Shots

Alec and I divided up the shots in the animatic today in order to suss out how many there were (60), how many were hard (9), medium (26), or easy (25) to animate. The shot listing is colour coded according to difficulty:

1. Opening Shot - Pan down the machine

2. Ed Sleeping

3. Clock

4. Estab of room

5. Clock - Ticks onto 12:00

6. Lights turn on - Here Jed come in

7. Ed Sleeping - Jed walks past and Ed wakes up (teaser)

8. Ed Spazzing

9. Foot tap

10. Finger Clicking

11. Headphones

12. Vroom

13. Polisher

14. Bumshake Upclose

15. Bumshake - Jed, finger snap

16. Ed being like "guyssss"

17. Jed walking towards cam whilst dancing head looking down

18. Ding

19. Estab of room - Jed walking in the distance

20. Ed in pain

21. Look up at pump - Pumps breaks down

22. Ed attempts inhale - Fails - Screams at Jed

23. Ed screaming in background

24. Ends screaming - Looks about

25. POV looking around room (dancing)

26. Ed notices mirror

27. Jed turns around the corner to mirror

28. Ed screams for mirror

29. Jed walks past, notices, ignores mirror

30. Ed leans forward and moves bed and looks down

31. Wheel doing nothing

32. Ed tests the bed moving

32. Wheel moves

33. Ed goes for it and moves the bed

34. Estab of both characters doing there thing.

35. Ed comes up behind Jed.

36. Jed begins bum-to-bed contact

37. Bum hits bed

38. Ed flys back

39. Eds hits the wall

40. Ariel shot

41. Ed inhales 1

42. Jed Moon walks

43. Ed screams 1

44. Jed running man

45. Ed screams 2

46. Jed singing

47. Ed inhales and grabs chest

48. Jed spins and lets go of the polishing machine

49. Ed spazzing before death

50. Ed dies and jed slides

51. Jed's standing there bedside

52. Estab o' room clean

53. Jed turns off machine and walks off

54. Hands follow wire to wall

55. Unplugs polisher and plugs in machine

56. Machine turns on

57. Ed wakes up and fills up

58. Eds sleeps on pillow and track out

59. Copy previous clock and AE the date

60. If struggling for time copy previous Ed waking shot.

Piss shots = 25 Meds = 26 Hard As = 9

It was satisfying to know that a third of the film was made up of really really simple shots, and would take no time at all to animate. The exercise proved beneficial in terms of organisation and has reinspired the team to meet the degree deadline.

Updated Controls

A quick post just to show the progress being made with Ed's facial controls.

New addtions include:

• Squash and Stretch handles, which, believe it or not squash and stretch his face. I created them using four blends and a set driven key system. This will be really handy when we want to achieve sudden jelly like movments, for example the shock wake up, as we can now add aniticipation and exaggeration.
• High & Low bound. A simple control which can alter the postion of the mouth on the face. Slide it up and it sits just beneath his eyeballs, slide it down and it almost reaches his neck! Perfect for the jaw drop.
• Bulge Slider. Originally I wanted to include 3 blends to this set but struggled to figure out a triangles limitations. I decided to leave out the puffed cheeks and create a seperate control for them later on, meaning now when slid to the left or right his cheek puffs up accordingly. Used for pre-screams and anticopation i.e just before Ed explodes!
• Finally I created a rather funky Extreme Scream driver. Simply pull down the jaw in the diagram of Ed and he performs the most extreme of the scream blendshapes. This one deseerved its own control.

Facial Setup

Finally managed to get somewhere today! With the much appreciated help of Alex Hulse and Dave I began to understand what set driven keys, locators, blendshape sets and limitations actually are. I had made the big mistake of creating all my blendshapes seperately, meaning I had about 20 individual blends. Really I should have been creating sets of blends which when combined would form inbetween expressions, such as open, closed, wide and narrow.

