Post Hand In

Link to First Draft of our Short Film

We got really great feedback from both Alec and Mike for our final film hand in. I am extremely proud of how far we have come and have thoroughly loved working with Rachel. I think we have both constantly tried to push each other to further our abilities the entire year.

However, we still have numerous fixes with lighting and animation to complete before the end of year show. We got speaking to Mike again after the hand in and he went through the film with us:

Rachel took down his notes as we watched:

We knew for definite that plenty of shots have to be re-rendered (like shot 07 of the pocket watch close up as it rendered with a white background so the changes in after effects led the shot to be super bright) so we don’t mind fixing up a few animations. Mike also suggested making some cuts and completely cutting shot 11 as it was a strange cut from the previous shot and isn’t necessary as part of our story. This also may leave us some time to add in Rachel’s beautiful uphill sequence 05. I knew my animation had to be fixed for shot 05 and looking back it is ridiculously sticky and terrible, so I’m glad now that we can cut it until he hears Walter knocking and we can end with him walking over and leaning towards the wall.

 

 

Rendering

One of my main jobs this semester has been rendering. This has been extremely time consuming, however google zync has helped speed up this process. We encountered a lot of issues with zync, such as pink objects within scenes rendered out and objects that simply weren’t supposed to be rendered but worked perfectly within maya.

Pink objects meant that a texture was missing. This issue was diverted when I went into the file path editor to make sure texture nodes weren’t missing, or some were used. If the issue still occurred, I reset the background layer for the characters and reapplied the aishadowmatte material to override the collection.

This tutorial was extremely useful to setup google zync:

• To help solve some problems, I tended to upload every scene before reuploading each layer to render.
• Limit was set to 50 machines, so depending on the frames rendering, I set the chunk size to fit.
• I avoided preemptible machines so there was no risk of losing work.
• I also Ignored missing plugin errors so nothing was canceled.

• Rendering out separate layers allows the control for color correction.
• AOVS (render passes) allow further control.
• When setting up render layers, these can be dragged over to create overrides for an entire collection within a layer.

Sticking to the plan:

Certain Sequence setups were more difficult, but the scene prep sheet Rachel had initially drawn up was extremely helpful when keeping track of rendering.

Background setups were mainly setup on the masterlayer with z depth set up as a render pass so it could be used within nuke for certain shots. These were rendered out on the macs on uni as most were single frame renders and estimated at 25mins. The moving cameras were set to render on spare macs .

Character setups were a lot more complicated. Each layer consisted of two collections:

• the character collection contained the character, objects they interacted with and the lights that affect them.
• the background collection contained any shops/ground/objects that the characters shadow would cover. I then applied an override for the aishadowmatte to render out an alpha channel with the character and the shadowmatte in one beauty layer.

As Rachel was also setting up renders, she realised that we could have an absolute override on the background collection with the cast shadows turned off. When we didn’t have this, the shadow layers rendered out with our character made the backgrounds darker. This meant a lot of extra editing was necessary to remove the extra shadows.

As Rachel exported her animations for me to bring into the background scenes to setup rendering, she created ubercams which meant it was a lot easier to follow as every layer could render out of the same camera. This was really helpful when leaving the eye layers to render out separate overnight, as they were initially very dark.

Sample of character render layers:

When the characters were interacting, I placed both in a layer together to help any issues when it came to rendering out shadows. We also had issues with Samuel’s hat as it had to be pulled down lower by Walter in some shots, so we hadn’t sent the lowest possible way to Andrew so the hair could be hidden underneath. To solve this issue, I’ve been rendering out the hat separately for Rachel to comp on top just for the frames where the hair pokes out.

One big issue we had before the final presentation, without realisation, was the receive shadows as it wasn’t automatically set in the face layer. The image on the left (below) is without it on, and the second is it with. It makes a huge difference with lighter shadows and the shadows were less blue in color, from the skydome hdr.

Alec suggested rendering the eyes of the characters separately for certain shots as Walter’s turned out very dark in some. I had to put his face on the background layer and set the material to aishadowmatte so that the eyes could capture the shadow information:

SQ01 was one of the last backgrounds to be rendered and we experienced an on and off glitch in the window panes. Rachel realised that this was because the curtain plane was too close to the reflective window so this was moved. It wasted a lot of time rendering, sadly, however was remedied before the final hand in.

