SUMMATIVE HAND IN

The film has finally been handed in....now for some catching up on sleep!

bye byee

3rd Year Summary

Although stressful, I felt I learnt a lot this year.
I feel my rigging and weighting have vastly improved since second year and I enjoy it so much more and am more willing to appproach it.
I feel my modelling has improved and am a bit more equipped with certain knowledge than I did not have in year 2.

Although I was initially not so keen on having to animate, - of which I had not touched since the lip syncing unit back at end of Year 1 Term 3 - it turned out not as bad as I had had in mind, though its not something I still feel totally comfortable with.
In future, I would like to try out more compositing and lighting as I thoroughly enjoyed the compositing process, although if it was not done under the immense pressure and tight deadline, I believe, it would have been an even more enjoyable experience.

Am pleased that the film was able to be completed for hand in, although there is still lots of room for improvement and little errors are needed to be fixed, of which hopefully can be met for the Degree Show.

Overall, a year of a few ups and downs which ended on a positive note :) with special thanks to Aminata and Josie

A few final renders

Music

Yay, think we have found the soundtrack for the film.
Josie had just sent me the soundtrack that she has synced with the animatic and we feel that it works quite well for the time being and is one the best options available at the moment.

Really glad and relieved that the music is done now, just need the special effects ^_^

No to the Clouds

The clouds are going to go, they looked nice when I render them individually against a dark background with no other lights, however when imported into a lit scene its effect does not seem to fit in.
Either it glows too much, or when it glows too little its hardly visible. With its glow attribute aside, it just does not look right and I found it better to just not have them in scene, less distracting:

Camera for Ending

Now that it has been decided to change from the original camera to the close up, I have decided to change how the camera pans out.
Instead of keeping to the animatic there the camera continously pans, I have decided to cut and fade in the pan instead. I believe it looks better, below are two different cameras for the panning out part:

** note**
where the lantern disappears is Aminata's part of the animation, and although Aminata worked on the same scene with the same ending pose (which is her beginning pose), they still did not sync in o_o!! luckily you cannot quite tell the slight difference in the head

camera 1


camera 2


I believe camera 2 will be the final camera to use as it pans more smoothly and does not go slow as if it is struggling to move along mid-way

Some Animation

Like I mentioned before, my animation skills are not that great, but here you go

Animating the Goddess (+__+) and the lantern (body and tassel):


Xiao Xiao + house lanterns:

*hehe, the lanterns move as well, although it cannot be seen or might not even be noticed, it'll be better than to have them just static

** more on the summative CD, do not really want to bore you with all these little short playblasts

Close up?

At the moment, am deciding on whether to keep the exisitng camera for the ending shot. Therefore, whilst moving the camera around, I stopped at a close-up of Xiao Xiao of which I feel looks better, here are the two for comparison:

original camera:


new camera:

Opening logo

Here is the logo/image for the opening sequence kindly done by my brother ^_^

Initial Compositing

I have started to composit the only renders we have at the moment and mixing them with a lot of playblasts to get a better idea of timing and how it is flowing etc
At the same time, I'm using the opportunity to test things out to see if the render settings are correct and experimenting with the effects I can do to the sequence

opening shot headache

This opening shot is starting to get on my nerves, I can't seem to adjust a nice angle without displaying the floor where the mountains sit!

and its beginning of week 10 as well......4 more days till hand in....T_____T *sob*

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update

here is, so far the final camera that will be used. There is simply no time at the moment to keep tweaking it. If there is time and it looks bad it will be changed

Cameras for 3-9 and 3-10

Following the camera I used for the animatic, I feel the shot does not really look right.
Therefore I decided to change it and after a comparison, I feel more confident with this decision:

original camera



new camera


*note*
this part of animation was initially Sung-Jin's responsiblity. However, reluctant to improve on it and make changes, I had to re-do the animation for it to fit in with the rest of the film.

Camera Choice for 2-2

I'm deciding at the moment the camera that should be used for this shot, so far I like these two are most appropriate:

Camera Choice 1


Camera Choice 2


I think Camera 2 is better?

More music for Josie

Found a few more tracks from my collection of OSTs and have sent them off to Josie.
Josie has also been looking for a range of really nice traditional music as well ^_^, we are steadily building up a large collection of possible tracks to use which is better for Josie's experimenting.

There was a total of 15 songs in the latest batch I had sent to Josie.
Like before, I have provided a short sample, but only of a few of them.

Environment so far....

aargh, it is so tediously painful placing each individual lantern in place....this is taking SO much longer than I had planned it to be.

screenshots of lantern-filled environment to come soon

Update 1.20am
this is what part of the environment looks like currently,
still need to tweak some stuff, and the blue and yellow lanterns look horrible.
Going to have to change them back to red
.....and that sandy yellow texture looks so out of place

SCALE INFO

Just to make sure:

Xiao Xiao has to be scaled down by 0.182

Chang E has to be scaled down by 0.2

Butterfly Lantern to be scaled by 0.092

Environment does not need to be altered

Xiao Xiao Rig Change

Aminata provided a lot of helpful feedback and reminders whilst using my Xiao Xiao rig that I have gone back and made changes to

1) fix some minor errors and
2) make it more convienient for Aminata/Sung-Jin to control the hands

I personally did not want to use finger set driven keys because I like to manually animate the fingers, but because of difference in preferences, I have altered the rig and included set driven keys for the fingers and this updated version has been sent out.
Thus, there being two versions of the rig now.

First Render Tests

With little time left, I am unable to sit and and just endlessly wait for nothing to be happening and progressing with render tests and so forth, which was supposed to be Sung-Jin's responsibility.

Not having shown me any tests since the start of this project and when I ask for tests to be started and shown to me so that we can start to decide what we are going for, I get given excuse after excuse.

Therefore I have decided to start doing some render tests myself.

This Wednesday, using one of the finished shots, I rendered it with an Ambient Occlusion pass, and experimented with depth of field and basically layering everything in After Effects to see how the results are, I will post them later:

Rendered using Maya software:

Ambient Occlusion:

Channel depth:


Everything combined:


Further testing and tweaking will probably be needed, and the shot where she is holding the moon cake will need to be lit again, it has turned out a lot darker than when I did test renders for the lighting.

Final few items for the environment (this post is regularly updated)

2nd Bridge:


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UPDATE 03/05/08
Willow Tree x 4 colours:


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UPDATE 08/05/08
Wall with 2 entrances:


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UPDATE 09/05/08
Another wall for behind the Orphanage


And more mountains with slightly varied colours and roughness
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Environment - Whats left to do

2nd Bridge
Willow Tree
Village Wall and Mini-Entrance
River side pavillion shelters

Final arrangment of everything

Pavilion Finished

another asset in the environment finally done, a pavillion:

Xiao Xiao to Sung-Jin & Aminata

Okiee, Xiao Xiao has now been finally sent off to both Aminata and Sung-Jin to start animation.

Finished Moon Cake

here is the finished moon cake modelled and textured by me

Moon Cake Designs

I have drawn up only designs for the top as everything else will be the same as every other traditional Moon Cake regardless of top design.

Using the designs of Moon Cakes I had last Autumn Festival (see pictures in this post) I have drawn up a few designs influenced by them.
I prefer the more symmetrical designs as they appear more eye-catching.

Instead of using the traditional Chinese character 喜 喜 (meaning double happiness) I will use the character 笑 (smile). One being part of the film's title and two, holding the meaning of the Goddess sharing a smile with the little girl Xiao Xiao.


Design (12) will be the final design, based off the Moon Cake I had last year.

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Update: Cleaned version of Final Moon Cake Design

Clouds

There were problems with creating the Chinese stylised clouds in 3D and so I have tried using other ways of creating them.

Initially it was planned to have them remaining as 2D but through experimenting I think I may have found another better idea, I'll update once I get that finished.

For now, here what the clouds look like in 2D, I gave it a slight purplish base and lining to show the stylising of the cloud, but I don't think it works very well....


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Update:

Here is the final outcome, I decided to keep the outlines of the cloud's design to remain that Chinese stylised feel

More mountains

Here I have re-recycled the mountains I had modelled for the animatic, having applied a new texture and bump.

