Final Video

Contact - 3d Animated Music video from Nicholas Hodgson on Vimeo.

Animation Reflection

Through this entire process I have painstakingly taken myself down a road that has taught me a huge amount. It enabled me to learn many different aspects of CG including cameras angles/shots, animation, modelling, sculpting, texturing, sculpting, retopology, lighting and finally compositing. All of these skills I practiced these skills not because I "had" to but because I genuinely was interested in them. I created this piece also not because I "had" to but because I had a true passion for the idea and and was more than determined to recreate my the idea I had in my head.

Probably one of the biggest driving forces for this animation was the fact that I absolutely love space. I have probably watched every space documentary ever made in the history of human creation. Something about it sends my imagination into overdrive. It is ultimately almost completely foreign to us. The vast expanse is virtually unlimited and I really loved the idea of exploring the unknown. For me I have always wondered what the future holds for humans. I know eventually we will run out of resources in this solar system and be forced to migrate to another planet (if we survive that long). This sparked my imagination because I wanted to portray what the planet would look like after such a time had passed, how would humans have evolved? All of these factors really played a huge role in how I created many of the scenes. For example, I wanted all the characters to wear the same outfits because in my mind humans no longer needed to breed and were instead all clones of one being. These kinds of ideas not only paint a vivid picture of the world but they also cut down on production times.

Music videos such as tool - schism and a few others were extremely influential because they were just so different and creepy. I really wanted to create something of a similar style and flavor.

Through this process I watched my work transform from something scribbled on paper into the final product you see before you. It has really taught me a lot about the production and steps involved in making a film entirely made in CG. I realize now that I needed much more planning with camera shots etc before I started modelling and animating. The reason for this was because I spent far too much time sketching out things inside my head. CG is time consuming and because of this it is really useful to know what exactly is going to be shown in detail on the camera. By knowing this you can dedicate your resources towards aspects that will have more attention. For example, I animated every single character in the window scene (scene5). If I had known that they would only be shown for a split second I would not have needed to do this and waste hours of my time.

Now you may be wondering how this animation is a system. I can tell you now that it is not finished. The original plan was to have the humans traveling to different planets destroying and polluting them as they traveled throughout the universe searching for new habitats. The system in my mind is similar to that of a virus spreading through the body. Just as a virus spreads to one cell, destroys it, and multiplies, so do the humans showing their greed for power and technology. It takes about 48 hours to render 6 seconds of footage so as you can imagine expanding the animation is just not possible in this time frame. You will also notice that the animation is in 720p and not 1080p, this is also because I simply did not have the time to render fullHD.

Due to the rushed nature of the project I feel as though many aspects could have been much more refined, such as the scene where the characters are animated in slow motion. I felt as though the shots did no transition very well together. It looked great in the playblast however when rendered it did not flow in my opinion. I would have wanted to match the beat of the music more with the changing of shots. This would have made the animation emphasize the music. After all I did want this to be a music video from the beginning and that is the main objective of the video.

Since I only had time for 1 render for each scene it meant that if any mistakes happened I would not be able to go back and re render. For many of the passes there are glitches and bugs, and also some of the self illumination is not showing in a few of the scenes. This was because I did not split up my render layers properly. Given more time I could easily re render these in full HD with no errors however at this stage its just not possible. However I am extremely pleased with the overall result of the final product.

Texturing Studio Character

Found some time for texturing out my prisoner character today in between renders for my animation clip. Really liking the personality that Ive created for this character. He is a prisoner who has been locked up for a very very long time and he lost his marbles completely

I know there is a crit coming up however I dont think its going to be possible to get this guy rigged and animated before that time. Although I think I have shown off my rigging skills from previous posts in my short film. I still need to retopologize the model as well. These tasks are both EXTREMELY time intensive. Ill see what I can get done before the 28th.

Wall Finally To A Suitable Standard

Ive been working for 2 days now trying to fix the wierd bump artifacting on the wall in shot 5 and I have finally found a work-a-round. The reflection was screwing up the surface for some reason. To combat this i dropped the reflection and then raised the glossiness of the material.

Here's a quick shot of what the shot will look like zoomed out.

Scene 5 Complete

Finnished scene 5, however I am getting this really wierd problem on the wall where there bumps all over the material. I dont know why its doing this. Ill try figure it out tomorrow.

Heres a small snapshot of what it will kinda look like.

Glass Material testing for scene 5

Basically in this scene there are going to be clones staring out the window looking out at their new home. I am actually really excited to start animating this scene with all honesty. I want the camera angle to shoot from the outside of the spaceship because I want that feeling of isolation.

Scene 6 Complete

Made a a lot of progress today, I am thinking that MAYBE, just MAYBE I might get this project in on time. There are just a few issues that I need to figure out with maya but apart from that I am fairly confident I have a knowledge to re create my vision for this animation. I am finding A LOT of minor problems that are wasting precious time, so when ever I meet a problem I cant overcome I usually make a post on a forum and move onto something less complicated. By doing this there is no downtime in between working on different aspects of the short film. By the time I finish a task chances are there is  reply to my question and I can then move forward again.

