Where I Am So Far

So heres how far I am with the project. I've started drawing some random objects around the house that i will probably stick into the scene. I decided to use a real room and make a 3D version of it and fill the room with objects from around my house etc. Right now the room is still rough, trying to get the lighting and shadows right. Anyways, the top photo is the real room and the one below is the 3D model WIP. Cheers.

Experimenting With Depth

In the build up to the negotiated brief, I thought it would be best to get to terms with depth of field in maya and composite. I created a bar set up (that i wouldn't mind in my future home) and experimented with the different DOF settings to get the best results. Here are the outcomes.

Negotiated Brief

For my negotiated brief I'm going to model a 3D interior environment in Maya. Its hopefully going to look realistic, and for the final shot I want to include some depth of field among other render passes.

Here is a chair and table set up I modeled the other day to show the style I am going for, such as the soft shadows and properly textured objects.

MudBox Sculpting

Just before the start of Easter I started to look at using Mudbox and after watching a couple of really useful autodesk tutorials I found on youtube I felt a little adventurous and decided to sculpt Superman based on the new actor Henry Cavill. I started with the basic body sculpt mudbox has to offer I cracked on sculpting the body and head shape. There was plenty of stock photos of the actor to sculpt from, but only a few side on photos, but I was sort of sculpting from my impersonation of what he looks like, almost like a caricature. I found out a little later that your meant to sculpt important parts separately, ie Cape, Hair etc. To make the cape I just used the grab tool and pulled parts of his back away. I've constantly been going back and forth making changes to the sculpt, but have got to a stage of being quite happy with the results.








Just some minor details like creases and leather look boots.



I did try to use the colour tools in Mudbox. But this model has no proper textures.

Finished Post Preduction

As promised...

Post Preduction

For our post production assignment I'm working with Grethe and Miguel, we came up with the idea of having a 3D Henry hoover come around the back of a laptop and snort up coke off the desk. Controversial, yes. We thought it would be best to not go any further and have him hit the Hetty hoover. We started by filming the desk with the P2 cameras and used crushed mentos for the coke, Miguel was to act as our druggy. So after the filming I started to model the Henry hoover whilst Grethe was to rig the hoover 'snout'. Modelling didn't take long, it was a basic poly shape with blinn and mia materials assigned to it. When the Hoover was complete I started to animate the hoover. I had trouble trying to line up the 3D camera to the real one, until I used an image plane of the shot and fixed it to the camera which made it 100 times easier. since we shot on a wierd angle I had to have Henry 'float' down so it looked right when we would layer over the top of the footage. I animated Henry going on and off screen so that we could break the shot down into four parts, which would save on render time.



Miguel told me he wanted to do some animating on henry as well so I gave him the middle part of the 'story' to animate. Since it was just a static shot we didn't need to worry about tracking a shot, though looking around at other people's work, i definatly would like to try tracking 3d objects in the real world, because it looks awesome. I had some issues with rendering passes from maya for instance the shadows. But I was told to assign a "use background" material to the plane and then to use render passes. I used a Diffuse to Shadows and a Raw Shadows pass for the opening, and if i have time i want to use a Depth pass.



So on to composite. I wanted to edit out the bit of paper on the left hand side of the footage, just because we could, but we realised it would be more trouble than its worth so we opted out of it. Composite was pretty straight forward, it made a lot of sense in the long run to render out seperatly because it so much easier to change one little detail than the whole thing. In order to animate the coke, we cut around the coke of a single Tiff and put it onto the clean plate, then animated a mask around it closing on itself. Anywho the final version should be up soon.

Animated Exeter Titles

So after a hectic January we finally finished the Animated Exeter Titles. After many Final versions and some long nights, it was ready to be shown at the festival. Its been great to look back to the beginning of the project and see how far we have come. We had such a great team that were more than capable of making the idea that I had and transform it into something greater than I expected. As well as being an enjoyable project its also been an educational one, such as never trust displacement grass and also Open EXR files are more trouble than they are worth. I wanted to emulate the style and feel that Dexter's Laboratory had. It just seemed to fit the target audience and the pre-designed characters we were using (Cat and Robot)so well. At first I was worried that having a 2D cat in the 3D world would seem a little too fake and might not look quite right, but after seeing what a great job Tom did on animating the cat, I knew it would look great. Needless to say the Cathedral looked great, with sole credit going to Olly who really took the idea and ran with it. I knew he was working hard on something but nothing prepared me for the 'beast' that was the 3D cathedral. I just hope having a giant Robot coming out of it doesn't count as blasphemy.

As a side not I will never name a file "Final" ever again as it seems to curse you.

The Titles got some good feedback off my peers which was really appreciated, and was also recommended to be entered into Annecy Animation Festival by Susannah Shaw, which was a completely unexspected and awesome. Any-whoooo here it is: