Visualisation more models....

Here are my models of the desk lamp and sketchbook so far (no final textures, etc.) :

Visualisation - still life progress :)

I have been doing a little bit of work so far since breaking up for Christmas, trying to eventually have modelled the majority (if not all) of my 6+ still life objects before returning to uni.

The first two I have modelled so far are what I consider to be the easiest shapes within my composition idea; the pencil and the Cocacola glass. Although these are not finished or totally polished models yet, I feel I am happy with their shapes and appearance so far, and will experiment more with textures when all my models are ready.

Pencil photograph above, 3d model below

Glass photograph left, 3d model right

I have also just gathered my chosen items together and arranged them in some compositions I like, and looked at whether I would want to include my lamp as an actual modelled item, or just use it to research source light. I have decided that I think my work will look more effective with the actual lamp there, and can help me with making lighting look more realistic.

Here are a few photos I took (quite similar!) to show ideas of what I might like to achieve in this project:

(Composition where light is not shown, but suggested by reflections/shadows)

(Front on composition with light)

(Composition from an angle with light, to show corner of desk)

I plan to model a couple more of these objects over the Christmas period, probably the lamp first due to its more simple shapes.

More soon..... :)

Fantasy Olympics Rationale + Animation!

For this project, my task was to produce a 30 second animation using Adobe After Effects, to promote a new, futuristic sport at a fantasy Olympic games. This firstly involved quite a bit of character and concept design, before gradually learning the skills needed to create my animation within the new software.


To start with, I came up with a few ideas for my animation’s concept, then chose to use the sport of uphill skiing, using rocket skis to make it more of a ‘futuristic sport’ as the brief asks. I then sketched out some design ideas for my penguin character, before merging aspects of a few of these ideas together to create my final character design.


To be able to use and animate my character in After Effects, I had to scan it in to Photoshop (as I find this easier to use than Illustrator) and separate the different parts of the character into different layers, so they could be animated separately. I also scanned in drawings I had produced of the different layers of my environment design (sky, mountains, snow, etc.) and edited them to fit the cartoon style of my character.


I then imported these aspects into After Effects as files and compositions and then placed them in 3D space in front of my main cameras. I also blurred the parts further away and very close to the camera to give an impression of depth of field. I also created a couple of particle effects – CC particle world and CC snow – which helped me create the fire coming from the rocket packs and a snow effect over the whole scene. Once all created and imported into my main composition, I followed my storyboard and animated my character, assets and cameras, before adding lights and sound before rendering for more effect.


Throughout this project, I found the concept of creating a 2D character in a sort of 3D environment or space quite hard to get my head around, which is why I ended up producing quite a flat, but layered background for my animation instead. I also found the software itself rather frustrating to use at first, until I got used to all of the toolbars and functions that I needed to produce my work.


I feel, to say how unconfident I was with this project as it progressed, that I have done quite well in producing a decent quality piece of animation with a piece of software that was totally new to me. I have found in this project that I find 2D animation much harder to make look effective, but do find it easier to produce character design in 2D than 3D so far. As far as the 3D pipeline goes within relation to this project, I still feel I would prefer to work in 3D and not particularly in the field of character animation. I also feel I would prefer to use software such as After Effects more for compositing and visual effects purposes rather than animation.

Visualisation research.

I haven't looked at my visualisation project for the past couple of weeks due to cancelled lesson and being ill last week, so have decided to get back to grips with it before my seminar tomorrow, so I can make a decision on what to do over the Christmas break before the hand-in.

I have firstly looked at a few traditional still life artists, and here are some that I particularly liked:

Firstly, I really liked the still life work os American artist Kevin Frank, especially 'Moon Rock'; the piece I have inserted below. I think the pale colours compared to the contrasting bold red book in the centre is particularly striking.  I also really like the composition in this image, where I think the main, larger objects obey the rule of thirds, leading the audience's eye to these parts first. I think the objects within the piece all link together well too, which is an aspect I would like to bring to my work, rather than just being randomly placed or a typical 'fruit bowl' still life piece.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

'Moon Rock' by Kevin Frank

I have also looked briefly at the work of William Michael Harnett, and Irish-American painter from the 19th century. I particularly find the composition of his work the most inspiring, as many of them are placed on tables (like a lot of still life paintings) but also feature objects stacked on top of each other, often not very neatly.  The piece I have featured here is called 'Music and Literature' which also sticks to a strict theme, a lot like Kevin Franks image. When this is combined with the interesting use of composition, I feel this is an effective way of telling a story through still life imagery, rather than painting objects that have been placed purposely just to be painted.