One major issue we had towards the end with rendering was, what I think, the computer lagging and some scaling issues. Some of Greta’s shots had eyes rendering out of place and teeth scaling issues (as seen below). I scaled the teeth back to one and had to figure out little problems here and there such as zeroing out the rotating eyes. I believe this was due to the geometry layer not being set to reference and instead it must have been moved without knowing. Some computer lag did occur so turning the mac’s off proved to work when some geometry was rendered as gone but looked fine within the viewport (as seen below).

 

Maya rendering the hands separate

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lighting and Setup

I completely lit every scene within our short, excluding the stick in one or two shots. I also lit the characters in every shot. Rachel did the complete setup for SQ01, excluding lights and completed SQ05 of which has to be changed and added to the final short film. She also did the base layout for SQ03/SQ04/SQ06/SQ07, of which I went in to change houses and add props and lights.

I studied lighting within arnold on solid angle and looked at changing shadow colors to make them cool at the beginning and warmer towards the end of our short film.

 Psychology of Color in Film

Document Link

 

These are the relevant colors I used throughout lighting our short film. I wanted a clear contrast with a cool night sky against the warmth of the lights, and the warmth within our story between our two characters. As seen above, orange represents warmth, friendship and happiness, so I used peach and orange lights throughout. Our short film goes from blue skies and warm street lamps to a warm sunrise. In our end shot, I used purple shadows to represent a sense of magic with warm skies and soft lighting.

 

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Wes Anderson/ Robert Yeoman

 

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) was my main inspiration for lighting our scenes. I loved the saturated colors, and although our short film is not overly saturated, the colors are still very vibrant. The saturated colors represent a lively and happy environment. It catches the eye and is almost dream-like. I especially loved the contrasting peach street lamps against the cold, blue environment, especially against the cobblestones, however they reflect against them so clearly because the ground is wet.

Wes Anderson makes heavy use of symmetry throughout his films. He avoids angles where lines aren’t parallel and uses the rule of thirds. Wes tends to center his subjects in the middle of his shot but uses the thirds to create a stylistic imbalance on either side.

Rachel and I took great inspiration for the centered shots of Wes Anderson when subjects interacted with objects, such as shot 13 when the money falls into Walter’s hand :

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Planning

Rachel added a lighting tab to our google sheets to show the completion for each shot. A sky tab was also added, however there was only a need for 6 setups, of which I finished 4 setups, and lit 5.

• Walter House setup (SQ01)
• Walter Walkthrough Street (SQ02)
• Main Street (SQ03)
• Forked Street (SQ04)
• Winding Street (SQ05)
• Final Street (SQ06/07) – Lighting was simply changed and two houses switched in for shot 26.

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 SQ01

Towards the beginning of our short, I used peach and orange lights from the street lamps, and some pale blue lights against the roof to represent moonlight. We have a pink house that I enhanced with peach lights to represent our warm short film and our sweet old character, Walter.

 

Final Render: Color Layer needs added to Greta’s roof on the left in editing

Final Render

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SQ02

I completely set up this scene and lit it. Although Danny added some props, I ended up deleting and replacing most to frame the environment better. My main inspiration for this shot was a student film, Rubato:

Short film ‘Rubato’ (2016)

 

The layout of the cobblestones that I made was what took the longest when setting this scene up. I had to form them into a squarish shape and instance them numerous times. It was quite difficult to get them to form well along the curved pavements but I managed it in the end. We also re-used this floor for SQ06/SQ07 which was handy as it was also a flat ground.

Danny added props and assets

I changed props around and placed lamps and lights where necessary to light the ground and character, so I tried to place the focus towards the area where Walter walks. I also loved the chimney’s in the foreground in Rubato (2016) so added this to ours. I placed pale blue lights against them to represent moonlight. I thought this was a nice contrast to the warm lights on the street and character.

Leading Lines Played an important role throughout my setup as I wanted to frame the characters in each scene.

