Final show

I haven't posted since my last hand in because I've been busy getting everything ready for my final show, mainly finishing my animation. I finished my animation just in time and although the effects and sound weren't perfect, I think the final piece was good considering how much time it took. Final show went quite well, was a bit difficult because it was so busy and being in Newcastle all day was a bit tiring and uncomfortable, but I got some good feedback there and I'm very happy with that. Ill uploads my final animation here.

If i had more time to spend on it I would have made quite a few things better, for example, cutting scenes to better lengths, improving the robots movement and motion clips, using better effects and sound, adding splash effects in the water, and adding more screen shake as he walks. But as I've said, with the time I put into it I'm quite pleased with the animation in its current state.

From this point my blog might become more focused on my own work and not college work. I might also start posting more often since all my time isn't taken up by getting my animation finished. Either way I will get my final grades on Friday as well as exit tutorials, and from what I have heard I've done quite well, possibly getting a distinction grade. But I suppose ill just find out then.

Hand in week

Its the deadline this week and its been quite the push to get everything done. My animations aren't finished but I think I've done a good bit of work on them so as least they will be ready for final show. I've been getting all my PPD research work printed and organised and it really takes longer than I thought but I think I will get everything finished. My script, storyboards and animatic are already done for work related and I have written up my work on the rabbit animation too. I've pretty much finalised my robot animation now, there will be a lot of rockets flying around and lasers going off. On my group animation with Gareth we have got our creature nearly finished, it took a bit longer than we expected but that is mainly because of all the other stuff we have had to do. I've uploaded some examples and tests of both animations.

smoke trails

while creating my pyrocluster smoke trails for my animation I was looking for tutorials and found this, in the end it wasn't what I wanted and I had to get the settings right on my own, but its a fairly good tutorial on a smoke trail.

SpeedTree

I've wanted to upload this for a while now, because its one of most impressive 3D programs I've seen. Speed tree lets your create trees, with varying quality very quickly and ready textured, there are a lot of pre-sets for different variety's of tree and plants. Speed try has its own working physics engines for trees and branches can break off under different tolerances. Speed tree is used in both games and films, a bigger example of this is avatar, in which all the vegetation and plant life was made using speed tree, or at least a lot of it, in gaming "Homefront" used speedtree, as do a lot of other games, but using the software costs thousands. With speed try the branches and trunks can just be drawn in but clicking in 3D space. This video is a good example of what it can do, showing a high detail tree being drawn, and then showing the physics working on it.

Updates

I've had a number of posts typed up ready to upload for a while, but annoyingly blogger has been down for a good while, so I'm going to put them up now.


02/05/2011 - 08/05/2011 weeks recap
This week was pretty harsh because I've had a lot to do leading up to hand in, including getting my new script sorted, doing a quick final show presentation for PPD, and filming/working on group brief with Gareth. I've managed to get my script pretty much sorted but I'm not completely sure about the end, because my idea was that he is shown as a giant rampaging robot through the animation, but is revealed as a tiny toy robot playing around at the end, and this concept would be a little bit hard for me to get across. After talking with Dave he said that I should go for an idea where he slips on something falling over and blowing himself up, I think this idea would be much easier to get across and would allow me to do some nice animation. I thought that maybe slipping on a ball could make sense because he is on a beach and someone could have been playing with it. I need to do some testing for my comps because now I am doing it all with still for better quality and I will have no need for annoying tacking. Friday was quite a full day, because on the morning I had to present my ideas for final show, I was just going to go with some straight forward things, including a screen showing my animation, a large high quality print of my robot, and possibly a small real model of my robot. in my presentation I was given the idea of making some fake coins in some way, to go with the theme of a coin operated robot, having my branding on the coin, as well as my blog/website address replacing the writing around the side. I think I will try to do this idea, and if the coin can be the size of a real pound coin it would be used as one of those trolley tokens in supermarkets which you use in place of a pound coin which people sometimes have on key rings. I think the presentation went quite well because I got some good ideas. After PPD on Friday me and Gareth went out filming because we both needed additional footage for our animations, I think that we got pretty much everything we needed done, and we were quite lucky with the weather, because it was the same as the first filming trip so we have some continuity.

