Week Fifteen (Spring Semester)

This week has been about cleaning up.

The iteration we were able to show at Softs didn’t quite have all the elements in because they were being rendered. But there were some slight adjustments that still needed to be made, and because we had a little bit of time, we thought we’d add some elements we didn’t think we were going to be able to get to.

Dorothy decided to tackle the creature’s frills. In the original concept design, Frostridge had four floppy ear-like appendages that would spring out stiff when he was about to strike. We had decided they wouldn’t be done a few weeks ago because of time. But, Dorothy found some time and decided to make them and animate them. She did a great job and they are now being added to the render.

Cewon also tackled our opening credit logo for Foxhole. It was decided weeks ago that what the film needed was a very wide establishing shot to show the audience the world in which they’re stepping. We also thought the perfect moment for this would be to combine that opening shot with our production team name. But since there was no animation involved and it was going to be a static image, we thought it best if Cewon tackled this last because she could work on it while other things are being rendered. She has now completed the production logo and even put some lighting effects on it.

Foxhole opening credit

Sai’s biggest task over the past week has been working with grass. Because the creature interacts with the grass so often, that element has had to be finessed at almost every step of the way. We’ve gone back and forth about color, movement, and outline, and every time we put new elements in the mix, it seems the grass must be adjusted in some way. But he now has the grass reacting to the creature in a way that looks natural.

Sai also adjusted the animation. Sometimes the wrenches didn’t seem to be hitting the scaffolding just right, but we learned that the scaffolding was actually not being composited in the right place. When the scaffolding was moved up, much of the problem went away.

Lighting was one of the last elements to be done before compositing, but, some things needed to be composited before Julia could fix the lighting. This week she finished polishing the lighting elements for our opening shot which was a difficult task due to all of the moving elements as we pan from the top of the wall to the bottom. Julia had to keep track of both 2D and 3D elements to make sure proper shadows were being cast on all surfaces and that the sources of light didn’t wander.

The last thing to be done in the following week will be sound. Paul will take the finished animation and make sure all the sound is synced up properly. He’ll also add some sound to the opening credit logo and then send the whole package back to Chen to do a final render of the entire piece.

The team will also be practicing for their final presentation which will be on Thursday. The faculty has advised that Foxhole show the entire animation during the presentation, so they are having to work hard to squeeze in all other relevant information in a ten minute time span. But, their adviser, Ruth, had some great suggestions on topics to concentrate on, so they’re hard at work putting together that presentation.

Week Fourteen (Spring Term)

This week has been a heavy crunch.

We started off with our Softs presentation on Monday. This was the first time many of the faculty members have seen the entire animation from beginning to end. Unfortunately, because of rendering time, what they were looking at was an older version than what was currently being rendered, but their comments were mostly positive. There were a few things they didn’t like, such as the art of the inside vs. the outside, coloring on the inside, and the timing of some of the animation with the sound. Many of those things had been fixed, but when the faculty hit on things that weren’t fixed, we put it on a list to try and fix this week.

So, we have adjusted, or are looking to adjust the look of the sky for the inside and out to get a more consistent look across both; the banging on the wall on the outside has been replaced with a new sound to make it sound more metallic; the lighting is being readjusted in scene one to more closely resemble the lighting in scene two; some animations are being adjusted to fit the soundscape, like Ramesh banging on the railings; some sounds will be adjusted by the sound designer after the final render; and the outlines to some of the shots are being readjusted to keep a consistent look for the character. The team has posted a list up in the room to more specifically outline what needs to be adjusted and each team member keeps that list updated daily.

There are also deadlines for these adjustments. The deadlines reflect the time Chen needs to composite and render these new elements into the animation. Some scenes have heavier asset loads than others and the deadlines reflect this–the heavier scene’s being needed first.

Joel also delivered the final creature early this week, this included some adjustments for having to drop our original plan of having more creatures in the film. Originally there were at least 5, but now we have our main creature, and three others coming across the plane in one of our final shots.

Week Thirteen (Spring Semester)

The Foxhole team spent this week crunching for our Softs presentation. We made a list of all the final assets that needed to be created or fixed before our final render and pinned that list to our television screen. One by one the items have been checked off and we are just about to commit to a final render.

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One of the main snags we hit this week was shadows for the grass. While using the Paint effect, we got no shadow cast from the grass and only found that when we turned the grass into polygons, did we get a shadow. But, the polygon version looked too “3D” and didn’t blend with the rest of the art work. So, it was decided that we would render a shadow on it’s own layer from the polygon version, then add it as a layer to give the illusion that the Paint effect version was casting a shadow on the ground.

