Trailer!

We're done. Heres a trailer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK_j376ooKY

AWESOME

Nothing screams dodgy student film like a lens flare.
Ha!..... We've got two.

render update

34 second render.
screw indirect lighting. I'm happy with really quick render times.

Almost finished lighting one sequence. Only 4 more to go.

Render sneak peak

Here's a peak at some render tests I've been doing today.
I'm trying to get at least one sequence done in next couple days.

27 sec render with Mental Ray. Simple lighting setups.


The same render with Final Gather takes 2 min 43 sec.

For what you get for the extra time rendering I'm more than happy to go with the 27 second render which will save us some valuable render time over next couple of weeks and save us some headaches too.

P.S. - It's 2:30am and I'm still at uni. Screw this I'm goin home now.

Almost finished animation

Week 11
Here's our animation done for now.
There are still a few minor things to fix but for now we can say animation is finished.
We can come back and fix up things later but we have to move on and prep everything for rendering.

So the schedule for completion by week 15 looks like this:
Week 12 - All textures and shaders finished.
Week 13 - All lighting and render setups finished.
Week 14 - Render all shots. Collect audio for final soundtrack. Compile final edit on weekend.
Week 15 - Final cut of film due for panel review. Final mastered tape due for screening.

We might be pushing for time but for now this is how things are looking.
Hopefully not too many dramas til then.

Workreel update

Small update.
A couple more shots now animated.
Tried a simpler version of transition from city street to castle.
Adjusted a few minor details in some animation.
Now just waiting for last shots to be animated so can finish texturing and begin lighting set-ups.
And desperately need a cut of whole film animated so can get sound.

So I animated a shot today, and textured KM's sword. Meaning textures for KM are done except for final colour overlays.

Animation WIP / Workeel

Here's a WIP of our short film.
Some shots are animated, some not.
Some have textures, others don't.
Lots of work to do yet.
Some shots have to change.
Audio hasn't been done yet.
FX stuff hasn't been done yet.

wip of kitchen textures

Production Progress

As of yesterday we have now officially started animating.
We split up and allocated shots for everyone to animate and have set ourselves some rough deadlines do work to.
We decided to have weekly group meetings to review and critique each others work and keep each other on track.
So from now on it's full steam ahead towards our finished film.
I'll try to post weekly updates of our workreel as we finish animating and adding shots to it.
Wish us luck.

PreVis Update

Here's an update of where the Pre-Vis is at.
I've been sick the last few days so haven't really done as much as I'd like so not much to show really.
I've changed and adjusted a few shots taking on advice from last production meeting.

Added the fast-zoom camera-move to castle but it's pretty shitty to be honest.
Much easier to get right as a drawn set of storyboards than a 3d shot. If not done right it just screams 'dodgy CGI shot'. That said, it needs work to get looking right.

I've still got to do the rest of intro sequence with the eagle using updated environment and then the Pre-Vis is done and we can start animating, finally.

My head is pounding so time for some much needed sleep now.
Hopefully next update is finished Pre-Vis.

KM rig FIXED

The arms can now stretch! Woo! Individual attributes for stretching FK or IK. So, basically if you want to blend between FK and IK now, you need to keep them at the same stretch. Which uh. is pretty easy to do, I guess.

Clavicles still need paint weights.

Mountain Textures

Halfway through doing mountain textures. I want to put a bit more detail and make the mountain more rocky on the hill on the left. Happy with bg. Need to put sky in, bad lighting, whatever.

Takes about 2 min to render.

PreVis Update - Work In Progress

I still have to do the intro eagle sequence and the fast camera move to the castle but here's what I've done this week.
It has changed slightly every day as I'm constantly updating the reel with the new shots as I do them.
I'm still not sure about some of the city shots though.
Still needs a lot of work.
Needs to be finished and locked off this week. AAAAAAARRRRGGGHHH!!!!!!

Also I feel like I die a little every time I here that god-awful distorted eagle scream that gets used 3 times.

Updated ShotList

Here's the updated shotlist with new shot descriptions added according to new animatic/pre-vis.
You might notice that some shot numbers are missing because we now have 3 less shots to do.

Animatic/Pre-Vis Update

This is where we are at with our animatic/pre-vis for the film.
It has almost doubled in length from our early rough versions but I think it's much better now.

Colour test

Colour test, its ok I guess. Needs rocks, grass, and hi-res textures.

Production Schedule - Semester 2

Here's our schedule for final semester.

New eagle feathers

Found the maya bonus tools, seems weird I had to use maya for 3 years before I found these...
Anyway, it doesn't look like a chicken so much anymore. Real textures would help, I guess.

Not looking forward to painting weights on them.

Work sched

Max	Eagle rig finished
Max	King rig finished
Ang	Ratcatcher tested
Ang	KM tested
Max	Mountain normal map fixed
LJ and Max	Mountain populated, grass, rocks, shrubs, clouds, sun
Ang	Castle Uvs
Ang	Throne Room finished
	Throne room rough textures
Ang	Previz throne room
LJ	Interior house Uvs
LJ	Interior house populated (trophies, paintings, curtain, window exterior painting)
Max	Portcullis needs modelling
LJ	Castle tower flags
LJ	City UVS (buildings)
LJ	City (write a list of props)
For later	Model & test animate flier
For Later	Test paper being cut-up
Ang	Throne room waiting area
Ang	Throne Uvs
LJ	Crown

Test animation

JH did a quick animation of one of the ratcatcher's shuffling.
I love the IK pop on the right leg, I don't really want to go back and fix it now when there are main characters to focus on, so, I guess we'll just have to move everyone's hips down a bit before animating.