Here's a screenshot of what scene 6 will look like. Once again, I am very pleased with the result:

Finalizing Scene 2

Doing a little bit of compositing within maya to imbed a background into the shot. I felt I needed to do this to bring more noise to the shot. It just looked a little too plain before.

Here's the result:

Animation Complete

For this scene I have incorporated a slow-mo look to it as the camera pans around the room. This was a great idea because it meant less work needed to be done on the animation. All I had to do was make slight movements and drag the frames over a lenth of 250 frames. This created a very nice effect. Ive made a basic video here of some shots. Obviously it needs to be cut and edited for the final result but you get the picture at least.

Render of the Scene

To finnish off my working day at 5am I wanted to upload a picture that brought a smile to my face. This is what the overall scene will look like, as you can see with the poses I have used, the emotion of the scene is really captured. This is the point where the humans have discovered a new inhabitable planet. I wanted them to show shock, awe and excitement.

I am extremely happy with the final result:

Scene1 Shot setup

Ok reached my goal for the night and its only 4am! Quite tired now I must admit but nothing some coffee cant fix. So far I have managed to set up the scene with all the clone characters with a specific pose within the environment. I have decided against heavy animating because its too time consuming and I need to focus on other things. The best way around this is to create a time warp of the camera zipping around as everything happens in slow motion. I can add simplistic movements and drag them over a timeline of 250 frames and it will look like the matrix. I really want a few closeups of the characters main features as well. Like a close up of a slow blink, lips twitching and opening, and also fingers extending. These small details will really make the shot look nice.

Heres a quick click of ONE of the camera revolves.:

Rig Complete

Once again, my inner OCD perfectionist is screaming at me, but I must push on ignoring that voice in my head. I have slapped together a VERY basic body rig of the torso just so I can quickly animate some key poses for the shot. Since there wont be much movement it wont affect the overall quality too much.

Its going to be a very long night, as usual. Still waiting on an email back from Karin to find out what is going to be possible in the remaining few days before the due date. I REALLY need an extension for the render times of this project. Hopefully by the end of the night I will have this character duplicated and ready to be animated within scene 1...

Full Character Model Complete

Once, woke up and got straight back to work as per usual. I finished baking out displacement and normal maps for the clothing so that I could replicate the detail from zbrush into maya and add the clothing to the head rig. From here I simply need to add a few bones and IK handles and the rig will be ready to be referenced into the environment I made for scene 1.

I wanted it look like more of a lab coat in the end, and also the color white strongly relates back to the whole 'clone' theme that I was going for within the film. I kept it pretty minimal. I wanted to make it more detailed but I literally don't have time which really annoys me because I am pretty OCD when it comes to perfection.

You will notice that there are also a few artifacts under the armpits, around the rim of the collar  and the sleeve  I could fix these but once again. Not enough time.

Here is approximately what the final model will look like within scene 1:

Cant Sleep

For a few months now I've been working nonstop almost from the time I wake up to around 3 am in the morning and its really takings its toll on me now. Sleeping pattern is absolutely demented so what else can I do but more work? Perhaps something towards studio?

I suppose with the mood I'm in lately I had to express it somehow through CG. The pieces of puzzle (for the rig) just weren't fitting together as they should. And so I stepped back for a minute and decided to rearrange the puzzle. I imported the hand mesh into the scene and duplicate it numerous times around the rig. Using the facial rig I played around with expressions until I found one that suited the atmosphere - FEAR.

For some reason I imagined my character in a dark dungeon with giants all around him. I wanted to push the rig and try and get some exaggerated facial expressions to fit the mood of terror.

I guess this is the feeling I'm getting now knowing that I wont get my short film in on time. Despite nonstop learning and hard work it seems it will not pay off. The rendering alone is going to take a week and I haven't even put it all together yet... Perhaps I have bitten off more than a can chew for the time we have been allocated.

Here is what I came up with:

Hand Modelling

I have also sculpted the hand model which will be used for all the clones. It has been retopologized, textured and sculpted. All it needs now is to be placed onto the main rig with the clothing and head.

Using the same SSS shader I rendered the mesh in maya/Vray

Here is the final result:

Clothing Creation For Character

Learning from my mistakes prior I decided to create an animation friendly basemesh before proceeding to sculpt. I made sure the shoulder topology was correct for animation so I could simply bake out my maps without worrying about retopologising the sculpt. I made it very wrinkly to get across the look that the human clones were very bony and skinny.

Here is the final result:

Facial Rig Finally Complete

Ok so with time constraints I've had to cut the facial rig short and reduce a bit of the detail. But with all honesty I didn't really need it to be this robust. Because the shot will only be very short and in a dimly lit room. Most of the detail will not be noticed. Even so, this rig still provides a great performance. I've used many techniques such as blend shapes and curve deformers mainly to deform the face. This has by far been the most time consuming process involved in my short film animation. Time to put it to the test!

