Jess' Moon Smile Diary

SUMMATIVE HAND IN

2008-06-13T20:20:00.003+01:00

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

bye byee

3rd Year Summary

2008-06-13T03:32:00.005+01:00

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

2008-06-13T01:50:00.005+01:00

Music

2008-06-13T01:07:00.005+01:00

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

2008-06-12T19:07:00.003+01:00

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

2008-06-11T17:33:00.007+01:00

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

2008-06-11T15:06:00.007+01:00

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?

2008-06-11T14:21:00.006+01:00

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

2008-06-11T13:58:00.004+01:00

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

Initial Compositing

2008-06-10T14:17:00.003+01:00

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

2008-06-09T02:01:00.002+01:00

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*

-----------
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

2008-06-07T19:03:00.005+01:00

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

2008-05-31T13:58:00.005+01:00

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

2008-05-20T23:49:00.010+01:00

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....

2008-05-10T19:12:00.008+01:00

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

2008-05-07T01:30:00.007+01:00

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

2008-05-05T03:11:00.005+01:00

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

2008-05-03T00:10:00.009+01:00

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)

2008-05-02T23:51:00.013+01:00

2nd Bridge:

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

==================
UPDATE 08/05/08
Wall with 2 entrances:

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

And more mountains with slightly varied colours and roughness
====

Environment - Whats left to do

2008-04-30T02:33:00.003+01:00

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

Final arrangment of everything

Pavilion Finished

2008-04-27T23:21:00.003+01:00

another asset in the environment finally done, a pavillion:

Xiao Xiao to Sung-Jin & Aminata

2008-04-27T01:27:00.004+01:00

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

Finished Moon Cake

2008-04-24T21:03:00.004+01:00

here is the finished moon cake modelled and textured by me

Moon Cake Designs

2008-04-24T13:04:00.005+01:00

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.

=======
Update: Cleaned version of Final Moon Cake Design

Clouds

2008-04-23T22:46:00.009+01:00

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....

===========
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

2008-04-23T17:19:00.006+01:00

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

2008-04-20T03:34:00.006+01:00

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

2008-04-19T17:40:00.005+01:00

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

2008-04-19T17:23:00.004+01:00

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

2008-04-16T21:04:00.006+01:00

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

2008-04-14T23:08:00.003+01:00

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

2008-04-13T21:30:00.005+01:00

A simple, variation of the orphanage:

Orphanage Change

2008-04-11T17:03:00.009+01:00

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

2008-04-09T16:48:00.008+01:00

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

2008-04-09T16:09:00.003+01:00

Easter Break SUMMARY

2008-04-07T21:46:00.003+01:00

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

2008-04-07T14:38:00.007+01:00

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)

2008-04-04T19:20:00.011+01:00

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

2008-04-04T15:40:00.006+01:00

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

-------------
Xiao Xiao put into scene:

Orphanage Exterior Finished

2008-03-31T23:38:00.006+01:00

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

2008-03-28T15:34:00.009Z

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:

Sleeping Girls

2008-03-26T02:20:00.006Z

I received the models of the two sleeping girls from Sung-Jin, after changes were needed I got the final one of two today - 25th March.

Sung-Jin had sent the file without cleaning any of the history, outliner or layers so I cleaned it up instead and also made some minor alterations by removing a lot of unnecessary faces under the body, inside the neck, inside the hair and some edges on the face:

(model by Sung-Jin)

Now I am waiting for the blendshape to be done on the second sleeping girl character.

----------------------
Update:
Receieved the final 2nd sleeping girl model on 26th March 2008

Goddess - Really Finished this time

2008-03-22T22:55:00.005Z

Back down a few posts entitled "Goddess - FINISHED" on March 17th, 2008 I mentioned that I forgot to include finish deformers for Chang Er's hair decoration on the schedule.
Back then I had also forgot about adding deformers until I uploaded the screenshots for that post. So technically, Chang Er was not really finished.....
but now she is, she really is.

I had trouble controlling the jiggle deformer therefore I switched to using a Sine non-linear deformer and it made a really nice flowly effect but was not what I needed....
panicking that I would maybe have to get rid of the dangling beads, I ended up using infleunce objects to control it instead.
Which will mean I will have to animate the secondary animation myself. But it should be ok.

...pics to show that the beads can individually be positioned:

Lantern Design

2008-03-22T02:40:00.010Z

The main lantern design, which is the one Xiao Xiao will be receiving from Chang Er will heavily resemble the butterfly lantern which can be found in this post which is archived under Lanterns and Lights

As I have not set up the code for the link to open in a new window and if you do not want to come back and refresh this page, I will re-post a pic here to remind you:

As already explained during end of Term 1 Summative presentation, the reason the design is to be similar of a lantern I had when I was young is because of the personal connection it provides with possibly many other people around my age who had similar lanterns given to them during the Moon Festival when they were young, and also it differentiates well with the other decorative lanterns .

