Render Farm Down!

Render Farm is down at the moment but should be back on tomorrow. I should be able to get some Hi Res Footage.

I have learnt SO MUCH! (Conclusion)

I think that the project has been successful and I feel that we managed to communicate our story through our animation in a way that can be understood. We kept the idea simple but tried to do something different by compositing our animation on Live Action. I think that this was a good idea as we only had 30 seconds to tell a story.

We did not meet the Rave on Air Quality Control, but we are still happy with the results. During the beginning I modeled some corel reef for the fish tank. The Corel Reef had a bit of particle animation which allowed some of the plants to sway and bring the enviroment to life. Ferhan introduced me to Dynamic and Particles as he specialises in that along with modeling. In the end we couldn't use the Corel Reef because it was too much for it to rendered with Real Flow Water. Instead we just went for a simple glass Fish Bowl which gave us a chance to concerntrate more on the animation. This was good because our project was more of an animation piece than an enviroment piece.

I learnt a lot from Ferhan's Dynamics and I was able to teach Ferhan how to UV Map and Texture as well as compositing and the Render Farm.

We had technical problem with rendering water and glass, but I don't think it took anything away from the animation, which I think is the strongest part of this project.

Overall, this was a good project but was made differcult by the essays and Rave on Air which set us back on our schedule. We had to sacrifice quality for Rendering Speed in the end but it shouldn't affect the whole animation.

Compare The Market, created by marketing agency VCCP.

This is one of the most annoying adverts I've heard but the compositing and rendering that VCC has achieved in this advert is something to aim for in the future. It was always going to be differcult to composite our animation to the level that they do in industry but I think we did a good job with lighting. I don't know how long it took VCC to make this advert, but I presume that they had a short space of time to do it but they had a lot of 3D and VFX Artists to make it. I think the key to creating a realist render is having a good eye the colour and light and time.

Citroen Advert and Lighting

The of composite that we were trying to aim for was some thing similar to this image. The Robot has been well lit and blends into the scene. One of our ideas was to have interaction between the fish and the people in the live action. We decided not to do have the fish interacting with because it would be too complicated to time it with the aniation in maya because of the lag in the time line.

This advert was Directed by Neil Blomkamp.

I tried to make the Fish animation as realistic as possible by creating a cylindrical lambert which would represent the table and then placing reflective attributes to it so that you could see the Fishes reflections on the Table. For the Final render I took away the visiblity of the lambert table by selecting "Use as Background" which keeps the shadows and the reflections from the lights and puts them on the live action table. The Shadows and reflections were finally done with Raytracing because we wanted realistic and accurate shadows. All of our lights were Area lights that were positioned to mimic the artificial lighting in the canteen and the natural light from the windows. Area Lights take longer to render that any other lights but the results give you lush and soft shadows and specular highlights. Another advantage of the area lights is that we could change the shape of them but it wasn't necassary. We rendered out our scene in layers which helped make the rendering times faster and the Compositing in After Effects easier.

We had a lot of problems with rendering the glass because of the angle of the lights. This was corrected through trial and error with moving the lights and changing reflection settings.

Overall, the lighting was successful but I had to turn off setting such as Final Gather and Global Illumination to improve the render speed.

Storyboard Summary

We have 2 fish that blow bubbles set in composited on live action. The bubbles will change shape and sound as they both try and out do each other. The final bubble will explode leaving both the fish dead.

Storyboard

Testing

A bit of testing with the lighting but need to look at Paint effects bubbles and water foam. Ifeel this will add to the realism.

Need to torrent
Maya Dyanamics: Underwater Environments

Testing

Update

So far, alot has been happening with Rave on Air and Contextual Studies. I've managed to finish the essay for contexual studies but I still need to prepare for the presentation. I have had feedback from the Formative Assesment which has been very useful in terms of what I need to achieve to gain a good grade. The Production Schedule is a key element for improvement and Ferhan and myself are going to spend Wednesday Cracking on with that. From the Formative Assesment I have learnt that I need to compare my work to the work of other 3D modellers and compositors in the industry. I'm going to look at Love Studio's who did the Renault advert where the car turns into a transformer. I think adverts in general and the post Production house's who make them are going to be my source of research. I need to put more 2D work and experiments on my blog as well.

The areas that are going well is the actual production of the project itself and the quality that we are producing is at a high standard. We are looking to finish this project with in the deadline given to us 19th June 2009. We tried our hardest to get the project finished for Rave on Air but came to a decision on Monday 25th June that it was not going to be feasable to finish the project to a high standard for the Quality Control. On the same week as the Quality Control, we had to hand in the PPD essay as well. The scheduling during this section of the project for myself was improvised slightly and had to change priority's between Rave on Air and PPD. I think our 30 second film would have been a Big Hit on Rave on Air but it wasn't going to happen in a short space of time.

Overall, setting up for Rave on Air was quite an "Eye opener" for me, especially with Dan Dalli's Show Reel Project. I was scavenging through every Maya scene that I had for a decent print to put up. I learnt that you have to change the dpi to at least 300 pixels in the render settings if you are printing out a render on A3 or higher. I have also learnt that Ii need to do some more modelling in my own time so that I have enough work for my final show reel next year. I'm looking into buying or *cogh*downloading*cogh* Zbrush or Mudbux as they are currently being used in the Gaming industry and could take my modelling to a new level. Dynamics and paint Effects really appeal to me and I thnak Ferhan for introducing me to them from VFX point of view.

At the moment we are have come across a problem with the Real Flow water. I got a text from Ferhan saying that it was impossible to add the water because of the scale of the fish tank. I replied back saying that I would be researching in ways to mimic water with lighting and paint effects. The Animating Stage of the process will be completly finished by Tomorrow 9th June where I will take a copy of the playblast and sync together the sound and music.

Presentation for Contextual is on Wednesday, so I'll be ready to take that on when it comes. As for now I'm Testing out Paint Effects bubbles with Particles and simulating water with lights. I messaged this Student on Youtube who has manged to successfully simulate surface water.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isXNkTiiAYQ

Hope they reply back (fingers crossed).