Final Background Render

Attempting to Light Walter:

 

Resulting Character Lighting

Rachel edited the character and background layer together and added depth of field

 

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 SQ03

Rachel’s Initial Setup for SQ03

I replaced a lot of the houses within this scene, and set up the props. It was difficult to get the lighting right in the alleyway scene. To make the area darker to take away from the hdr skydome lighting, I added a simple box to cover it and shade from the blue lights. I had to make the buildings in the distance look more realistic so added more blue lights to resemble them fading into the sky. Finalising the lighting:

Final Background Lighting and Setup

Initial lighting

Adding blue skies for window reflections

Warmer lights and shadows

Within this shot, I used the props to form a frame leading the eye towards the focus of Samuel who will be beside the crates.

Final: Adding specular highlights

Final Character and Background Lighting

Final Character and Environment Lighting

 

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SQ04

Rachel’s Initial Setup for SQ04

Within SQ04, I had two skies; one on either end. Rachel showed me how to place a lattice on houses to change their shape to suit the hill. This scene was the largest file to work on, so it came with a lot of issues such as the ground not showing up in certain areas and it was difficult to keep loading. I did consider splitting the scene up into two backgrounds, but I managed to continue working on it. I wanted a very warm feeling within this scene, as it is where the characters first interact with each other.

House Layout and lighting progression

Prop Layout

When placing props, I stuck to our animatic and focused on where the characters would be and filling in empty gaps. I tended to place Greta’s milk bottles that I textured and the newspapers/signs next to the houses and shops. I also placed Rachel’s rope and hanging cloth in between the houses to make the town seem more livable and realistic.

Character Lighting

I tried to keep the character’s quite warm with peach and orange lighting and placed Rachel’s wall lamp on the house above them in the scene where they interact with each other. I also placed a huge blue area light above them to represent the moonlight from above.

One of our initial problems was a mistake of my own. I didn’t realise that the character’s faces had recieve shadows turned off, as you can see the difference below. The impact is huge. Recieve cast shadows turned off vs on (left to right below).

Some Final SQ04 Renders

Although I lit both the characters and backgrounds, Rachel comped them together in after effects and added depth of field within it too to help the characters stand out more.

Some Final Background and Character Lighting and Setups

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SQ06

Rachel’s initial setup for SQ06 and SQ07:

I had to switch in a few different houses for sc26 for Walter to be seen as it was an awkward angle:

Resulting Background Render SC26

Final Character and Background Lighting and Edited Render

Light Setup for SQ06

What I enjoyed about working on this setup, was the influence of Wes Anderson and symmetry. I used the imbalance of the posters on once side against the shop on the right to lead us towards the rope framing the house on either side:

 

Leading Parallel Lines like Wez Anderson and using the ropes to frame the window

 

Final Background Lighting and Prop Layout

 

 

Final Background and Character Lighting and Edit

 

 

I tried to keep this lighting quite cool to contrast the time passing for the next shot. Rachel added a lovely vignette and depth of field to keep the focus on the character.

 

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SQ07

I used my painted sunrise sky for this scene and a warmer hdr to achieve the look of a sunrise. It was also quite difficult to achieve the shadow on the final house. As seen below, I stretched a building within the scene to create a casting shadow and placed some random chimney pots above it. What created such a clear shadow were the two spotlights from behind. I also added some more peach lights against the rooftops on either side of the main building.

Final Background Lighting for SQ07 (Sunrise Lighting)

Some character lighting for SQ07

 

 

 

Animation Progress and Research

I sent this to the team to show the progress from layout>blocked animation> final animation

Link to Spreadsheet to keep track of animation phases and completed shots to start rendering.

As I was mainly working on the Environment layout, lighting and rendering, it was initially planned for me to do just a few animation shots after being blocked as I am less skilled at animating than the others, but I put time and effort into them. In all, I have (so far) completed around 35-40 seconds of animation.

I completed the blocked out shot 04 and 05, animated shot 12 fixed up some of shot 11, and redid shot 07.

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SQ03_SC04

Rachel blocked this out for me:

Firstly, I took it into syncsketch and drew inbetweens to give me an idea of where to build off of.

What was of great help to me was Tween Machine.  It helped me hold poses so simply and helped me determine which keyframe to favor more (first or last). It really helped speed up the process.

