The Three Billy Pinata's

Week 16: That Awkward Moment...

When you've finished your Going Live project and you forget what life was like before you started it...

We've presented our final short to Axis yesterday (Monday 28th) and while we'r still waiting on more in-depth feedback, what we did get from them so far has been positive and we're all really really happy with the out come :)

Photographic proof of our visit to Axis courtesy of Wendy!

We've decided to make a couple of tweaks to it ahead of the final degree show - but we want to make sure we don't fall into the curse of trying to fix everything - or getting trapped in the render farm, so we'll only be tweaking key scenes that really stand out (to us) as problems - this includes a couple of obvious mesh deformations and an incorrect texture.

We'll probably work on that in the next couple of weeks (when everyone's recovered a bit ha), but all in all this has definitely been a great learning curve and a great opportunity to work with some amazing and creative people.

3 Days to Go: Because We Are Awesome

Today is a great day...

Today at 8.30ssomething pm we finished our animated short (before being swiftly asked to leave the building...the building was meant to close a 8pm. oops).

It was a long process (we almost lost Sushma to the troll and sound along the way), but eventually after effects / premier pro co-operated and we we made it.

Most of today was spent making final tweaks to the audio and re-editing it to fit the final animation. We were all able to make final decisions on extra foley sounds as well as tweaks to pitch - and we think that this has definitely made all the difference. 

This was probably the first time all of us have seen the final thing with all the final sounds and for most of us this is also the first time working on an animated project so we're really happy with the end result.

These characters have taken over our lives and we're more than excited to get them back, but definitely sad that its almost all over (cheesy but true cause we're cool like that).

Our final presentation is all finished, so we're pretty much prepared for the final meeting with Axis on Monday :)

100 rendered and feeling smug

5 Days to Go: Composites and Corrections

The end is definitely in sight...

All first and second round compositing is now COMPLETE and is ready to go over to Sushma and Kaitlin for editing. This is also the first time the 2 of them have looked through all the composited shots which is VERY good for one main reason - we get a fresh pair of eyes on the animation as a whole.

As the rest of us have had a hand in compositing we've seen what effects and changes have been made etc, but this was the first time the both of them would be seeing this, and therefore could give some initial first feedback!

As a result we've tweaked a few shots to make sure they stay in line with the rest of them - but also to avoid them looking too after-effecty. Kaitlin made a good point about not hiding behind the compositing. We should be showing of the animations and the work that has gone into the models and textures.

There has been some initial hiccups in getting all shots from After Effects (as they are) into Premier Pro for editing - we're wanting to import the shots this way so Amit has more control in the final round of compositing (which will include grains, vignette and all that snazzy stuff) - but after hunting down Malcolm and stealing his After Effects / Premier Pro knowledge all is once again right with the world.

Sushma stealing Malcolm's mind

One key thing we've all probably learnt from this project is that it is important to find a clever (quick) work around (/cheat) for any visual issues that may arise. Our favourite case study is one again the Troll. Reverting back to a much older model to quickly render off the final couple of shots meant that a re-test of that rig wasn't done, and with textures turned off (due to lagging) a couple of deformations were missed in his lower half.

BEFORE!! We see booty

Luckily this was only really obvious in one shot. Firstly Yannis attempted to block out the issue with some of the surrounding plants on the bridge (which is something we've done in a previous shot for a different issue), but this didn't look right. So we turned to Photoshop!

Bimpe took the effected rendered TIFFs and painted over the problem areas (100 frames.... fun times), and thanks to the magic of copy and paste this shots we're cleaned up in 30 minutes.

After - Booty Free!

Success!

Now all that's left is for Yannis to finish up the credits sequence which is still looking awesome - Cristina has also added a great personal touch #nospoilers

Week 15: 7 Days to Go: Banter and Bold Declarations

Yep, that's right. we have a week to go until the final deadline and things are still ticking along.

The last couple of weeks we've really been bogged down with rendering - renders taking much longer than expected, renders coming out incorrect or renders not coming out at all (being held captive by a hungry render farm).

                                Where are the rest of our indirects sob sob

But our spirits have remained high! This is a really important stage and one of the key things to making sure we complete this with some sanity is to stay calm and full of humour (which we definitely are - there was also a game of chess to stretch our creative muscles and assess our next plan of attack).

All the scenes are almost rendered - although due to time constraints we've had to drop the AO passes - and for some scenes where we haven't had time to re-render the diffuse/indirect passes we've had to just use a beauty pass - which sadly gives us a bit less control during the compositing stage - but we're still trying to ensure that it all looks good.

