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.

Tuesday, after some re-working and rethinking of the project.

Today most of us from our group were in college, so we got up to speed and are on the same page.

Had a chat with Jared and Alex about where we are at in terms of the group project.
Jared had some great relevant stuff to say about how the animation is looking right now.
On the day I showed jared the Camera motion path I had did the day before.
Jared was saying think about familiarity, and keeping the audience comfortable with what you are doing. Put yourself in the perspective of who will use this room, it could be a bee's P.O.V. or in this case we have fairy dust that will come from the emerging title and will fly into the scene through the window creating the mattresses.
The point he was trying to make was that we have this very fast flying around camera, and it creates a bit of a nauseating effect on the viewer, which wasn't our intention at all but regardless.

We did discuss some other options for things we could do. We originally had the idea for a time lapsing effect which we would show with the handles of a clock moving very fast and maybe the view from outside changing from night to day.
Jared did bring up our fairy tale book opening, and even though he warned us to be careful when going with cliche, was saying going with the book opening and going into the scene and then finding the same book within the scene and going through it again may create a nice animation loop effect.

And I do like this idea of the book opening, which is also the ending creating a circular animation. Also to break up the long shot of the camera flying around the room, we discussed putting extra cameras in the scene to get different angles of objects in the scene. we discussed fading them in as it has a more gradual feel as opposed to straight cut.

Also we discussed in stead of a clock maybe we could model an egg timer or hourglass, or maybe a water clock, maybe even a sun dial to show passing of time.

It maybe go to do a few different test version of the scene, one using straight magic to create the effect, another showing time and objects gradually being put into place. could be interesting.

On Tuesday Tara our modeler, I let her know the problem i was having getting the other props in shot and the bed was so big and the room so small all i could see was the bed. since then we have expanded out the size of the room. Now it seems a lot less populated with props. So maybe this would be a good opportunity for Greg or jonathan to model a few things for the scene. we do have space now to put the story book if we want to go with the fantasy circular ending.


Even though I should be feeling some anxiety right now about whether i will get all the projects done on time. I am concerned about whether or not we finished, but I just seem to be very optimistic that we will be done on time and that my fears will feel completely unfounded. I have plenty to worry about but it really isn't Getting to me.

Maybe I have just seen this kind of situation too many times to let it bother me anymore, maybe I have learnt to be pretty cool in these pressure situations. I actually think deadlines are a fantastic thing. It keeps your mind focused on doing all the work needed in the time allowed.

To add to my Optimism, we recently sent out an e-mail to sound design students , asking if they'd be interested in creating a score for our scene. the music really isn't what's being assessed here, But it is a nice bonus to have if the scene is completed. So that is a great bit of news. Also Alex showed me a more effective way of controlling the camera attached to the motion path, Also he explained the importance of nCache files. Creating new cache's so it is easier for the software to remember the loads of calculations needed to produce lots of effects. It's a very useful thing to remember, especially later when I will probably have a lot of things going on , and time to do them will be at a premium, so faster render times will be a necessity.

So what to do now. Well as we have "blown up" the princess and the pea 3D scene, I need to animate my camera again, which is fine because i could do that in half the time now, and i need to animate the mattresses. I aim to have my part done by monday, tuesday at the latest. i will need to leave it open for new things in the scene, So Rochelle will be doing a coloured version and Tara will model a book I can animate opening and taking us into the scene.

So i will be conscious of those things. I think a week to do them is enough time, I just need to be WORKING, and not distracted.

New clip and i am pretty darn confident

Today ( Monday) I got abit of Steve's advice on what I could do for the 3d camera.

I was having all sorts of problems controlling the camera aim, till steve suggested i should have the camera and the aim on two seperate motion paths, which cleared the problem up greatly.