Studio Character Concept

Unrelated to my animation paper I have also somehow managed to find the time to concept out my character for my studio animation. I wanted to create a character with a lot of personality. And since the theme of the cartoon was medieval I figured the best way to do this was to use a prisoner. I wanted to portray a deranged prisoner who has been in the same cell his whole life and has a few screws loose. In fact, hes completely stark raving mad. I wanted him to look anemic and skinny from being mistreated  To do this I created a collage of images that I used as reference to inspire the look of the character. As disgusted as I was to look at images from the holocaust I still found them useful to generate ideas of anatomy for a person who has been abused and starved. I also found it very usefull to constantly refer back to the la luna cartoon imagery to make sure I was modelling the character to fit into with the other characters. I noticed from pictures that there is a lot of exaggeration in the cartoon and I used this fact to play a lot with the design. I extended the limbs and sucked in the belly to really get across the message that this character has been starved his whole life.

I still need to texture and retopologize for animation friendly geometry but these tasks are more time consuming rather than creative. My favorite -_-.

Here is what I came up with. (it is no where near finished detail wise but its pretty close, I still need to add features such as the hair, beard, wrinkles, and mud. He will look VERY unkempt I assure you.)

Scene 1 Complete

Ok so I spent the day modelling out the first scene. I wanted this to be a very details shot because it was in doors. However it did not have to be perfect because I plan to have many closeups of faces in the shot. This is because I want the audience to understand the desperation and emotion of the humans as they decide to pick this planet to travel to in search of resources and a new home to inhabit. I really wanted it to be gloomy and dimly lit by a hologram. Almost as if a torch was being held under the chins of the humans as they stand around the hologram examining it. I also used the same texture and illumination (red) in this scene to show that they are on earth. (this connection will be made by the ships that are flying away from the planet that are colored blue instead of red)

It gives a creepy feeling and with the combination of good animating, this shot will be great. I will also note that the blue orb will be replaced by a hologram of a planet in after effects in post. So it most likely will not be such a solid sphere of light.

Keep in mind that the room will not have a roof to save time. This was planned in advance during the storyboard because the whole shot will be of the upper torsos (face included of the humans standing around the hologram.) I am glad I worked this out earlier as it will greatly reduce the time it would take to model and UV.

Here is what I drafted out today.

Scene 2 Complete

Adding further details to the ships and the planet. Instead of animating the earth displacement map I decided to just show the planet in its desolate state after humans have run out of resources. I will animate holographic text in the shot to introduce the planet as earth so as to not confuse the audience. I also added irradiance maps to the ships and planet to emphasize that the earth is in trouble and in a meltdown state due to lack of resources.

Eg

Earth
Population: 350,000
Resources: 0.5%
Status: Uninhabitable

Here are some sample pictures:

Scene 2 Blocking Out

Scene 2 is the scene where the ships leave planet in search of a new planet. I have simply duplicated my ship model multiple times and animated them flying away from the planet. In the scene I am playing with camera movements and also lighting as well.

All I need to do is add texture to the planet and also add a background with stars etc. Most of this can be done in post.

Playing Around With Facial Rigging

For my animation I will have many of these characters in the same room because the human race has long been void of any form of diversity. Instead humans are all clones. (convenient for someone who is lacking in time). I really want these characters to show emotion and sadness in losing their home planet. Because of this I need to produce a rig that is capable of delivering realistic emotion.

I have only completed half the RIG but here is some poses I have managed to produce using a simple joint structure in maya.

3D modelling Statue

Here is a 3d model that I created to act as a statue in the Aotea Square. It is of an ancestral Maori man commencing a powhiri to welcome guests into the area.

Asset Modelling For My Anmimation

Here is the spaceship I modeled using displacement maps. Instead of engineering displacement maps from models I reverse engineered them by creating them in Photoshop first and then applying them to the model.

How I did it was by using primitives and UVing each individual face. I then spead these UV'd faces out on a tiled displacement map to give the illusion of detail. In a sense I did the modelling in photoshop rather than in maya. I absolutely love this workflow and will deffinately be using it in future projects to reduce modeling and  sculpting work hours.

I will duplicate this ship many times in my animation to show the colonies of the earth leaving in search of new planets. The only problem I am facing at this time however is the background. I need to have a background that is as detailed as the ship or it will look out of place.

Here is the final result of the ship:

Further Subsurface Scattering study

For the head of the character in my animation I wanted a skin look and hence the SSS shader was perfect once again to achieve this result. As you have seen from previous posts I have retopologized my head for animation. Not only that but I baked out displacement, bump, and texture maps for the head. I have then attached this maps into the SSS shader and tweaked its settings to simulate a look that indicated blood underneath the skin. When light hits the skin it is reflected back by the fluids underneath the skin to bring a bit of color into shadows. Overall I am extremely happy with the outcome. The head is alsmost ready for facial rigging as soon as I combine the eye and the head together.

