Week 8 The Final Journal Entry - Extended

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RvT1KDAVwmc#!

Above is a link to the final major project after being exported into the following setting as requested in the brief.

Video Format: - QuickTime H.264 codec, 720x576
resolution, 25fps and 80% quality.
Audio Format: - AAC, Stereo (L,R), 44.1kHz

Our Final Product called “The Mexican Stand off” When finalised worked well, I think we chose the idea because it was simple and we wanted to just get a grasp of techniques and  an understanding of the software’s, without doubt it allowed us time to experiment as my weekly journals show, but it was still about ending up with an effective piece. I think overall it worked, but I think it could have been improved by more time spent on the animating side, by incorporating more movement into the animation, although when the Human cowboy shoots the animation, and the animation falls to the ground, I believe this is when the video becomes more effective.

I created the Model by using Z-spheres and sculpting it on z-brush, it worked very well. I don’t think I would have created a better model should I have used box modelling, perhaps instead of selecting the polygons and adding materials that way we could have researched into UV mapping, this could of allowed us to get more detail in, although our final video was tinted brown, so a lot of the colours were lost anyway therefore there may not have been much benefit.

The Video footage we shot as a group, By all being there it allowed us all to have an input and have different points of view to which shots look better. We filmed it using a Sony Hand Cam, which we fixed to a Tri-pod, this gave us firm control of camera angles and disposed of shaky hands, this gave it a more professional look. Because we had an action plan and an external actor the filming process couldn’t have gone any smoother, Shots were filmed first time, and only the rain stopped filming for a short interval, once this had passed we were able to finish the shoot under an hour.

The Animating of the animation was produced by Karl although I did have an input in it and completed one of the poses myself. The process was created by applying an animation layer to the skin and then using key framing to record the poses. This was the best way to create this, but I do think more research into movement could have happened and we could have put more time into this, saying this I was very happy with the outcome of all the animation and how it fit to the music track.

The editing happened as a group, I think we were all very confident about this part as we could all use Final Cut/Premier pro very well, We cut the video footage down from about 30 minutes of film down to a 55 second clip, only taking the significant parts we needed, we cut using the razor tool. We layered the animation footage over the top and used the Chroma key to take away the blue background so only the animation was left, all that was left to do was to move it into place on both the time line and the video footage. This process was very effective and I know there couldn’t have been a process which would have produced the results any better.


My aims at the start of the year were quite basic in terms of goals, I wanted to learn the techniques and tips to use “the software” by which I meant 3ds Max and I can say I feel confident when I use it, I have leant from how to box model to the basics of follow through and how to add skins to models and edit envelopes. This will allow me to use this as a stepping stone, so I have a knowledge of which I can work on when I create models in my own time. The progression projects gave me the motivation to learn how to use Z-brush, so that I can create more detailed sculptures and use them in 3ds Max.

Particular Modules have helped me more than others such as the 3d Animation, I enjoyed this so I found it easier to produce more and more work for the weekly tasks, Week 2- Basic modelling was the start of me really getting to know 3ds Max and I didn’t feel lost in the software any more. Also Drawing for Animation was an important part of my progression over the year, especially when I learnt about the muscles and there locations which at the time I didn’t expect it would come in useful, but when I used z-brush to create my model I had to get his form accurate, I did this by using the muscles as references.

When I wrote my personal my personal professional development strategy, I think I was focused in heading in the direction of drawing for animation, my aims have altered and after looking into the industry, VFX Artists could be another possible option which I would like to look into. With this in mind I tried to take a bigger interest to incorporating Z-brush into my work.

So with software in mind we knew as wrote in an article named how to break into the VFX for films, we would have to incorporate “ZBrush and 3D Studio Max”, so on the character we took great care in using this and also sculptris. 3ds max was used for the whole of the animating and as the projects go on we get more confident with software which our target area needs.

We also looked at popular techniques used in the Animation Industry, and moving away from the VFX industry, weather forecasts and many adverts to date have been blue screened


References

Ehow.com (1999) How to Break into VFX for Film and TV | eHow.com. [online] Available at: http://www.ehow.com/how_2305219_break-vfx-film-tv.html [Accessed: 23 May 2012].

Week 7 Journal Entry

This week was alway going to be the week when it all came together, it did but not without a little problem.When we recieved the mapped model from Charlie somehow the skin had unattached itself from the bones , the envelopes had been lost. we had one of two choices, re-do the envelopes or re-do the materials.

We decided between us that the easiest solution was to just re-colour it. So I started on that why Karl made a start with the presentation.