'Music and Literature' by William M Harnett

I have also looked at this website which shows examples 3D still life work which I found pretty interesting: http://www.templates.com/blog/still-life-art-impressive-masterpieces-3d/  Although a lot of this work is created within 3ds max, as well as Maya. I would like to see myself produce work anywhere near this standard, as I think some of them are extremely good in terms of photo-realism/visualisation skills. I especially liked this piece by Cheyne Hessler, due to the strong contrast and the impact of the realism in both objects and background:

'Still Life' by Cheyne Hessler (CG society member)

When thinking about possible themes for my own work, in response to these influences, I am thinking of using things inside my room to show my interests and give an impression of a story behind the items. Below are a few objects I have quickly photographed to help with possible ideas for my compositions.

Busy doing AE project - update of ideas/progress

A quick update on what I am doing at this moment on the After Effects project on my way to the deadline on Friday!

So here are a few screen shots of the animation I have added and edited this morning/afternoon so far. This mainly involves my idea of the penguin flying into space on his rocket skis, as the planets move to form the olympics rings shape...

Planets forming the olympic rings shape in front of penguin

Planets then start to "glow" before transformation.

Transformation has now occured, due to decreasing opacity of the glowing planets, and increasing the opacity of the olympic rings.

After this has occured in my animation, I plan for the penguin character to increase its rocket power further (animate my CC particle composition within my project) before flying gently through the centre black ring. I may also include a couple more closeups within this sequence to show expressions a little more. (I am hoping this will bring me up to somewhere around 30 seconds, as it is currently only about 20! :( )

I have also added another particle system to my project since I last posted screenshots - this is a snow particle system. I think this adds more dimension and interest to my piece in general, as well as obviously fitting in well with my winter olympic theme!






Will post more when it is done!

AE Progress.. And been ill :(

I haven't been to uni for the past week, due to cancellations and illness - I am still getting over it now, although I am feeling a lot better than before, I still can't concentrate for as long as I would like without feeling icky! :(

Now is one of those moments, so thought I would try and blog some of my progress in the next due project - After Effects 'Fantasy Olympics' animation. This is due next Friday, so I am getting a bit stressed at me not being able to do much work at the moment, and I keep changing my ideas and designs every day so I'm not getting very far...

I think I am sticking to what I have done today though, I changed my design from a black outlined drawn environment, to just sticking to the shapes I drew as solid colours. I have also started experimenting with layering up my scene in 3D and making the further away or really close parts more blurred, to give an effect of depth of field. I have also added a CC Particle World effect with the directional axis style to simulate animation of the rocket skis, which I think looks quite cool.

I have no idea where my animation is going to be honest, therefore dont know how I am going to fill 30 seconds. I have probably only done about 5-8 seconds so far with most of the first half animated. I think I will have to take a break to do a storyboard to help with this. I also need to know what an animatic is (we also have to hand one of these in), as I think this is associated with my storyboard drawings in a video?

Anyway, here are a few screenshots of my work so far..

AE Project - Ski-ing moodboard

 

This is a quick moodboard I have made to help me with ideas for my environment/background for my fantasy Olympic animation to be made using After Effects. From looking at these images, I think I want to use a ski slope as my main setting for my character, with a separate background of trees or mountains to add more depth to a quite 2D background. I may also experiment with depth of field to help with this.

Visualisation - modelling stuff

I haven't really posted much on this project so far, to say I have said I am interested in visualisation in my context 2 essay! (Yes this is due to the chess player project that I haven't stopped thinking about for the past few weeks - back on track now!)

Anyway, last week we did some UVW unwrap modifier, which I found sort of difficult to be honest, but can see how it will be useful when texturing more precisely in this project.

Before this, however, we did a few weeks of modelling objects to practice looking at things and modelling them well for our still life project.

I have not completed all of these, due to both absence/illness and focusing on the other projects. I have tried to complete the majority of the first task we received of modelling goggles, which I never finished. Here are a couple of screenshots to show how far I now am with this particular modelling task:

 

I realise this model is not perfect as I have tried to make the nose/bridge part on my own without any assistance and therefore struggled making it look decent. I think this is pretty good though for now, and will improve it if needed when texturing.

Another model I completed (actually in the seminar! :o) is the random theatre prop - the use of which we really do not know. Anyway, here is a couple of screenshots again to show the model I have made...

I am quite pleased with this model, although I did have to mirror the main box part, due to the extruded pattern on the outside not wanting to produce twice with the shape merge compound object. This may affect me when trying to texture this object, but it seems to work fine so far and saved me time too.