Here is the final result of the combination of maps and shaders applied to the face:

V-Ray EyeBall Study

Because I want to have a realistic animation for my final result I am finding it necessary to delve deeper into the mysterious and continually expanding world of maya. It seems as though with every new thing I learn there are 100 other things that I must also know before the task is complete. After much strife I have finally come up with a workflow for realistic eyeballs. The most important thing I had to take into account was the anatomy of the eyeball. I had to consider things such as the cornea, iris, and sclera. I modeled these out using simple primitives from maya starting with spheres and then textured the sphere in Zbrush to add in the veins and iris. I took this into photoshop to create a bump map for added detail. Using the Subsurface scattering shader in Vray I tweaked the settings to give the illusion that blood flows underneath the eyeball. It also produced some very nice shadows. For the sclera I used a simple Vray material and changed the reflectivity and refraction settings to give it a see-through look with a shine.

Here is my result:

Changing the topology for animation.

Here I have used 3d coat to re create the topology so that I can animate facial expressions. I have done it so that I the polygons run loops around the face in order to replicate real life muscle directions. By doing this it will bring about more convincing expressions, and in animation this means everything. This by far is the most time consuming process of animating this character. It took a few days to fully complete this topology for the model. Its almost like doing a jigsaw puzzle except you have to choose how to fit the pieces together

Space Animation Character Bust

Here is the character with the hat and the cloak stripped away. I intend to model all new clothing for the model. I want the model to like very cult-like inside the spaceship. All the humans on the ship are clones so I intend to duplicate the model using references in maya for my animation. I want to portray the human race as fragile and ancient. And this model fits it perfectly. All i need to do is retopologize and rig the character and its ready for animation.

More sculpting

Here is a concept sculpt I made in my spare time, using techniques learnt from my previous sculpts. I think that developing the face before anything else on the body is a great workflow because it is the main feature that determines the attitude and personality more than anything. The rest of the body can follow if the face is suitable for the idea in my head. Once again I focused mainly on the WORLD that this character existed in when sculpting as it enabled me to visualize the mood far better. Another positive feature of sculpting the head first is because the character will be covered in clothes and there is no need to sculpt the body as this will ultimately be covered up. This is a workflow that I will definitely be using more in detailed sculpts. This was a project for studio however I really want to include this in some kind of animation, possible for a short story and include the character in my animation paper. I know this is frowned upon but why not re use some assets. Time is a major factor in all CG productions and by doing this I will be able to cut weeks off. 

Animation Post (late I know)

Ok, so ive been bashing away at a few projects in the recent months and they have gone wonderfully. My reason as to why this is my first animation post because I wanted to wait for my skill and idea to increase to a point where I could produce something id consider to be acceptable.

The first Idea I had was to create some kind of board game recreation of a battlefield that had come to life. Where toy soldiers were fighting each other from different countries to represent conflict between eachother and how human kind was slowly killing itself through war, pollution etc. I imagined God looking down on the earth in disgust and drops a bomb down from the sky on earth, obliterating human kind. The earth would look charred and burnt but still, a single plant rises from the ashes. I don't know why but this idea is very suiting to the theme of creating the creator. The creator destroys the creators of the creator, who starts the world over. I could go on haha. As much as I love this idea and would love to produce it but I literally have just realized I have 6 weeks to create something amazing on top of studio and my other elective. So I am SLIGHTLY changing my plans.

After a conversation with TJ I had an epiphany. I would EXPAND the field of play from a planet to the universe. TJ was discussing his idea of a game based in space and it reminded me of just how much I love space. It has actually been my dream to make a film of ANY kind based in space. Watching every space doco ever made in the past 10 years will do that to you. Something about it just strikes me as eerie and mystical. I think those could bring a huge flare to my project and change it for the better while at the same time reducing the amount of work needed because in space most objects are very easily modeled such as planets, suns and space ships, however I will probably want to add a lot of extra detail.

For this idea, in my head I imagine hundreds of human space ships. Blasting away from earth in all directions in search of a new home planet because earth has died due to abuse from humans. They all find different home planet to inhabit however every single planet seems to get destroyed by the human race in its future. Humans spread like a bacteria all over the universe destroying everything they touch. I love this idea because the universe created us and yet we are destroying our creator slowly. Its like we are a plague to the universe. Its all dark and dreery I know. But I love it the whole idea and symbolism behind everything.

Now its time to create some story boards...

Storyboard

These pictures are not in order but here are the original sketches I started the project off. I already had what I wanted in my head at this stage these were just simple reminders.

The Final Result (WATCH IN HD)

NUKE!

It was time to head into nuke and experiment with my render passes. This program is great for creativity because what you render out from maya is always completely changable in most cases. Lights, colors etc can all be changed in post. Another thing about this program which I have learnt is the fact that the scene can never be perfected enough. You could spend an eternity adding in details to make it perfect. Its just a matter of time. I admit that this project has been late to hand in because of this. But due to uni holidays I decided that I would rather spend a little bit more time on it.

