Choosing footage.
I had thought of quite a few films that had scenes that I could use.
Here's the list:
Jurassic Park 3.
The Good Bad and The Ugly.
The Godfather 1.
My first choice was The Godfather 1, and I got to the stage of ripping the scene off the DVD, but when it came down to seeing where an animated rabbit with a bazooka could fit in, it just didn't seem practical.
So it then came down to my last two films: Jurassic Park 3 and Good Bad and The Ugly. For Jurassic Park I had two rigs in mind- a dinosaur and a rabbit.
The rabbit didn't really fit in with the scene (space wise) so it came to the dinosaur, but the thought came to me "what's the point in animating a dinosaur and compositing dinosaur in a film that's about dinosaurs.
So I decided to go for Good Bad and The Ugly.
So I have ripped the scene off of the disc using a software used to take films from DVD in to Itunes and your Ipod (a software called handbrake) http://handbrake.fr/
Storyboarding.
I'm currently in the story-boarding stage. I had the choice of either modelling an object or animating a character, I've decided the latter as I haven't had much chance to animate this academic year, so I'm going to animate a t-rex with a dog personality.
Please see storyboard below.
The background to the idea was in this scene you have 2 men on one side and 1 man on the other. I thought this was unfair, because at the beginning of the film leads you to believe they're going to have a dual. So I thought to make it even I'll add a pet dinosaur in to the scene for humour.
Tracking.
So, I'm on the tracking stage now. One of my friends (joe angelo) sent me a link to a mayalive tutorial on youtube, so I followed this tutorial, but I later found out the guy doesn't go in to enough detail. In the end Steve Crocker (tutor) gave us a demonstration of what to do and we all worked through a scene together with good tracking points.
Trakcing is a lot harder than I thought it'd be, and one of the difficulties of my shots is that there are not many decent tracking points. As I understand tracking more, it comes as no surprise as it is a desert, which means the camera in Maya is not imitating the films camera movements very well.
One of the shots of the single cowboy is particularly bad. But what I did notice was that there was some good tracking at the end of the scene. So I specified the frame range on the Solve (in Maya-Live) and I got a good track. I am hoping that it won't reduce the duration below 30 seconds as that it is how much compositing work we have to do.
Animating.
After the excitement of having some good tracking on the scene mentioned above, I fancied doing a test animation, but in the end I got really in to it and finished animating the dinosaur in this scene. Also around this time I fancied doing a test animation, the goal was to get in to a lively dog who wants to play fetch personality (the animation is unfinished as it is only a test, but I hope to add to it at a later date).
This can also be found on youtube- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Qwr8_T_SU4
Production Schedule.
Workflow Research.
Pre-Production.
Script writer- writes the script- storyline, characters behaviour and interaction with each other. This needs to be done at the beginning other wise there really is not much point in producing concept art and storyboards on a story and characters that have not been thought through.
Concept artist- character designers and environment designers.
Storyboards- the skeleton of the story. It is there for reference, it helps to reduce cost as it is expensive to go back and change the shot. Helps the pipeline be efficient. There a tricky movements on the characters part, it's useful to know the camera position down the line, that way avoiding work in unnecessary areas. Also good reference for character designers as they need to know.
Animatic- a moving version of the storyboard. This is done to confirm and if need be adjust the camera movements. As this cannot be done in the storyboard stage.
Production.
Modelling- character (soft surface) and environment (hard-surface). Organic modelling is for character modelling. A base mesh is modelled in a program like Maya and then exported in to a dedicated software package like Zbrush. Alternatively, keep the model a low poly mesh and assign high detailed textures. Modellers look at the character designs and anatomy to get edge flow as good as possible. Modellers also look the character design and storyboard in order to model the character based on it's appearance the types of movements. If this is not done then the mesh may rip when animating.
UV Mapping- unwraps the models Uvs in a dedicated texture interface. There are stand-alone UV mapping softwares or internal ones. UV mapping is unwrapped based on the models edge-flow- this helps avoid the texture looking stretched.
Texturing- export the UV layout as a snapshot and then apply the textures in photoshop. Texturing is in this position because a model needs to be made and needs to be UV mapped so that the textures won't over lap or look stretched.
Rigging- is in this area of the work-flow because there is no point in trying to rig a character when there is no character to rig and textures need to be applied to the model before rigging otherwise they won't behave correctly. Actions of the character also need to be established in order to construct a skeleton properly. In a film multiple rigs would be used. Spiderman for example- his root joint was in the chest when webbing from building to building. These kind of movements. Facial expressions will also be taken in to account.
Animation- The Animator will either animate bi-pedal or quadruped models. The models will have been rigged, and have blend shapes assigned for the necessary body parts. It is easier to animate a model once it has been rigged and when voice actors have played their part- this way the characters behaviour will have been contextualised better rather than reading off a script. So the animation role is placed here because it is dependant on a model being created and textured and rigged so that it moves well and looks good.
Layout artists- the people who arrange all the assets in the scene. All the production work (modelling, UV mapping, texturing, rigging and animation) needs to have been finished so that the scene can be put together. In addition there will be multiple personnel working on various different sections of the scene. So it would be easier and more efficient that the layout personnel get to work when everything before it has finished.
Lighting- place the correct lights in the correct locations in order to get the right mood of the shot. The whole scene needs to be pieced together in order for lighting to be fully effective otherwise a missing object could give off an inaccurate result.
Render- happens near at the end of the production pipeline because everything needs to be in the scene- models, textures, animation, lights and cameras in order to render layers to be set up and be sent off to render- most likely a Render Farm.
Sound designers- the types of objects that emit sound- either by being hit or falling to the floor, or if there are weapons, cars etc and the velocity in which they collide need to be established in order for the sound designers to find and design the sounds to go with the animated film.
Post-Production.
Compositors- colour correction, blending the 3D elements together from the render passes. If there is any live action involved then blending the 3D element together with the live action.
Editing- once all the shots have been rendered in to render passes and composited together, the shots are pieced together in order to finish the film. Storyboards are used as reference in order for the order of the shots to be correct.
Over all these job activities are in these areas because A: they work and B: a lot of these tasks are dependant on a job that precedes it, so if job A isn't done B and C cannot happen. This also helps keep the workflow efficient in order to meet tight deadlines and not spend any more money on making an animated film/game/mixed media film than necessary.
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