Sogar i have done a pretty good test which isn't oerfect but getting there, the speed of the camera steve suggested i create 2 objects in the scene parented to either side of the camera, tugging it in such a way as to slow it down, giving me more control of camera speed.
Unfortunately because of my "4 cameras" parented on the same spot we had to create a new cam, but for some reason i wasnt able to see if this might have worked. Ah well I was just pleased I finally figured out this problem i had parenting the camera to the aim. Next i need to animate the matresses, going in on tuesday we will take a look and see what should be fixed, aswell as decide on a Final colour palette we are going with for the room.

I am pretty confident we will finish this with time to spare.

(message to team blog)
Have been working on this most of monday night and it is finally coming together.

It's still a little too quick but that I am confident is easily fixed.

If everyone is happy with how it looks I will crac kon with animating the matresses.

I was mostly worried i wasn't getting enough of the other props in the scene enough screen time.

Problem is the room i pretty small and the camera is as far away from the bed as possible without clipping through the brick wall.

So its something to consider is how big the room is to accomodate for the camera. But anyway its fine, camera movement is pretty smooth so Id say this is the closest i have got to what we had in mind for the scene.

See everyone tuesday.

first test, MEH, NEXT TIME :)

A quick test render for the princess and the pea animation.

I was struggling most of saturday getting 4 cameras to all link up and attach to the motion path. I eventually got it and and it followed the path.

As the render shows the action is way too fast and the camera much too close to the bed. I am trying to change the speed of the camera, i have someone done it in such a way that the camera goes all the way around the path in 200 hundred frames. This i need to get in there and change.

so next i will edit the motion path, so you can see a lot more of the room. I need the camera to SLOW DOWN, and have a more natural moving motion, a smoother movement.

so the jerky movement as i got i need to clean up.

I was hoping to have all the animated mattresses done by saturday night, but unfortunately my day long struggle with the camera means i will be working on it still on sunday, thats ok just i have limited time.

monday i have Steve's project to do, which again i was hoping to have time to spare to do something for that.

So sunday i will work on the camera for about 2 hours or so, then i will switch to character animation for steve's project. As i seem to be wasting a lot of time struggling to get this right, so i will do what i can for now and maybe ask Steve or Alex how i can do a better job.

What I will be doing for the weekend.

At the moment i have created a decent motion path for the 3D scene, am parenting the camera and am just working on getting the camera movement down, once i am happy with that i will be animating the mattresses. If all goes well, i will have all the animating done by tuesday.

Which I hope everyone will be in for!

anyway, once thats done we can crack on with texturing and lighting. then stuff in post such as sound and the opening. Once i have done the animating i will get cracking on a title.

I am confident i will get this done by tuesday, only problem I see is getting the curtains to look good when the window opens, if i do i will ask Alex on tuesday how i can fix it.

will post some test renders on the blog if i do afew.

Animating Over the Weekend..

this weekend,

I will start on animating for our environmental project.
In the Princess and the Pea scene we are creating we have several props in the scene that need animating.

So far we have modeled a pretty good looking block out of the environment in maya. It's pretty basic as to speed up render times for animating. In the scene we have a free moving camera that goes around the outside wall of the castle, the window opens on its own, camera enters the interior rotating around the room pointed at the bed. The bed begins to pile up with mattresses conjured up by fairy dust, dropping on top of each other as the camera is pointed and pans around our main prop.

Also, other animation will include a ticking grandfather clock, curtains that will burst open as the window opens for our camera.
Also there is a second window in the scene that will have a shaft of light illuminating our 3d bed.

We have decided to go with a stylized cartoony look with reality based furniture chip n dale design, possibly incorporating some spanish or greek inspired patterns and textures. To be consistent with the slightly egsadurated style, the mattress animation will have a nice bounce and seem very springy.

I will have a go with a flag which can stand in for moving curtains. Also Alex has shown me how to use NCloth to get a more realistic curtain motion. so i will render out some tests to get the right look for the Curtains.

Also there might be an environmental change outside the other window as it comes into view. but that will be a post production problem when animation is done and we can start adding details.