I am also a terrible programmer by nature, however I found this to be a lot more intuitive to me. I really opened my eyes to how much work is actually done in post to bring about true detail.

Here is my Nuke tree showing the process I went though in order to embed the animation within my video footage.

Animating and Rendering

Ok so ive just been experimenting with a range of different ideas and poses for my animation. SInce it is a spider I really want to capture the essence of the war machine acting and interacting with the environment like an actual spider. The key I believe is to make it interact and become part of the environment. CG that sticks out is easily spotted by the human eye as we have all seen in old low budget films.

I had to take into consideration a lot of aspects in the shot because of its movement. I had to also consider a lot of aspects that would affect the placement of the spider. Because I used N cloth on the model and I had not programmed colliders very well with the fabric I could not mount the spider on the wall as expected as it meant the cloth would get tangled in the geometry. This was really frustrating because I didn't want to loose the cloth because it gave the robot that little bit more realism. It would have been ideal if I had the spider climbing down the wall when it spotted the soldier peeking around the corner.

Another thing to concider was what mood did I want the scene to portray? I really wanted the solider to feel as though he was so insignificant in comparison to the robot/s. The robot showed absolutely no fear in the solider. I wanted to animate the spider as though it was stalking prey. For this I studied the movements of spiders and other stalking animals. After all this I decided to place the spider onto the ground instead of the wall. This would also bring the most camera view of the spider throughout the scene.

However after animating the spider I realized that when the solider comes around the corner to shoot he points his gun upwards of the spider shooting at the windows on the wall. GREAT. So now I had to find a way around this problem. And this was when I discovered the use of referenced files in maya. It enabled to open up my creativity so much more. References basically enable you to import other maya files into another scene. So I came up with the idea to simply duplicate the large spider model and create miniature "drone" versions of the boss spider that are also out patrolling for humans. I made a copy of the original spider, re-textured it and saved it under another file. I then animated the new red spider. Then looking at the geometry on the wall I realised that I could simply duplicate/rename the animation of the red spider and recycle it to save time. Then i simply referenced in the duplicates and started each animation at different intervals to break up the movements of the spiders to make them all look different. This workflow really keeps the creativity in the scene open for edits and changes later down the track. 

Now that all the animation has been completed. I needed to set up lights. This was tricky because the scene itself was not well illuminated. It was somewhat dull and lifeless. So I just used HDR, and a low intensity rect and sphere light to replicate the lighting. I wanted to avoid the 'burnt out sun look.' From here I rendered out all the different passes on different render layers in maya. I rendered the shadows and the the spider separately so I had more control over them in post. These passes including rgb, light selections, reflection, specular, World_XYZ, and velocity.

All of these passes are made to ensure the most control in post and make blending the object far more efficient. These passes are infused inside a multi-channel EXR file which can be split apart in nuke.

Past the Due date of the 2nd brief

OK so I'm past the due date now, but to be honest I don't want to produce something that's mediocre, I want to produce something that is of the highest quality possible. I hate producing work that I am not happy with. I want to make a professional portfolio and rushing large projects into this space of time is never going to produce quality results. I keep finding more and more to add to my scene to make it look better. The fact that I have incorporated dynamics, animation, modelling, texturing, lighting, 3d tracking, and also compositing means I have my work cut out for me but I am confident that the final result will show my effort.

IF this was for a client I would obviously have done a lot less in the scene and gone about doing things differently to meet the time frame however I think this is an exception.

Final Render

Here is the final render of the robot spider and what I will look like inside its environment:

Slow painstaking progress

I have rigged the entire model and it is ready to be animated. I used a feature in maya called referencing which means I can import a different maya scene into another. Any changes that happen to the imported maya file will be changed in the referenced file, this means that I am able to animate without having to worry about redoing any mistakes (which inevitably will happen). Due to time constraints I cannot take any risks because even the most simplistic problems can take hours to solve with my basic knowledge. The rig is fairly standard using IK handles and joints with the exception of a few set driven keys.

Finally A bit of Success...

So after trying for days on end to track my scene in both MatchMover and Nuke, I decided to try a progrma called Boujou to track my scene and finally receive some promising results. I think my persistence finally payed off. From here I started to model out some of the background geometry. The reason behind this instead of using a flat plane was because when the spider crawls down the wall I want the shadows to look dynamic and suit the surrounding environment. It would not look natural to simply slap flat shadows on a wall that was not flat.

I also start to model the spider itself, which is now ready for rigging and animating into the 3d environment I created. The geometry is rather simple because there was no closeup in the shot. Not only that but the camera is very shaky which means the audience wont be able to focus much on the CG object.

Project On the Side

After doing some research I decided to work a bit on my own away from the group and create my own project. I wanted to adopt a system similar to how Google operates. They dedicate 20% of their workers time to let them work on their own projects that loosely relate to the company to keep the creative spice alive.

In this brief I set out to create a character head sculpture that showed true emotion and personality.

