Major: Reflective Statement
I am happy with my end results from this project and pleased I was able to successfully translate my concept into a finished short film. I believe my Making Of and Demo Reels really showcase all of my work and the process of making this film. I was able to plan my time successfully throughout this project having created a timetable, enabling me to be sure I could complete the project on time.
At the start of the Major project, I was happy that I was able to finish preparing my models and characters for animating because all of the design and story changes were completed in the Minor Project. I did improve my pre-viz one more time after receiving feedback from the Minor project, as this allowed me to have a starting point for creating my final film. At the beginning, I was focused on texturing all of my props and rigging the ones that required a rig. This took some time to do as I had around 90 models to texture. I laid out the UVs for all of the models that needed texturing in photoshop, but some models could just be textured with surface shaders. I found texturing quite easy to do, although it was difficult at times to get the texture to look right on the 3D model.
As for rigging some of the props I found this straightforward. I took the approach of creating a single, main control for each prop rather than having a separate control for each attribute, as I didn't want it to get too confusing when animating, by having too many controls to select. However at times this did make it slightly more confusing when animating because all of the keyframes for each attribute were all together on the timeline. Also in this time I was fixing any problems I had with my characters and models and doing tests for effects I would be creating in post production, such as the robot smoke and sparks.
After this I was able to take all of my completed models of the metaphor planets and my characters into one Maya scene to begin animating. I started by using my pre-viz as a guide as this helped me to lay out the planets in the scene and to begin blocking out the camera's movements. Some time was spent animating the camera's movements and then working on making the movements smoother and more fluid, as it was important that the camera flowed from planet to planet and wasn't constantly stopping and starting.
I then moved onto animating the characters and props on each of the planets. I recorded reference footage to help with the timing and movements of the characters. I also looked at reference footage for some of the props, such as the crab and birds. Some props were harder to animate than others, for example, I had to work on and improve the birds flying quite a few times until it looked semi-realistic. Also when animating, I realised a few things about my models and rigs, for example, in real life a peacock doesn't have knees like a human does, they actually have a joint that goes backwards when they walk. However as my film's world isn't 100% realistic, I think this works, especially as a lot of the planets don't have real world proportions.
When improving my animation after my first pass I received feedback that I needed to make my animating, especially the characters, more organic. I did this by making things move less uniformly, for example, for the character on the bed reading the book, to make it more organic I had to have the head moving from right to left in a different amount of frames each time and also reach a different amount of rotation each time.
After improving and finalising my animation, I moved onto lighting my scenes. Different lights for the playblasts were used compared to the lights I had created for the rendered version of my film. For the rendered version, I have a skydome as well as two directional lights per planet. I used 'light-linking' to tell Maya which lights affect which objects. I found the process of lighting my scenes straightforward, although I had never properly worked with lighting before so some help was needed with which lights and settings to use. I had also never used 'light-linking' before, but it was an easy solution to my problem of having the planets cast shadows onto other planets.
Moving onto compositing, I had to work out the best ways to produce each effect I needed. I created the effect of the pens drawing on the easel by erasing the drawing on each frame, up to where the pens were. Although this was quite a tedious process and took a long time, I really like the end effect and that it doesn't look disjointed or as if the drawing is just 'stuck on' over the top of the playblasts in post production.
Having previously done tests for the extra effects for the robots I knew how to create the smoke and sparks. However I found it very hard to make the sound waves and musical notes look good in After Effects so I decided to model and animate them in Maya instead.
As for the extra lights in my film such as the lamps in the room and in the house, the lights on the road and the lights and eyes of the robot I added emission to the relevant surface shaders in Maya. Having never worked with emission before, after experimenting, I liked the effect and found it a quick way to add light. As shown in my lighting and rendering examples once my film is fully rendered I will also be adding a glow to these lights using matte passes in After Effects. I chose this method to light up these extra lights as I experimented with adding actual lights in Maya but it was hard to get the right effect and I didn't want to increase the render time too much.
For my sound design I took the voiceover and sound effects I had used in my pre-viz and edited them to fit to my final film. I edited each clip so there were no spikes in the audio and set the gain so everything was at around -6dB. Having never used this method before, I think it helped to level out the sound effects as I had clips from all different websites that were different volumes. In my Minor project feedback I was told the sound was too loud in my pre-viz so I spent time making sure the sound effects were quieter than the voiceover but ensuring they could still be heard.
Some feedback that I had received from the Minor project was that my Making Of and Demo Reels weren't very professional and could be improved. I spent a lot of time over the course of the Major Project slowly improving the layout and graphically designing the book. I downloaded a program which lays out the pages as a book which enabled me to graphically design each two-page spread.
As for the demo reels, I also spent a lot of time improving these as well, especially the prop demo reel. I ended up creating two versions of my prop demo reel- one for this submission and one to use to apply for an internship. I think by preparing a demo reel for a potential employer it really helped me to work out how to present my work professionally and to get into a professional mindset.
I am looking forward to rendering and having a fully finished film that I will then be able to submit to film festivals etc. I will probably wait for feedback before rendering, as I would rather make any necessary improvements as I want my final film to be as good as it can be.
Coming to the end of my degree I believe I have gained a lot of knowledge during my time on this course and this project has given me invaluable experience of creating an animated short film from beginning to end. In the past I haven't always had a completely professional mindset, but I believe now as I graduate, I am ready to enter the professional world with a more professional mindset. I am pleased that I was able to make a film that showcases my models as 3D modelling is something I would like to pursue.