In terms of compositing, we've got a little pipeline going on, so were we're going through 3 key stages:

1. The initial file set up where all layers are applied
2. The more snazzy effects like heat haze are then added
3. Finally after editing, the whole thing will go to Amit for one last round of colour corrections and a couple more snazzy things

Upon reflection there are definitely a few things we would have done differently had we had the time - such as making firm decisions on what would be rendered out (for example where there is no camera movement we only need 1 still shot, not up to 100 extra frames of the same thing :( ). But these are definitely good lessons to take with us for future works.

But on the great plus side, we're still coming up with new and simple ideas to create short cuts for ourselves. For example Ritchie had the great idea of creating 1 generic After Effects file with the heat haze effect to be imported into whatever scenes need it. This definitely saves us a lot of time, especially for those who don't yet know the technique for creating it!

Thank you muchly Ritchie!

Troll = 0, Team Juan = 1

We now have a non-stomach-deforming Troll

WIN

Week 14: Compositing Crew

So it is all hands on deck for compositing our film! Luckily we have another week - which has definitely been needed as we're having a few issues with our renders - some of them have been coming out blank and some of them are failing in the render-farm which isn't cool.

We have about a quarter of our shots left to render - and the priority is to get these out asap. In the meantime Amit has also given us all a crash course in compositing in After Effects - as we felt this would be the most user friendly for us all considering the time we have left.

Amit feeling triumphant with the new 4K monitors

We're pretty much following the same set of instructions and modes etc so every scene is consistent. We also have a few extra effects to add in likes dusts and particles which Yannis will talk us through as this is something he's added into the credits - which is looking pretty damn awesome.

There's still lots to be done effects wise, but we're getting through these as quickly as possible.

Now to the not so good news... the troll has turned on us and he is deforming in Maya, we're not sure if its the reference of the model etc, but he's been deskinned and reweighted a number of times and he's still not liking us much.

In some cases it's ok, but in other's where is stomach is visible the deform is really obvious... it's working fine in playblasts, but when its rendered out the issue remains. Bimpe, Sushma and Natasha are doing a couple of tweaks to see what can be done animation-wise, but with the time constraints will will probably be something that we have to mask in post-production.

Woe is us.

Such a tease...

The attempted art of Sabotage

It's safe to say that we've had a more than semi- successful week of rendering! Amit, Bimpe and Natasha have been setting up the passes - we're using Indirect, Diffuse and reflection - as well as a couple of custom ones - ID, ZDepth and AO.

All pass have been completed and have now been thrust gracefully into the render farm.

A couple has gone through earlier in the week, but Amit had spotted some issues with the outputs - some of the passes weren't showing what they should have shown, and them some weren't showing anything in After Effects, but were working fine in the glorious Photoshop. He's gone back into the render settings and saw a couple of things that may have caused the issues, so fingers crossed they should be fine now.

we are organised and ready to render!

 A few of the shots have been successful (huzzah), so Ritchie and Cristina have started the compositing process in After Effects and it's all looking pretty good so far. Cristina had worked on a new Matte painting that was similar to the IBL we had in place for renders and its really exciting to see it all fitting together!

A very happy compositing Cristina

We wanted to give ourselves as much flexibility (and detail) as possible when it came to compositing (hence all the passes) and due to time / experience, we want to keep our comps simple, but more importantly we want to make sure that everything still retains the same look and feel - especially as nearly all of us will be comping so we need to make sure everything is still unified.

With all the technical stuff rolling along, we're turning some of our attention to our credits. We want these to have as much thought and care as we've had with the film, we also want t have fun with it! We've been throwing around some ideas, and settled on a really good one from Yannis which will involve some 2D animation (his speciality). With that said.. no more spoilers

Oh and we also attempted to spread the good word of Team Juan with Team 2... but they were having none of it.

We can't be held accountable for our characters actions...

Week 13: We Reserve Our Right To Render

T-Minus 2 weeks...

Key things to do this week:

1. Completely finish and sign off all animation
2. Set All scenes to render
3. Start compositing completed renders

No biggie. We're gonna kick into Super Saiyan mode and start tying these things off! Amit has started working on a test composite scene to get a look at what we should be aiming to do.

We've run into a couple of tweaks of scenes which was to be expected, but nothing to major, if anything its been extra useful to make these changes to make sure the film makes sense and fits together.

