Final film!

Overall I am really pleased with our final film. Everyone put their all into it and this really paid off. As I'm an animator, I was so pleased with the amount of character animation in this project, but as it is an environment project I feel we could have shown off the environment just a little bit more. The main point of focus is the character, and it should have been the environment I think, even thought I do feel the animation carries the narrative so well. Either way, I am really happy with the level of animation, level of detail in the environment with modeling, lighting and rendering. Well done guys!

Scene three renders

Scene two renders

Scene one renders

In the one below, I did the touch flying up animation

Editing Underway!

Not much else for me to do now really apart from finish this blog and give feedback on the final edit when it's done. Time to give a big sigh of relief that its all done in time and now I can finally relax!

More deadlines! Ahhhhh!

Christmas and New year and all that lot hasn't been the best time for getting work done! Gotta pick up my pace a bit now to get the last of these shots animated for rendering and editing!

Third scene animation

Here is my part of the animation for the third scene. It is the shot where he is confused at what just happened to him, and he check his torch is still wokring by hitting it on his hand.

First off I filmed myself doing roughly what i wanted my character to do so I could see how he moves etc.

Now i have the basic idea i can reference this video and block out my animation for this shot.

Here is the playblast of my animation:



I'm pretty pleased with how this shot came out. Only took me around an hour to get done. I like the secondary animation on his other hand under the torch as he hits it on it, it moves away. The video reference really helped me with this one.

Lighting second scene

Scene two was getting lit by three of us, so we couldn't do a GREAT deal of lighting each for this scene, but here we go. First Nick put in some lights to give the whole scene some light all over it. Next I wanted to light up the statue becase for my animation shots, the character is up close to the statue and knocks it over, so it has to be seen well!

First I added an area light into the scene

This is what it looks like now:

This is far too bright! So I played around with the intensity settings and ray trace to get the right kind of glow I wanted for the scene.

Here is what the final one looks like:

Re-animated shot

I am so much happier with this shot now. It just works much more and I'm pleased with the secondary animation in his arms as he turns around.

Finished shot

A few people had some problems with this shot because it didn't link in with the next shot nick had animated etc. He dives into the pole and lands behind the statue and in the next shot he is standing up in front of the statue again. No problem, i will just reanimate it to make it fit better. To be honest, as I was animating I wasn't sure if I was happy with it anyway so this was good that I got the chance to change it!

Scene two animation underway

This scene will be really fun to animate. Ive got two shots in this scene but the second is the main show. Its where the statue falls down so it has to be right. Here is my first one, hes standing there in awe of the statue. Ive done subtle movement in his body and hands so hes not stiff. Even the slightest of movements count!



Here is the main statue falling over scene. As we were going to have it shatter, we came across loads of problems with that one, so we decided to have him push it over. I have got him diving into the stick holding it up, and then it crashing to the ground. This took me a while to get the weight right but I'm really happy with it now and when the sounds are all in it will look even better!

Lighting first scene!

Dave did most of the lighting in the first scene, but when i put my animation in, i could see some problems with how it wa slit. The character was really dark as he walked past the door way and looked in. To solve this problem, i put an area light in the doorway so light him up a little bit so all my animation wasn't a waste of time! Here is the before and after:

UV and texture of the gallery

Now as the animation is finished for the gallery scene, we can all start UVing and texturing the gallery. We have each done a part of it, and my areas were the walls, floor and corridor.

First, i had the UV layout which Maik had unwrapped and got to work in Photoshop to make the textures. This is my first time Uving so we all helped each other out to understand the basic principle of what we are actually doing and trying to achieve.

This is the UV unwrap i was given so texture. This is for the main gallery walls and floor. To start, I created a PSD network of Maya to paint my textures in in Photoshop.

I then made up a pattern in photoshop i had to tile so create the wall paper. I wanted to go with Green, but from my photographs from the V&A galleries, i saw that they used deep reds and purples which really made the gold frames stand out. As we want to have huge gold frames, I thought red would be my best bet.

This is the pattern which was made and i tiled this over the wall. Here is the finished texture on the walls. It took me some time to match them up, but as it will be at night tome, the lights will be very dim in there so you wouldnt be able to nice anyway - but im a perfectionist!

Next was the floor. I searched for a wooden floor image which i could tile to create a whole rooms worth of flooring. I found this:

This is too light for what we had in mind, so i darkened it in Photoshop and then tiled it over the unwrap of the floor. This is what its all looking like now:

Now for the corridor! I want to keep the same flooring as the main gallery so it runs through nicely. I was thinking a figgerent colour and pattern for the wall in the corridor so it breaks it up a bit. Here is what i decided on:

Okay I'm happy with all these now! Now to update the PSD network in Maya so i can see my textures in the rooms.

I changed the reflective setting of the Blinn for the floor so its nice and shiney and we can get some cool refections of lights and stuff in the final renders. This is what it looks like now:

Gallery Scene completed!

Me and nick have been working so hard to keep to he deadlines and have now finished the gallery scene at the start of the film. I wanted this scene to be perfect, because it has to be clear whats going on as it is setting up the story. The shots and animation are vital in these scenes, as well as all the other scenes but we don't want people getting lost or confused at the start of the film!

Anyway, here is a play blast of my first section. I did the start, Nick did the end of the gallery scene so that we could make it flow, then all we had to do was patch up my last scene with his first one and were were good to go!