Also I did a fair bit of post work on this one- colour correction, levels, and a bit too much glow.

last RatCatcher model

More Rat Catcher models

Here's the latest addition to the character collection.
Only one more to do.... for now.
Again these are Hi Res versus Low Res mesh render tests.

City stuff

Just modelling the city, rendered some prog shots.

Rat Catcher model tests

Here are a few grey-shaded test renders of the first 3 Rat Catcher models.
I was comparing Low Res and High Res meshes with their respective normal maps.
Again I gotta say Mudbox is awesome.
Now I just have to finish other RatCatchers so Max can start rigging them all.
...poor Max.

Eagle with normals

Also started playing with the ambient occlusion shaders, this is single pass! no compositing.

New king clothes design. To save time.

Week 2 Sched.

Tues:
J A- Model Hair & Eyebrows on Ratcatchers 2,3,5
J H- Model Hair on Ratcathers 1,4,6
Max - KM ready for paintweights

Wed: Animatic to Alex
J A- UV maps for ratcatchers
J H- City Environment
Max - Fix GirlMouse

Thurs:
J A - Finish throne room (incl. throne chair)
J H - City environment
Max - Rig Ratcatchers

Fri:
J A - Test. anim on KM
J H - City environment/ Mountain start
Max - Rig Ratcatchers/ Eagle

Holiday Sched.

A delicious serving of spreadsheets.

Shotlist

I made a shotlist. Shotlist
Shot
List.
SHOT!
list!
shot LIST...
SHOT LIIIIIST;
A poem expressing my inner shot list.

So when rigging the GirlMouse I made a happy sort of mistake, it took the GirlMouse waaaaay off model. But it looks cuter. Who knows, discussion time.

Styletest

Trying to imitate stop-mo aesthetics, so I put an image sequence bump map on. Looks ok, needs a lot more time put into it before it works though. Here's a picture!


I think I just like posting a lot, because we move up to the top of google.

Here's a run cycle I did, with a slightly older rig (no armour stuff done). About two hours work, including lighting, rendering, etc.

Rigarous

Rig's pretty much done except for paint weights, and I'm waiting on blendshapes to do those. Woo, the big KM's pretty much done.

Here's a quick, roughly lit render of the first environment to get modelled, the throne room from the end sequence.
I still need to add some details such as flags on flagpoles, windows, large hanging flags on rear walls, the throne itself and possibly another table and of course textures.
Here I just tried to replicate the shot from the concept sketch including lighting and mood.

Here is an image of the girl mouse from the intro sequence.
She's only in the film for a few seconds and doesn't get very close to camera so I haven't added much detail to her. She still needs a texture but you get the idea....

Here's a couple of test renders of the updated versions of the multiple Rat Catchers.
I dialed back the amount of detail in the sculpt to more closely fit with the design style of the other characters. This meant smoother surfaces and definition of creases in facial features such as cheek bones and eyebrows. Enjoy...

Blendshapes; more like mishap(e)s.

Here are a couple of concept images for our film.
First is a floor plan of the King's throne room for the final sequence.
Below that is a coloured concept drawing for the possible mood and lighting for when KnightMouse enters the throne room. We wanted to go for a less saturated and darker tone for this final scene.

And lastly is a coloured version of one of the concept sketches done earlier of the town streets. I did this as a test of the kind of colour palette we chose for the sequence when KnightMouse walks down the street.

So I finished most of the rigging and decided to celebrate with a pretty render. Check out the paint weights going to crap in the armpit.


Paint weights Version 1:
When a problem comes along, you must WIP it, WIP it good.
Just posing the little guy I noticed problems with geometry inside the head sticking through an ear (conveniently framed out of shot), the tail twists awkwardly in extremes as well as the arms not being brilliant, armpits fixed.

Because I had a heap of custom controls, joints and influences added ontop of the set up machine- I had to reskin and start paint weights from scratch. Need to fix armour bending on legs.

Also added noise to the texture, changed armour from blue to grey, through a normal map on for some rivets. Also changed material to blinn, looks great on armour but like wrapped cheese on the ears. Terrible.

Here's a face texture, I made it, I like it. Ignore the clothes.


I've also finished doing some test rigs, gotta' compare what's easier to animate though- a rig made traditionally or a rig made with the setup machine. Traditional seems more customizable and blabla, but setup machine is EASY... and quick.
I posed Knightmouse and did a render to show, shading artifacts aren't great.

Mudbox is awesome

OK, so it's been a while since my last post but only because I've had to work on other stuff. Apparently we have so much spare time we should really be doing a million other stupid little meaningless assignments and not working on our major final year project. Really, i mean it's not like it's important or anything. I'm sure we can pull out a fantastic little short film in the 2 weeks off in between doing other pointless shit. It's not like it takes long to do an animated film. I understand now why previous years' final animation projects have been so disappointing.
I mean I haven't really done any animation in almost a year but that's ok it's only an ANIMATION DEGREE!
But hey, I'm not bitter....really...

Now that I got that off my chest, onto the important stuff.

I've been working on modelling some characters for our film and in doing so familiarising myself with Mudbox. First impressions are it's pretty awesome.
I modelled a basic low-res human character in Maya and took it into Mudbox to add detail and got a little carried away. I then took that model and modified it to make a bunch of other characters using the sculpt layers feature. All these characters are using the same mesh and texture, normal and displacement maps.

These aren't final versions but just quick muck-around tests and renders.
Oh and the skin texture is pretty quick and nasty (ie.- crappy) but that was just me playing around with the texture painting ability in Mudbox.
I think I'll have to tone down the detail on the normal and displacement maps cos it's a bit too much.





Bum chins are awesome...





And this one's a combination or blend of 2 of the above models using the sculpt layers blending ability in Mudbox.


And finally here's an example of what happens when things go wrong with displacement maps and normal maps with Mental Ray.