The process of adding textures to a computer model is slow and painstaking – but the results can be very satisfying. Here’s an example of the stages involved in making a bottle of champagne.
Start with: a bottle shape, a shape that is very slightly expanded from the bottle, without the neck (this will be the label), a cork shape and two basic textures - an effective green glass and a decent metallic gold.
The first stage is to put the label on the bottle. First, the bottle needs the glass material to be applied. Then, the label object needs an opacity map to make the labels the correct shape. The two can then be put together.
Next, the label’s writing and decoration need to be added - another map, in plain colour. Some of this will be gilded and some will have a raised texture – we’ll deal with them next.
A map defines which areas of the label will be gold and a second provides the raised pattern to the torn gold wrapping at the bottle’s neck.
Now, the cork needs to have a basic texture that gives it the right colour/pattern plus some suitable printing. Then a bump map finishes it off.
Oh, and the last stage is to make the bottle look as if it’s full, not empty. Now imagine having to do all this for every single object in every scene – and welcome to the world of animation!
The extremely charismatic Paul Thomas Hickey recorded the voiceovers for the two About Here films yesterday. Paul was an absolute pleasure to work with – and he has the most amazing voice. I’d believe anything he told me, he sounds so authoritative. He brought our wee stories to life in a way that was even better than we hoped for. Cheers, Paul!
Animation is complete: we handed over our roughs yesterday, with finalised timings. Stephen Gilmour is now working on the sound design, while we work on the lighting and textures.
We all spent the day at the Wireless Innovation lab testing the roughs on different mobile handsets. Stephen was experimenting with different sounds to find out what works on mobile speakers; Adam and I were looking at the effect and compatibility of file types and compression as well as seeing what the films look like on different spec screens. We're in a good place now to move onto the final design stage.
Many thanks to Fred Bogacki for letting us play in the lab and for his time.
Exciting moment today – Stephen Gilmour sent us the first rough soundtracks for About Here. They sound good already; the comic timing in one scene had us falling off our chairs laughing. We’re meeting on Tuesday to discuss the details. By then we’ll have a finalised rough of the animation footage to work with (with timings and animation complete, but textures/lighting still to be added).
We haven’t posted any pictures for a while, so here’s a sneak preview of Princess Thenaw floating - through the air and across the sea (still only roughly coloured and quickly rendered – no textures/lighting, remember). These frames are taken from the rough footage we’re working on at the moment. Only three shots left now.
Animation is going steadily: nine shots complete and two in progress. As always, reference video is one of our most important tools. We’ve been acting out scenes in front of a camera to try and finalise the details of the performance and the movements needed. Funniest reference footage so far is Adam emulating a Capercallie walk cycle...