Back after Easter

Today was the first day back after Easter, and I had a tutorial with dave and I'm pretty sure I know what I have left to do, and what to get on with. Dave said it is fine for me to go with my new ideas for my robot animation, but I need to make some storyboards or a script. After finalising my new ideas I will probably have to film some new footage, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem, and the other stuff I filmed should be useable somewhere anyway. I also made a little bit of progress on my group brief with Gareth today and we made a little progress on our character. I will probably spend the rest of the week working on my ideas for my own animation, progressing my group brief, and doing paperwork for ppd and work related briefs.

Pictoplasma Cont. 4

This was a picture of Rilla Alexanders character walk. Her character had a series of story books behind it, and Rilla's lecture was read in a very scripted, storybook style.

These pictures were taken at Jeremyvilles character walk. Jeremyville's work is done in a simple cartoon style, and i have to say this doesn't appeal to me at all. I don't think it is bad but the distorted perspective and weirdly drawn in environments, which seem like an after though get to me a bit and its not for me.

Ill end my pictoplasma posts for now, and ill end saying i quite enjoyed the trip, i found almost all of it interesting to at least some degree, and some of the lectures and work i saw gave me some ideas on how i can do some things a different way.

Pictoplasma Cont. 3

These cardboard boxes were actually robots made by 3753% Tordal, and in the character walks people could put their own design on the boxes. The robots had sensors in them to detect movement, acting and moving as they needed to. I liked this work because it wasn't tradition art (as in drawings) really, but it fits with the character based theme of pictoplasma.

These knitted characters were in another character walk made by Anna Hrachovec. I liked this ball character in particular because it looks like a ninja. This was quite a small showing of work but I thought it was quite good.

Pictoplasma Cont. 2

These pictures were taken at one of the character walks by Matt Jones. His character walk was a series of vinyl characters in tea cups which were made by over 60 artists based on and using his own base character. The character isn't overly impressive, and is very simple, but I quite like it, and the whole idea of different artists creating their own interests me. The whole idea of creating a vinyl collectable isn't something i had thought of before, but i think i will look into it at some point.

During Pictoplasma Matt Jones did several workshops on making vinyl toys but sadly i wasn't able to attend because of limited places.

Pictoplasma Cont.

The character walks featured work from various artists, some of which i had heard of before, and others which i hadn't. Some of these pictures were either scans of leaflets and stickers which i got from the character walks, and there are some of the pictures i took which i found most interesting.

This is some of the work done by Jeremy Dower. I like the way that this work was made, but some of the content is a bit weird and i'm not sure on that. During a lecture he said that his work was all done in photoshop and no 3D software was used, even though it looks like it could have been made using zBrush. I think this 3D style, made using photoshop, is quite impressive.

Pictoplasma

A few weeks ago I went to Berlin to the Pictoplasma Festival 2011. While there I attended various lectures, screenings and character walks. I found a lot of the things there very interesting, with only a small selection of things not being my thing. Before the lectures and screenings started the character walks were available to see some of the work done by various artists, most of which were speaking at the lectures as well. Most of the character walks were very interesting, with a few being particularly appealing, and some of them relating to my own work.

My own work and robot animation

Because at this point I don't really have enough time left to complete my original animation idea, and doing some filming and then compositing it all isn't an option because of the style I have chosen, if possible I want to change the animation I make. While filming I got almost all the footage I might need to do my ideas and I think I could end up with a good final piece. So that I don't waste the work I put into my robot, I plan to go with an idea which I had a long time ago while doing test renders, which is making the robot really small, like a toy. I had various ideas for this, and I think any of them would be quite entertaining to watch.

My original idea was always quite ambitions and I had trouble defining the style of the world, with the animatic being around 3 minutes. If it's an options to go with my other ideas for the sake of time, ill be sad to drop my robot animation at least for now, but at least doing it another way will still use my robot and maybe even my other assets.

