one last test id like to upload that i did on submission day

using trapcode particular i made some pretty decent looking fairy dust in after effects. But i didn't get on with hanimating till near the end. so i couldn't get the final animation all that polished. but as a test it stands up well for what it could have been. :)

Submission Day..

Has been a pretty stressful day, no surprise.
Lots of problems needing quick results. I think i managed to reach a decent compromise.
We were meaning to have the Occlusion layer ready for our scene today, we all had a go at rendering it and all we got was 2 seconds worth collectively. So we didn't manage to get that done. The render farm was an option but we opted instead to chop doing the shadows and textures and go with just the colours and lighting. Unfortunately, when compositing in After Effects, the layers would not match up, possibly due to the way it was rendered, even the lighting was missing frames.
so we rendered out the colour version, which looked fine, just it was missing a lot without the shadows.
I spent about an hour animating the particles in AE, it looks ok , just rushed. Trapcode Particular is a good thing to use when doing particles at short notice.I was trying to put an obscure in front and animate it hiding the particles, however it makes soo many passes around the bed, it would be impossible to do in an hour and look decent.
Burning to disc was a bit of a time sink as well.
Rendering was left to a pretty late stage. i was hoping to have time left to do a better job with compositing and sound.
On the plus side, the Sound design students went to town on the sound, great score, great sound effects. really brings atmosphere to the scene. I think had we recruited the students come day one, their work would have informed ours a lot more, it would have influenced the animation. The title looks great in after effects. Pretty much what we had in mind from the sketches and colour versions we did.
I hadn't thought a lot about the transition from book 2D to 3D environment, we did great if a bit rushed.
If I had an extra week i would have done a lot more work integrating the 2D and 3D, its just a fade, i would have liked more masks to make it more interesting.
I think a project that isn't fulfilling its potential due to over ambition is still really useful exercise. It has definitely showed me to make a schedule and stick to it. Plan out these variables.

last week, got till friday to have 2 projects done.

Its tuesday and i got alot done.

have nearly done all the anmation for the scene. need to redo the Ncloth as it didnt look too good. and also i need to animate particles in the princess n the pea scene.


http://library.creativecow.net/articles/castaneda_alvaro/Maya_Tutorial_005/video-tutorial.php

am watching this tutorial i found on doing particles in Maya. as i was having trouble putting in expressions for particles in AE.
was planning to do them in Ae, but the tutorial i saw showed i can attach it to a null object with an expression, but that refuses to work.
i will be giving it a go tomorrow i think. i want to have a scene finished for steves project as well. so for now i will check out this tutorial, finish the hand done animation for the scene and maybe round off some of the shots for steves project.

this is probably gonna be my penultimate blog entry, as i will be focussing all my efforts on finishing.

Animating the curtains, work in progress 1 week to go.

my work on the curtains is going slow this saturday.

This is a quick render of what i have been doing for the curtains and as you can see the animation looks very mechanical and not at all like cloth.

As you can probably imagine this is pretty challenging. Maya has crashed on me around 3 times and i have had to start over on one side now and then. I'm still optimistic despite these set backs.

I am aiming to have all the animating done for the group on monday, tuesday at the latest. We really must pull everything together. this is lighting, texture mapping animation, sound, title sequence, compositing. All needs to be on schedule for the rendering. i can imagine the rendering will take time and we have been working very hard to bring everything together.

I am happy with the work despite it constantly knocking me down and picking me up. I aim to have all sides of the bed curtains finished with hand animation. the curtains will be finished as a dynamic. It takes a long time to get a cache file with the dynamics because the scene is over a minute in length. So seeing quick feedback is a luxury at the moment.

I am pretty confident this weekend i will see the animation brought to a decent result. this weekend will just be animating, don't have any other plans. I will resume with steve Crocker's project as soon as animating for the group is completed.

want to have them both done to a decent level, and if i stay focused, and without the worry of written submissions on my back right now I am pretty confident i can do this.

some tests done for curtains using Ncloth

Tonight i am trying to get to grips with using Ncloth for the curtains in the Princess and the pea bedroom.

i have created some new cache files with the wind going in different directions. it may take a little practice.

Since the mattresses are done, my responsibilities on the job now would be to bring the curtains to life and maybe the fabric for the bed curtains as well as a title, also i will need to animate the particles coming in in after effects.

I think i can do the Ncloth for the curtains tonight if i am optimistic, if not i will have those done tomorrow.

New Work in progress from saturday, working on mattress animation

Some more work I am still working on for the group project.

some work in progress for my 3d animation on the group project

this is a work in progress for the mattresses that are set to land in the bed. there are only three mattresses right now, i should end up with twenty roughly by the end.

the mattresses are pretty simple to animate, i am going to animate each one individually and get a slightly different bounce with each one.

if i still have time tonight, I may have a go at putting the curtains in the scene and trying to get them to fly open on cue.
The curtains are created using ncloth, so i need to queue up a wind to move the curtain, this will be the first time i have attempted this, but i am confident this will not be a problem.

I want to leave some free time this weekend to do some work for Steve's project, which is the characters lit in the scene and animating the match move.

i don't see any particular problems with that project, i have done a test and will just need to modify all the other shots with the same lighting.