Fantastic Voyage - Art of Progress 01

Fantastic Voyage - Scene 02 Test Render

I decided today to do a test render of one of my shorter scenes to see how quick it would be. Surprisingly it didn't take long, just under half an hour. So i'm thinking I can render all my scenes in one day if I split between two computers.

I also finished most of my pre-vis (i just need to do some minor tweaks to the timing) which means the block out of my animation timing is done too, which means I can spend the rest of the week animating, and next Monday/Tuesday rendering. While it's rendering I'll edit my art of and audio, and do some work that I've missed too.

Toolkit 1 - Basic External Lighting

Toolkit 1 - Light Filters

Fantastic Voyage - Ballroom Color Update

Before

After

I still prefer the First one in terms of color palette, but having the Green does work better with my metaphor.

Fantastic Voyage - Pre-Vis Progress + Final Audio Demo

A Quick video showing the progress so far on my Pre-Vis. I'm using my pre-vis as a way to block out my animation for scenes. So that once I have it all blocked out, I can start animating straight after.

I also got my narration audio from my voice actor and I love it. When he sent it, it had very minimal cleanup and sounded great. He only had to re-record a few lines which was perfect for me. I'm going to take the rest of the day to edit and sort the audio so it sounds like it does here, and then I'll continue with my pre-vis tomorrow (or today if I finish audio editing early).

Fantastic Voyage - Scene 01 Progress

So before my computer decided to crash today I did manage to get one playblast of the first scene of my animation. It's not final, the camera and movements are too fast (however Maya is being very slow today and picky today, and it's already blue screened my computer once already, so I can't fix it yet), but it's good for a first block out.

I also rendered a quick still from the scene 3 times (basic, wireframe and ambient occlusion).

Fantastic Voyage - Art of Test Layouts

Decided to work a little on the title page and "introduction" pages for my art of. Feedback for them is appreciated though I am happy with the look of these so far.

Fantastic Voyage - NCloth Test Fails 2

I spent the morning trying to get the NCloth on the Wallflower perfect. Here'es a compilation of my progress of achieving that. They mostly failed, with the very end one being the final NCloth I'll use in the animation (which I can turn on and off for my playblast)

Fantastic Voyage - Scene Breakdown

(Scene 1 where it says to change to establishing shot, will be the same as the last shot, but without the wallflower in the middle)

I decided to do a quick scene breakdown to help me when it comes to pre-vis, animation, and rendering. I'll be able to check off scenes I've done, and sort files easier this way, rather than be confused and lose things later.

Fantastic Voyage - nCloth Test Fails 1

With these tests, I kind of messed up a little. But its good to learn from mistakes. In the first one, the ncloth didn't move when I keyed it in the first position, so it all snapped back and glitched in on itself.

In this one, I tried to rig the cloth to the joints to fix the problem, but a similar thing happened and it all kind of bunched up.

I asked Simon for help in having the ncloth mesh move with the rig and model and he didn't have a solution and said I should instead ask Allan tomorrow.

If Allan doesn't have a solution I may have to add 50 frames of it in the 0,0,0  position, and then 50 frames where it moves to its start position in the animation, and the animation from there normally. Like so. This would take time when rendering, but since I don't have lights or anything complicated in my scene to make render time long in the first place since I'm using surface shaders, this shouldn't matter too much.

Fantastic Voyage - nCloth Tests 2

So with the help of Simon I figured out what was wrong with the keying. Turns out the connections were a little messed up so I had to go back in and reconnect it all, Which I did for both my models. After that I went on to doing my NCloth Tests. One with NCloth added after animation, and One with NCloth added before animation. The Flower one is Ncloth added after and the Butterfly one is NCloth added before (I didn't do a walk cycle for this one though, just a simple move in the z axis)

I think i'm leaning toward doing it before animation and saving it as a separate rig, so when I animate I'm not having to re-do the NCloth over and over again. I also learnt that you have to leave about 50-100 frames before the animation starts to allow the NCloth to settle, before it goes into its movement.

