Animatic

I have finally completed the animatic that I had started in Maya. With the characters not rigged at the time it is a little hard to read what it is about without the storyboard. a little text has been added to explain what the characters actions are. With the animatic finished, the camera moves are now established as well as the positions of crayon and shadow as well as the time limit. I pretty happy with how it turned out. :)

Programming

I must say that this subject has been the most difficult that I have ever come across since starting tertiary education. Programming I do loathe to the core. I was unsuccessful in bringing together a coherant animatic and have programming for the cycles excercise before the deadline yesterday.

Unity- Texturing

Importing the character and texture was a success! It took me a while to look through various tutorials available on the net, but I've finally got it! I was even able to place the normal map on it by putting on the same material as the texture.

Normal Map

The normal map I have left to the very last moment since I felt I didn't really need as the model is really smooth, as you can tell. I didn't do this through mudbox, instead just doing it in Maya. I only did this to show that I understand what normal maps are and what they can do. I have added to the model with the coloured texture and it all went very smoothly.

Unity Excercise- Animation Cycles

Unfortunetly I'm finding it very difficult to work with Unity. I just can't get my head around the programming which I was never good at to start with. But I have successfully imported the four animation cycles into Unity and are looping as they should. The animation side of things with the engine seem easy enough. But when it comes to programming, I'm at a loss....

Texturing

Texturing is my favourite part of animating as it brings the character to life. I have left Crayon as simplistic as possible since time is now factoring in. No problems were experienced during the texturing process and simply followed the colour scheme that I planned out weeks ago.

Animatic Excercise

This assignment is such a bummer. I can hardly get anything to work in this program. I at least have the position of the cameras in place, yet the Switch Camera script theat we were given didn't work!

Animation Cycles

For the last week or so I have been doing the animation cycles that we are required to do to put into Unity3d. Ideally I would like to polish up on them some more, but unfortunetly time is of the essence and there is still alot of work to do. Now that I have seen what the character can do I would like to go back and refine the skinning some more as well, especially around the shoulders, chest and upper arms as they do not look natural enough. But a very enjoyable excercise non the less.

Skinning

I have just completed skinning my character. Chris Denaro told me about this easy-to-use rig that is very simple to use. I managed to aquire the melscript for it and have found it very sound. DSN Rapid Rig Basic it is called and haven't had any problems with it what-so-ever.

UV Unwrapping 3

The final stage of UV Unwrapping was for the hands. The hands were the most simple of the Unwrapping process because they are correctly postioned along the X,Y,Z axis. I only planar mapped the top and the bottom sides of the hands and used the Relax/Unfold tool a couple of the times to straighten out a little warping. Then I duplicated the right hand, which was the one unwrapped, then repositioned the new hand onto the left arm. This way the UV meshes of both hands are perfectly positioned on top of eachother.

So Crayon is now completely unwrapped and ready to be textured in Photoshop. What I will have to learn now is what sized textures Ican use in Unity.

UV Unwrapping 2

The body is finished and took a much shorter time than the head. Because the suit is one colour (Grey-Black) I did my best to hide away the seams. The arms I have detached to the body could fit better on the UV template. the seam runs under the arm and down the side of the suit. The feet I have separated so it could fit better on its own. It doesn't matter much if a seam shows on the feet as there will be no close ups of it. The front of the body is slightly larger than the back to allow more detail on the texture. The Relax/Unfold tools were very useful on the body.

UV Unwrapping 1

UV unwrapping is one of the subjects of animation that I like the least. But I love texturing and working in Photoshop so it is very necessary for me. I have unwrapped plenty of times in the past so I know my way around the UV tools in Maya.

I started with unwrapping the head first of all as it is always the hardest part to do. Automatic mapping I used on the face and then began sewing all the pices back together. 6 pieces I left the head in. The face I did not sew to the head because it will be textured differently as I am painting clothes onto the model and will be two different almost opposite colours. Other pieces include the inside of the nostrils, inside of the mouth the chest and neck. Very little warping of the textures should be found.

