Natasha's still working on pulling together the 2D references for the characters, so we had ourselves a good old fashioned photo session to help with referencing the larger movements of the troll and the mariachi's.
For the troll we were focusing on the scene when he jumps over the bridge. So we put Amit's parkour skills to the test to capture these.
Natasha will flip the images when she's drawing them so they fit the trolls entrance on the storyboard.
Yannis will be animating the mariachi's running away on at the end, so we did a few test sequences with them.
We felt that a couple of the earlier sequences were a bit noisey - there was a bit too much going on which would make the scene look a bit too confused and cluttered, and would be tricker to animate! We would have run the risk of models merging into each other.
Now we think we've pretty much got the sequence we want, its a bit more linear, but gets across what we're trying to achieve - and its funny. Huzzah.
So our early animations have brought up a couple of issues which was good to know now rather than a week before the deadline!
There have been a couple of issues with the little goat rig, and although the referencing system seems to be working like a charm and upating, a few major changes need to be made to the rig which has been really affecting Yannis and Cristina's early walk cycles which can only be rectified by starting from scratch and re-importing the update rig (sad times).
After a quick meeting we decided a few things.
1. It was best to push back our animating process and spend time actually testing the completed rigs and making any major changes earlier on so we don't risk having to completely redo scenes later on.
Bimpe has finished working on the Mariachi's rig so Yannis and Ritchie have been testing these out and pushing their limits to pick up on any deformations, control issues, attributes that need locking etc.
Cristina has been testing Kaitlin's goat with some glorious /creepy results.
We'll also do the same for Sushma's troll when it's completed. Kaitlin's set up a doc of things to cross-check, and the checkers can alert the lucky riggers to any problems for them to fix up quick smart.
2. We'll be dedicating 1 animator to one set of walk cycles for our characters - this way we can ensure that all the walking styles are consistent! We'll also be making sure that each walk has it's own 'personality'.
3. We're also going back to basics (kind of) Sushma has suggested that we do 2D references for our shots - for the goats in particular - this will give us a bit more direction, and really help in establishing the individual walk cycles for the goats. Natasha has started work on this as she has a lot of experience in this area - so far she has hand drawn these and will animate them in flash.
So it's all re-shaping up... Bimpe's run into a couple of issues with the blendshapes for the head cause Maya is cool like that, bu deformers will be her friend.
Today's glorious animating eye candy - courtesy of Cristina
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 tinytiny...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.
SO, today has been all rigging, animation and...N-SYNC, pure pop bliss to carry us through this animating filled day.
The referencing system is all good to go and Amit gave us a little run through just so we're all clear on what goes where etc. We also finally put all our characters and the landscape together in the scene to make sure all the sizing was correct (had to do some scaling for the landscape).
And as all but 2 of us are complete 3D animation novices, Sushma also walked us through rigging the camera so we're not stuck playing around with it for hours on end.
Top tips:
- Rig the Camera to a locator
- Place the pivot point off center (for more of a real camera on tripod look etc)
- Animate in 2 panels! 1 with your camera's perspective the other in Maya's perspective so you can see what the hell is going on.
Natasha, Ritchie, Yannis and Cristina have started work on animating their scenes (and making the Goats dance to Spandau Ballet), and are looking at a couple of references for a quadruped walk cycle.
What's probably been best about these initial blocking sessions is that it's allowing us to start testing the rigs and quickly pick up on any issues there might be, which can be quickly rectified and updated via the referencing system.
Huzzah.
Oh and we've also been spying on the enemy (aka Fincher, aka Group 2)
Today's animating eye-candy - a rigged and almost ready mariachi courtesy of Bimpe
In all the modelling/rigging frenzy, we forgot to upload our updated animatic (hi Barry, sorry Barry!). We've cut a couple of the scenes that we felt we no longer needed, and speed up a couple.
Huzzah!
Natasha and Bimpe will be working on a colour script of our key shots in the next week or so once we're into the full swing of animating. We'll also be doing turnaround for all our character model once all the textures have been finalised.
Tis the season to keep rigging, and Bimpe, Kaitlin and Sushma are the lucky recipients.
Natasha's also pulled together a phonetics model sheet (if that's the right term) for the troll's lip sync
Facial references for the Mariachi's
As we're starting to block out our scenes this week we're aiming to have the rigs (and skinning/weights) completed by the end of the week. Amit has set up the file referencing system of any updates to rigs etc will automatically update in our scene.
We're also working on some final clean up for the models - Yannis has had a couple of texturing issues with the ogre that he and Amit have been working on, and after talking to Barry we're going to make sure that all the textured characters look unified.
Ritchie has been working on a separate bump texture for the goats in Photoshop - to make them look like they have paper strips.
Cristina has been finishing up the assets fort he Mariachi's and Bimpe and Natatsha have been finalising the terrain. Amit will be doing some lighting tests with this later this week and starting work on our waterfall.
Looking smug and snazzy
Today we leave you with some textured goat eye candy courtesy of Ritchie Li
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