So the first task was to delete all existing blends and reassign them in multiples according to the expression. Once all the sets were created I set up a simple slider control with the help of Alex. He explained the process envolved:

- Create blendshape set
- Create curve control
- Merge curves
- Name
- Freeze transformations
- Create curve slider
- Merge curves
- Name
- Freeze Transformations
- Parent slider curve to control curve
- Set limitations of slider.
- Lock off x and z, and set min and max of y by reffering to channelbox.
- Animate - Set driven key - Set
- Select slider - Load driver
- Select translate Y
- Select Blendshape set in channel box - Load Driven
- Select specific blend
- Key (with slider at 0, and blend at 0)
- Translate slider to max Y value, and blendshape to 1
- Key
- Depending on whether you require multiple blendshapes, repeat the process.

I soon grasped the conecpt and began to enjoy creating all the controls. Using the same technique I applied quiver controls to premade clusters. As well as this I made a four way control for the open, closed, wide and narrow by merging 4 blendshapes and the X and Y translations of a locator in a box. Finally I added a high and low bound slider for the mouth to position the mouth wherever we want on the curvature of the face.



Although far from finished with blendshapes still to create I am really pleased with progress made today. I learnt a hell of a lot and I owe a big thanks to Alex and Dave for their time.. I think I now know how to sort out the eyes, eyebrows, eye lids, teeth and tongue....

Heres a quick playblast of the controls so far in action.....

Monday Meeting

Chim Chiminey Chim Chim Cha - Rooooooooooooooo.....

Today the team had a serious team meeting in the morning to discuss the progress of the films. Whilst we are all working hard we agreed that we need to worker harder, faster, and longer if we intend to complete everything for the degree show. Unfortunately the dissertation has become a hinderance to all of us and caused the production to fall way behind schedule. With so many days off for essay writing it is hard to pick up the momentum from where we left off.

Thankfully Splay has enjoyed recent success with test renders looking amazing, textures almost complete and rigging well underway. However P.O has taken a turn for the worse with blendshapes dragging, the light setup causing ridiculous render times, and textures taking longer than expected. As well as all this the rigging is lying firmly in Daves hands, who, at present is rigging Splay. With no new visuals to inspire I must admit I've been a bit disheartened with progress. We simply must start animating midway through the term, but to do that Ed needs to be textured and rigged with facial controls attached - something that is proving to be very time consuming.

As a result I have set immediate deadlines:

Dave must complete a fully functional torso rig by next friday.

Simon must texture the bed by next friday.

Alec must model and rig the oxygen tube and mask, aswell as sort out lighting and help with animation by next friday.

Grigsby must finish all of Jeds textures by this friday, aswell as test skin and wall textures for Ed and Jed by next friday.

Spence must have Ed, the sink and the radiator Uv'd by this friday.

Phil has kindly agreed to chip in with any spare texture/s

I must have all of Ed's blendshapes and test facial controls complete by this Thursday.


I dont want to be a nasty director, I love my team, but reality has kicked in and I know now that if we keep shrugging off these deadlines and messing about all day we will never achieve the film we all want so badly.

On a more positive note Alec, Grigsby and I stayed behind late tonight in an attempt to render out a decent shot of Ed in mid terror. I really wanted to check that the model looked nice coloured and lit, and more importantly that the blendshapes looked good. Test animations proved difficult due to limited controls and unfinished blends however we managed to get him waking up with a fright - until Maya crashed. Therefore I cant post the little test but we concluded all was fine as long as a decent facial setup is attached and the model is smoothed properly.

We did however manage to render out a nice still of Ed in action. Alec set up a few lights, then we applied a coloured blinn with a subtle fractual texture. The first test was AWFUL....


But after a smooth, an occlusion pass, and light and texture changes we stumbled across something half decent....



Maybe there is light at the end of the tunnel....

Got There Eventually!

Blendshapes are well under way now, after a lot of hassle.

X Ray

Simon came up with a genius suggestion yesterday which has solved two problems. The first was the issue of restraining Ed to the bed. We began to wonder whether people would question Ed's ridiculous attempts when he could simply get out of the bed to catch Jeds attention. It was therefore always a known fact that he would have a broken leg or two, but how do we show it? We dismissed the idea of attaching a big ugly cast on his foot for composition reasons and proportions. Restraints were out of the question unless we were going for the mental asylum look. So why not introduce an xray of the patient? A great idea by Mr Harvey - so much so that I made it that night....