Here is the colour palette I will be using,
[colours extracted from my Butterfly Lantern photo from above]:

---------------------------------
I have used the same design, although I have made some minor minor changes. The biggest change is the patterns on the wings and the colours....
So...the final main lantern design will be as follows:

Okay, so here it is coloured in.
The decorative pattern of each is quite similar and there are no really major differences between them in terms of colour as the choice of colours was already settled anyway on the traditional red with the rest being taken from the palette above.

The final lantern will take on colour "7"

Xiao Xiao Rig

2008-03-22T01:40:00.007Z

Backdate: 17th March 2008

I forgot to update this on the night I finished since I have not been updating much,... went to bed straight away....
Here is my rig for Xiao Xiao:

Xiao Xiao FINISHED

2008-03-21T22:57:00.008Z

Yay!
Finally, Xiao Xiao is completely finished, all weighted properly ready for animation.

I feel that I have grown to become more comfortable with rigging and weighting than before.

At the beginning of Term 1 I absolutely dreaded weighting, but after weighting Chang Er I felt I had learnt a lot and had improved.

Therefore, when it came to weighting Xiao Xiao, I knew the procedures better and it has actually taken me less days to complete than Chang Er so I am glad about that and I actually enjoyed it. o_O

A few screen caps of Xiao Xiao:

Heart Attack

2008-03-21T21:48:00.004Z

Recovering from my brief heart attack not too long ago, I give progress on my Xiao Xiao rigging and weighting.

She is about nearly 95% done - yay ....huuuuu ^3^

All I need to do now is just finish off the little weighting on the eyes, teeth and tongue and that is it.

Ah...the heart attack, that came from the skin not allowing me to bind the eyes, teeth and tongue.

It kept saying that the skin needed to return to bind pose and Maya would not let me do so!! which did mean that I would have to re-weight again....*cries....*

But after closing Maya on-off for several times and trying the "Go To Bind Pose" for the hundredth time it worked!
Do not know why it stopped me in the first place and why it let me eventually, I still have no clue....but it works now and I am happy.

Easter Schedule - update 2#

2008-03-18T15:11:00.007Z

I have sent the above schedule to Sung-Jin also, along with three photos of the types of trees I want him to model and texture. As I have am already nearly finished with the Willow tree and am in progress with the Pine tree I need to let Sung-Jin know exactly what other assortment of trees that is needed.

The following are small caps of the three type of trees I had sent to him:

Xiao Xiao Rig & Weight Update

2008-03-18T14:22:00.008Z

on the 15th Sung-Jin sent me his most up-to-date file of Xiao Xiao's rig, however it is still no where near finish.

Sung-Jin said he has weighted the character, and has however constantly been running into all sorts of problems these past few months.
One minute it is the loss of my blendshapes, next it was the pony tail skin not following the rig and then next is the inner layer of the waist being a problem and that time is needed to fix it.......

I have taken a look at the rig and have found a lot of areas that have not even been weighted properly.

Therefore I am going to take over this task and I will rig her again from scratch and I will also weight it because it has been nearly 3 months as I sent the model to Sung-Jin in December 2007 and not much progress has been made on it since and we do not have anymore time to waste on it.
On top of that, during these 3 months, Sung-Jin has not produced any other work.

Goddess - FINISHED

2008-03-17T16:29:00.008Z

Finally finished weighting the Goddess...am so glad and relieved.

I had to start again twice, but luckily the last time, everything went more smoothly and I managed to get it done faster than the first time...... 0.O

Towards the end I had some trouble with the eyes as they were not following the locator and it kept flipping 180 degrees. It had binded well with the rig and I was not sure where the problem was.
Therefore, I had to break the connections and constraint everything again, and it worked fine =_=;;

Nevetheless, am glad it is done, although a few days behind schedule.....=___=....
I also forgot to put in the schedule the time I need to paint in the deformers for the Goddess' hair decorations.

Some screencaps:

Environment Object 1 - Main Bridge

2008-03-14T13:32:00.007Z

Screencaps of the finished model the main bridge:
off to UV Map and texture now

----------------------------
Update:
Bridge finished - textured:

Visual Reference/Research - Chinese Bridges

2008-03-11T21:58:00.006Z

Staying true to the Oriental and Chinese feel and structure of environmental props, I have looked at some visual research for bridges, the main point of contact between Xiao Xiao and Chang E, the bridge will possess the traditional ornamental decorations:

WEEK 9 (Term 2) SUMMARY

2008-03-09T23:45:00.004Z

Overall this term has been quite disappointing because we are very behind the schedule. The work intended to be completed over Christmas is not and not much work has been done this term. Although I understand and knew that the dissertation unit would take up most of this term's time, I feel we should have been able to have done more than what we have, and its hard when co-operation is not in fully working order....