I have done some tests in cinema 4D to see if compositing my robot works well in the way i plan to use him. My test has my robot as a giant walking out of the fog from the sea towards land. Although i couldn't do any after effects testing, and the robot is composited onto a still image instead of video, at least doing this proved the idea can work.

group brief progress

As my part of my current brief I need to work on an addition brief to create a portfolio/showreel piece. I have chosen to do this as a group brief along with Gareth to make a looping animation. Our idea is that a creature inside a cave will put its hand into a smaller crack and after pulling it out it will be covered with mushrooms which will take over the entire creature. At this point a huge hand will come in from the entrance of the cave and pull back out, only to show that is himself of another creature which will also be overtaken by mushrooms. At this point the animation can continue to loop.

During this Easter break we got all the filming done for this animation, and we should be able to get it done very fast, which would be good considering the limited time left. The filming went fairly well, the weather wasn't perfect but we had good light and only a little bit of trouble with rain. we bother got everything we needed, but to give us the range of shots we need for an animation inside a cave, we will have to use some footage that we filmed outside of the cave and mess with settings in after effects to make it look like night/inside a cave.

These are some pictures from near where we filmed out footage for our group piece.

Portfolio

This is my PDF portfolio, which is set out in the same order as my real one. I also have my CV and branding on the file. The order is set out so that my live brief stuff is together, my E4 stuff is together, and my work purely for college is together. I made both a high and low resolution version of my pdf portfolio so it is easier to load/download over the internet.

I can't find a way to upload my pdf portfolio so ill do that once I find out how I can.

CV stuff

This is my CV which also shows my branding. My branding my basically the name I have chosen to use which is "Shink", a name I have used online for a while, and I couldn't think of anything better for my branding, but I like it. I have a silhouette of my robot next to the name too as I quite like how it looks.

Big Blog Update

I haven't updated my blog in quite a long time, so I will be talking about quite a lot of things. I'm going to talk about the current state and progressions of my work, portfolio development, group project, ppd work, and the Berlin trip.

The first thing to talk about is my portfolio development and CV as I needed these done for my current brief and my interview for third year. I finished my CV which I will upload later before leaving for Pictoplasma, and I'm quite happy with how it looks. My portfolio turned out fairly well showing a range of the work I have done over the course. I will upload my PDF portfolio later along with my CV.

Before leaving for Berlin I wanted as much of my portfolio done as possible but I didn't get everything printed, so I had to do this after coming back. This only gave me 2 days to print my work, complete my 300 word statement of intent, and get everything else ready for my interview. I got everything done in time, although my showreel was simply all my animations in a long video and wasn't cut down to the 30 second length I would have liked.

The trip to Pictoplasma in Berlin was quite interesting, as I saw a lot peoples work and found the lectures and screenings interesting. I will upload some of my photos and images from pictoplasma in a later blog post.

After returning from Berlin I got my portfolio sorted and had my interview on Wednesday the 13th of April. I think my interview went ok, it could have been better but it could have been worse. Considering it was my first real interview I don't think I could have done too much better.

The following two weeks were the Easter break and I've had to use this time to complete ppd and work related things. During this week my and Gareth got our filming done for our group brief, and at the same time we both got footage which can be used in our own projects. As my original script was fairly ambitious and at this point I would need to create around 5 more environments/sets in 3D to even create a trailer version of my animation, I'm hoping I will be able to change the second animation I will submit for the current brief. This would allow me to create some work much faster and with I could use the footage and ideas I already got for this purpose, so hopefully there will not be a problem with this, as with the short time I have left I think changing my animation to the ideas I have in mind using the techniques I plan to use wouldn't be too ambitious.

That is pretty much everything up to date, so ill upload individual posts now with pictoplasma info and my cv/portfolio.

past weeks recap

since my last post i have done a few things, changed my environment, handed in the last brief, and done a presentation.

My hand in was ok, i got everything done in time and i think it was reasonable, but i wish my animations progress was a bit further on. At this point i just have my first environment quite far along, i do need to make some changes though, such as doing the grass differently, altering a lot of the textures, adding more objects to populate the scene and more.