Environment Completed

The environment was completed last week as well as the music box. The room its self it 25m x 12.5m x 15m high. I wanted the room to be immense and grand to set the film in a palace yet to look plain so that it can be called nothing more than a storeroom. The mirror is placed on the far wall opposite the doorway. On the Left side of the door are four great columns, and on the left are three arched windows where the source of light will come.

Modelling the environment was very simple, with crating the original mesh, for instance creating one window or coloumn, and simply duplicating and welding the verts together. Normal values have been put onto columns and arches so to make it look smooth and save on poly budget.

This model is for the kib320 project, so the model will be broken up and put back together in Unity. The windows, wall arches, columns and doors can be brought in once and then creating an instance of these models to recreate room. This should save on memory and make it all run faster.

Environment Modelling Continued

The environment is really coming along. So far, I have plotted out all the major elements of the room such as the columns, mirror and various details on the walls. What I have left to do is the windows, Doors and the fill the room with various objects. I'm thinking that because time is an issue that crates may be enough to put into the space. If I have extra time later in the year, I will go back and model out some more objects

Model Completed

I have completed modelling Crayon. In the mean time, I have been learning how to bone and skin the model ready for animating. I'm quite happy with this model as it has good edge flow and below 5000 polys required to put into the game engine. Friday I will begin skinning the model but before that, it will have to be unwrapped.

There were some problems that occured during the modelling process. I started on a model of Crayon before this one and soon found that the edge flow was no good. So I ended up scrapping it and began on this one. Another problem was that Crayon's arms were at a 45 degree angle rather than horizontal which I was then told by my lecturer that having them at this angle can cause problems when trying to use Auto Rig, which is the program that I'll be using to rig the models. After fixing those problems, the model was set to go on to the next stage.

Character Modelling pt 3

With the body completed days ago, I had begun on making the head. I started out by creating a box then from there I have extruded and add lines to the model until it looks to what you see now.

I needed help on how to do this since I don't model faces that often but know that there are certain rules to follow in order to get the face rigs to work correctly. So I have been on youtube and studied various videos and following tutorials on google and animation websites to make sure there were no mistakes.

Character Modelling pt.2

I have continued on modelling for the last few days, rounding out the body and adding more detail to the neck line of the suit and the joints, such as the knees, elbows and shoulders. everything looks nice and square and happy with it so far.

Colour Boards

I have made up a couple of colour boards to give myself an idea of what I want the textures on both the characters and environment to look like. Dark, almost grey scale tones will be used in the film to give a little of a sombre feel to the film. This is not a happy story, so no bright colours will be seen. The environment will have marble textures in order to give the feel that the characters are in a random room of a palace. Veiny marble textures will be made in photoshop. I have found some pretty neat tutorials on how to do this so I will test them some time in the future.

Environment Concept 2

I have researched a bit on the Internet for the environment and found a couple of pics that can show just how large I would like the room to be. I went travelling Europe a year ago and visited the palace of Versailles. And I remember the immensity of the palace chapel with it's high ceilings and great pillars and balcony's. I certainly want the environment to look something like this. I have also found that the dimensions of the chapel to be 25m x 12.5m x 25m, so I will be following these measurements my model.

Environment Concept

I sketched out a few plans of what the I would like the environment to look. I want the film to be set in a palace for the jester to be living in. So a large room with high columns on one side and windows on the other. Crates and other bits'n'bobs will be placed around the room to give the suggestion that this room, although once grand, is now nothing but a storeroom.

Lighting

I have given some thought on what I would like the lighting to be in the film. In the examples above, it is a dominant orange/yellow colour that is slightly over-exposed. The environment that I will be creating will have large windows with this kind of light coming through.

Character Modelling Pt. 1

I began modelling a few weeks ago on Crayon/ Shadow from model sheets that I drew up a few days before I started. The first week of modelling I had negelected some of the rules of when making up a 3D model, so I had to scrap it. This is the second model that I have begun with the body fleshed out. The hands and the head still need to be finished though, which should take the rest of this week and all of next week.

Storyboard

I have fleshed out a storyboard to help me with camera angles and the sequence of events. This is just an initial concept of what camera moves I'm going to do, but the story will remain the same through to completion.