--------
Anyway, the Easter schedule about 2 posts down summarises what has been completed up til now, so I won't repeat it here again. This week after handing in the dissertation I went back to the Goddess rig and altered the elbow so that it bends more naturally and have just been weighting.....not much to end the term really Will have to work harder over Easter and Term 3....aza aza!

Goddess Re-Rig - Elbow

2008-03-09T11:41:00.006Z

Despite already having spent a few hours on the weighting I decided to start from scratch again because I needed to change the rig and the topology of the elbow as its hideous at the moment.
-----------------------------

Update:
After weighting for 8 hours, there is some progress -___-, most of the body is done, but still need to do the skirt, the right elbow is done and it has turned out much much better....but the left is still being troublesome.....so off to continue weighting

Much better...yas?

*note* need to change that texture.........

Horrible Elbow

2008-03-09T11:35:00.008Z

This was the process of my weighting about two weeks ago, so this is a delayed post.
I am having trouble with the elbow....(+_+); and another thing I dislike about weighting is that the weights have been distributing itself all over the place when you move from finishing one joint to another.....tedious!

Schedule for Easter

2008-03-06T00:07:00.003Z

Now that the dissertation is finally over (huuuu.... ^~^) I can finally focus on just this film and get it moving again, here is the timetable I have created for what Sung-Jin and I have to do over Easter...

WEEK 7 & 8 (Term 2) SUMMARY

2008-03-05T23:52:00.004Z

Unfortunately have not had any time to focus on this unit for these past two weeks. Any work I have done in relation to the film unit is modifications on the Young Ginette model for Aminata.

I added a new skin texture and gave her eyelashes, apart from that have just been working on dissertation :(

Please refer to this blog http://jess-milimelodiary.blogspot.com/ for full details and progress of this character for Aminata's film

WEEk 6 (Term 2) SUMMARY

2008-02-18T00:02:00.004Z

Not been very productive this week as already planned from last week as I am catching up with my Dissertation.....never again do I want to write so many words.....I am running out of constructive things to write... :(
Hope to get a nice amount of words written so I can go back to doing some work for this unit for the coming Week 7

Other than that, I have just done some research to help me build up the trees

------
P.S I have still not received the little girl completely finished with rigging and weighting yet from Sung-Jin...its been nearly 3 months now and I am getting worried as there is still a list of a hundred things to do...(matter of speech...or at least I hope there really isn't a hundred things left to do o_O)

More Trees & Colours

2008-02-16T18:28:00.007Z

I came across a lovely MV by BoA today (the song itself is not anything special tho :p) however, the colours and the trees I found particularly useful as reference so I took two screencaps.

As I am looking into using plum flower trees, I am excited to be able to use a lot of lovely pinks immersed within the green foliage.

Pink colour palettes to come soon

Oh, also, I came across this photo of a willow covered in blossom...really pretty!
The photo was taken by Andy Curshen, but unfortunately I do not remember the URL it was from....><
This is such a refreshing scene...I do not think I have seen a pinkish-white willow tree before. After seeing this photo, I am definately going to do something similar :D .... will make the environment more vivid instead of all different shades of green, don't you think?

Chinese New Year Blossom 桃花

2008-02-14T17:09:00.008Z

It was CNY a few days ago, and houses normally decorate with blooming flowers and one of the more popular plants are plum blossom willow or plum blossom (although I am not actually sure what the correct term is in English)

I used this opportunity to take a few photos of the still blooming plant at home. Obviously, it is no where near as pretty as the massive bunches you could probably find pictures of on the internet as we do not have the luxury over here in London to buy the massively big trees of this blossom willow.

Anyway, being able to take close-ups will help with the colour and texturing. Although, The Moon Festival and New Year are totally different celebrations, the Chinese find these flowers to be most auspicous, so it will still qualify for use ^^ in the environment.....
enough rambling, here are the few photos (please excuse quality :p)

Branch texture

How the flowers "sit" on the branches and bloom

Flower Close-ups

Updated Group Schedule

2008-02-11T01:27:00.001Z

Right, I am still waiting for Sung-Jin to complete the tasks he had been given over Christmas 2007....after that he still needs to work on rendering tests etc....

