Friday 25 May 2012

End of the Line

We have finished.... All sound, rendering, comping and editing is finished all that is left to do is hand in our DVD and we are finished.

First thing is that I am really happy with the outcome of the film. We started this film in late January when our dissertation was about to kick in and we have still managed to get all the work we had planned done and to a good standard. 

The Team has worked brilliantly together, Joe and Nick who had the original idea have made a great edit and put some awesome animation that has brought my character to Life. Greg has been a great help all the way, modelling and texturing not just the lift but creating the rig containing both character and has more features than I can list. Steph has been a great compositor on this project learning nuke and in total comping around 20 or more shots, as well as texturing both the Zombie and Intern characters. David has been good help when creating the office set and did some of the first lighting tests for the film.


Thats it! Going Down is finished and hopefully people will enjoy watching it as much as I have working on it.


My Role

When this project began I was mainly focusing on the Character modelling. In total through out the year I have modelled 4 Characters: Zombie (Below) and Intern for Going Down that I designed and The Vein and Crude wizard for SpellBound. Although as the project developed I became more as a generalist working on all aspects of the project.


The 3 images below show examples of both character for Going Down in a variety of shots. I feel the design of the characters work well together. I would if I had more time rework some elements such as the zombie clothing, where I would improve on the models and add another level of detail. Also with the intern I would do the same, taking everything to the next step.






For both characters I created all the blendshapes used in the film. The intern was the main focus when creating the blendshape as we had be able to make a wide range of facial expressions for the film. The zombie on the other hand mostly had eyebrow movements but we had to make sure it that the jaw worked well as the animation of the zombie relied on a good working jaw. Greg Martin is to thank for that as he created a great control giving loads of room for movement. Also in the image below you can see the outcome of the Hair I created using maya hair system for the Intern character. It was my first try at creating hair and I think the end result works well.



As well as light a big section on the film I also took on the task of creating the render layers for the shots ready to be rendered then be composited by Steph. Each render layer had its purpose and it was my job to make sure that each render layer worked with nuke as it would be waste of time if the render layers didn't work after we had taken the time to render all the frames. I started using nuke to check that what I was doing was working.



Later on in the project  I took on the task of trying to  composite one of the shots. I composited one of the fast pace blue shots. I found it really enjoyable and felt that I learnt loads from doing that one shot. I even started developing a comped version of my turntable (images at the top of post).


In total I did the lighting for around 8 shots in the film. I also animated 4 Zombies out of the 7 found it the final shot (shot0180).  So all in all, I have worked on every stage on the Going Down film. Also I have worked on environment modelling and texturing in Spellbound as well as developing Grass and Hair for the other two characters.

Tweaking & perfecting

We have managed to get some extra time to re comp and re-render a few selected shots that we felt we could improve in the time we have left.

Animation, rendering and sound is all finished! All we have left to do is get the last of the comps in the edit. Next plan is to sorted out our degree show items and sort out the dvd for submission. Other than that we are DONE!!! I think we are all happy with the outcome. We all feel now we have done it we can do it better but thats always the case.

We have spend alot of time working along side Quality control/ broadcast students as our film has alot of things that could cause some problems when going through quality control. My professional Skills blog explains alot about QC. Here the link! http://professionalskillsok.blogspot.co.uk/


Thursday 24 May 2012

Rendering, Rendering & more Rendering

LAst few weeks have been purely rendering and compositing. We have had 6 pcs working around the clock rendering our film! We are happy that we have managed to get a good level of quality out of our renders without them taking alot of time. If we had more time or if we had started this project from the beginning of the year I think we would of used a high set of settings, but we are all happy with the outcomes we are getting.

Some shots like shot0150 have really made me feel confident that we are going to get a successful film.


Shot0180 has been a huge render to get. Working with Steph we have managed to render 7 zombies! I am  very pleased with the out comes as the shot was developed late on during the project and was a big task to  complete.