We also put together a 3 minute and 30 second promotional video which you can now see on our Media page.

Week Twelve (Spring Semester)

As we get closer to the end of the semester, we find ourselves having to come up with different ways to keep each other updated. We’ve been using Hansoft up to this point, but we find ourselves now having to be very detailed about what our deliverables for the Soft Opening on April 21.

Ramesh Scared

The director first made a list of what items were distracting in every shot thus far. This list included assets that were missing and assets that needed adjustment. Then the team looked over the list and prioritize the deliverables. The team then decided against putting the list on Hansoft in favor of putting the list up in the room. We are now meeting every day and crossing off things on the list. Most of these items need to be ready to render by early next week so we are in a mad dash to finish the assets.

Once we’ve finished our Softs iteration, we will start to focus on our final product–adjusting, defining, knitpicking. We’ll just have a week or so to really make the animation sparkle before we give it up to the final render.

Week Eleven (Spring Semester)

Part of the challenge this week was organizing our next iteration. As the week started, we had new assets in the latest render, but not all the assets that had been created. It’s a matter of the staggered way in which our team produces these pieces of art and animation. Chen begins to render at the end of the previous week and some assets make it in, some have to wait for the next iteration. So we are in talks about how to list assets that have been delivered but not composited into the whole piece.

We also had to make a decision about what to concentrate on for Softs. Softs is the time when the faculty visits project rooms and expects to see near-finished products. We want to show them a “watchable” version of our short animation, which means we don’t want anything that pops out as unfinished that will take the viewer out of the story. So, we’re having to shelve some of our plans to make certain shots perfect in order to concentrate on making every shot on par with every other, favoring consistency over perfection. This means that some lighting elements won’t be finished for softs, some animations may need slight tweaking, and some backgrounds may not have as much detail as we’d like. But, the average viewer will hopefully not be distracted by these elements, but rather get swept up in the story.

Ramesh and the signs

Animation will be at a place this week in which the cloth and hair can now be rendered onto the main character, Ramesh. The last of the 2D and 3D art assets are being worked on, and a new audio track has been rendered which includes new vocals, new drum sounds, and equalization and compression to help the track sound great on a variety of sound systems.

Ramesh check wrench Maya Ramesh climb out

We’ll be in a heavy crunch for the next couple of weeks.

Week Ten (Spring Semester)

This week was in large dedicated to our halves presentation.

We had an awful lot to cover as our six-person team has taken on multiple roles in order to produce our animation. Some members have as many as four separate tasks assigned to them. We could talk for hours about all the things we’ve learned over the past couple of months. So, what to leave out?

One of the things we decided to forgo was sound. The soundscape was largely done during the first semester of our project so there seemed little reason to give it time in the presentation. We also didn’t want to show the complete 4 minute film because that would also take up too much time. We ended up using two video clips that illustrated our process, then each member of the team explained a part of the process to our faculty/student audience.

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We covered things like 3D layout, art, animation, motion capture, modeling, and lighting. This is a long list of things in which we could dive very deep, but we kept it simple and maybe even sped up a little too much to make sure we came under the 15 minute deadline.

We eventually received an A- for presentation and a B+ for our project grade. That’s not bad. The faculty gave feedback and it was mostly positive, but there was some confusion about our iterative process and they were concerned as to whether or not we would be finished with the animation by the end of the term. Technically, because we’re working in iterative passes, it’s already done, just not polished.

Our progression this week consisted of Joel turning in his rough animation, our discussion on the merits of ambient lighting were settled in favor of using it even though it greatly increases render time, Sai has finished the rough bird animation, Paul has recorded a classical Indian singer to add to the soundtrack, Dorothy has a rough pass of facial animation and Cewon is off to Korea.

We’re a little behind on the animation, but, the team had a big discussion about timeline and we think we can very comfortably push our deadlines back a week.

Week Nine (Spring Semester)

This week moved a little slower than usual because two members of our team and Joel (who is taking his independent study with us) are at the GDC conference. But we plowed forward.

Dorothy almost has her facial blendshapes finished. We will use these in place of animating our main character’s every expression. It is less labor intensive and will work better for our timeline.

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Sai continues to refine the motion capture and has been delivering scenes to Chen for compositing as he completes each one. Chen has rendered yet another rendition of the short and with each pass the original vision of last semester’s team becomes more clear.

We also did grass tests this week. The rendering time should be manageable and it looks great on its own. The next step will be putting into the context of the short.

Grass Test

We are still looking at getting light into the short next week, as well as Joel’s animations, hair, and the facial blendshapes. We were supposed to have an Indian classical singer come in on Saturday to do some vocal work for the soundtrack but she had to cancel at the last minute. Hopefully we can get her in soon.