This is a still of my environment.

Today i had to do a presentation on animation, which i have spent all week making. My presentation was aweful, at least from my point of view. I kept forgetting things which i planned to talk about so i ended up just saying a less informative version of what was on the screen. I had planned to expand on what the animation studios i looked at did and talk more about other companies which i like the most. More than anything i tripper up on some of my slides where i started talking about things as if they were related to the previous slide's company, which was confusing for both me and everyone else. Either way i think it probably wasn't as unbelievable terrible as i think, even though it was.

Building render terrible scene

This was just a render of a terrible scene set up, i am having trouble getting the composition of the buildings and the terrain shape right as i have said. As well as this problem, it is very hard to navigate such a large 3D environment, even if it just mainly for two scenes and only the central point will be used. The scene was very laggy, which didn't help either. The way i have made my buildings is that they are a huge amount of polygons which are instanced objects, but i have them hidden in editor so it doesn't create even the slightest lag, and i have very simple shapes representation the buildings which are hidden in renderer. Doing this lets me position my buildings with as little trouble as possible.

Building pictures

This still renders are various buildings i have, in there non-destroyed state and most of them without textures at that point they were rendered. Of course they will be destroyed and look more fitting for my work, but i made them intact at first so i could re use them as i needed.

Next week timetable 28th feb

This is my next weeks timetable but as i say, i assume that parts of it might change.

last week timetable 21st feb

last week

I didn't get to post earlier in the week like i wanted to as i had some problems with time. I will post the last weeks timetable i was going to upload along with the next weeks timetable. This week i have been working on my buildings and environments, my buildings are now pretty much done but towards the end of the week modelling the actual terrain shape and placing things in the scene has been causing me problems. I can picture the terrain and buildings placement for my scenes later the animation because it is more of a town and easier to get my head around. I am going to have to wait until next week to get some opinions and advice about it.

I also got my email giving me a date for my interview on friday. This means i need to get things sorted in time for it, and it also means that my main animation of the year wont be ready in time for that. Either way it gives me more to do.

Lastly as i really need to get my ppd things done I've been working on that and trying to get it all done which is quite difficult, as i have quite a bit to do and I'm worried about a lot of different time constraints and deadlines at the minute.

Next week i need to get my animation on track finding out what to do with my terrain before progressing. I need to work on what to do in preparation for my interview, and i need to work out finish a lot of ppd stuff along with my CV. I will upload my timetable but i assume that it might change based on what is worked out on Monday.

weekend/monday update

OlD house type with newer sandy looking bricks

New house type with different shape and older looking bricks.

This weekend and today i have been trying to re-do my building in which my coin starts its journey, getting this right has taken much longer than expected but i think after today ill really getting somewhere. Instead of my perfectly square building i have before i've been working on more unusual shapes and extrusions on my buildings. I still haven't decided which on my new building designs to use for my starting house, but on the image i have uploaded here the part sticking out of the right of the house will be made from wood and i have have this collapse as it is only supported by 2 pieces of wood. This will be quite from from what i originally invisioned for this scene, but i think if i do it right it may show off the strange building design of the world and give the viewer a better idea of how this looked in this world. As well as revamping my building desing i have worked on better looking old bricks. I have left behind my sandy looking ones which looked very new, in favour of more pinky orangey brick with two textures layed over all the bricks to add white/grey and darker parts to the bricks to make them look older and give them more imperfections. Although i need to tweak the textures slightly i think doing it this way gives a much better looking and older looking brick than before, and will better suit my works, especially when i get some more textures, plants, and holes in the brick walls going on.

by tomorrow i plan to have several buildings made up and after than i will be putting the first environment together. I will also be doing some of my PPD work this week. I'm really trying to crack out these environments because originally planned to have nearly completed all of them by now, and what i want to get done for hand in will be quite a rush, but i'm making progress with my buildings, despite having problems coming up with some building designs due to lack of reference along with other things. I will upload the weeks timetable tomorrow.