WEEK 5 (Term 2) SUMMARY

2008-02-11T00:52:00.001Z

This week I managed to complete the following tasks:

- Finished Blendshapes for Chang E Goddess (so Chang E is completely done - model/texture wise)
- Fully rigged Chang E including controls etc
- Started weighting.....(still in progress......long long story)
- Modelled two trees and UV mapped them (will post images up soon)

production of work is getting better, but since I did not make any progress on my dissertation, the amount of work I did for this unit is rather disappointing, not very happy with myself about that. Will be focusing most of WEEK 6 on the dissertation because I am very behind with that, have not touched it since formative submission and so really need to make a move on it.

I am still waiting for Xiao Xiao to be weighted by Sung-Jin....
_____
Other Issues:

I have been having major issues starting my computer up and I am getting very annoyed and worried because I basically can't do any work at home.

I spent ALL of today taking it apart and reassembling the components and luckily at 11pm ~ish it decided to load, but I only have the computer running on 1GB of RAM (>~<);;....not good.... plus it is not stable, if I switch it off the probability of it not booting back up is 50/50 so I'm not risking it and will have to leave the computer on Stand By or something for the remaining weeks till the Dissertation has been handed in.....(I hope the computer doesn't explode by then o~O)

I had bought new RAM but the computer is not detecting it, so I am guessing there is either something wrong with the Motherboard or there is something wrong with the power circuit......tears.....

Trees - Weeping Willow & Others

2008-02-09T17:15:00.000Z

The Pine Tree and Willow Tree (Weeping Willow) are commonly found in Chinese Landscape paintings. I will be using a combination of these, however, using the Willow tree more heavily as it is seen as an ornamental tree.
The Willow Tree, gracefull and a symbol of spring and the Pine tree symbolises long life and is a favourite of landscape painters.

The photo below I found off another blog (I'm afraid I do not remember the URL now.....) but it is a photo of a Garden found in the Forbidden City, Beijing, China.
I love how the Willow Trees engulf nearly the whole area and the atmopshere it creates, hopefully by using mostly Willow Trees by the bridges of the film I can recreate a similar feel:

This is a photo I took at Greenwich Park. I'm not entirely sure what type of tree this is, but its shape resembles a Pine Tree, therefore, it's shape is quite good reference.

This is a scan I made from a Chinese newspaper. I like the style of the stylised plum flowers and I am planning on creating something similar for the environment.
This was part of a Chinese New Year greeting, and the Chinese culture uses similar colours throughout most of the major festivals, including the Moon Festival. Therefore, I will be using the same colour palette of reds and golds:

Goddess Further Progress 01 - Rigging

2008-02-09T02:59:00.001Z

After the blendshapes were done, I went onto Rigging the Goddess model. Normally (and especially from CVA Yr 2 experience) my rigging is not particularly brilliant. However, I have learnt a lot more and managed to get the proxy model rigged and moving okay (~ish) for the animatic..huhu (◎≧▽≦◎) big improvement from last year when the model was barely moving after skinning!!

anyway, the rig is done and I have tested it and so far it seems okay, just need to alter the weights and influences in some parts... I have kept the rig quite basic, enough for the animation needed (I made notes during the process of the animatic)
I did not use an IK Spline for the Goddess' back, I kept everything FK instead because during animating the Goddess for the animatic, I felt this worked best for me.
However, I did use IK Splines for the Goddess' Shawl to create more realistic movement and make it easier to animatic it flowing.

Goddess Progress - Blendshapes & finished

2008-02-06T00:33:00.002Z

The Goddess is now completely done, all ready for rigging and weighting.

The blendshapes are finished and here are a few examples:

A rather "scarwieee" Goddess....I highly doubt this type of expression will be used, but I created the blendshapes just in case we need it for anything during animation.

...a bit scary with the big eyes...

WEEK 4 (Term 2) SUMMARY

2008-02-04T16:44:00.001Z

This week I managed to do:

- Fully modelled the Chang E Goddess
- UV Mapped the Chang E model
- Fully finish texturing the Chang E model - including alpha masks etc

________________

For the coming week, I hope to:
- Finish blendshapes for Chang E
- Start modelling props for the environment

Updated February Schedule

2008-02-04T16:38:00.002Z

We are quite behind but hopefully we should be able to catch up over the Easter

Personal Schedule:

Group Schedule:

Chang E Goddess Progress - Textured

2008-02-04T16:32:00.001Z

Finished this late last night, the UV Mapping took forever to do (bit exaggerated....a matter of speech, but it did feel like it!)
Unwrapping all those uvs for the beads and hair decor was quite painful....but nevertheless it was done and the texturing went quite quickly until I did the alpha masking for the lace....that took a while as well.....

