Spent a couple of hours testing daves rig today. We have to be sure everythings working before we begin to animate.
I had to re paint the weights for the elbow and shoulder because there was a bit too much deforming going on, but that was only a minor issue. The neck could do with a little bit more bend, and the file lags out when you zoom out to view the whole model, menaing you have to playblast any body animation. Apart from that its a dream to work with! I think once these issues are addressed we're all set! Well done Dave!
Thursday 18 February 2010
Monday 15 February 2010
Catch Up
Due to the dissertation taking over everything lately the project has had to take a back seat, something I hoped would never have to happen. The team have spent the majority of the last two weeks at home staring at blank word documents in the hope that something will appear. However we have been able to churn out the odd bit of P.O work in our 'free' time or on the days we regroup at college.
Grigsby has been working heavily on lighting and texturing the 'Edshot' as well as sorting out render layers and optimum render settings. He has done an absolutely brilliant job of bringing the scene to life and has kept in constant communication over the phone and the blog. Up until last week none of us had witnessed a render which could be classed as 'the final look' of the film, however I now feel we are ever so close to our vision. Below is the latest render (without ramp shader tests), hope you dont mind mate...
Simon has been focusing primarily on textures for the bed and pillow as well as making constant changes to the machine upon our request. Somehow he is able to tap the keyboard and he completes two thousand words of his dissertation so he has been almost fulltime on the project lately!
Dave has finally given in to my constant pestering and completed the Ed rig which is delicious news! After tremendous effort he conquered the stretchy arms and has done a really good job of setting up easy to use controls for the neck spline, as well as the head spline. The eyes along with their controllers have alos been parented to the rig meaning everything is now nice and simps. He will be posting a video of the working file shortly. Hopefully animation can commence later this week (fingers crossed).
I managed to kncok 7 out however I soon tired and with the help of Alec decided to see what this baby could look like rendered nicely. He set up a few lights and whola....
Awesome sauce. New renders always reinspire me and fill me with confidence that the boring lamberty file is actually going to look half decent at some point. So cheers Als.
This leads me on to what Alec has been up to. Well truthfully? Not alot. He admitted today that he's been a bit lapse with both projects and has yet to produce enough work. I think the meeting gave him a much needed kick up the backside as he stayed with me till late tonight working on the nightime lighting for the intro scene. Although still fairly basic and with alot of work needed, he managed to set up a lighting system and achieve some soft shadows. He has taken the file home so hopefully he will continue with this at some point...
Grigsby has been working heavily on lighting and texturing the 'Edshot' as well as sorting out render layers and optimum render settings. He has done an absolutely brilliant job of bringing the scene to life and has kept in constant communication over the phone and the blog. Up until last week none of us had witnessed a render which could be classed as 'the final look' of the film, however I now feel we are ever so close to our vision. Below is the latest render (without ramp shader tests), hope you dont mind mate...
Simon has been focusing primarily on textures for the bed and pillow as well as making constant changes to the machine upon our request. Somehow he is able to tap the keyboard and he completes two thousand words of his dissertation so he has been almost fulltime on the project lately!
Dave has finally given in to my constant pestering and completed the Ed rig which is delicious news! After tremendous effort he conquered the stretchy arms and has done a really good job of setting up easy to use controls for the neck spline, as well as the head spline. The eyes along with their controllers have alos been parented to the rig meaning everything is now nice and simps. He will be posting a video of the working file shortly. Hopefully animation can commence later this week (fingers crossed).
I have used project time to foucs on Jed as he has been neglected lately due to the rapid progress with Ed. I had to make adjustments to the model before blendshaping could begin such as extruding eye sockets, creating eye lids, and re locating the neatural mouth position. I also had to reassign some textures as the image sizes were too large for the computers to handle ( resized to 2048 x 2048). However today I began creating blendshapes on the latest textured version....
I managed to kncok 7 out however I soon tired and with the help of Alec decided to see what this baby could look like rendered nicely. He set up a few lights and whola....
Awesome sauce. New renders always reinspire me and fill me with confidence that the boring lamberty file is actually going to look half decent at some point. So cheers Als.
This leads me on to what Alec has been up to. Well truthfully? Not alot. He admitted today that he's been a bit lapse with both projects and has yet to produce enough work. I think the meeting gave him a much needed kick up the backside as he stayed with me till late tonight working on the nightime lighting for the intro scene. Although still fairly basic and with alot of work needed, he managed to set up a lighting system and achieve some soft shadows. He has taken the file home so hopefully he will continue with this at some point...
Other than that, the progress has been slow the last week or so, and with the dissertation hand in fast approaching I cant see the pace changing any time soon. I cannot wait until it is out of the way and we can just work soley on the project!
Wednesday 3 February 2010
Oxygen Tube Modelled & Rigged
Unfortunately Alec has been struggling lately with the task of modelling and rigging an oxygen tube so I have had to step in and take over.
What seemed like a simple tube connected to a few clusters actually proved to be far more complex in the end. The tube itself had to be modelled to a length which would allow it to extend from the pump to Ed's mouth with ease, meaning I had to refer to other scene file dimensions. I also had to take into account the movement of the tube and therefore include extra slack.