It also solves the issue of a blank video screen on the life support machine that needs filling. Hopefully we can have the legs flashing, or red squares zeroing in on the fractures when the camera pans past informing the audience of the injury.

I need to run through the new camera pan with the team tommorow, however I think I've decided the original boring straight pan down the machine is out, and the new querky left to right, up and down pan is in. That way we can cover alot more interesting features on the machine, following pipes and passing the xray, but still finishing up with the patient.

Tight Lipped V.S Open Extreme

Spent the best part of today blendshaping from the most extreme scream to the tiny tight lip. There was a ridiculous amount of vertices to repostion and shrink, not to mention solving the issue of a spontanious burn deformation. In the end miss verall sugegsted I reverse normals and it worked like a charm - cheers much! I need to finish the feet and create 4 or 5 more blendshapes - the squash and stretch of the rig will aid us in exaggerating the screams even more.



At the moment he bares a slight resemblence to this lil fella...

Swanky Stuff

Pretty happy with these new arms. Managed to achieve some definition in around the elbow and wrist, as well as model a fairly detailed hand. I still think it could do with some reshaping and a little less of the goblin styled fingers, but I suppose thats just my style creeping out again! Hands and feet will be complete for Monday so alls good in the hood.





On a more positive note, eye tests were carried out for Jed today and the results were .... well check Alecs blog.

Arm Attempt

Really want to achieve some muscle within eds skinny arms. I extruded a tube earlier in the week and it looked like a pathetic sausage. So after briefing Dave with jeds rig and giving him the model in the morning I continued to work on Ed. I found it almost impossible to model with no reference and so sketched some rough arm designs, scanned them in, and constructed an imageplane setup. I then deleted the hideous frog feet made previously and began modelling the new arms. My deadline for Ed is Friday however I think that will stretch until Tuesday as I still need to complete blendshapes for his mouth. However we are ahead with Jed so it should even out on the schedule...

Daves Rig Requirements for Jed

-Afro needs parenting to head
- Afro needs general wobble.stretch/squash (lattice?)
- Headphones need parenting to head - account for change in mouth shape
- Headphones need to throb/squash & stretch - rig. (lattice?)
- Mouth blendshape facial setup - GUI
- Tongue needs parenting/attatching to mouth
- Teeth - need to follow lips when blenshaped i.e an up and down control
- Head rig - needs alot of bend so he can whirl it to and fro
- Body rig needs to be very flexible (squash and stretch/bend) Needs to be able to perform groovy snake like moves
- Arms need to be able to stretch
- Hands rigged
- Bum clench and expand controls
- Legs need to stretch
- Feet - reverse foot control?
- Not too many body rig controls/rings
- Eyes - stretch/squash/expand controls in channel box - parent to face/

Mirror & Bed Modelling

Sink Sculpting

Still major shit to do to it...

Ed Start

Decided to get a move on with the Ed model today. It was supposed to be the easier of the two characters however I quickly became stuck due to the unfinished designs I produced last term. After achieving the basic shape and extruding some primitive ears I called it a day. Either I was way too tired for this or the design needs work!

Fiddlin with the Fro

I knocked up an afro texture last night ...



I couldnt UV the fro' for the life of me and so left it with the default mapping until Spence is available...



I then applied it, added some lights and composited it with an occlusion pass....


Pretty poor result. The texture stretched as expected and was far too large. The colour was wrong and there was no depth or bump so turned mr JayB's who knew an awful lot about normal maps and tangent object normals. He explained that it was a much more advanced approach at applying bump as it works out the depth based on mathmatically derived height.. So basically the hairs will stand out more realistically than a standard bump, aswell as making the edges irregular! After alot of fiddling it began to get somewhere....



diffuse map and the dense hot lookin afro!

Almost there....

I have been urging myself to add more detail to the Jed model today, and I can safely say it is nearly complete!

Trouser bottoms...

Name tag, pin, and buttons....


Belt....

Still need to adjust the placement of the headphones, create a few blendshaopes and maybe add a zipper or overlap down the centre of the suit. Apart from that he's ready for rigging!