Back to the After Effects project

Now I am done with my chess player animation project, I am starting to focus back on my next hand-in - the fantasy olympics animation using After Effects.

Before I had my chess project obsession, I posted my photoshop edit of my penguin character drawn from the front. I have now eventually scanned in my side profile drawing of the character and edited similarly on photoshop using different layers.

Here is the drawing and the edit on photoshop:

Next, I will need to start designing an environment and decide how to go about making it to use in After Effects. Due to my main idea of going up a steep, long hill/cliff with snow - I think this maybe easier to make in 3DS Max rather than an edited still image, as I want to show movement within an enviroment. I will update as it goes further.

:)

'The Chess Player' Animation - Video + Rationale

Here is my final animation:




Animation Rationale:

‘The Chess Player’ project involved me producing an animation of at least 30 seconds that showed a self-defeating chess-playing robot. To do this, I produced two robot arms (supposedly of the same robot), which I rigged and animated using IK chains and the reaction manager. I also modelled a pretty simple environment of a study/office style room, with a centre piece of table and chairs, where the game of chess between the two arms took place.
In my animation, I decided to show a very short game of chess, where the white player wins within four moves, which was animated within approximately 1 minute rather than 30 seconds. I tried to show emotion and character within my characters through movement and gestures, as they did not have eyes or mouths. A main gesture to show victory or disappointment was the nod or shake of their palms - acting as their heads. Another one I used a couple of times was tapping their fingers on the table to show thought or concentration.
Within this project, I feel I have learned a variety of very important skills used in many areas of the animation industry. Perhaps the most vital and difficult of these skills was the use of inverse kinematics (IK chains) when rigging up my robot arms, as well as using different animation constraints and the reaction manager. These techniques are associated with the field of character design and animation within the 3D pipeline.
I also feel that throughout the production of this piece of work, I have learned a lot more modelling techniques within 3DS max, such as quad modelling, the lathe modifier and attaching shapes objects with the editable poly modifier. In addition to modelling, I have also learned a great deal about texturing with both standard and mental ray materials, and the effect this can have on rendering times. An important material I learned how to use is the ambient occlusion mental ray material, which renders separately and is then composited with my original renders in After Effects to produce an animation with better quality shadows.
I found myself facing many problems during this project, mainly due to the animation aspects towards the end of the production stage. For instance, I ended up moving the chess pieces together with the hand when animating, rather than using the recommended link constraints, due to the chess pieces wanting to follow the palm even after linking them back to the world. I also had some trouble trying to make the king fall and roll at the end of the animation, as it is seemingly impossible to animate pivot points within 3DS max. I solved this by carefully rotating and moving the piece along the table so it did not move above or below the surface of the table as best as I could manage.
After doing my first 3D project this year, I can still see myself doing work in either modelling or texturing rather than an actual animation role in the future, due to the complexity of rigging and the problems I overcame whilst trying to use link constraints within this project. I have really enjoyed this project overall, however, and am now interested in the field of animated film much more, in addition to my current strong aspirations of working in visualisation or game design.

Ambient Occlusion

"Ambient occlusion is a shading method used in 3D computer graphics which helps add realism to local reflection models by taking into account attenuation of light due to occlusion. Ambient occlusion attempts to approximate the way light radiates in real life, especially off what are normally considered non-reflective surfaces.
Unlike local methods like Phong shading, ambient occlusion is a global method, meaning the illumination at each point is a function of other geometry in the scene. However, it is a very crude approximation to full global illumination. The soft appearance achieved by ambient occlusion alone is similar to the way an object appears on an overcast day."

In one of Andy's tutorials on texturing and lighting, he showed and explained the advantages of ambient occlusion materials to do as a separate render. This render would then be combined with the original render, resulting in a much more realistically shaded image.

Here is an example of one frame of my animation without ambient occlusion, with one layer, and then two layers (edited on photoshop):

And here is the ambient occlusion render used to produce this effect:

After experimenting with this method, I think my renders look a lot better with at least one layer of ambient occlusion added to them, and therefore am trying to get all of my animation rendered as ambient occlusion too, although it takes a lot longer to render than my originals. If it does finish rendering, when done, I will probably use After Effects to merge the two types of footage together to achieve the same effect but in video.

Drawing and doodling...

I am currently doing some drawings of designs, poses, environment, etc. for animation project... sort of after I have done it all,, is that the wrong way around? Oh well.

Apparently we need at least 6 pages of drawings/sketches and a storyboard, so I am doing this all last while waiting for renders, because this seemed the most sensible way of doing it. I assume my original drawings of the robot arm ideas can be used for these too, so will probably just scan/copy all of the appropriate pages from my sketchbook and hand them in in the folder with my DVD.