I chose this because I feel as though this is the hardest aspect to create with any 3d model and CG. I also love zombies so I thought I would combine this fact into my 3d model so that I had drive to complete it to the highest quality possible. I actually loved doing this project because I felt personal connection with it. This reinforces that enjoyment is an important prerequisite to creativity.

Another reason I chose a zombie is because they are constantly portrayed as emotionless brutes who are hellbent on eating brains. This zombie however has a sense of sadness and longing in its eyes. This is a trait not often seen in zombies and why I was drawn to this particular sculpture. The original plan was to composite this model looking at itself in the mirror and seeing itself for the first time and remembering the life it once had as a human (however I ran out of time). Incorporating these feelings into the project really gave me a direction and I am happy with the result.

I now have come to a deeper understanding in the steps needed to generate creative 3d artwork. Before I looked at it from a very outside perspective, however now I try and connect with what I am designing.

Match Moving Is doing my head in...

Finding it really hard to match move the scenes that I want to use. Especially since they are in war movies. There are so many post production additions such as smoke that make it near impossible to create a 3d scene and match move.. I've tried 2 different programs and nothing seems to go as I plan. Not only that but I need an extremely good copy of most films to be able to match move accurately. Everything I find seems to be too blurry and unusable. I will try and find something with a higher quality to use instead. Fingers crossed.

Essence Of Creativity

SO what exactly is the essence of creativity and how do we acquire such a thing? At the gaming company Valve they have adopted a new technique to promote creativity. They did this by completely changing up their business model to encourage people to pick and choose which projects they want to work in. This is done because it promotes creativity? Why? Because it enables people to work on what they are actually interested in rather than slaving away on a project that does not stimulate them in any way. As Steve Jobs once said, "They only way to do great work is to love what you do." I completely agree with this because working on  a project that you have no desire to complete is mentally straining. In reading about this I came to the conclusion that I can incorporate this idea into our current briefs. Although there is a set guideline that we must follow I can promote my creativity by adding in aspects that interest me. This could turn a boring compositing project into something that I am genuinely interested in.

This brings about the issue of employers possibly drowning out creativity by reducing the amount of freedom given to workers. This is why I love the design of the brief that we have been given. It has structure and yet at the same time it allows for a lot of freedom to explore. Looking at this fact makes me ponder if creativity is not just in our hands but also in the hands of the brief being presented.

I also think that we need to collaborate ideas in a group more often rather than brainstorming ourselves. After all creativity is not about efficiency but instead heavily relies on serendipity. Happy mistakes sometimes make the most brilliant ideas. Perhaps combining our creativity instead of working as individuals would help us generate more innovative ideas. This brings me to the point that all of us are for some reason making robots for the compositing project. We did not decide this as a group, but rather as individuals. It seems almost embedded in our brains to interpret "non-organic" as a robotic creature. Perhaps this is a sign that we are all using the same thought processes to create our composite. I think we need to change the way we approach ideas in general and reprogram ourselves to think not about what has been done, rather what hasn't been done. We need to interrupt our subconscious mind and break our usual patterns of thinking.

"Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people. Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have" Steve Jobs.

Meeting with Karen

Had our first real meeting with Karin and I am very glad we did so. I felt earlier as though the concept was secondary to actually building a portfolio. This is because we were focusing more on the technical side of things rather than looking at the actual concept we proposed. Instead of focusing just on workflows we need to focus more on what we are actually producing from the briefs. A very important thing to think about is the creative freedom we have within our briefs or rather the illusion of creative freedom we have. Although we could have chosen anything that wasn't organic to change a movie scene we all seem to be creating robots of some kind. This was a decision that came about individually without influence. I think the reason for this was because we all have a predisposed notion that for something to be inorganic it must be a robot. This thought process really limits our creativity and overall diversity. With the new brief we are fighting for our creativity and really forced into a corner as to what we can and cant produce. Once again this relates back to the concept of creative freedom. We have to balance out the scales to accommodate what the client wants vs what we want to create.

After the meeting with Karin (the client) I realized that I had strayed very far off track from the brief. I was simply trying to embed any CG into any film without really thinking about the reason why. I quickly came to the conclusion that I needed to rethink my approach as I needed to actually change the meaning of the scene rather than just throw something in for the sake of it.

I think that this is an important skill to learn because a lot of the time in films where CG is implemented the director will instruct the compositors to build the scene with a particular mood and atmosphere that suits the needs of the film. Even small implementations can drastically change the viewers opinion of the scene and alter their interpretations.

I am thinking about going back to my original idea of using a war movie and embedding technology ahead of its time to change the atmosphere of the scene. Combining advanced technology with and old war film would bring about an interesting feel similar to a game called Resistance on the Playstation 3. Where aliens have invaded earth and are taking over the human race. Instead of aliens however, I wish to bring about a new scenario where the Nazis actually succeeded in developing war machines that overpowered the American army.

