Major Project: Reflective Statement

This project from premise through til major project has been one of the biggest challenges I've ever faced. By going through it I've learnt a fair amount and gained more passion for parts of the process while there were some parts of the process I was more reluctant at tackling. For a long time I never felt like the project was coming together as I had a problem properly envisioning it and struggled with overall design. But as it went on it all started to come together and in the end I was quite happy with the film that I submitted.

There are issues that still need to be fixed with the animation and edit and I could easily spend another couple of weeks working on the sound alone, but I also think I got my project to a point that I could show it off as a post-viz product. I plan to keep working on it and keep improving it as although I'm happy with what I've made, I still know that I could make it a lot better. At one point Phil suggested that the music for my project didn't quite match up with the narrator and I agree with this, so if I decide to push this project further I will likely look for a different narrator. Although this project started off as a mockumentary I started to prefer it as a children's story or fairy tale as the story of it fitted better, especially with the style being similar to children's shows. But the narrator is more fitting for a documentary so I want to look for someone with more character and energy to their voice.

In terms of the frame renders I wish I had spent more time getting the lighting right as there are some that aren't quite right and need a bit of work. With my Art Of, I should have also spent more time working on it, and included more of my work as there was a lot more to include that I didn't get around to and I didn't treat it so much as a 'making of' document but more as a way to show off the better looking work of the project. But even then there were a lot of renders and captures of the maya process I could have included but didn't.

Overall I ran into many issues from start to finish but managed to overcome them for the most part, and learnt a lot in the process. I'm now more interested in the rigging process even though it was one of the parts I struggled with most, but in general my experience with Maya has been quite enjoyable. My least favourite part of the production process was likely animating, and with this I should have probably taken a different approach and got more stuck in. I was happy with a lot of the facial animation in my film but the body movement definitely needs a lot of work and I had trouble with the walk cycle due to the lack of any knee joints but I think I can still make them look better than they currently do. All in all I'm happy for going through this process, and have managed to improve my work ethic by a large amount in comparison to previous projects (although it still could have been better). It's by far the most time I've spent on any single project but I think having control over it made this more enjoyable. The entire process has improved my skillset by a considerable amount so for that I'm glad.

Major Project Submission

Major Project: Final Playblast

Major Project: Character Turnarounds

Major Project: Just an 'armless Munch-kin

I created an extra blendshape on a copy of my character so I could remove his arms. I'm sure this isn't the correct way to achieve this but the character is only going to appear for a few seconds at most so it wouldn't be worth re-creating a limbless character.

Major Project: Decapitated Body Render Test

Major Project: Animation Progress

Here is my progress so far. Sound effects are still a WIP as well as backing track, as I am currently talking to a composer. I still need to animate the last 20-30 seconds as well as refine a fair few of the shots and add effects to them in post.

Major Project: Scene 7 shot 3 Playblast

Major Project: Scene 6 Renders

Major Project: Scene 1 Shot 1 - Set complete

This is the set for the first animated shot in the film, in which the camera scrolls through a regular forest to find the small village.

Major Project: Scene 2 Renders

This is a short scene in which the ugly munchkin is first introduced.

Major Project: Scene 6 Shot 3 Render

I haven't posted in a while as I have been getting stuck in with animation, and as I haven't been animating chronologically I didn't think it was worth posting mismatched scenes, but hope to post a large chunk of animation by the end of the week. For now I've set out some renders from some of the animated shots.

Major Project: Scene 4 Renders

In the breaks I take from animating I've been leaving maya to render stills from scene 4, although I had rendered stills from this scene before, the settings weren't consistent for lighting and textures throughout the stills so I decided to correct it. I'm still a bit unsure about the specular for the characters and if they look too shiny or not.

Major Project: DJ Character

 

 

Major Project: Completed Sets

All of the 5 main sets are now fully complete, the only changes to be made are that floor details may change depending on the shot as I don't want to have a ridiculous amount of objects in my scene.

Major Project: Scene 4 Renders

I've now corrected all the textures and got the area lights set how I want them to be. Apart from polishing up the animation this scene is now complete.

Major Project: Scene 4 Playblast

There are still some changes that I'd like to make but the main chunk of animation is complete for this scene.

Major Project: Scene 4 Shot 4

 

Major Project: Character Interface

I decided to make a quick interface for selecting controls as I thought it would save time in the long run with the animation process.

Major Project: Scene 4 shot 1 Playblast

Major Project: Scene 4 Shot 1 Renders

With the addition of area lights renders are taking roughly 7 minutes. I think I prefer the first one. Changes are still being made to this character texture.

Major Project: Scene Render

I've managed to fix my issues with area lights and cornea textures. the only change that may happen now is to the floor texture as I want to increase the resolution.

Major Project: Scene Renders

Having a few issues with having lights linked to only the character, again not sure if this is an issue with my version of maya as there are other issues with rendering that don't seem to make sense.

Major Project: Scene Renders

I tried rendering out a frame from one of the scenes so I could see how it would look with a basic matte background. I've been having trouble coming up with good backgrounds so this was experimental and not finalised.

 

 

Major Project: Character Renders

I've made some changes to the textures as suggested by Phil, the eyes aren't properly set up currently as I'm having issues with the transmission setting on the textures, where it just comes up black instead of clear in the renderview. I think this may be an issue with my copy of Maya.