Character Compositing!

For this project, we had to composite a moving character into a scene and show certain aspects.  I had to show that the character could reflect on a surface, that a shadow would move along with it, that the lighting within the scene was correct as well as the colour and that the character would be completely masked out by one of the objects in the flat photograph.   We also had to make our character in a chrome material so that it reflected the environment.  The photograph we took had to have two surfaces.  The size of my photograph and therefore the whole animation was 4288 x 2848.

At first, I took a photograph of trees in my garden for the baby to walk behind but then realised I had no surface for him to reflect on therefore I chose to do a picnic in the garden for my still image as I didn't own any toys for the baby to walk through in a scene.  The masked object would be the basket where the baby walks behind.  The reflective surface was the glass of Ribena and the shadow was applied to the blanket on the floor and the side. 

I applied the image in the background and then initially thought that the image had to be in the background of the renders which at first confused me and over complicated everything.  I then did it so that the background image was not rendering in the background but could be applied in post production. 

I created objects in my scene that needed to have effects on them such as the glass, banana, kiwi and basket.  They were all basic shapes that could be applied.  I then used the matte/ shadow reflection material to these objects but as I didn't want reflections on everything, I made two versions of this material and switched off reflections on one of them.  I also created the basic chrome material from Arch & Design and then applied this to the baby. 

After, I went to the Environments options and mapped out a environment/ background switcher.  This was applied onto a separate material slot and onto the camera mapped background slot in the matte/ shadow/ reflection material.  This meant that these would not show in renders but mean that it would register that these objects are still there.  This also means that the environment would be shown as a reflection on the chrome baby. 

I had to then add lights.  I used photometric lights which meant that it would be more useful for the environment settings.  I at first thought I had trouble using these but it was the fact that I switched on the matte/ shadow/ reflection material as the shadows were not showing anywhere or even in the alpha view.  I quickly sorted this out by switching it off.  For the lighting, I used my camera settings for the lighting which was:

 - Shutter Speed 1/ 400

- Aperture f/8

- ISO 700. 

I also adjusted the settings of the highlights and midtones as these made the image far too bright therefore I decreased them till it looked right.  At first I was going to use unitless 80000 to show the effect of sunlight but this option made the render not show at all. However the Physical Unit option allowed it all to show. 

Next, I sorted my character out by creating a walk cycle and adjusting his position so that he started off screen.  His reflection on the glass was still visible at this point so I knew it was working.  I gave him a standard straight walk cycle but decreased the actions as they were over-exaggerated.  This made the walk cycle more realistic.  I also had to decrease the sort out the end time and the maximum step time so that the baby would finish walking past the basket in the time frame. 

Once the five second sequence was rendered, I imported them into Adobe After Effects.  I had to render the sequence as pngs as these was the only file format that would allow the baby to save the alpha and not have a black background even when adjusting the settings.  I also added some Z-Depth to this sequence to practice it and to show that the still camera would need to focus.  These were exported as exr files and imported as straight - unmatted.  Once completed, I decided to downsize the render as the original size would not fit the monitor.  I reduced the size by two thirds as this seemed like a suitable size and almost half HD. 

This project has enabled me to get a better understanding of the film and game industry as by doing things this way, it can save a lot of time and rendering if you use real life still images or video sequences (which goes onto a more complex area) instead of creating everything from scratch in 3D.

Silent Comedy!