Here is Chang E fully textured now, happy for it to be completed :)

Now onto the Blendshapes!! aza aza (to me and Sung-Jin!! ^^)

Chang E Goddess Progress - Finished Modelling

2008-02-04T16:27:00.002Z

Finished the model during mid-week, the hair decorations took a bit longer than I had planned as it was a bit tedious moving all the beads around.

Here is a turnaround of the finished model, poly count is quite high, but it didnt take longer than 10 mins to render so, hopefully it should be okay:

All I have to do now is UV Map it....aza...aza... =__=;;

WEEK 3 (Term 2) SUMMARY

2008-01-28T13:40:00.002Z

Because of the prioritising of the Dissertation, not as much is being done for this unit.
Neverthless, here is a list of the work done this week:

- Goddess Shawl is fully modelled, textured, rigged and weighted - all ready for animation
- Goddess body and hair is fully modelled including all skirt and collar detail
Just missing the hair decorations
- Research for stylised Chinese clouds

Hopefully for next week, the following tasks can be completed:

- Hair decorations fully completed
- UV Map Goddess Model
- Start finalising main lantern design

Chinese Clouds

2008-01-25T21:06:00.000Z

Clouds are often an important element in Chinese landscape painting or traditional Chinese auspicious decorations etc. Clouds symbolise good fortune and happiness, reflecting nature. Clouds are often found scattered or merged around the mountains where the the Dragon and Phoenix may soar past, or they are in endless cycles forming a pattern, always constantly changing in form.

The clouds which will be one of the main elements in the opening and ending scenes were initially planned to be drawn in 2D and projected on a plane. However, after speaking to Mike Smith last week, Mike suggested to illuminate the night sky a bit more so the clouds will most likely be in 3D now so we can play around with highlights.

Here is some quite overdue visual research for the clouds.
Like the clouds I had drawn for the animatic (image included for recap below), they are stylised and in an easily recognisable Chinese style to maintain the whole Oriental atmosphere.

Clouds I drew for Animatic (re-cap):

Traditional Chinese Cloud motifs:
These are scans I made from a Chinese Auspicious Pattern book I own, which I will draw influence heavily from

Newspaper Cut out:
I found this in a Chinese newspaper, it was part of a larger painting but I only cut out the clouds...>_<>

Mulan Screencaps:

Goddess Progress 03 - The Shawl/Scarf

2008-01-25T20:37:00.001Z

The shawl/scarf is now fully modelled, its size should be ok for now, but that is something that can be changed easily when everything is imported into the final scenes. The shawl is going to appear as a light and "flowly" object wrapped gently around the Goddess. But unlike real cloth material, it is not going to drape onto the Goddess' shoulder and fall to the ground otherwise, again it loses the whole "Goddess-y aura".

I have also been playing around with the texturing and especially transparency levels.

----------------------------------
Update
I have finished rigging and weighting the Shawl so it is now fully ready for animation and use.

Goddess Progress 002

2008-01-25T20:28:00.002Z

After fixing the hands, I made a considerable amount of progress compared to last week.
The outer collar is now finished.
The hair is finished also and I am now just adding the decorative ornaments which will take some time as there is so much of it and there is a load of beads to put into place.
I have considered replacing them with textures to reduce the poly count and rendering time, but the effect will look too flat, so I will risk it and go ahead with the full detail otherwise the whole traditional Chinese Goddess "feel" will just be lacking something...(will have to arrange more time for rendering!)

WEEK 2 (Term 2) SUMMARY

2008-01-20T00:01:00.004Z

Have not been very productive because of the dissertation research.
I have just been continuing with the Goddess Model and re-updated my personal schedule.
Have managed to model the ear and sort out all those funny faces on the hand (which was an extrememly tedious process and I still do not know what caused it) and just tweak areas in general adding bit of detail where needed:

------------------------------------------------------

Updated Personal Schedule

2008-01-18T13:31:00.002Z

It has actually been quite difficult to split the day into two and half work on production and half on the dissertation because I feel I am not totally connected to the unit and need to stop half way through. Also, I do not (personally) find that its a productive way to organise my time. I think I will need to allocate a lot more days to my dissertation because at the moment I have spent a lot of days on research and still need to start some solid writing...

WEEK 1 (Term 2) SUMMARY

2008-01-14T02:29:00.001Z

First week back after christmas and it has not been very production unfortunately as a group..... I have re-schedule the group and personal production timetable and have managed to model about 55% of the Chang E Goddess model.

I have also altered all the errors I have found with the Xiao Xiao model after sending it off, and have re-sent the latest updated and (fingers crossed) hopefully last version of the Xiao Xiao model to Sung-Jin.
Hmm, Sung-Jin has not shown much progress with the tasks he had been set, so hopefully he will get back on track and follow the timetable without me having to constantly ask him to show me updates or at least let me know what he is up to.....or if he is even doing any work....>_< hopefully this will improve because if this situation continues, I am worried we will run into serious trouble with the little time we have left and with the quality of the work we produce.

