Post-submission Reflection

I'm really happy with the quality of the visuals of Wrightley's Escape. There were a couple of glitches in the final video but none are too noticeable to really mess anything up (and surely not enough for re-rendering it). I won't point them all out because it might affect your opinion of the video :P One thing I wish I had been able to fix was the size of the video. I was consistent with HD 720p all throughout the project including rendered images and project/composition settings but for whatever reason Premiere Pro decided to throw it's toys. My opinion of Adobe drops every time I use their products, I have to admit. At the same time my respect for After Effects is always increasing. Maybe AE is like the cooler older brother to PP and it wanted attention so it didn't play nice. I'd send it to the naughty corner if I didn't feel this analogy was stretching a bit far... Another thing I would have liked to changed would have been the quality of sound but the free stuff online is free for a reason. I would like to try recording my own some time but there is always the issue of quality and accessibility. And we're under enough time constraints as it is. It's hard to be critical when I'm stoked with the final video. Ah well, good project :)

MDDN 241 Project 2b Final Submission

Ta-dah! It only took 18,000 images across six passes of 3,000 frames, five days of x-grid rendering and re-rendering, four iterations of the final video, two versions of the soundtrack and two weeks of relatively sleepless nights to get here... ha. My brain hurts. I'm incredibly pleased with the final result though.

Check Yourself Before You Render Yourself

So are the fruits of my efforts over the past few days. I've been fixing textures and such to get a legit aesthetic and now I feel I'm ready for my final beauty renders. There have been some bugs running through my ambient occlusion renders where Wrightley will randomly disappear from certain frames. I was able to fix three of the four broken scenes but one refuses to behave and I'm stuck for what to do...

Playblastoff!

I've been rocketing through the animation to make use of the x-grid for Ambient Occlusion renders before next week's predicted storm of renders. So far it's worked out nicely as I have all my AO and Depth of field images saved away and ready to rock. I noticed this blog has been somewhat devoid of genuinely informative posts on progress but there are only so many way to say "it's three in the morning and I'm still animating!" Naturally, I am relieved to say that aspect, for the most part, is done.

Scenes 4, 5, 8, 10, 12 and 16 are to be extended by a few frames but will be using either stills or repeated frames so there's no real point in wasting rendering power on identical images. No all I have to do is fix the textures on my models and I can render out the beauty layers and start doing some stuff in After Effects. Getting excited :)

Referencing is Key

I was doing scene 16 this morning and noticed the horseshoe on Wrightley's lower leg was passing through that of his upper leg when he knelt down so I had to adjust the rig. I'm somewhat thankful I referenced the rig in all my other scenes now. It's going to save me a lot of resizing.

I also referenced my workshop file in all my scenes which has its own references. Pretty much it means if I want to do anything in maya I have to smash the 'return' key like the 'A' button in a Pokemon Centre first.

The Renderer's Lament

I wonder if I can apply for course related costs to pay for the power bill for my computer rendering 24/7?

Just an Update, No Biggy

While I don't have any aspect of my animation completely done I've made a fair bit of progress all round. I've managed to render out a couple of depth and ambient occlusion renders and Szilard should totally start an advertising campaign for it. Ambient Occlusion - It's Just Better;

I've also managed a couple of playblasts, some of which are at full animated quality but those are quite obvious in the clip :)

Candy Handles and Paper Balls

Now that I'm into blocking the later scenes certain props have sudden been found to not exist in the state I need them to. As a result I've made a couple of additions to the workshop. I also made the handle of the screwdriver more realistic looking (however the colours make me wish they were made of candy because they look delicious when rendered) and made some size variants to put into the toolbox.

On another note the nature of some of these shots are really making me use the camera in cheeky ways to hide stuff that is too complicated for me to animate. As long as it works. The playblasts are also giving me a really good scope on how my animation fits together time-wise. Already I've messed with at least three scenes that I originally had under different lengths to what they are at now.

Test Results Negative

I've spent the past two days trying stuff that would make my animation that much cooler but Maya seems to refuse any attempts I make. This is a screenshot of me exploring the nCloth tear physics to show Wrightley ripping a page from a notebook but I feel there is some realism lacking... I also looked into crosshatch shaders to layer on top of my final renders but was unable to make sense of any of the tutorials. The current outlook seems very much like the weather at the moment. Regardless, one must soldier on, through caffeine and calamity :) I've also been working on cranking out some basic playblasts to gauge how the animation will flow in regards to time which I am currently up to scene 12 of about 25-26.