Getting back into the groove!

After a recent browse of my University blog, I figured that it was looking a little dusty. Perhaps it is time to start getting back into the swing of things--do a bit of spring cleaning and use this as a place to upload my post-University CG work.

Let us kick off with some architectural work that I have been doing in my spare time.
This was some practise modelling to help me get back into CG after a long hiatus.

Final Animation --- New Designers 2014

Experiment IX: Year 3 Final Submission

Making of and Technical Document Experiment IX by tfarrington20119836

Fat Cat Interview Scene

This scene will be playing during the scene where a troop of soldiers jogs past the broken shop window filled with television screens. I'll have to find a way to stick it to one of the screens... maybe with tracking.

More lighting renders!

Since Alan told me about rim-lighting, I thought it might be a good idea to include some of them in my renders since then and, to tell you the truth, they've turned out much better than I anticipated!

These images appear brighter than they really are, however. I'm not exactly sure why.

Scene Lighting

Been hard at work trying to light all of these scenes! Here's some of my favourites so far.

Riot Playblast Scene

Alan enlightened me yesterday on how I can use referencing to 'import' large numbers of character rigs without, in a way, actually importing them. I used that technique for the large numbers of civilians after animating 5 separate rigs. I then imported those five different animated civilians into one scene, moved them about into a small group, saved it, then referenced multiple copies of that small group into the scene. Because of the large number of rigs in this scene alone which all ready makes the whole scene's FPS drop like a comet, this playblast won't include playblast lighting or textures.

Podium Playblast Scene

I cannot thank Alan enough for showing me how to clean up my files to lower their size. There was so much stuff cluttering my scenes--no wonder they took so long to save and load up. "Optimize Scene Size" does wonders... and so does saving them in Binary instead of ACSII! Looks like I was pretty much doing everything wrong. Anyway, here's my first playblast since optimization.

Scenes yet to be completed

I'm going to make a note here to refer to when I'm wondering how many scenes I have left to do. I'll edit this post to cross them off after completing them.

Listing them in order of appearence...

1: Helicopter Scene (1 shot)

2: Riot Scene (2 shots)

3: Console Scene (1 shot)

4: Shop Window Scene (2 shots)

5: Cloning Facility Scene (2 shots)

6: "Who am I?" Scene (2 shots)

7: Poster Scene (1 shot)

8: "You're an experiment..." Scene (1 shot)

9: "So much injustice..." Scene (1 shot)

10a: "-The Moulenovf Inititive!" Logo Scene (1st shot)

10b: "-The Moulenofv Inititive!" Issac Scene (2st shot)

11: "How can I help?" Scene (1 shot)

12: Costume Reveal Scene (1 shot)

13: "Let's see what you can do..." Scene (1 shot)

14: Alleyway Scene (6 shots)

15: Basejumping Scene (3 shots)

16: Rooftop Parkour Scene (2 shots)

17: Corridoor Scene (2 shots)

18: "I want her found..." Scene (1 shot)

19: Holographic Display Scene (2 shots)

20: Energyball Volley Scene (1 shot)

21: Podium Scene (2 shots)

22: Sai Summoning Scene (1 shot)

23: Building Explosion Scene (1 shot)

24: Rooftop Firefight Scene (1 shot)

25: Jump-punching Kat Scene (1 shot)

26: Window Shatter Scene (1 shot)

Shop Window Playblast Scene

"There's so much injustice-..." Playblast Scene

Argh, that's the last time I try to include textures and lighting in a scene with multiple character rigs. I had to wait an hour for this thing just to playblast.

Bullet Playblast Scene

I felt that just the single firing squad of soldiers didn't seem too dynamic and interesting in the animatic, so I livened it up a bit with some dynamic-looking slow-motion and bullet-time effects.

Hologram Display Playblast Scene

"You're an Experiment..." Playblast Scene

So since my previous playblast was so short and easy to animate, I figured I'd make up for it with a more complex scene.

"You're an experiment... a clone.."

*DRAMATIC PAUSE*

*EASTENDERS THEME*

Costume Reveal Playblast Scene

I'm really pleased with how the capsule lighting turned out in this one.

Console Playblast Scene

I just realized that I'm embedding so many videos from YouTube onto my blog that it's straining my PC just to load up the front page. Argh!

Window Shatter Playblast Scene

Helicopter Playblast Scene

All this time animating and I hadn't even animated the very first scene of the animation itself. Oh, the irony.

Poster Playblast Scene

"Who am I?" Playblast Scene

 "Who am I?"

"...Yer a wizard, Harry..."

Cloning Facility Playblast Scene

What's it called again? I missed it the first time.

I don't know...Something about moles?

"Let's see what you can do..." Playblast Scene

Sai-Summon Playblast Scene

 Since I've essentially run into a brick wall with any scenes involving crowds and large numbers of characters, here's a simpler scene.

I've also decided I'd try to give my playblasts a little something extra -- implimenting some draft lighting.

