Fantastic Voyage - Reflective Statement

This time last year I was very unhappy with what I was doing creatively. The course I was pushed onto just wasn't for me. So choosing to come study at CAA was a very big step for me. And I have to say I've loved every second of it. Even all the stress and low moments. And I wouldn't take back my decision for the world. Fantastic Voyage was a dream come true for me. Getting to direct, produce and animate my own short film was just amazing, and one year ago I never even thought I'd ever get to this point in life.

Although my short film could use many improvements (mostly in the animation portion), I am very proud of what I've managed to produce on this course. But I do admit, I bit off a bit more than I could chew with this project. I went in excited and wanted to impress. I really wanted to use NCloth, so much so that I never created a backup plan when NCloth went downhill. In hindsight, creating a version of my rig that allowed me to move the dress/poncho/filament as separate parts would have been the best thing before experimenting with NCloth, and I'm a little mad at myself for being so lazy with the rigs and just wanting to dive into NCloth. I really needed that backup plan with the dress rigs, because my animation suffered as a result.

I need to improve in this planning aspect, otherwise, my work could suffer in the future. I also want to improve in the animation aspect so that my characters don't look like they're floating in space. I'm looking forward to my second year at CAA, and I hope to improve in all ways possible next year and over the summer.

Fantastic Voyage - The Art of Pollination Waltz

Fantastic Voyage - Final Film

Fantastic Voyage - Art of Progress 02

Fantastic Voyage - Compositing Test

After 2 hours of making these custom "old reel" effects, I finally have a base composite to work off. I can basically add my renders one at a time after they're finished rendering from Maya and add them to the pre-comps I have within the existing comp, without having to add the same effects every time. I'm aware the colors look quite de-saturated right now and I am planning to brighten the colors a little more in my next test. Also, after many tests and asking for help, I have decided to leave out the NCloth. It was getting too complicated and just wouldn't work for me. Perhaps in the summer, I'll find time to render a version with the NCloth, or I can revisit this project again in a few years when I feel more confident with Maya.

Fantastic Voyage - Model Turnarounds

Fantastic Voyage - NCloth Update

So today I did another NCloth Test and found out that the clothes just aren't working well in my scene at all. So as annoyed as I am to announce this, I've made the decision to get rid of all my NCloth. While this does mean the Poncho, Dresses, and Stamen will be stationary (since I can't go back and re-rig at this stage), I will do my best to make the animation engaging with what I have.

Fantastic Voyage - Pre-Vis

Yesterday I made the decision to sway from the green background and keep the original silvery purple. I understand by doing this I risk the feedback that it doesn't look like a meadow, but other color combinations I tried just didn't look as good. From this, I went ahead and changed the texture, edited the scene a little again and playblasted all of my pre-vis. I used the pre-vis to block out the location and speed of the camera and characters and where they would move when. Now I'm going to put in all the animation scene by scene.

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.

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.

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.).