This project was to create a character rig.  First I had thought of two characters being a baby and a boy and then had written a beat script which allowed me to create a storyline around it:

                            

Silent Comedy Beat Script

1. Boy and baby watch telly in a cardboard box;

2. The cartoon on the television is of a rocket in an asteroid belt;

3. Boy imagines that he is in the asteroid belt with baby so they start to pretend that the box is a spaceship;

4. They are avoiding the asteroids;

5. Meow!

6. A cat is strolling around the living room;

6. Baby becomes fascinated by this;

7. Giggle!

8. Baby attempts to come out of the box/ rocket;

9. Rocket wobbles and goes out of course in the imagination events;

10. Baby is determined to come out;

11. Baby walks to the other side of the box;

12. Boy realises baby is about to fall out and is scared

13. Baby slides out of the box

14. Crash!

15. Spaceship is toppled over and hits an asteroid;

16. Boy looks over with a frown;

17. Baby is over in front of the cat;

18. Giggle!

I felt that the beat script helped me a lot in shaping out my project.  I designed the two characters.  The character of the boy had been originally been designed by my friend then I changed it a bit so that it would work for the project and the theme.  I had added a mouth, nose, hands and shoes.

My second character I completely designed myself which was of a baby.  I wanted to give this character a cute feel as I feel these work more successfully and can more of a feel of humour into it.  I feel I should have made the eyes larger to achieve this even more.

Using Mudbox I feel was very useful if I wanted to change clothing styles.  I decided to use this rather than use the material editor in 3ds as I could add a bit more detail onto it such as the nappy without having to edit the polygons too much.

After that, I modelled both characters in 3ds Max using a T-pose which is standard to be able to rig it to a good standard.  This was the part I felt comfortable with doing as I had practiced this a bit over the Summer for a few other projects.  I rigged the characters using CAT rigs and shaped the bones within my characters.  I had to do this twice as I did not shape the bones accordingly the first time.  This worked out well but when it came to editing the envelopes, I found this to be troublesome and judging from my final piece, I didn’t do it very well as there are parts of it that are still creasing wrong such as the shoulder of the boy towards the end when he falls over.  I feel I may have had to edit them further during the animation process.  I think there are other things that needed further research which make the bones attached to the muscle better as my arms and legs for my character are quite wide.

I started to animate the characters and create my storyline.  I was comfortable doing this as I think some of the timings could have been smoother and I should have shortened the length between some of the actions to make it flow better.  At certain points such as the blinking, I did these parts well.

Although the brief says to add only two characters, I also added a CAT rig to the cat as I needed something mobile to be a distraction for the baby.  This didn’t at all look smooth even though I had mesh smoothed it and edited the envelopes.  The envelopes on this for some reason were flat therefore did not cover the whole mesh properly.   To make the cat mobile around the room rather than in a straight line, I had added a standard walk onto it and then I needed him to pause in two places and start moving again.  I had to add both a standard CAT animation and a normal animation layer then play around with the Global Weights for both which allowed me to start and stop the rig.  I had to do this for the baby too so that I could have two styles of action.  I also added a path node onto the cat which is what allowed for the cat to walk around the room rather than in a straight line. 

Both the baby and the cat have both CAT animation and normal animation layers as they needed it.  The boy was mobile in the box and he was imaginary driving.  I should have had him gripped onto a toy wheel to show that he can pick an object up.  On the boy’s cape, I had used a wave modifier and attached it to one of the bones.  I should have used the wave and moved the cape as a separate element to make it more fine-cut and so that it did not go through his arm or the box.  The wave itself worked well by making it look like it was flowing.

My environment I created was all parts of my old pieces of work.  I had just imported them and used some of my own textures I had taken and quickly applied them which allowed me to spend less time on the environment but still make it work successfully.  I used After Effects and Illustrator to create the outdoor scene and the space/ alien part by using the skills I have used previously.

In conclusion, I feel that I need a lot more practice with character rigging and I think it will be useful for me to know as the gaming industry and film industry use this a lot and having skills in all areas to a good enough level is probably required in industry in case you have to change what you’re doing.  I would fine tooth the actions and sort out the envelopes to a better degree.  Some of the positions of things I would have also fine toothed such as the cape, the baby and the boy all in the box.  The parts I did achieve successfully in this project were modelling the characters, rigging the baby, creating a good flowing storyline, the path node, the morphing of the baby and the boy and applying sound effects in the right places.