Need help creating crowds

I've been trying to animate the podium scene in which there are legions of soldiers marching past the camera. The problem is if i try to import multiple marching soldier rigs, Maya ultimately freezes up from the sheer amount of memory needed to process them all, so I need to know how to create an animated crowd marching in unison. I remember there being a tutorial on the CG arts tutorial blog, but I can't find it any longer.

"How Can I Help?" Playblasted Scene

Much like the rest of the scenes, I plan to add in the particle/fluid effects later.

"Even if-" there is more to do here is another playblast!

)

In the original animatic, he says "-and she will sit at my side..." I decided to change the script a little and asked for Fat Cat's voice actor to record some new lines for me.

The playblasts, cap'n! She cannae take much more! (Jump-punch scene)

)

And so the Lord said: "Let there be playblasts!": Energy-Blast Volley Scene

By jove! Yet more playblasts! : Alleyway Scene

So I don't exactly have Premiere Pro at home, thankfully I just found out that YouTube has a built-in video clip editor that lets me string together multiple camera shots!

Even MORE animation playblasts: Corridoor Scene

More animation playblasts: Basejumping Scene

Touchstone Presentation

Thomas Farrington 2014 Minor Project Submission

The Art of Experiment IX by ThomasFarrington

HTTP://TFARRINGTON.BLOGSPOT.CO.UK

Art of Experiment IX by tfarrington20119836

ADDITIONAL PROGRESS

MISSION STATEMENT

PROJECT ORIGINS

The origins of this project lie within a project completed in the second year of my course entitled 'Character'. The aim of said project was to create a series of three unique characters with the roles of a villain, a sidekick or a henchman and a hero. The three characters were also to be themed around a predetermined pair of media genres, ie: 'Viking' and 'Space Opera' or 'Horror' and 'Medieval'. I recieved the pairing of 'Anthropomorphic' and 'Superhero'. After creating my three characters, 

I gained more interest in the universe that they might inhabit. I began imagining a storyline for them, the various origin stories for each individual character and whether this would translate well into a movie or an animated, Saturday morning television show. I became more and more excited to elaborate upon my project, resulting in my motivation to do a year-long project, for my third year, creating a short 3D animated trailer piece as a 'preview' for an upcoming conceptual movie involving my characters.

PROJECT AIMS

The aim of this project is to create a fully-fledged animated trailer for a conceptual movie involving the three character I had created back in my year two 'Character' project. My additional aims are:

- To use well-recognised and popular conventions seen in many other hollywood blockbuster trailers in order to create authenticity as well as establish an easily understandable origin story for my hero character and a recognizable overarching plot.

- To effectively translate my characters from a 2D medium to a 3D medium.

- To create believable environments in which my characters will inhabit as well as finishing these environments to a high quality.

 - To utilize online resources and the help given on the course for aid and reference.

- And finally: To manage my time effectively when taking on the large amount of work needed to complete this project.

TIME MANAGEMENT

27th January - 2nd February

Begin modelling environments

(COMPLETED)

3rd February- 9th February

Layout the UVs for environments

(COMPLETED)

10th February - 16th February

Begin texturing environments

(COMPLETED)

17th February - 23rd February

Additional time reserved for environments.

(COMPLETED)

24th February - 9th March

Light environments

(WORK IN PROGRESS)

  

 10th March - 6th April

Animating characters while creating additional props as needed.

(WORK IN PROGRESS)

 7th April - 13th April

Adding special effects: Utilize online and course resources as well as gain insight from course tutors.

14th April - 21st April

Reserve additional time for any technical issues that may occur. Begin rendering if no difficulties occur.

 22nd April - 30th April

 Begin rendering sequences.

30th April - 1nd May

Begin editing clips together.

Progress update!

I haven't been posting a much as I should be recently and I, unfortunately, realize that. This is mostly due to the fact that I've been extremely busy trying to finish up all the texture work for the sets; lots of extra bump and specular maps as well as the textures themselves! All of the texture work is finished now, thankfully. Now I've moved on to lighting, to which I've gone ahead and done some test lighting for some of the scenes. unfortunately, some of these scenes are taking a lot longer to render than anticipated and I'm not sure why. I shall have to consult Alan for his expertise.

I've also begun animating, too! I'm sorry, I couldn't resist..

Animating is just too much fun.

Building Shatter Scene

Scene from Animatic:

 Recreated in 3D:

 I also took the oppertunity to experiment with Skydomes and matte paintings as first highlighted back in the "Uncanny Valley" project in year 1 (or 2, I think). Here's some behind-the-scenes screenshots.

Alley Scene: Textures & Experimental Lighting

UVs Finished!

After two weeks of constant, m onotonous staring at the UV Layout Editor, I've finally managed to finish up UVing all of the assets in my sets. Granted, many of which were duplicate models repeated over and over like one might see in my cityscape backdrop, but I had the added effort of deleting any duplicates, UV-mapping the single models and re-duplicating each asset. This did give me a chance, however, to rethink my sets and give them some minor layout tweaks post-UVing.

Here are some samples of the finished UVs--posting all of the UV images here would be bordering on the realm of insanity; there's at least a hundred separate UVs.