Keith Sintay

When I went to Dingle, I went to Keith Sintay’s animation workshop. It was so useful and he went into great depth when discussing animating in maya and went on to show us a short demonstration. He blocked poses every 10 frames, then every 5 and so on. However, he did not stay in stepped animation for very long and explained how he splines the animation very early after getting a blocked out sense of time as going from stepped to spline is often a game changer (of which I wish I had known long beforehand). He also mentioned using atools, which is free to download and is installed by simply dragging it into the maya scene (I was so impressed by this).

Some helpful tips

Working as part of a team:

• Don’t expect to be given great shots to work on when starting out.
• Keep any irritation at people within.

Composition:

• Foreground, Mid-groung and background elements should read clearly.
• Stick to the rule of thirds.
• Have clear silhouettes.
• Asymmetry is more interesting.

Workflow:

• Work in linear animation, not stepped.
• Do as much in the workspace as possible and not the graph editor.
• Take breaks.
• Know the context of your shots.

Spines:

• Bipeds use an FK Spine.
• Start with COG (center of gravity) then work up the back.
• Fingers have a tendency to lean towards the middle.
• Turn off weighted tangent and turn on auto key.
• Animate on 5 and 10 to gauge the timing.
• To check COG draw a line from the pit of the neck down to the inside of the foot.
• Always check animations from above.
• Get ATools!
• Use animation layers for breathing cycles and laughs.

 

I did try aTools but I don’t think I got the chance to see the full extent of how useful it can be. Its useful for creating my own buttons for selections. This was useful for selecting the whole rig to be able to change timing within the graph editor. It also has tween machine installed within it which was handy. Although Keith Sintay only showed us a small portion of atools, I had a look at this tutorial. I think it would be extremely useful if we had to do lip syncs so we could create our own keys for vowels.

Drew Adams

Drew Adams had some helpful tips on working from a blocked animation to a splined animation. I found this quite difficult to start with.

Some helpful points made:

• Start with the hips then move up the spine. Finish with the head.
• Nail timing in stepped before switching to splined mode.
• After switching to spline, check the moving holds.
• Clean the graph editor to clean up the curves.

Stepped Further:

Splined:

Feedback

Alec‘s feedback: lengthen the time he is crouched to give him more weight. Exaggerate the end pose when the character is in the box- legs are high in the air. Flop back down.

We used syncsketch for feedback:

 

Rachel:

• Hands and fingers remain bent up as they fall.
• Keep feet flat until the legs straighten then add the heel/ball rotation.
• Arch back towards the end and have him slump after throwing the bottle.
• rotate shoulders more to emphasise the body throwing.

Final Playblast in my environment setup:

I also fixed up the sticky hand issue where he holds the bottle for slightly too long. It was more difficult because I had to switch between two bottle rigs (one connects to his hand and the other alone). He does have facial animation, but it’s a little difficult to tell side on.

 

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SQ03_SC05

Rachel’s Block for Sq03_sc05:

Before working on this shot, I realised that I had far too many keyframes at the beginning of shot 04 when trying to work on inbetweens so it was quite messy by the time i went back to splining it. I tried to make it easier for myself and do less inbetweens and work with tween machine and splining. I made linear tangents when necessary to stop sliding issues, as Drew Adams discussed fixing the moving holds first when transitioning from stepped to splined mode.

Stepped further:

Splined Progress:

I had to erase the blocked out translations when he walked because it would cause a lot of unnecessary drifting, so I still need to focus on getting the walk right. He looks like he has a bit of a limp. I also changed a lot of the previously blocked out animation but the timing is still there.

Feedback Before Facial:

 

Rachel’s Main points:

• rotate hat higher at the beginning and samuel’s back. Have him look up at it as he is initially proud of his find.
• After he sees the hole in the hat, he is disappointed and saddened. Show this.
• Have him slouch in a deep sigh as this gives the animation and slouching more purpose.
• Keep eyes locked on the old man as he is turning to look around the corner.
• Settle hand slightly towards the end.

Rachel also helped me block out the walk again as I was having issues. I hope to work on this for a while after hand in to perfect it for the end of year show. Looking back on it, I feel it is quite stiff.