Goddess Trouble

2008-01-14T02:26:00.001Z

I have NO idea why this happens, but sometimes it is like the surface has decided to divide itself and become two different "islands". When you either smooth or soften the object is when this problem becomes visible. There is this invisible line that clearly differentiates for example here the hand from the rest of the body. All the faces of the hand are one shade of grey and on the other side of this dividing line, the faces are another shade of grey...... why?!?!? @_______@ not only is this annoying it wastes a lot of precious time having to go over and try fix it

Goddess Progress 001 - Pleats

2008-01-13T01:40:00.002Z

Progressing steadily these two days, this is how Goddess Chang E is looking like at the moment:

Which pleating is a better choice?
hmmm, I was experimenting with how I could make the pleating appear more "elegant", so that it helps add to the whole Goddess-flowly-elegance feel (please excuse my use of description, I could not think of a better one at the moment >__<). The choice of pleating was made because I wanted the long skirt to appear more delicate and flare out gently at the end....I think pleating 1 accomplishes this?

Pleating 1:

Pleating 2:

Yep, I think I will stick with pleating 1 as it makes the skirt flow outwards better :) .... (I think)

Term 2 Production Schedule Update

2008-01-12T16:56:00.002Z

The production Schedule for Term 2 has been updated as I forgot to include the modelling/texturing and rigging of the sleeping characters, and I have also re-arranged some of the time allocation for certain tasks:

This term needs to be organised very clearly and time needs to be used extremely efficiently in order to complete both units, so here is my personal schedule for Janaury which will most likely not change:

Personal Schedule for Feb & March, Term 2. These will most likely change over the course of the Term, but it gives me an idea of how many days I need to put aside for the Dissertation as we have much less time than it seems...March is not too far away!

argh Maya!

2008-01-10T17:28:00.000Z

Maya!! argh!!

for some unknown reason, each time I re-load the exact same final Xiao Xiao Maya file, Xiao Xiao appears different. One minute she is all shiny, or she becomes matt where she is not supposed to be, or part of her hair will be transparent. Just when I am frustrated with not knowing why all this is happening the file loads normally!!

what?! why?!

ergh....I am still unsure of the reason, I have checked the Outliner and Hypershade and there are no unwanted assigned materials etc, all clean and tidy and everything is fine.

pleeeaaase do not let this happen when we come to rendering..................T______T

Christmas Break SUMMARY

2008-01-09T22:56:00.001Z

Although am extremely behind the schedule I had set at the end of Term 1.....these are the following tasks I managed to complete over the course of Christmas:

* Further Xiao Xiao character design development/finalised - including colour/texture samples
* Xiao Xiao Model Sheet
* Fully Modelled Xiao Xiao (Little Girl) - including inner mouth/teeth/tongue
* Fully textured Xiao Xiao
* Blendshapes for Xiao Xiao

* Further Music research

* Further Goddess character design develpment/finalised - including colour/texture samples
* Goddess Model Sheet

* Fully Modelled young woman for Aminata's production - including inner mouth/teeth/tongue
* Fully textured young woman

Will really need to work efficiently during Term 2

Xiao Xiao Tweaks

2008-01-09T17:59:00.001Z

After sending off the finished model to Sung-Jin to start the rigging/weighting, I re-inspected the model just to double check and be safe to make sure everything was ok. Unfortunately, I found a few flaws around the eyes, hand and hair which I had to tweak:

Unevenness on thumb
The reason for the uneveness was my arrangment of quads...I had initially arranged it in a "patch" so that it will help stretch and bend appropriately when animating.

Resolved

Hair Pinching on Back of Head
I do not understand why there was pinching occuring...and it was not visible when texture was applied, it was during my second round of inspection when I saw it >__<

Resolved

Term 2 Production Schedule

2008-01-09T01:00:00.001Z

Hopefully tasks can be completed according to this schedule whilst juggling the Disssertation at the same time...

Chang E (Goddess) Final Model Sheet

2008-01-07T16:57:00.000Z

Chang Er further colours & changes

2008-01-07T02:54:00.000Z

I made further amendments to the Goddess' clothing design.
This is mainly because the design of the original belt design - although more ornamental and follows more accurately existing Chinese Goddess fashion - it will increase heavily the poly count.
As I have already increased the poly count due to the hair decoration, I had to balance it out. Using textures will not create the effect I want/need as beads and fabric gathering will look too flat.
I am satisfied with the finished outcome as the decoration is not too crowding.