Compositing: Shot0148

So it comes my time to composite a shot! I have to admit its a strange shot as we are going for a styled approach for this section of the film. So the idea to create this blue tint to the shot. 

The two images below show my nuke scene and node trees used to created this shot. I found it a good challenge to get the style right and make it fit the rest of the shots that already have been created. 


The image above shows the nuke node tree for the lift composite. The first task is to break down the rendered image into its passes. As you can see its the same Lift image for each section this is because within that image are the passes we created in maya. To split this up we use a shuffle node, we can tell the shuffle node to select the pass we want.

Once we get this sorted we then use merge to bring them together, When I do this it gives you an option of A ad B, when B means it will be on the bottom and A on the top (blue nodes are merge nodes). Diffuse is our base layer with shadow, specular over the top. We do this for both Top lights and Bottom lights then merge them both together with the bottom lights being B and top lights being A.

From there we can control all the elements by adjusting the merge and what image is seen more. Although merges can be set to different types of 'merging'. For example for a shadow we use a merge but with the type of merge set to 'From'. Where as if it was Specular it will be set to Screen. Finally Ambient Occlusion will be set to Multiply.


Below are two images showing the development of the lift. We are mostly blurring the backgrounds to create this style, this is why the end result has the background blurred as we want the characters to be the focus. Although my actual comp of the lift pre blurring was in my opinion good. I liked the tone I got and the variation in the metal but I had to match the same as all the others in the section so adding the blue tint was important. If it wasn't going to be one of the fast pace bits I would of sorted out the specular slightly as it is coming across blurry at moment.



I like the end result. The one problem which is down to 3D problems is the weight variation on the interns leg. I plan to fix this within 3D if we have time but if not we will have to live with it. Its a clumsy mistake to do and I really hope it doesn't bring the section down as I think this and the rest of the shots are looking really cool!



Character Uv's


Here are the final uv's for both characters. I have laid them over multiple uv spaces as I wanted to have more detail on elements and would of had more trouble with that if they were all on one uv space. Also gives me a chance to break the mesh into it shader groups. The uv's were originally done by Josh but there were model changes and topology changes so I had to redo them. Below are some images of the tools I used to create the uv's.

The unfold tool: This tool isn't as used as much as I think it should be. You need to cut up your model well using the cut edge tool in the uv settings and then the unfold tool can give you great advantages to create smooth and even uv's


When you have multiple meshes creating your model you need to keep it organised. One of the best tools to do this is the layout tool. First thing it does is resize the uv's so they are all even, which is exactly what you want as you want the same resolution when it comes to texturing. Also once this is done you can select the group you want to be on the same uv space and it will lay them out for you.



I am happy with how the uv's worked out. Along the way there were a few hick ups but easily fixed and reworked. 




Lighting Shot0150

Shot0150 is one of our beauty shots! Greg was the original lighter on this shot but I felt that the zombie when leaving the lift was way to dark and that it needed redeveloping and with Greg working at Framestore I took on the task. Below is the original lighting I started with. 


I took away the lift and started to just concentrate on the zombie as the lift has its own lighting set up made by Greg, and I am happy with that its just the zombie I am concentrating on.





I started by adding a point light above the head to get the first impression of where the light was coming from. I didn't want to have loads more lights in case of over exposing the zombie.  So the idea was to place the light to get as much of the face as I could. These two renders (above, below) show the new light placed above the head.


I felt the light placement was wrong and that I wasn't getting the right look that I was looking for. So I have replaced the light but this time I lowered it slightly in front of the zombie to shine on the face more  as well as adding a fill light lower down. I am happier with the outcome. Me and Steph are happy with this setup as we feel we can make anymore adjustments in comp! As you can see, here are the two new lights and where they are now positioned to light the front of the Zombie.



After some tweaks and refining within maya and comp. Here is the final look of the zombie within the shot. I am very happy with this shot. I think it shows the distance we have all come as everything in this scene looks good. The render layers we are creating are giving use great benefits when comping.