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.

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...

Chasing Waterfalls

Time to play with WATER.

Amit's been working on a couple of tests for our scenes waterfall and river! The river has definitely been easier to achieve - this was made with an animated bump map, he also threw in some test rocks to see what the effect would be.


We're all really happy with the results on this one! Amit's going to make a couple of tweaks (colour wise etc) and play around with the lighting. We'll also test it against the rest of the assets and characters to make sure its not making too much 'noise' and distracting from the story.We're not to worried about where the river currently starts as we'll be adding in a misty effect!

And on to our glorious waterfall.


After a group chat about it we still think theres a bit of work to do on this one - again we want to make sure it doesn't distract and we need make sure the water flows in a way that it looks like it's coming  from a distance (so the splashes shouldn't be to prominent). Yannis also pointed out that we need to tweak the edges of the landscape to reflect this aswell and create more of a perspective.

Also Amit made this using Maya 2015's Bifrost, so we can't really use this as we're working in 2014. There was the suggestion of rendering it off and adding it to our scene but there were scaling issues when Amit first tested this, and mountain and waterfall would end up tiny tiny tiny...Touche Maya touche

All in all it's definitely a really good start, and getting an early look at these tests mean we can start making the relevant changes to fit the rest of the scene.

Today's eye candy is a rough comp that Amit's pulled together of a quick render of our landscape.