Playblast in my finished background setup:

Further Animation:

Rachel had added blendshapes to the hat so I tried to animate it slightly. Alec also thought the arm raise at the end was too weird as it looked like he was trying to lean against the wall so I cut that out and kept it relaxed.

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SQ04_SC12

 

After Rachel’s Blocked Animation :

I was using the given time frame as I didn’t realise we could go out of this as we had music created for us, however I know it is definitely far too fast.

With feedback review:

• slow the start right down.
• hold some head poses looking at the stick.
• Move hand with arm.
• Curve shoulders more towards the camera when bringing the stick around.
• have the shoulders nearly side on when looking up.
• Have head relax after shoulders and so on towards the end.

Further Adjustments:

• Bring thumb up before settling to grab on the stick.
• Fix stick swinging too close to the camera.
• Stick jitters in one place.
• Make back of neck move when shoulder relaxes at the end. (couldn’t do this because of rig limitations).

Ready for facial:

Final Playblast:

Alec suggested we have the coin start to fall in this scene to follow through to it landing in his hand in the next shot. Rachel added this in before we rendered the shot.

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SQ03_SC07

Greta had animated another version of this before the hand in, however she didn’t animate it enough. It was simply too subtle and she hadn’t animated the right hand, so I went over it and ended up having to completely begin again because it would be easier as it’s quite a short animation. I redid the watch animation also with a rig connected to Walter rather than the separate rig, as this meant it would move smoothly with the character.

I think I could make it slightly more subtle if I have time to go back over it before the end of year show. The time in the card has also changed to 4am.

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Editing SQ04 SC11

Rachel had given Greta some feedback when it came to this shot as the initial plan was to have Samuel appear from behind the wall.

I edited this to save some time, while Greta worked on trying out zdepth on the background renders within nuke.

Final Animation Edit

The edit of my animation input:

 

 

Final Presentation and Feedback

Link to Final Presentation

Link to Updated Animatic

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Feedback

SQ01-

• Speed up the timing on the window and have the light turn on.
• Close the door already halfway out/ cut this early.

SQ03-

• Shot 6A- Keep Walter’s eyeline on his watch.
• Shot 05- hand raises too much.
• Shot 08- Arch the coin fall.

SQ04-

• Shot 12- See the coin fall start here
• Render alpha mask for the eyes separate to lighten in after effects where it is too dark.
• Shot 20- Fix the corner of the mouth as the wrinkle is too extreme.

SQ06-

• Shot 27- Angle the camera to see the silhouette
• Shot 28- Move Walter Right and have the end of the stick in frame.
• Shot 29- Pull the camera up for a vertigo effect and keep walter looking longer.

Week 17- Presentation and Feedback

Presentation Link

We got really good feedback this time for the animation, lighting and zdepth tests. The street layouts were coming on pretty well and I helped Rachel out with this.

We came across some issues with the rigs. We noticed that the end of the arms for Samuel were poking out of his shirt, so I tried to remedy this by painting the ends of his arms the same color as his shirt. I also sent it back to Andrew and asked if it was possible to delete that geometry while adding the new hair and buttons to samuel’s clothes.

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Planning

Environment setup:

Rachel lay out a plan for the animation for the 5 phases of animation for each character:

 

Week 13: Presentation and Feedback

Presentation Link

Link To Updated Animatic

• We had some real struggles with the story of our animatic.
• There were concerns over matching character to environment styles
• Mike met and gave valuable tips and feedback
• Aiming to cut down the animatic as much as possible while simplifying the story

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Planning

• By mid march, we plan on having all backgrounds set up.
• Have all the animation and cameras blocked and set up.
• By the end of march, start rendering out backgrounds at least.

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Feedback

Alec: 

• I’d like to see the characters rigged or the process of rigged next week

Class :

• The slant where he walks up the hill looks a bit funny

 

Rachel went on to draw up a table and we added little notes to it to figure out what we were working on and when:

Week 11- Updated Animatic, Feedback and Planning

Rachel worked solely on this animatic after showing the team the updated Moodboard animatic to give us an idea:

Updated Animatic: https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21AG3RjZ_vdiF0_Og&cid=F598693FAFE0C248&id=F598693FAFE0C248%21686&parId=F598693FAFE0C248%21328&o=OneUp

 

 

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Feedback

Alec:

• Do you want the old man to look more realistic or more cartoony?
• I think his chin and jaw to come down more. A lot of his personality is coming from his droopy eyelids thats what you want to go for. The nose in the 3D model at the minute is too pointed compared to your drawing. 
  