Looking back at the original colours I had used, I felt it did not create as "fresh" a feel as I intended, therefore, further looked at experimenting with further possible colour combinations as seen:

At the moment, I think it is a choice between colour 4 and colour 10.....or...I may do a few more sampling :D

____________
16:54 update:

Three more colours....colour 13 which is basically a development of the original colours will be the final.

Chang Er Further Development

2008-01-05T15:01:00.002Z

Slight changes were made from the original design, the face shape, the eyes and most importantly the hair design and use of ornaments. I felt the original did not have an elegant enough hair design, and this is an important feature for Chinese Goddesses. Another area I am still deciding on is the eyebrow shape.....I think shape two (on the right) may be a better option

* Texturing Contribution for Ginette's Milemelo *

2008-01-01T14:16:00.001Z

Young Ginette Character fully modelled and textured:

All ready to be sent off to Aminata.

* Modelling Contribution for Ginette's Milemelo *

2007-12-29T13:29:00.002Z

After sending off the finished Xiao Xiao (little girl) model to Sung-Jin, I started to model a young lady for Aminata's production - Ginette's Milimelo.

I have been given roughly about 12,000 polys to work with when the model is smoothed

I have included the following movie file of the finished model but to see its individual progress I have designated another blog because it helps me maintain the progress of the modelling work for both my Moon's Smile project and Aminata's and making it more clear and easier (hopefully) for the tutors when it comes to marking :)

Please see http://jess-milimelodiary.blogspot.com/

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

More Music

2007-12-27T02:23:00.002Z

The tracks previously selected to be used in Animatic I think fits quite nicely.
But just in case there is something out there which can be even more suitable I have done some further hunting for more music so we have greater resources to experiment with.
Again, I have cropped them into short samples to provide a "feel" of them:

Little Girl - Progess 004 - Blendshapes & FINISH

2007-12-24T01:41:00.001Z

a few weeks late.......but yay, finally finished the little girl model.
The blendshapes set me back a bit because Maya was being funny and would not let me create the blendshape after I had sculpt the target shape (?!) and so irritatingly I had to re-model a few of them.
The model is fully finished and cleaned now, and I have just sent it off to Sung-Jin so he can start rigging and weighting.

a few examples:

_________
Xiao Xiao does have a set of teeth and a tongue incase the pictures looks misleading >__<:

Little Girl - Progress 003 - Texturing

2007-12-18T22:55:00.001Z

Here is the final character textured, ready to have blendshapes done before being sent off to Sung-Jin to rig and weight

Updated Christmas Schedule

2007-12-16T19:28:00.000Z

A lot of things are not going to plan...>___< I have updated the Schedule and hopefully, tasks can be completed on time or even better if before the set internal deadline

Little Girl - Progress 002 - Finished Modelling - still need to UV map though!!

2007-12-13T02:16:00.001Z

A week late but nevertheless, the Xiao Xiao model is finished....BUT, a big but...I still need to UV map it and texture and I just remembered...the blendshapes as well.....oh dear

I have sent off this model to Sung-Jin so he can use it as a base for the other sleeping characters that will be in the orphanage, (hopefully) making it more time efficient, Sung-Jin can just tweak this model and make them lie there and sleep ^___^

Little girl Modelling Progress - Inner Mouth & Eye Details

2007-12-12T13:48:00.001Z

The progression of modelling is going quite well, here are some close-up of the eye I have modelled and the inner mouth detail - teeth, gums and tongue:

- Eyes:
I wanted more depth to the pupil's of the eye, also I created an extra sphere which acts as the Cornea to give that glossy-ness and reflective factor to the eye no matter which direction it is looking in

- Inner Mouth:

Little Girl - Progess 001 - Modelling

2007-12-08T01:26:00.001Z

Have made a start with the modelling.......
The ear was causing trouble today, some dodgy faces were appearing which meant I had to remodel it....the same thing had happened for a CVA Yr2 model so luckily I spotted it and I modified before continuation.

Xiao Xiao Model Sheet

2007-12-05T00:06:00.000Z

High or Low?

2007-12-04T13:41:00.000Z

I favour the "high pony" version, makes her look younger and more "cute" and innocent...shall ask Sung-Jin what he thinks...so I can finish off the model sheets and start modelling!

Re-development of Final Xiao Xiao Design

2007-12-04T12:45:00.001Z

Whilst drawing up the model sheet for Xiao Xiao to start the modelling (which is already 2 days behind according to the Christmas schedule!) I had further changes I wanted to make again.
Not only do the frills now appeal to me as not as attractive as I found them before, the whole button down the front seems too commonly known and related to "kung-fu", there are other traditional Chinese styles I wanted to try change this to.
Also, the face shape was bugging me a bit as well, her jaw seemed too square...
and there was the problem with her pigtails being too low down, since her head is bigger than her body, it will get in the way when she tilts her head or rests her hand on the hands....may be better for it to be out the way......

