screwed up and I couldn't fix it.  So it meant that I had to re-do that entire polygon from scratch. =(  That meant too that me fixing that UV texture problem in the previous post proved to be a waste of time since I had to re-do that entire polygon from scratch. =(

I had a few more problems with importing both this polygon and the other newspaper polygons into the Shot 3 project which took me what seemed like forever to fix as well.  But it's all good now and I was able to complete the animation of Shot 3.

The above is a draft render.  Lighting still hasn't been done and I will need to work very hard and very fast on the rotoscoping.  Lucky this shot isn't as long as Shot 2 and the arms don't swing around so fast as well which would make roto a little easier.

I would like to tweak the animation some more later but probably only after I finish roto and masking.
Okay, will be jumping straight into roto after this post.  Hopefully will have some more for viewing later today.

cheers

Final Project - WIP 7

This sheet of paper will go on top of the recycle bin in
shot 3.  Unlike the other sheets, I used joints to rig this.
The other sheets used deformers.

This is a really quick post.  This is an image of one of the sheets of newspapers.  I forgot to texture this earlier.  I can't believe this took me something like 2+ hours to do early this morning.  =(

ARRRGGGHHH.... must remember to texture or at the very least do the UV thing before I do any kind of deformation.  Even though I used the previous method that I mentioned in an earlier post, for some reason it just refused to work.  I had to be very, very patient and after many attempts I finally have this sheet textured and bump mapped.

Okay, off to work on this some more.  I experimented with lighting Shot 2 throughout most of last night without much success.  =(  Am just going to do that later and move on to Shot 3 first and try and plow through it ASAP then light and render all the CG shots at one go once I figure out just what kind of lighting I should use.

On a side note, I'm kind of in a good mood today.  =)  That's because a good friend in Japan helped me to pre-order the Kalafina concert blu-ray and Kajiura Yuki's The Works for Soundtrack 3-CD album.  Yay!!!!  Okay break time over... hopefully this good mood would translate into good work in my Final Project. =)

Final Project - WIP 6

This is another test render of Shot 2.  I fixed the crashing polygons, although I still think I can animate this better and will probably make more changes to the animation.  The biggest change I did to shot 2 in this render is that I worked even more on the rotoscoping.

I didn't think that the rotoscoping in Shot 2 in the previous render was clean enough so I went back in and changed the method of rotoscoping for parts of the character's body which meant that I had to re-rotoscope the entire Shot 2.  That sucked up quite a bit of time but I couldn't live with the previous roto problems and I don't think I'm being overly particular about it.  I think if anyone watched the previous render carefully, they would know it just isn't rotoscoped well enough at all.  Now I am really quite happy with it and will not touch the roto for Shot 2 anymore, unless I spot another problem.  I also blured out the background so that the character and the newspapers stand out more.

Alrighty, that is it for now... I will be going back to working even more on the project after making a drink... probably a cup of coffee or maybe ice green tea... hahahaha... I can't decide. :)

Final Project - WIP 5

 

Hello, here is yet another test composite render.  Looks like I still need to work on the animation as some of the newspapers are still clashing. :( I'm actually not that happy with the 2nd shot's animation too because I kind of want it to slow down more as he is pretending to read the papers but am running out of time so I may have to just leave it for now so that I can work on the final shot.

I think I need to work on the continuity from Shot 1 to Shot 2 as well.  It's definitely off, not just the newspapers but also the character.  I probably should cut out of Shot 1 a little later... need to remember to check on that, as well as the newspapers later today.

I still need to work on the animation and the rotoscoping of Shot 3 which will definitely take time.  Then will have to do the lighting and render layers.  So still lots and lots to do because I haven't even lit and rendered layers for Shot 1 and 2 yet.

Anyway, I am relatively happy with how most of it looks for now.  I keep learning more and more the more I work on this project and that alone makes me happy. :)

Okie dokes.... gotta go and try and catch some sleep.  Am pretty tired today with working on the final project, running maintaneance software on my old and dying laptop and trying to remember Transitive and Intransitive Verbs in Japanese... my brain is fried and I still have to get up to play table tennis tomorrow.

That's it for now... cheers.

Final Project - WIP 4

This is yet another draft render.  This time this is a render of the first shot of the project.  The 3d models are rendered out in as an iff sequence in draft quality so they don't look that good.  Also, I haven't set up the render layers yet, nor have I done the lighting, so the whole thing still looks very rough.

I need to fix some of the animating, some of the pieces of paper are crashing into each other and there is a small fix that I will need to do for the masking in AE.

Will need to check the rotoscoping when I don't feel so tired.  For now, it looks okay to me.  So now, I have finished rotoscoping Shot 1 and Shot 2.  I haven't started on the animation or the rotoscoping for Shot 3.  Yikes... must work faster.

Also, will need to remember to fiddle some more with the Mental Ray Depth of Field for the cameras.  I still think that I have too much DOP.

I brought home my school computer two days ago.  So part of tomorrow will have to be devoted to clearing the room and making space for the second workstation.  I'm hoping this will help speed things up later down the road.  This way, I can start to render out layers on one computer, while I work on the other.

Okay, that's all for now... I need to sleep real bad.  Need to wake up tomorrow morning to play table tennis too... so will sleep immediately after this post.

cheers
p.s. hmmmm... the quality of this Blogger streaming video doesn't seem to be that good... I think I'll return to using youtube next time.

Final Project - WIP 3

Here is a very short update of my Final Project.  I'm still in the middle of animating it but I did take a break from animating to do some rotoscoping.

This is a screen capture of a test composite of the newspaper surrounding the character.

The final composite won't look like that.  This is just a draft render of the newspapers and a rough composite so that I can test somethings out.

This was a rather useful exercise because I learnt that with the previous way I was animating, compositing will be quite a bit of pain and will require a lot of masking to make it work. So after this test, I decided to change the way I was animating to make it easier and more organised.

Because of the test I have to go back to change the animation for the second shot. :-(  Sigh... and I may need to fix some of the animation in the first shot.  Still... I'm glad I did the test because it's better to change it at this stage.

Okay... that's it for now.  Good night. :-)