One of the main points of discussion has been the 'hero' shot for the biggest goat - to try and get this to fit better Natasha has been tweaking the camera angles to establish the best shot, one that works well for the film, narration and the over all introduction of the character.

Loreal's finest #1

Loreal's fines t#2

Loreal's finest #3 

All in all it has been decided that the Loreal advert look wins every time, and so far #3 (the combination between #1 and #2) is winning.

In terms of music and sound, Yannis has done a great job of getting all this together, and all that's left is to do a final bit of production and our sound will be ready to be edited to the footage.

As we know that there's only a bit of time left, we're going to split the team slightly to do different things - hopefully by Monday all scenes will be completely rendered (and ok!!), once this has happened Amit, Bimpe and Ritchie will be compositing, with Sushma and Kaitlin ready to start editing all the scenes that come through. In the meantime Yannis, Natasha and Cristina will be working on our logo and credits design. They've got a strong background in this so the aim is to have that done in a day so they can jump on to compositing.

Playing and having a Blast

We are nearing final stages of this projects, and we're still finishing/tidying up animations, but its really important that we get a look at how all the shots look together!

We'v been working on the shots individually, and we're aware they everyone has slightly different styles/experiences so we''ve playblasted the shots (the ones that are finished atleast) to see how it all looks!!

Yannis has almost finished working on the music - its in the final editing stages, but Sushma has edited this all together for now.


Still lots of bits to work on, but so far we're all really happy with how this is turning out and the renders are looking good! Amit's planning on doing a test composite of one of the shots over the weekend to get a feel for what we'll need to do, and he'll feed this back to everyone so we can start work on it.

Sushma looking happy before the Troll turned on her...

It's all plodding along, but it will probably hit overdrive in the next few days are we whizz around (and sleep very little) in order to get everything finished! We know it's important to get as many hands as possible on compositing so we avoid it all ending up in Amit's lap!

Week 12: Candy candy everywhere

Ritchie's been beavering away on the candy explosion scene! He's been looking at cartoony 2D explosions in things like Roadrunner, and has been using After Effects and 3D to try and imitate that style!

He's rendered the rotation animation of sweets in Maya, and composited them with the explosion with Particular in AE. He's also been testing and ended up using Turbulent Noise to create the dust type effect.

 ENJOY!



As for the rest of us, Sushman, Natasha, Yannis and Kaitlin are finishing up their scenes and Amit and Bimpe are laughing at the monstrous size of our EXR render files.... over 50GB per image.

Good times.

 For render-time, sanity and general not breaking when trying to composting, we'll probably now render these out as TIFFs.

 Maya is a tricky mistress.

The Render Struggle Is Real

We've been doing a few quick fixes on some of this things that have been causing us some problems... *evil glare at the troll*. The necklace has been deforming quite badly in shots, so Sushma and Bimpe have been trouble shooting this so its not so apparent in some of the animations.

Theyve deskinned the initial bind and added a series of bones to it, followed by 3 control curves at the main problem area.. So if there are anymore deformations at the back we can you the control curves to force them back to the point where they atleast look kinda of normal.

Amits also been prepping the files for rendering... We're testing out a few methods as this could involve moving all of our files and having to repoint the texture files in everyshot. amits trying to work out if there is an easier way to do this in the hopes of maintaining our sanity.

Today we also said hello to Yannis

Week 11: Render Me This

Soooo were are definitely nearing the stage where we can start rendering our first shot!!

We're churning out animated scenes like theres no tomorrow (a slight exhaggeration but one that definitely one that fits the context) and should hopefully be done by the end of the week.

Sushma has suggested everyone playblast their animated scenes so we can then stitch theme together and view them as a whole. This is definitely a great step to take as we need to make sure all our animation scenes are consistent and that our individual animating styles don't differ to much from the scenes that follow each other. We've already noticed a couple of instances of this with the troll so we've been working together to tweak these.

HAPPY FACES!

This will also be useful so timing - to see what shots we need to cut down and so the music and narration can be edited to it. Annnnddd this. Also works as a second animatic. Huzzah.

Bimpe and Natasha have pretty mych finished their scenes so Amit will now be talking them through the render set up process so he isn't left to tackle this alone once all the shots have been completed.

Also now that the scenes are coming together we've been re-reviewing the goats textures - as the troll now compliments the environment almost perfectly. We've   been tweaking the saturation so that the goats still pop, but don't look missed matched with their setting.