• You need to think of your finished style. By February you need to have both styles combined the environment compared to the characters make sure they match.
  
• The animatic is much clearer than before. I still like the idea of the kid being slightly annoying than being nice all the time, because the part of them coming together at the end works so well.

Mike:

• I agree with Alec’s comments on the old man. I think his nose is too big. If he’s meant to be cartoony what cartoons have you looked at? More 2D than 3D things to look at. If they’re related maybe just age the boy? Its the same structure just tweak the feature, bigger nose etc.
• The little boy has realistic proportions too.
• Find the balance between the details of the characters and the scene.
• Instead of business cards, there’s a list. The little boy could read the list and anticipate where the old man is going, maybe more annoying.

Mark :

• Love the shot when he drops the coin and lowers his hand and the kid is there it’s class.
• The relationship between them is nice but it’s also nice for example in UP when the old man and the kid just wants to see what he’s doing all day and follows him around.

 

Week 09- Presentation, Research, Plan, and Feedback.

Link to Presentation

Plan:

Roles

Asset List

Timetable

Aside from the team having issues with the characters interacting with objects, it was necessary for one of us (me) to begin the modelling process and testing materials from substance painter and photoshop as the team needs a unified method of texturing. It was also necessary to test realistic hair to see if it is manageable. I had many issues so hopefully it won’t be as bad when trying it out again.

Feedback:

Alec :

• Is he using the cane as a walking stick?
• Facial expression tests are reading well, maybe not the first one or bottom right.
  
• The little boys hands might be too small, have you tried measuring them against the face?
  
• Make sure you put character in for scale against the environment.
  
• What are you using as reference for your buildings? When you’re mix and matching different styles make sure they still feel the same.
  
• Playing about with the focal length of the camera.
  
• Keep going with the hair, the tests are looking good.

Mike:

• Expressions are looking good, just worried about staging is all.
• Camera needs to make sure its clear so you’re not cutting things off.
• I’ve noticed you’ve missed out the woman, is she going to be in it? She might take up a lot more time.
• Middle building the roof and the windows are crooked but nothing else is, who would live there? Be careful with creative license.

Mark:

• The way the buildings are are on a level plane, is the ground going to be cobbled or straight? You could use the idea of what Paul has to create a curve in the street.

Taking this into consideration, the models still have to be tweaked to look similar for the buildings. As I’m modelling, I am sizing them up to the fred rig from the body mechanics, which is what the rest of the team have been doing. I will be enlarging  Samuel’s hands as they feel too small the more I look at them.

Week 08- Sculpting Samuel WIP with feedback

Getting back into sculpting in zbrush took a while, but it was easier once I got the hang of it.

I had a look at Pluralsight’s Creating High Res Characters in Zbrush, and followed the basic workflow:

• bringing images into Zbrush
• using zspheres to form the mesh
• using dynamesh and creating the character

Images used: I had to rotate the arm as Andrew Coyle said it would be easier to rig in a T-pose. We are hoping to have him rig our characters.

Initial Sculpting:

Some detailing:

Feedback from this:

Conánn:

• Cheeks are too low.
• Fatten beneath the eye sockets- following from nose to cheek and make it fuller near the edges of the mouth.
• Eyes are too slanted.

Mike:

• Make the boy look older. 2D>3D I am focusing on anatomy rather than cartoons.
• Widen the neck.

Alec:

• softer jaw on the profile image and a wider jaw.
• Make the eyes rounder.

Following feedback: I made him look older and fattened the areas around his nose and mouth, whilst looking at Kerry McCormick. I also defined his neck more and widened it following Mike’s feedback. I quickly sculpted some hair and eyebrows so that he didn’t look so alien for feedback but I plan on testing more realistic hair. We will stick to sculpted hair if we have rendering issues with the realistic hair.