A factor I am also concerned about at this stage is that the briefs set for us do not require much interaction between the client and the producer. I think if the briefs had more of a real world purpose to then this would force us to actually interact and develop with the client rather than just doing our own thing. I believe this takes a lot away from our conceptual framework

Still have yet to decide my scene..

I am very confident that I can composite a scene together, the only issue is choosing the scene of my choice. Deciding what to choose is very difficult due to time constraints. I have a choice to choose an existing model and embed it within a CG scene OR create my own. Karin stated that the object had to be non organic and I really am fixated on a robot of some kind because I want to push myself towards animating as well. I am currently searching perhaps for a CG cartoon of some kind. By doing this it would allow me to reduce the detail and the time it would take to texture and detail my model. I want to use this for my portfolio so I refuse to make something which isn't produced to its highest quality. And with only a week to spare this will be a challenge and a half...

Compositing Research

Compositing is basically the process of embedding CG with real life footage. It is the manipulation of mathematical formulas such as color etc. There are many things to consider in compositing such as the camera that you use. The settings and specs of the camera can drastically change the result of the composite. For example, most cameras use CMOS chips which distort the pixels of the shot. This is due to the fact that the camera 'reads' the image from the top to the bottom bringing about a sense of 'lag.'

Another important thing to note is that because CRT monitors were in use a long time ago. This made iamges darker than what they should appear. So all images are embedded with a +2.2 gamma difference and hence SRGB color was created.

When compositing using programs such as nuke we want to work in a linear light space but export our final result in SRGB light space. Another thing to consider before exporting is the camera distortion. All cameras create a distorted view of the environment and this is not very useful when processing pixel information because the computer requires a 'perfect world' work with. By undistorting the image we remove the effect the lens has on the image and we can proceed with embedding CG into our footage. At the end of compositing we can then re-distort the footage to bring about the desired result.

When bringing in CG to nuke we render out multiple passes such as ambient occlusion, reflection, lights, shadows, diffuse etc etc. These are all the layers that are to be manipulated into tricking the human eye into thinking that the foreign object belongs in the environment being shown. In order to place and animate the CG we motion track the footage. This is a very tedious and time consuming process because you must selectively choose areas that you wish to track. You can mask out areas that are undesirable such as shadows and moving objects. This is done so that you can calculate the 3d environment as accurately as possible. When the scene is calculated into 3d, you import it into your 3d application of choice where you can begin setting up your CG and rendering.

Once again the process is all about tricking the mind into believing the shot that is presented to them.

BRIEF 2

Brief
Change the meaning of a well known Movie scene by adding one or more 3D non-organic
elements to the environment. It is up to each individual team member to decide on the
movie, the camera shot and its duration. This brief calls for a high quality integration of a
3D CG object into a pre-recorded live action plate.
Recommended areas of research
- Research of feature films/ TV ads that have intensive CG implementation and/or belated
additions of visual effects.
- What makes a high quality integration of CG and live action footage?
- What are the implications of combining CG and live action shots?
Deliverables
Highest achievable resolution (minimum SD Pal)
Appropriate sound (avoid multiple compressed codecs)
Online vimeo link submission (5000 kb/s video - 256 kb/s audio)
Deadline
23rd of April 2013 - 1:00 pm

SuperHero Final Result

Here is the final result of the superhero I created.

Brief 1 Reflection

What Issues did you face?

One of the main issues that I faced inside Zbrush was accessorising my superhero character.  I have been exposed to many superheroes ever since I was born and have been fed images of what superheroes should look like. Usually these images are of men and women in tights with not much else. Because of this I found it exceedingly hard to stray away from what has already been created in other hero universes such as Capcom and Marvel. I found it rather easy to make the base mesh of the character but when it came to adding more features to tell a story about the character I hit a brick wall. It was a combination of not knowing how to model complex objects and also because I felt that accessorising would take attention away from the detailing of the body I had created. I really wanted to stray away from just creating a being wearing spandex and add to the personality and form of the character. My character was large and muscular and I wanted to emphasize this fact with the accessories.

Another point to add is that I did not originally start with the final concept you see before you. I originally was aiming at designing a paladin character which was hyper realistic. After a few days modelling I realised that this would not be possible in the time frame we had so I changed my character to become more ‘cartoon-like.’ This drastically changed how I worked within Zbrush.

In what ways did you interact with other members of the group, where these actions beneficial?

For me personally I did not have much interaction with the group because I already had a little bit of knowledge about Zbrush. I stayed isolated during most of the modelling process because I felt helping others and guiding them through the program would slow down my rate of work. I did not want to be spending my time teaching others and wanted to focus instead on what I didn’t already know. I felt distracted working around other people. Essentially the only help I needed could be found on the internet. However that was just for me, I can see how it would be beneficial for people to work together who don’t have much knowledge of the program. In the brief time that I did with the group I did try help out as much as I could which also benefitted me in a way because it made me think about someone else’s model and ways to problem solve around their particular issues. It made my thinking more intuitive on fly.

