Matt and Dorien = win
May 23rd, 2009
Check it out!! Desipite numerous obstacles Dorien is cranking through the rendered frames as we speak. Kudos to both Matt and Dorien, its looking awesome!
Shot Renders - the home stretch!!
May 23rd, 2009
Hey guys! This one is for Matt and Dorien particularly, who are cranking away on the shot renders. Go render team!
Anyhow, just a quick note. I checked one of the occlusion images in the trouble renders folder, and I noticed that Heph’s tracking spheres had been left turned on. They’re the little red spheres that used for tracking arcs in animation. There is a display layer called “heph_tracking” which will turn them on and off. When rendering the final shots, be sure to smooth the characters out, and turn the tracking spheres off.
No worries on Kaylee though, she doesnt have any spheres since I got lazy on that one :)
Keep it up guys!
Broken Interior
May 17th, 2009
I’ve had to break each shelf individually to save simulation time. There are debris that can be placed in preffered location and all geometry can be separated to add flexibility in the placement. I can also break a few vases separately and bring them in to add some vase debris, but they will have to be done separately…and probably duplicated to save time. The geometry for these are fairly light, even more so than the original shelves. I reduced the geometry by 50% before i ran any simulation on them.
- JOSEPH
*** IMPORTANT**** DUE DATES!
May 14th, 2009
Alrighty guys. Its down to the wire right now. We’ve got a TON left to do, and very little time to do it in. The name of the game here is completion, no quality. Believe me, if anyone is upset by that, its me. But we’ve got to get this thing done, so here is how we are going to do it:
Dynamic Simulation:
This is HUGE, since it has such a critical story element. We’ll need time to match simulation to character animation and get everything working together.
- Broken Shop Interior - Due Saturday 16th
- Shelf Simulation - Due Monday the 18th
- Wall Debris - Due Thursday the 21st
Rendered Frames
Rendered frames for ALL shots - Due Thursday the 21st - Obviously save the shots that have yet to be animated for last. But if a If a shot is not fully animated by Monday the 18th, it doesnt matter, just render what you’ve got and submit. I will keep the files as up to date as possible, so you’ll have everything thats been done.
Animation
Animation for all Scenes - Due Sunday the 24th
I will need submissions for all of the scenes to cut in by this point. If there are things that you want to still work on, thats fine. You can send me updates before Wednesday and I can try to cut them in. However, do NOT wait to submit something because you are still working on it. I need every scene by the 24th.
Also, do not wait until sunday to turn everything in at once. Scenes should be submitted as they are completed, with a playblast and the maya files in the project space. The sound designer will need as much as possible to do a rough cut.
Lets get to it!
Light Rig Shenanigans
May 13th, 2009
In an effort to make things look not too blow out and gay, I think that I ended up making things look a little dark. I’ll keep working on it tonight. Next I’ll put a camera move up onto the farm.
Light Rig Test: Mat 13
I WOULD have another render at a different camera angle, but shit is jsut so broken here (Monty) right now. I’ll see if I can get it going at home.
Kaylee Eyebrows and Hair
May 13th, 2009
Sorry I kept forgetting to post this. A few days ago, I made some adjustments to Kaylee’s eyebrows. They’re a bit lower than they were before so she doesn’t look nearly so suprised. Once they’re approved, I’ll go in and paint the details. The eyebrows, right now, appear a bit brown. The texture maps have them as black. I can’t seem to get the subsurface to cut off for the eyebrow area. I’ve compensated by making her hair a bit more brown. For the sake of getting everything done by the end of the quarter, I think this is fine.
I’ve also gotten the displacement working again on the hair. I also painted a texture map to help sell a bit more detail. One problem… the displaced hair bumps through the headband. I don’t really understand the shading network that Ben imported from ZBrush, so I really don’t know how to lessen the displacement. Maybe if Ben could take a look at it…
As per Alex’s request, I’ve also made a small version of the epidermal scatter map and attached it to a lambert shader. By temporarily applying this shader (called “animSkinLambert”) and hitting the 6 key, the animators will be able to get real-time feedback of Kaylee’s expression. I’d recommend temporarily hiding everything else in the scene first so the other textures don’t show up and slow everything down.
————-EDIT————–
Since the rig is currently being worked on, this means I’m not working on the most recent version anymore. I’ll have to make these changes again once the new rig is uploaded. For now, my changes are in the file “kaylee_rig_dBackup.mb” in the Production folder.
Hero Teacup Breaking
May 11th, 2009
All items in this film will be broken by violently dropping them on a solid surface and letting gravity take it’s course….providing that gravity does not ask for too much RAM…
There was a bit of a trick getting this geometry back into maya. I got it to work but the geometry is heavy. The shards are separate though, so alex can quickly keyframe a shard breaking further if he still wants that effect.
Karma strikes! In a good way!
May 9th, 2009
Well, all the crap we’ve had to put up with finally earned us some luck. Jared was able to come in and fix the issues with Kaylees arms. It was apparently an error in the set up script he used.
There is just a minor tweak needed in Kaylee’s head joint, and then the new, and fully functioning, rig will be uploaded to the site. I’ll post an update when its there and ready for download.
******* UPDATE*********
The updated,fully functional Kaylee rig is up on the project space in trouble_prod>scenes>chars>kaylee>kaylee rig> kaylee_rig.mb
Hooray!
Well thats that.
May 7th, 2009
All of Kaylee’s limbs are broken. If her root controller is rotated horizontally (Y axis) past 90 degrees, the IK splines that run through her legs and arms break the geo apart. Ashwin and I tried to fix it by adding an attribute to control the roll of the splines, but it didnt work, since the geometry simply implded at the other end (wrist instead of shoulder)
What this means is to get the film done for the end of the quarter, Kaylee will have to be animated using the world space controller. Atleast when she turns more than 90 degrees. Fortunately she only does this in two shots: shot32 and shot 39. For the rest of the shots, where she only rotates slightly, you are clear to use the root controller. you can also use the root controller to rotate in Z and X . It is only the Y rotations that are a problem.
Also, if everyone can please download the latest version of the kaylee rig from the project space, that would be great. It has fixes for the head rotations and for the finger control. Those, at least, we were able to fix.
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