So for now , I will aim to get all the animating done by Tuesday, if i have any problems figuring out the models i will have to talk to Tara our modeler. But so-far the models for the mattresses seem capable of everything i would like to do.

designing the window

what i have discussed with tara, who is our modeler for this project, is concerning the design of the window.i uploaded some images i took from barcelonawhich i wanted us to consider modelling for our exterior windows in the scene.

I said to take the basic shape and try and model that as best we can, as the architecture is pretty complicated.
But it seems going with that for the window will give it a more distinctive look

i also relised some of the images, the detail is on the outside of the windows not in. I thought since we never see the top of our very large window as camera enters the interior, i thought concentrating on the detail in the window would be what the audience sees. We are going with a stylized look, so it doesn't have to be perfect but at the very least competently done and with care to preserve the original detail, just doing away with things we cant possibly do in the time frame.

thats kind of the way it has been as a microcosm of the entire project, how can we do the most in the shortest space of time. how can we cram a lot of detail in while also not getting carried away coming up with too many possibilities.

One problem we needed to sort out was deciding on a final colour scheme. we have many different possibilities for a colour palette for the tone and so forth. All we need now is a definitive colour scheme all clear and done so we know what to do next for the 3d.

I need to get to work on the title, i am thinking first try and get all the animation for the mattresses done this weekend including the camera move, and i will be set to design the title.

I am confident we will pull through this, Tara has shown me how to manipulate the 3D Mattresses using all the handles. As i will be doing all the animation, she has made sure to include many different version of the mattresses , different colours and shapes.

It is a very short scene, so the only complications are things i cant anticipate yet in the animation, technical problems. but so far i haven't seen many. all we need is definite plans for how everything is going to look and i will be able to go ahead with that.

recent stuff

it has been a while since my individual group blog. Has been a while since i last gathered my thoughts so i will keep it brief and sweet.

The group are doing very well, Jonathan did a really great mock up title for our project in flash. I decided i would od it in After effects. I recently went to a 3rd year AE lecture from Dan Dode, who was supposed to be lecturing some 3rd years. it was very useful, we had to participate in making a title he had worked on. For me it was pretty familiar stuff. But it was really gret to e reminded, and since getting more into Maya it makes AE seem a lot more straight forward. AE i am mostly using for compositing right now, but knocking out a decent title I think i could probably do on wednesday afternoon. after i have met up with all my group.

Right now, i am uploading some inspirational stuff i found today, things like the credits from incredibles, 300, catch me if you can, metropolis. All done with a very nice soul bass look which i would aim to go for in the final title for our Princess and the pea idea.

I would like to do some modeling, i really would, its just animating is really my main focus at this time, and I think i have really improved a lot. I have knocked out 3 -4 great animations with lip sync for my other lighting and environments project. have spent some time in looking for some free maya models i can us for second character, and it has proven successful.

I talked to steve crocker about some problems i had with my maya live match moving footage, and i will get onto a second attempt to fix this.

THIS WEEK is my trip to Barcelona. I am just rolling my eyes in my head right now, because i just want to keep my head down and keep animating. But really i think this is the right time to get away as I look back on the last few weeks, it has all just been work and its taking its toll on my back. So i think some relaxation mixed with observational work will do me good. I haven't been drawing in a while safe for sketches for my title. Besides, this isn't the last project I am going to work on that will involve going out in the field and getting first hand research! Even thought I am pretty sure its kinda late in the day for research since we've already committed to what were doing. But on the other hand like i say this isn't the last time i will do this so I will definitely make the most of my Time over in Barcelona.

Anyway, I think my sequence has rendered. Oh god, gotta do research for my Dissertation essay, well i will save doing that till next week when i am back and my animating is mostly in the bag. Writing and researching will be my time to unwind and exercise my fingers. :)

Am glad this blog was longer than i predicted. But i would rather blog when i feel i have something to blog about :) so am glad i got this out :)