Week Eight (Spring Semester)

We’re in a mad dash before Spring break.

Iteration 2 is all about getting assets to replace all the placeholders Chen, our compositor, has inserted into the animation. Cewon has finished coloring the outside world, Dorothy has finished her models for the other workers, Julia is working on putting those models roughly in place, Sai and Joel are refining animation, and Julia is also has all her rough lighting in place.

Some of the challenges this week have been tasking Cewon, timing the animations, and reframing shots.

As Cewon’s tasks grow, we were wondering how to get all of her modeling textures done in a timely manor. But as Ruth, one of the team’s advisers, explained, we should just repeat textures and/or put on simple textures in order to view them in the animation, then decide what needs to be refined or changed. This will save Cewon a lot of time down the pipeline as she works harder and harder to get detail into our larger shots.

Sai and Joel asked Paul to split all the individual sounds in the soundtrack where they pertain to their respective animations. This was especially difficult to do for the creatures’ drums because they have yet to be finalised in the recording studio. So, Paul synthesised drums so that Joel can use them to time the creatures’ animation, The synthesized version will later be swapped out when the drums are recorded.  

Sound also hit a glitch when Paul delivered all his sound to Sai in 32 bit WAV format. Maya wouldn’t handle a 32 bit sound file, so all the files had to be converted to 16 bit. Luckily, this glitch was caught by Sai before sound files were created for Joel, so the files sent to Joel had the correct bit depth from the start.

Chen and Julia have had to work closely to ensure camera movement remains consistent among everyone involved. Sai and Joel are using camera movement to gauge animation, Cewon for perspective, and eventually Dorothy for refining models. The team decided to create the camera movement in Maya and then import that movement into Nuke. It can sometimes be a time consuming process because the starting position for the camera must be readjusted in Nuke to match where the shot is taking place.

While Julia is handling camera movement, she’s also been testing how to get the most impact out of our shadows that are limited by the toon-shader we are using on our models.

We are looking to have Iteration 2 done by the beginning of Spring break, after which assets will come in a little more sporadically over the next two weeks as students go out of town for the break and for GDC. But, we have accommodated for this in our master schedule and therefore our iterations should continue to meet their deadlines.

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Week Seven (Spring Semester)

We got into Iteration 1 this week.

Chen worked on creating placeholders for all elements that needed to go into the entire animation. Cewon provided him with outlined drawing of all art elements, Sai turned in the rough motion capture elements, Julia turned in basic lighting and rough cloth elements, and Dorothy turned in the bulk of her modeling elements.

Joel also turned in his animation of the 1st creature, Frost, with basic positioning in place and Paul did a new version of the sound with some minor time adjustments and a few new sounds. As the team discussed though, the final sound will have to be adjusted to elements in the final animation.

We’re working hard toward finishing yet another iteration next week before Spring break and before many on the team go to the GDC conference.

Week Six (Spring Semester)

We are just about ready to do our first render of the entire short film. This will not by any means be a polished product, but it is the first in several iterations that will lead up towards an animation we can show to the public.

We decided over this week that there is a lot of work for this team to accomplish in a short amount of time, and it was suggested to us that we may want to make plans on things we can cut if we absolutely have to. But, as the last semester team discovered, the shots and timing that comprise our current animatic are the bare minimum needed to tell this story, so we are unable to simply cut things out that don’t get finished. Rather, we will make complete renderings of the whole piece, working in stages. By approaching our project in this way, we will ensure that the audience will always be able to enjoy the story in its entirety even if our assets aren’t as polished as we would like.

Our art pipeline is moving along nicely with most models complete or near completion due to the work of our two talented modelers, Joel and Dorothy. Most of the models have also been textured by Cewon and Chen is moving forward with putting these elements together.

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Sai has made the call to recapture some of our mocap data on the Vicon system on the main campus. There was a problem translating the 2012 version data from organic motion to Maya. Sai could go over the data and smooth it out, but that would take longer than simply going to the main campus system and recapturing the motion data. We’ve already done the facial capture on the Vicon system as well as a few hard-to-get shots for full body so we are confident that pipeline will work for us. Below is video clip from our motion capture session on main campus.

Faciel MoCap example

Julia completed her 3D mockup of the world and so She, Paul and Chen set to locking down the camera angles this week. Now Cewon has something to use as an art reference and our animators, Sai and Joel, will be able to see just what needs animating in the shot. Chen will also be using Julia’s screen captures of the world to help place art assets withing each shot.

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Next week will see our first rendering of the project which will also give us a better understanding of how to go about our six iterations.