Final Storyline (to date)

2007-12-04T12:36:00.000Z

The Moon’s Smile

Camera focused on the full moon in the night sky

Camera pans down revealing a sleeping, small and cosy village, the whole village decorated with festive spirit.

Each house is decorated with lanterns but one, the darkest, dullest and excluded from the village - the orphanage.

The camera tracks and gently zooms in on this house, passing through the village whilst, a little girl opens her window.

Camera dissolves to a mid-shot of a little orphan girl perched gazing longingly out of the window to the streets sighing, not a sign of a smile anywhere.

From behind her, other orphans are fast asleep in the room, with not a care in the world.

The camera cuts to a close-up of the little girl before cutting to a behind the shoulder shot.

The little girl observes the scenery, longing, desiring to have taken part of the celebration.

Focus changes from the girl to the sky and background.

The Moon shakes and suddenly falls straight down behind the bridge, catching the little girl’s attention.

The lanterns in the village become even more vivid.

Camera cuts to outside of the window.

Intrigued, the little girl peeks over the window. Gasping, the little girl spotted something!

Scrambling out the room, scene fades to little making her way across to the bridge.

The camera cuts to a behind-shoulder shot

Getting closer to the steps of the bridge, a glow emitted from behind can be seen.

Camera cuts to the steps of the bridge.

Little girl comes up the stairs to towards the glow, shading her eyes with her hand

Camera cuts to behind the shoulder shot

The glow dies down revealing a smiling and welcoming Moon Goddess,

Camera zooms in gently framing the Goddess’ face in a close-up

Camera cuts to a mid-shot of the little girl

Mesmerized, the little girl’s gaze takes in the Goddess and she cannot take her gaze away from the lantern held in the goddess’ hand

Camera cuts to a close up of the lantern

In the hand of the Goddess is an extraordinary decorated and beautiful lantern, shining ever so brightly. Much prettier than any of the lanterns this little girl has seen before.

Camera cuts to the Goddess smiling

Camera cuts to a wide shot with both characters in frame from the side

As if she knew what the little girl was thinking, the Goddess kindly offers the lantern to her.

The little girl shuffles closer to the Goddess, and stalls. With a nod, the Goddess encourages the little girl to take the lantern. The little girl reaches for the lantern

Camera cuts to a mid-shot of the little girl

Looking up at the Goddess, she smiles gratefully

Camera cuts to mid-shot of Goddess

Goddess holds out her hand emitting a glow of light, smiling

Camera cuts back to mid-shot of little girl

Lantern shakes and rattles slightly, startled the little girl jumps back holding the lantern away from her. But then, specks of lights and glows emit from the lantern.

The little girl starts smiling again, giggling. Holding out her hand, she tries to grab the specks of light, which all eventually fade.

Turning around disappointed to the Goddess

Cut to behind the shoulder of the little girl

The Goddess holds out her hand, light specks gather to present a Moon Cake on the palm of her hand. Offering this to the little girl

Cut to little girl

Little girl takes it. Holding it up, she inspects in.

Cut to a close up of hand and moon cake against the sky above

The egg yolk within dissolves to become the real moon in the sky. (The Moon Goddess has been transitioned back up into the sky)

Cut to little girl

Startled, little girl looks around for the Moon Goddess. Disappointed she is not there, she looks up at the moon back n the sky. Dissolve into next shot

Shot of the Moon, dissolving as the camera panning down

Back view of little girl on the bridge by herself, wide shot

Camera cuts to front view of little girl gazing sadly at the lantern in her hand

The focus changes from the little girl to the orphanage in the background.

Slowly it is being lit up by lanterns.

Little girl, turns around to inspect.

Camera cut to behind the shoulder shot,

Slowly the little girl’s smile returns to her.

She realises what she had desired for she had been granted even though it was just this one moment.

Using a happier walk cycle, she makes her way back to the house - her “home” which is not excluded anymore from the village.

As she walks back, the camera pulls out.

Panning through the village and the mountains to the sky, the camera focuses on the full moon again.

End

Last Week of Term 1, WEEK 9 (SUMMARY)

2007-11-30T22:55:00.000Z

This week, in fact, this term has zoomed by so fast its unbelievable. It does not feel like we have been at college for 9 weeks and we are already on break now for Christmas.

The last week has been quite a blur.
I managed to make to make the changes to the animatic in 1 1/2 days for wednesday,
Finalised the Goddess design
Corrected all the referencing for the essays (instead of the footnotes I used instead)