Once I achived the correct height I increased the subdiv width to approximately 50 and then scaled every other edge loop to achieve the nice ripple effect. After a quick smooth (preview 3), it was simply a case of modelling the mask itself. This wasn't too complicated as it was an entirely seperate object.
When happy with the design, and after centring everything to the orgin and freezing transformations, I set about connecting the two together and creating some controllers. Using the newly discovered wire tool, I was able to deform the tube with a curve made up of 7 vertex points located directly inside it. I then attached clusters to each control point and in turn parented them to snapped locators, making sure transformations were frozen along the way.
The final stages of the process involved hiding the curve, creating a nurbs circle control for the mask movement, parenting the mask to the end locator, and creating a final group control which enabled me to scale and move the unit wherever I wished.
After alot of trial and error, grouping, ungrouping, parenting, unparenting I finally manged to get a working oxygen tube....
What seemed like a simple tube connected to a few clusters actually proved to be far more complex in the end. The tube itself had to be modelled to a length which would allow it to extend from the pump to Ed's mouth with ease, meaning I had to refer to other scene file dimensions. I also had to take into account the movement of the tube and therefore include extra slack.
Once I achived the correct height I increased the subdiv width to approximately 50 and then scaled every other edge loop to achieve the nice ripple effect. After a quick smooth (preview 3), it was simply a case of modelling the mask itself. This wasn't too complicated as it was an entirely seperate object.
When happy with the design, and after centring everything to the orgin and freezing transformations, I set about connecting the two together and creating some controllers. Using the newly discovered wire tool, I was able to deform the tube with a curve made up of 7 vertex points located directly inside it. I then attached clusters to each control point and in turn parented them to snapped locators, making sure transformations were frozen along the way.
The final stages of the process involved hiding the curve, creating a nurbs circle control for the mask movement, parenting the mask to the end locator, and creating a final group control which enabled me to scale and move the unit wherever I wished.
After alot of trial and error, grouping, ungrouping, parenting, unparenting I finally manged to get a working oxygen tube....
Tuesday 2 February 2010
Another Day Another Driver
Thats right, more set driven keys. I spent today adding 'stuff' to the facial control box in an attempt to make life easier for us animators. Clusters were attached to the eyebrow vertices, which in turn were parented to floating circles postioned in front of the face. This created a far more flexible and efficent way of controlling the brow expressions.
Next I created a control similar to the open, clsoe, wide, and narrow, but for the tongue. Instead I combined the up, down, left and right bend deformers of the tongue to achieve a really nice monouverable tongue control. It is now able to slap all over the place, as well as tuck in and out depending on the positon of a new slider. I have yet to figure out a set up for the ripple (wave deformer) however I think we should just animate it from the channel box - much easier.
Finally I knocked up a quick animation test before heading off for work. It's only a basic wake up, but it was nice to be able to animate the blends easily for once. Luckily the test proved there were no serious issues with the setup, apart from needing a rig to parent the eyes to.....
End of Term Shots
Below is the shots we felt we were able to achieve by the end of this term providing the following assets are complete:
Ed, Wall, Machine, Cabinet, Floor, Chair, Card, Vase, Lights, Oxygen tube, Bed, Blanket, Pillow.
I definately think this is achievable considering Ed is almost ready to animate, the machine is 90% finished, the bed is well underway and all that is left to do is attach the mask and texture the back wall. Hopefully we can supply Mike with a small teaser of Ed waking up for ROA. Come on Team!!
2. Ed Sleeping
3. Clock
5. Clock - Ticks onto 12:00
6. Lights turn on - Hear Jed come in
7. Ed Sleeping - Jed walks past and Ed wakes up (teaser)
8. Ed Spazzing
16. Ed being like "guyssss"
20. Ed in pain
21. Look up at pump - Pumps breaks down
22. Ed attempts inhale - Fails - Screams at Jed
24. Ends screaming - Looks about
26. Ed notices mirror
28. Ed screams from mirror
41. Ed inhales 1
43. Ed screams 1
45. Ed screams 2
47. Ed inhales and grabs chest
49. Ed spazzing before death
57. Ed wakes up and fills up
Ed, Wall, Machine, Cabinet, Floor, Chair, Card, Vase, Lights, Oxygen tube, Bed, Blanket, Pillow.
I definately think this is achievable considering Ed is almost ready to animate, the machine is 90% finished, the bed is well underway and all that is left to do is attach the mask and texture the back wall. Hopefully we can supply Mike with a small teaser of Ed waking up for ROA. Come on Team!!
2. Ed Sleeping
3. Clock
5. Clock - Ticks onto 12:00
6. Lights turn on - Hear Jed come in
7. Ed Sleeping - Jed walks past and Ed wakes up (teaser)
8. Ed Spazzing
16. Ed being like "guyssss"
20. Ed in pain
21. Look up at pump - Pumps breaks down
22. Ed attempts inhale - Fails - Screams at Jed
24. Ends screaming - Looks about
26. Ed notices mirror
28. Ed screams from mirror
41. Ed inhales 1
43. Ed screams 1
45. Ed screams 2
47. Ed inhales and grabs chest
49. Ed spazzing before death
57. Ed wakes up and fills up
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