Feel free to stay tuned for the stitched together playblast when its ready!

Our animations bring all the rigs to the yard...

Another solid day of animation, with lots done and our first rendered scenes coming through!

So lots of visuals to swoon over.

Everyone's working through these quite quickly, which means Amit will be getting a lot of shots to prepare for render/compositing - so Bimpe is aiming to have all her shots done by tomorrow to start helping with this process, Natasha will probably be helping too as she has almost finished her shots.

The scenes are shaping up really well, and we're making a few camera tweaks where we feel is necessary and Ritchie is wooing us with his animated shots.

Look how shiny!!

This is definitely an animation eye-candy day...

After Maya trying to betray us, we're making triple sure that we're backing up all the files on our master hard drive and our own uni-servers.

We would like to top this successful day off with a quick tune from our mascots / Team Juan theme tune (thanks Taylor)

Week 10: Animators are us

With a song in our step (Taylor Swift in particular) and a graceful air of accomplishment (following our 48hr AniJam stint) we are in animation 'heaven'.

Everyone's cracking on with their scenes and we're hoping to have them blocked if not finished by the end of the week / start of next week.

It's going smoothly so far - we hit a few of our hiccups early on meaning we needed to back track a bit with things like rigs, but everyone now seems comfortable with what they're doing. AND we can now use Atom to copy over our animation cycles so all is well so far!

Were also giving each other feedback on scenes before they are approved - mainly to make sure were all going in the right direction and then Sushma will be the overall overseer to make sure its all cohesive!

We're now being extra careful with the references and rig files as we've already had minor hiccups in which the tweaked rig file was causing the mesh to split in the shot/reference file - but Sushma's managed to rectify this!

We've had so VERY fun results so far with some of the animations especially because of the nature of these characters and the story, so we can afford to exaggerate some of the moments and really let the personalities of the characters shine through.

And now a word from our friendly and sugar hungry animators.

Natasha:

I'm animating the big goat - i've been blocking his walk cycle for a couple of weeks ow whilst we sorted out some of the issues we were having, so i'm managing to get through it all pretty quick. I was having a few issues with his knees not doing what I wanted during the walk cycle but I solved this with some hefty clean-up and managed to force it to move the way I wanted and going back to delete extra animation frames!

Yannis:

I'm working with the mariachi's animation cycle which will loop throughout allt he scenes. I'm planning on using Atom to import their animation sequences onto their reference mesh - so far we've tested this and it' worked well. Their movements are dependant on the song - which ive been recording this week - so i've done a basic cycle and will adjust this to the music once i've worked on the production.

Cristina:

I'v e been animating the shots featuring the little goat at the moment. I'd initially worked on its walk cycle a few weeks ago, but will need to redo this due to issues we had with the rig at the time. At the moment my only real issues are the speed of the moments so i'll been doing a bit of clean up and some work in the graph edit to smooth these out.

Sushma:

I am also working on a shot involving the little goat and its confrontation with the troll. Luckily I have had no issues so far, but I have had to make a few adjustments to the troll as it has been affecting some of the scenes others are working on. The troll hates me.

Ritchie:

At the moment I am animating the troll's running sequence. It's quite a complicated scene so i've been acting out the motions myself as a reference. I've been able to finish this scene rather quickly as a result. I also need to get used to working in the graph editor to adjust it in terms of speed and smoothness.

Amit:

As i'm not doing animation, i'm currently working on the lightning and prepping completed scenes for rendering. I managed to fix the lighting apocalypse issue we had last week. When we referenced it into a shot it was blowing out even when there wasn't any lighting in there.. must have been a glitch. I wasn't able to fix it in the master file, so had to go back to a previous unaffected file and reimport it.

I'm also keeping an eye on the render times - the test scenes are currently taking just over a minute to render - but this is without the characters or animation, so we'll probably be looking about about 10 minutes per shot - which is what I was expecting.

Bimpe:

I haven't got too many scenes to animate as I will be jumping on to rendering and compositing with Amit as the completed scenes start coming through. But i'm currently working on some of the more expressive and close up shots for the troll and mariachi's. I wanted to use references to make sure I was getting the basic movements right for blocking - and Yannis kindly offered his acting skills.

So far i've had a couple of issues with timing and over animating which has made the scenes look a bit blocky and jumpy but once I cottoned on to it I found it easy to just go back and delete. Also, we're all noticing that are scenes will potentially come in a but longer than we believed it shot would be - but hopefully we'll be able to cut these down in post.