I again used a Multires, just because this would have took sooo much longer if I hadnt of because of the amouth of faces there were.Then i selected the majority of a part using the element selection tool in the edit poly column under modify, and if there were any stray faces i missed , i selected them seperatly with the Polygon tool, once this was all selected I just used the material editor , picked the material, and dragged and dropped it on to the highlighted surface. this was a relativly easy task and took me around about an hour to finish.


Once I had completed the materials, I passed it over to Karl to make it move.

So once we had the Walk cycle/Animation layer back onto him, it was ready to animate!

It was a good job we made the origional grey copies of the movements because we were able to try them Chroma key'ed into the video footage, and from that we realised that we would havto put the model against a blue background as when we tryed it with a black background we got a black haze around the figure, we changed the background colour by going to the rendering option, then environment and to background colour.

Karls Movements on 3ds max...

This series of movements is very effective and portrays the animation being shot very well.

Again just a simple movement as the clip will only last for a couple of seconds, so we pefered him to move a little rather than just stand their like a still photo.

The long shot was created using a camera at medium length, so when scaled down in size on Premier Pro it didnt lose any detail or Quality.

The over the shoulder shot was pretty simple, just placing a freehand camera behind the model on 3ds max..

once we had these shot it was a fairly simple task of using the Chroma key and inserting them into the video footage on Premier Pro.

Week 6 Journal Entry

This was the last week of any of the modules, Blue screening went really well in video audio, i managed to get Duncun onto the still image background perfectly.
Again this practice will come in very usefull when we are editing the animation onto the video footage on Premier pro.

The aim this week was to get the walk cycle sorted so it stands properly, we drag down the foot arrows down so that the body is stretched, it looks ok but still doesnt work right.

Karl uses the curve editor to change the whole look of this cycle, and this is what we got on attempt 2. He takes off alot of the swing and rotation from the pelvis.




This is the second attempt at a side view so that  its easier to see its movement. the leg has come out of place in this though so will havto have anouther look over the envelopes.

Note: At this point Charlie has started Mapping the origional 3ds model using, We decided the easiest way to do this is to go to Editable mesh, the select by vertex and select an area and unattach it so its a seperate poly. then we will be able to add differant materials to each bit.

So at this point I will be Collecting all of our work together to put into a Presentation, as I've produced all I need to for now, Karl is practacing the movements of the cowboy , while the main target of the week sits with Charlie to get the mapping onto the cowboy.

Below are a couple of test animations that Karl created , just to see how they looked....


This video above works very well, may haveto think about flipping the video footage so that this can be shot on this side, maybe needs abit more speed , but this is quite successful.



This week Visually hasnt been as productive but it has come to the point which i said in my firsts weeks journal , the little things have took alot of time and patience.

We are still on target to finish this , Slightly early if anything which would allow us to make a few minor changes to the finished product.

Week 5 Journal Entry

Audio and Visual was a huge week for us this week as we needed to know how to add an effect onto video footage . Using the chorma Key under the video effects in keying. I was able to take away the matt plain background and insert the bullet and smoke effect so it looks good. This will withouth doubt help me with the gun shots in our mexican stand off.






This Week I wanted re-material my model to add anouther option for the group to use, I took the origional model back into Z-brush, and used a range of Texture brush's untill i got to this point below.I wanted the model to look more rugged and not as clean as the other model... I did this by creating darker patch's on the knees of the jeans and using earthy colours.

My next step was to get the model from Z-brush to 3ds max, So I exported the model as an object file and imported it in, this gave me the model without mapping. from here I inserted a CATrig and moved the bones untill they sat it a correct place were they would sit inside the scin (model).

When I get to this point, where i can still see bones sticking out from inside the skin, i havto do some touching up and just keep playing around with the structure untill it sits in properly.

The envelopes was the stage of the model which really threw me off to be honest.Didnt quite get this at first untill i seeked help from a tutor, when explained it made complete sense, red and yellow effect which parts of the model move by bone and blue is hardly effected.This on its own took me probably the best part of 8 hours to complete.

Also a problem occured when doing this, the model had far too many polygons as i had sub-divided in Z-brush in order to get greater detail, so the way i had to deal with this was to just ad a MULTIres to each piece of the skin and decrease all polygons to about 10% of the origional amount, this didnt effect the detail in the slightest, i then just attached all the pieces of the skin in edit poly.

In the motion menu I added a walk cycle to the model and it came out rather wierd. Me and Karl will havto take a good look at this next week.

Our Plans have changed very slightly next week because the model isnt walking correctly, so we will havto get on with that before we can start to make the movements to the film.