Here are a couple of examples I have done today: (once again apologise for my rather poor iphone camera)

Animation Camera Shots

So I am on the final stage of animating my piece before final texturing tweaks and rendering - cameras.

I find it quite difficult to get it looking natural and not too jerky, but have done a quick small render of a few camera shots for the start of my animation to see if they flow well together, and think it is pretty effective so far... for me.



So I will carry on doing shots like this throughout for the different moves/gestures by the robot arms.. Not long to go now hopefully! (:

Updates.. busy busy! :|

As  the title says - very busy times right now!

I handed in my essay earlier today while I was at uni - finally! I haven't had it checked but have proof read it and edited it a few times in the past couple of days, so hope it's okay... Glad it is out of the way anyway!

Anyway, animation deadline - next Friday. So I have been working a lot on this project - practically ditched the other projects for a while until I start rendering this one.

So far I have done about 40 seconds of animation (so much for 30 seconds) and I would say I am about 2/3 of the way through my narrative. I haven't done my proper drawings of storyboards yet, so am sort of working from my head and random notes at the moment, but I will improve on the animation once I have got the main stuff sorted. By this I mainly mean camera shots and animation, which I find really challenging to be honest :(

Anyhow, here is a tiny render I did of the movement at the start of the chess part of my animation. As I said before, leaving cameras until last so it is just a wide shot to show how the movement looks without the use of link constraints (as they disagreed with me!) :





And here is a quick screenshot of what I am doing right now, in case you're curious... (:

After Effects catch-up

For the past week I have been off with all sorts of illness/aches and pains I am starting to catch up with what I have missed, starting with the first session with Simon.

From following the photoshop tutorial he uploaded to the NOW I have completed this 3D room/environment within after effects cs4:



It was pretty simple actually, and has improved my opinion of after effects, as I find making 2D animation a lot more tedious than 3D. I now think it's a useful tool and am looking forward to learning more compositing stuff later on, as I think it has the potential to make rendering quicker and my final products more effective.

Environment modelling...

For my chess player animation, I thought a typical room with random robot arms would be more effective, in a weird way, than trying to produce some overly futuristic space for them to play in.

So my main idea is like an office/study area (as this is where you might play chess, for a guess?...), but the two arms could arrive in a more dramatic way to add some interest. I will draw out some ideas before I start animating, but will carry on modelling and making up my environment as I go along and see how it looks. I am also sort of using models I have produced over the summer and recently (cheating, I think not...) as I think they're pretty suitable and I can just import them!

Here are a few of quick renders showing my progress (not done lighting or major texturing obviously, will add more as I do more work!)

GameCity stuff + general work updates

Today I feel rather rubbish so haven't been to my After Effects seminar or Context 2 seminar. I am glad I decided not to go at the last minute to be honest, my neck is now killing me and feel achey in general. I am gutted I did not get to go to this because of my illness:


"The folk from Media Molecule are here to give a tour of their most recent add-on for LittleBigPlanet 2, The Move Pack, which empowers gamers to create their own levels and games for the PlayStation Move. After a tour of the features and the brand new story mode, the Molecules will attempt some speed level creation LIVE ON STAGE *audience shrieks with excitement*."

Very fed up. I will probably still use Media Molecule in my assignment despite a lack of feedback, as I really do like their work, despite LittleBigPlanet being quite 2D in style, and they are actually a medium company! (I can't find many :s)

  

Talking of GameCity, yesterday, I went to the Capturing James Bond talk from the motion capture departmant at Eurocom - one of the companies I looked at for my networking assignment but have had no response from. The talk showed how they made the animation of characters in their newest adapation of "GoldenEye 007" for PS3 and Xbox 360 using their own motion capture studio in Derby, and explained what techniques are used for different actions, etc. I found it really interesting, and am really tempted to get the game now actually! :) But it also helped me with my research, from them firstly introducing their company and some facts. I didn't take notes, but I remembered they were established in 1988 and have approx 270 employees, so I will probably use them as a large company in my essay.

Here is a photo I took before the talk started (very blurry with heads in the way - I was being sneaky and am useless with my iphone camera since IOS 5 update... Baffling.)

And here is a trailer for the game that the talk was all about...





PLUS for the animation work, which I seem to have been solely focused on since I discovered its earlier deadline, I have been experimenting with materials. Mental ray ones obviously look so much better in the Mental ray renderer, but it will take probably days to render out if I use all these materials. Here's an example of how I might use metallic paint, metal and plastic/vinyl mental ray materials for the main objects in my animation anyway (this took approx 1:50 mins to render :s) :