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.