In terms of your process, is there anything you would change to increase your workflow or solve any issues you have faced?

To increase my workflow I would have definitely produced concept sketches beforehand to have an exact idea of what I was modelling. This definitely slowed my workflow down because I was simply making it up as I went along. I knew I wanted to create some kind of war fighter with a huge sword of gun and that was it. This was one of the main reasons my first models did not work out as expected. Another factor that could have really sped up my workflow would have been to use both Maya and Zbrush together. Maya is great for hard surface modelling while Zbrush is best for organic modelling. At the very end of the model I started using Maya for the rockets but the rest of the accessories were hard surface modelled in Zbrush which proved quite challenging and tedious. The polygon count was also a huge issue for me because I included so many accessories that were heavily subdivided it slowed down Zbrush a large amount and caused it to frequently crash on me. This was perhaps one of the most time-consuming issues that I faced. Another issue I faced was the fact that the glove and the body had two different lower subdivision levels. This meant that when posing the model using transpose master they would each deform differently instead of together so I had to leave the character in a neutral pose.

What skills did you learn throughout this brief?

I learnt a variety of skills through this brief including how think abstractly about stylized approaches to characters instead of trying to replicate real life, it showed me that whatever you imagine can be modelled and that the process is never linear. I learnt how to look at an image and problem solve as to what the best method would be to model it. Everywhere I go now I always examine objects and think to myself, “How could I model that?” Although I have just scratched the surface of Zbrush I feel as though I have a base knowledge to do with most of its primary inner workings such as insert brushes and shadowbox. I feel knowledgeable enough that if a 3d developer asked me to generate a conceptual sculpts I would be able to do so with confidence.

How does each individual’s process differ? What do you think affected these decisions?

I think the other group member’s models were impressive for a first attempt at Zbrush. They accomplished a great deal in a short period of time. I think that the fact that they had never modelled before affected the final outcome however. I think they needed to draw inspiration from real life objects such as anatomy. In doing so, they would produce much more convincing models. Not only that, but a lot of key features not utilized such as shadowbox, insert meshes, and curve brushes etc. Many of these tools can bring about a whole new level of detail to a models appearance and are very easily used. The integration of a hard surface program would have also helped a great deal.

My Process

I first started by researching a large variety of superheroes to draw inspiration from. I looked at not only modern superheroes but also heroes from other universes such as World of Warcraft and Greek Mythology. I thought that by exploring outside of the traditional marvel and Capcom I would be inspired to create something that had not been done before. I also talked to a lot of people via Facebook asking them what they wanted to see in a superhero. I wanted to keep all my options open as long as possible so that I did not become short sighted and focus on one thing in particular. Even after spending 4 days sculpting my paladin I was not happy and ended up throwing out that model as I did not feel it was portraying my vision of what a superhero should look like.

I realised soon enough that in order to make life that little bit easier I would stylise the character to reduce the amount of detail needed. If the body was stylised it meant that everything else could be simplified down. I felt this approach fitting because most superhero designs are very stylised such as in comic books. I started by using Zspheres to block out the base mesh of the model. I left the density at level 1 and made it an adaptive skin. The reason for the low density was so that I could move around each individual vertice to ensure that the subdivisions would increase in favour of the features I wanted to add to the model. An example of this is moving vertices around the pectoral region to block on the shape and also around the eyes (adding edge loops to ensure that more polygons could be used for detailing facial features). I slowly went up subdivisions blocking out the overall shape and using the pinch, standard, and Hpolish brushes to detail. I wanted to avoid organic looking surfaces so I tried to give ‘edges’ to the physiology of the character to make it look more cartoon-like. For the straps, shoe sole, belt and gloves I used extract and also retopologized geometry using a Zsphere. The knife and sheath were created using shadowbox. Most of the accessories were modelled inside Maya and imported into Zbrush. The chain and grenade insert brushes were attached to the mesh using the curve stroke while the spike insert mesh was attached using the drag rectangle tool. Insert meshes create their own subtool which makes them very easily editable and textured. The gun was created using Zbrush hard surface modelling techniques however it would have been much more efficient if this had been created in another program such as Maya.

As for detailing, I was not after a hyper realistic model so I did not want to add any fine alpha details. Instead I wanted to entire model to look sleek to reinforce the comic themed look. There was one alpha applied on the belt which is the atomic symbol (it’s hard to see), but this was to add character to the hero.

When it came to texturing, I solely relied on matcaps within Zbrush and simply changed their colour and material in accordance to the type of accessory I was trying to texture. It took a bit of experimentation to find the right results but in the end I was very pleased with the result. I changed a lot of the render settings and included a ‘sharp’ Photoshop filter overlaid on top of the render.

The First Brief!

So our first brief is up. "Model a new superhero." I really like the broadness of the brief and how it leaves the possibilities open for us to explore. However I feel as though the lack of knowledge our group has in regards to 3d will greatly limit our creative abilities. It will be interesting to see the results on hand in.