In this week, we held a soft opening over Zoom with a faculty group consisted of Dave, Brenda, Heather and Carl to share our progress and gather feedback. Here is the main contents of soft presentation:
- Introduction to our project
- Project background: What is previz, where do we fit in
- What our workflow is
- Work we’ve done
- Pivot/changes for remote, challenges the team has met
- What the team has been working on after halves
- Mo-cap tests & challenges
- New camera features
- Screen some of the previz shots we’ve visualized.
- Show the process of visualizing & what we learned
- Our goal for end of semester/finals
Here are the feedbacks we received from the faculty group:
- The DoF feature made a big difference, and the UI changes since halves are nice. For example, locking down to standard focal length lenses was a good call.
- The scene the team is building based on the se7en script looks good. It’s hitting a good balance of being just good enough along all the dimensions of the pipeline: models are just detailed enough, animation reads well enough, and camera shots look good.
- Shaky hand held cam isn’t helpful. Should have equivalent of at least a gimble or steadicam dampening for basic cam; real cameras are heavy and move slowly. Pro previz systems all have real camera mounting systems modeled in so that the camera moves realistically.
- Find a way to share the entire pipeline. There’s a big difference between doing a single animation in isolation and working with an asset list and building a library of animation clips. Tie this complete pipeline to the larger perspective of filmmaking.
- Clarify the audience and context for this tool. Using the lens of a “small previz studio” is a good direction. We suggested creating a sample budget for what it would cost to do previz for a film. That would quickly narrow down who their customers would be and how this service might be used. Be clear about the filmmaking process this will connect with.