Toolkit 1 - Organic Modelling 3

Fantastic Voyage - Keying/Rigging? Problem

So as you can see when I'm keying the foot control it doesn't register in the animation (this happens for both foot controls). However outside of keying when I break the connections it moves fine by itself. I checked everything that could be stopping it from keying properly and I even tried to unlock the control (even though it wasn't locked) but nothing really worked. I'm unsure if this is a problem with Maya on my computer, or if the rig broke when I was sorting the layers, but everything else keys fine. 

Fantastic Voyage - Ballroom Progress

I rendered a quick playblast turnaround of the ballroom to show it off. I'm not sure if I should add more details to the texture like my concept art or keep it like it is to match with the simplicity of how I've textured my characters.

Concept Art

Texture

Either way if I do choose to re texture it it shouldn't matter until I render. So i'm going to do a few animation tests and NCloth tests to figure out how to go about my NCloths (whether I should add it after I've animated everything to speed up the process, or before and risk my work flow being a little slower.).

Fantastic Voyage - Butterfly Rigging and Skinning Progress

The only issue so far with this rig is the legs, which is something I'll ask Simon for help with tomorrow. I also haven't integrated the NCloth into the poncho yet since I still have questions. I'll do tests for the NCloth when they're answered. 

Fantastic Voyage - Updated Script

I did send a draft of this script over to Claire but so far she hasn't got back to me, so I decided to upload it here for now to show the update.

Fantastic Voyage - Wallflower Rigging and Skinning Progress 2

There are a few issues with the legs and ankles which I couldn't fix but for now its okay until I can talk to Simon for help. I also haven't integrated the NCloth for the dress yet as I still have questions about it I need to be answered. So I'm going to work on the butterfly rigging and skinning in the meantime.

Fantastic Voyage - Wallflower Rigging Progress 1

To make this rig I'm following the Biped Rigging Part 1, 2 and 4 and a tutorial from the 3rd year section called NCloth - Attract to Matching Mesh. So far I'm almost done with the legs (i'd be further along but I ran into trouble with the IK Handles). I just need to add controls to the knees and Hip now.

Toolkit 1 - Organic Modelling 1 + 2

Fantastic Voyage - Butterfly Texture Progress

Today I finished the butterfly's textures so I again decided to render a quick still image of the finished model. I may go back and tweak things in the first texture file (such as adding shading) but for now, I'm considering it finished.

Fantastic Voyage - nCloth Tests 1

I decided to test out the possibility of using nCloth to help me animate. It would cut down animation time since I wouldn't be animating the secondary animation of the dress and filament. However, it would make rendering much longer. But I'm thinking since my rendering won't be that long anyway because I'm using surface shaders on everything (which requires no extra lighting) this won't matter. Here are two of my tests so far. I'll test more when I complete the rig for the wallflower.

Dress and Floor

Completed model

Fantastic Voyage - Flower Texture Progress + Ballroom Progress

Today I finished the textures for all my flowers in Maya. I decided to do a quick render with them all lined up to show. I also included the finished textures below. The rest of the flowers are recolors of the original Wallflower and I included smaller versions of them.

____

I also wanted to show my ballroom progress. So far I've "modeled" it (though it's basically just a scaled cube with inverted normals), and put in some placeholder textures which I will finish tomorrow.

 Outside

Outside

 Inside

 Inside

UVs

Fantastic Voyage - Butterfly UVs

I had a little trouble exporting the uvs with this model, it wouldn't save to my hard drive at all. So I had to save them directly to my computer. There have also been a few errors when loading this model so it may have corrupted at some point between yesterday and now.

Poncho UVs (created with huge help from simon)

 Legs and Antenna UVs

Head UVs

Fantastic Voyage - Butterfly Model Progress

Wireframe

  Maya Shading

Surface Shader colors

Fantastic Voyage - Wallflower Texture Progress

The back of the dress in this version messed up a little with the seams, but I managed to fix it by moving the uvs around until it all matched.