Texture projection tests

Since i have to get a reasonable polygon count while making the bricks on my buildings look quite good, while at the same time making each brick appear slightly different and laying extra effects over the whole thing, I did some texturing tests. I was having trouble getting a flat projected texture to work across al the bricks within my cloner object, in my buildings i play to use this to add things like moss and ivy that might grow up the buildings, as well as dirt or graffiti that might be on walls. I have no idea why i couldn't get the projection to work initially, but I Got it working and can apply a single texture across al the bricks in a wall now.

Of course the bricks aren't perfect because they are too squared and the edges need to be less sharp so they look old, but as a test of textures I think the way I'm doing it will work fine. The bricks all have a base texture on them, and have a very slight alpha channelled red on the top of them all to make them less like sand blocks, the is a green texture that uses ambient occlusion as mask so the creases and areas which would be affected by ambient occlusion have a dirty green texture on them. The last texture is just "LOL" made in Photoshop quickly to make it look like graffiti that is on the wall. I think it definitely does the job and should make modelling my environments easier now that i got this working.

this weeks progress

This week and last i started work modeling my assets to make up my environments for my robot animation. Last friday we made a stop-motion animation in groups using blu-tac, This animation wont upload as there is a missing file stopping it playing, but i will try to get it uploaded soon if i can. So far the modeling of my buildings is going ok, i decided to work on making my buildings out of individual bricks as textures looked rubbish for close up objects. My distant buildings will be textured, but my close up ones will use individual bricks. although, i'm having trouble getting things right, as keeping the polygon count low enough while having a good looking brick is proving difficult, and getting the texture colour right is awkward too.

This example is of a building test i made that uses medium polygon, fairly rounded bricks, and a kind of sandy coloured brick texture. The main problem with this house is that it is 200,000 polygons or so, even though it uses instances.

Animatic

This is the animatic for my main animation of the second year. It isn't perfect as i have decided to slightly alter something that happens in the story. The robot is no longer running low on pressure and looking for coal, but now goes in search of more coins.

this week and last

This week was the first back since we finished the 4mations brief. I got the 4Mations brief along with AD202 and 208 handed in on time and have received grades i am happy with. During the assessment week i fixed parts of my robot and replaced his gears and cogs as well as the arm setup. The robot looks a bit better now i think, and is fit to be animated.

This week we had to create our animatics and prepare out presentations and treatments. I will be presenting my treatment on monday because my animatic took over 3 days of solid work to complete, and left me with no time to get everything else i wanted to done.

i will upload my animatic here, and will upload my final 4mations animations and model sheets after.

tiny robot 3

I prefer the second picture because it has better lighting on the robot, but the coin texture is flipped.

tiny robot 2

tiny robot 1

Tiny robot

Since I needed a 3D pound coin for my animation with my robot when I make it, I made one. I think it looks quite good, and will definitely do the job, but after seeing it next to my robot I really liked the idea of a tiny robot as if it is a toy. I rendered out these 4 stills which i am really pleased with and i might make more tiny robot scenes in the future with him in various scenes. Two of the still are very similar, but each had a slight problem or difference so i've uploaded them both. I was also pleased to find that my robots arms have a better range of movement than i first thought while still looking good. I'll upload them one at a time as they are big files

renders of the 4M logo in 3D

This is rendered with HDRI lights and is after i got rid of any messed up polygon sections.

new year updates

It's the end of the first week back in the new year and i've done quite a bit this week. My group has been working on the 4 mations brief which is due in next friday, so for that this week two of us went out to get some footage to track using pfhoe. Since we needed a 3D version of the logo to use i made an inflatable looking version of the 4M logo we were given. I made the logo into a solid object so it should work with the soft body dynamics in cinema 4D.

Apart from the work for that brief i've been trying to get my storyboards sorted which will be used in the next brief. I got about half way through turning my script into storyboards and will get the rest done soon.

To update on what i said i did last week, after i last updates, i got my animation tests done with my rigged character and got pretty much everything sorted for the two briefs i have an extension on.