calling the shots

We've started animating! The first shot, out of a total of eighteen, is complete and the second is well underway. We'd love to post the results but it's now getting to the point where it will spoil the movies if you see what we are doing. No doubt we'll come back and post some of these shots at the 'pre-shading' stage we are now at, but only once the films have been finished and screened. Today has been spent scrutinising the movements of capercaillie and robins on live footage to make sure ours have their distinct mannerisms, as well as their own unique character. It feels good to see things starting to come alive.

now we are moving

Not before time, we have breathed life into our creation. Here is a clip from the first motion test for the About Here everyperson. The rig and the skinning are working well and we now have some shots to animate! We can also run a full test on the correct movie format (3gp) for the first time and get an idea of the quality we can expect from the file sizes we are aiming for.

not life size

We have everything (characters, props, scenery) built in 3D now for both About Here films. We’ve set up our sets and camera positions and have rendered out some mobile-sized stills. Here are our feathered friends from the first shot of each film, at their final size. No lighting or textures yet, so these are just very roughly coloured and quickly rendered, but we’re pleased by how much detail can be seen.

improved rig

I’ve been testing and working on the About Here person rig for the last couple of days. I uncovered a rotation glitch* when destruction-testing using extreme poses so have adjusted a few of the controls. The rig now doesn’t have any wired parameters and is much more robust. I’ve included some nice hand movement presets using Reaction Manager which should speed up the animation.


* I’m working in 3ds Max 2008. When bone rotation parameters are wired to control shapes’ custom attributes the rotation axis flips from being the bone’s local axis to being the local axis of the immediate parent bone. If anyone has worked out a fix for this, let me know!

facial deformations

Here's the outcome of the last two weeks of watercolour class. This is the first face I've attempted to draw or paint since leaving high school so, frankly, I’m relieved that it's come out recognisably humanoid. The colours worked out okay, as usual; the forms less so. I’ll keep practicing!

rigging

I’ve been having fun character rigging. The rig for the About Here person is pretty simple. It needs super-expressive arms and hands, mobile eyebrows, and not much else – not even legs!

I also saw a physiotherapist this morning (the usual computer-user back problems) and it turns out my spine has much the same range of movement as this character. Basically, we both have a hinge in the lower back, a hinge at the neck, and everything else is fixed. There’s a certain justice in that.

out of the woods

The trees have been a bit hard to pin down. Trying to make something look obviously treelike at the postage stamp size we are going to produce this movie at is not as straightforward as it first seemed. We need to play a bit more with the foliage textures but this should work. We are starting to get the look and feel of this production I think.

backgrounds rock

Nearly got all the models we need finished now. Here's a snippet of the conversion process we've been going through. I started off trying to construct things in virtual mid-air and soon discovered that a little more planning is required. Yes there is a reason why all those incredibly talented art department types spend a long time developing concept drawings. How else do you know what you are going to build in 3D?

animatic critic

At the beginning of this week we put together animatics for the two About Here shorts. (An animatic is usually the first full-length version of an animated film, put together from initial drawings – in this case, we used our storyboards – with a very rough soundtrack usually featuring the voice, ahem, "talent" of the animator. It allows the timings to be seen and adjusted.) We took them to the good people at Dunedin Arts for critique on Wednesday.

It’s great to get feedback from someone outside the project at this stage. We’re so familiar with the story that it’s hard to tell how it will come across to a viewer. J.P. and Hawk had some useful constructive criticisms that have helped us to make the films tighter. We’ve just put together a much improved version of the animatics. Thanks, guys!