At the start of the Major project, I was happy that I was able to finish preparing my models and characters for animating because all of the design and story changes were completed in the Minor Project. I did improve my pre-viz one more time after receiving feedback from the Minor project, as this allowed me to have a starting point for creating my final film. At the beginning, I was focused on texturing all of my props and rigging the ones that required a rig. This took some time to do as I had around 90 models to texture. I laid out the UVs for all of the models that needed texturing in photoshop, but some models could just be textured with surface shaders. I found texturing quite easy to do, although it was difficult at times to get the texture to look right on the 3D model.
As for rigging some of the props I found this straightforward. I took the approach of creating a single, main control for each prop rather than having a separate control for each attribute, as I didn't want it to get too confusing when animating, by having too many controls to select. However at times this did make it slightly more confusing when animating because all of the keyframes for each attribute were all together on the timeline. Also in this time I was fixing any problems I had with my characters and models and doing tests for effects I would be creating in post production, such as the robot smoke and sparks.
After this I was able to take all of my completed models of the metaphor planets and my characters into one Maya scene to begin animating. I started by using my pre-viz as a guide as this helped me to lay out the planets in the scene and to begin blocking out the camera's movements. Some time was spent animating the camera's movements and then working on making the movements smoother and more fluid, as it was important that the camera flowed from planet to planet and wasn't constantly stopping and starting.
I then moved onto animating the characters and props on each of the planets. I recorded reference footage to help with the timing and movements of the characters. I also looked at reference footage for some of the props, such as the crab and birds. Some props were harder to animate than others, for example, I had to work on and improve the birds flying quite a few times until it looked semi-realistic. Also when animating, I realised a few things about my models and rigs, for example, in real life a peacock doesn't have knees like a human does, they actually have a joint that goes backwards when they walk. However as my film's world isn't 100% realistic, I think this works, especially as a lot of the planets don't have real world proportions.
When improving my animation after my first pass I received feedback that I needed to make my animating, especially the characters, more organic. I did this by making things move less uniformly, for example, for the character on the bed reading the book, to make it more organic I had to have the head moving from right to left in a different amount of frames each time and also reach a different amount of rotation each time.
After improving and finalising my animation, I moved onto lighting my scenes. Different lights for the playblasts were used compared to the lights I had created for the rendered version of my film. For the rendered version, I have a skydome as well as two directional lights per planet. I used 'light-linking' to tell Maya which lights affect which objects. I found the process of lighting my scenes straightforward, although I had never properly worked with lighting before so some help was needed with which lights and settings to use. I had also never used 'light-linking' before, but it was an easy solution to my problem of having the planets cast shadows onto other planets.
Moving onto compositing, I had to work out the best ways to produce each effect I needed. I created the effect of the pens drawing on the easel by erasing the drawing on each frame, up to where the pens were. Although this was quite a tedious process and took a long time, I really like the end effect and that it doesn't look disjointed or as if the drawing is just 'stuck on' over the top of the playblasts in post production.
Having previously done tests for the extra effects for the robots I knew how to create the smoke and sparks. However I found it very hard to make the sound waves and musical notes look good in After Effects so I decided to model and animate them in Maya instead.
As for the extra lights in my film such as the lamps in the room and in the house, the lights on the road and the lights and eyes of the robot I added emission to the relevant surface shaders in Maya. Having never worked with emission before, after experimenting, I liked the effect and found it a quick way to add light. As shown in my lighting and rendering examples once my film is fully rendered I will also be adding a glow to these lights using matte passes in After Effects. I chose this method to light up these extra lights as I experimented with adding actual lights in Maya but it was hard to get the right effect and I didn't want to increase the render time too much.
For my sound design I took the voiceover and sound effects I had used in my pre-viz and edited them to fit to my final film. I edited each clip so there were no spikes in the audio and set the gain so everything was at around -6dB. Having never used this method before, I think it helped to level out the sound effects as I had clips from all different websites that were different volumes. In my Minor project feedback I was told the sound was too loud in my pre-viz so I spent time making sure the sound effects were quieter than the voiceover but ensuring they could still be heard.
Some feedback that I had received from the Minor project was that my Making Of and Demo Reels weren't very professional and could be improved. I spent a lot of time over the course of the Major Project slowly improving the layout and graphically designing the book. I downloaded a program which lays out the pages as a book which enabled me to graphically design each two-page spread.
As for the demo reels, I also spent a lot of time improving these as well, especially the prop demo reel. I ended up creating two versions of my prop demo reel- one for this submission and one to use to apply for an internship. I think by preparing a demo reel for a potential employer it really helped me to work out how to present my work professionally and to get into a professional mindset.
I am looking forward to rendering and having a fully finished film that I will then be able to submit to film festivals etc. I will probably wait for feedback before rendering, as I would rather make any necessary improvements as I want my final film to be as good as it can be.
Coming to the end of my degree I believe I have gained a lot of knowledge during my time on this course and this project has given me invaluable experience of creating an animated short film from beginning to end. In the past I haven't always had a completely professional mindset, but I believe now as I graduate, I am ready to enter the professional world with a more professional mindset. I am pleased that I was able to make a film that showcases my models as 3D modelling is something I would like to pursue.
Comments
Post a Comment