Although Sung-Jin has also modelled some mountains (which can be found on his blog), he did not include the layers and effect found in the Chinese Landscape painting examples I had sent him, and lacking the feel that we are going for.

Final Mountains (by me):

Clutter (small) of Houses 2

Here is another small set of houses modelled and textured by me


glad that I managed to finish this one within a shorter time period, off to sleep now.... ......(-.-)(_ _) ..zzZZ

Changes Needed

As discussed with Mike during last week's formative, a bit of depth is needed.

We could use a further stretch of fields to suggest this and Mike suggested to use animated planes for this.

Sung-Jin and I have also discussed the use of light mist around the foot of the mountains, on top of that the appropriate use of depth of field to hopefully achieve better results.

Clutter of Houses 1

This took a bit longer to finish than I had wanted to, so a bit disappointed. Luckily the texturing was than faster than I had planned so hopefully the next clutter will be much quicker:

Moon Cake and Small Props

I forgot to put in the schedule the smaller props that still needs to be done:

- Moon Cake
- Stars in 3d or 2d
- Butterflies
- Rocks
- Plants

WEEK 1 (Term 3) SUMMARY

Wow this week has gone fast.

Since last Wednesday I have still not heard anything from Sung-Jin on how the mountains are going and only two mountains are needed to be modelled and textured.

I have altered the orphanage exterior, did further research into Chinese rural villages and am more comfortable with how the environment will be arranged.

Not a lot done this week so it is a bit disappointing and worrying.

House 4

A simple, variation of the orphanage:

Orphanage Change

I felt that not enough careful consideration was placed behind the exterior design of the orphanage and became carried away, producing something not very unsuitable.
At the moment, through comparison with the other houses, apart from the choice of colours, it seems to be on equal levels in terms of the status of the household it communicates across....
Therefore, I will alter the exterior slightly, no major changes, but hopefully enough to make a bigger difference by referencing back to a concept produced in Term 1.

*** NEW ORPHANAGE EXTERIOR ***
*** HOUSE 3 - Old Orphanage ***
Instead of having the old exterior going to waste, I'll just use it in the background as another house

House 2 Finished

Modelled and textured by me. Took a bit longer than I wanted with this building, so need to work faster for the next few

Term 3 Schedule

Easter Break SUMMARY

Here is a summary of what I have managed to do over the Easter Break in WHITE, and below in PINK is what we as a group have left to do:

Completed Tasks:
============
* Rig and Weight Xiao Xiao
* Weight Chang Er and refined rig for secondary animation on hair decoration
* Model, texture and rig main Butterfly Lantern
* Model and texture 22 assortment lanterns for the environment
* Model and texture the main bridge
* Model and texture the exterior of the Orphanage
* Model and texture the interior of the Orphanage
* Customise shader for River
* Model and texture background house #1

Unfinished Tasks/In process of making :
============================
* Modelling trees
* Modelling background house #2

*********************************************************************

This is what we still have left to do as a group:

- Arrange/set up final scene
- Render settings
- DOF and other camera settings
- Clean up sound file
- Finish environment
- ANIMATE the whole film T_____T
...nearly forgot about this one (!) model and texture the Moon Cake ... -__-

House 001 - finished

House 001 for the environment is now fully finished, will decorate it with lanterns once I import all the final files together for the finishing touches:

Lanterns (for the environment)

Here are the lanterns which will decorate the village Xiao Xiao lives in, representing fun time for children.

I initially put down on the schedule to model 4....this gradually became 8, but then when I was deciding the colours and looking at my references, the final amount became 22:

With no light/glow:

With light/glow:


All the Lanterns together:

Orphanage Interior Finished

The interior is now completed now also, therefore, the Orphanage is completely done now.
Screencaps:



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Xiao Xiao put into scene:

Orphanage Exterior Finished

Here is the finished orphanage exterior only...still have the interior to do of which I had nearly forgotten about at one point.....


思嘉 建立的。。。

Main Butterfly Lantern - Finished

This had taken me a bit longer than I had planned to, but nevertheless, the Main Butterfly Lantern is now fully modelled, textured, rigged and weight, all ready for animation:

This alpha mapping was wrist hurting (!)...=__=''

The rig for the lantern, this was relatively simple to weight and there were not any trouble at all: