Week 11: Break time!!!

Woop it's finally break time!
Wow this was a tough term but I have had so much fun and completed so many cool projects :) I was just looking through some of my work from the beginning of term as I cleaned up my files, it's so easy to forget all the work that goes into these 10 week terms as you move from one homework to the next!
Anyway here is my Texturing and Shading 2 final:

I wanted to put together a shot from the inside of a Ultramarine armory, based on a few props from the Warhammer 40,000 universe.  It was tough to get all the modeling done by week 5 and there was plenty of time that went into the texturing side of this too.  Having said that the workflows we went over in Substance Painter are so much faster than any way I have textured before.  It really frees up a lot of time for you to get into the nitty-gritty texturing detail and not spend too long getting the base materiality and aging worked out.  I added a few sculptural elements to the Bolter the golden eagle and skull were both done in Zbrush.  I was reluctant to open Zbrush this term before we officially begin to learn it but I blew off the old cobwebs and did wind up using it for both this project and my VFX final.  I also rendered out a small camera move you can check out here.

I also found some time to work on another Riot Master copy while I was waiting for renders to complete.  I picked Soraka because she has a slightly more simplistic design compared to some of the other champions.  I actually suck at playing her but I do like the design and I wanted to try out some skin painting as well as metal, cloth and gems. Here is the WIP I hope to progress over break but I know better than to make promises the 3 weeks off disappear so fast!

 

I almost forgot but I also found a few spare minutes to make a 50% completion cake too! We enjoyed it at the History of Animation final class :) It really does not feel that long since the last 4% cake back in term 1!

 OK break time!! see you in 3 weeks for some games specific courses! :D 

Finals!!

Phew! well I do still have Texturing and Shading going into week 11 so its not over just yet but I can take a breath finally!! This has been one of the hardest terms yet in pure hours but it has also been one of the most rewarding.  Seeing my 2D training improve my 3D stuff is so gratifying and getting a chance to play around a little with story and style has been really fun.

My first class to come to an end was gesture drawing.  We didn't do a long pose (3hr+) like we did for figure drawing instead we did a lot of small exercises.  This has been a pretty chill but fun class and it was really nice to get my hands dirty with charcoal again after all the digital work from the last few terms.

Hard surface was quite easy this week since I pushed to get ahead last week and free up time for VFX.  That's not to say the week came without any trials though! I wanted to put together a turntable animation just to get in the habit for it and figure out if there are were any easy mistakes I can avoid in the future.  As it happens I learned a lot! The first is that it takes soooooo many hours OMG I figured I could get it all done in a day with a few Gnomon computers but it took 3!  Because the material is pure white or wireframe Vray needs a very high quality setting to avoid any grainy noise so I know now to leave plenty of time for a turntable like this in the future.  I also learned to playblast my stuff before I render because I didn't notice but my turn has an ease out half way through the animation which really bugs me.  I was able to minimise it in after effects but still lesson learned!  I am really happy with this model, it was not easy and it represents a lot of hours and sleepless nights but I feel so good about the final result yay :) you can watch the turntable here (I used some music from Starcraft just to give it a cool feel but for a real demo reel piece I will obviously use royalty free or payed for music.)

On account of all the other finals this week and the godsend of Texturing and Shading being moved to week 11 I haven't made a lot of progress with my final.  I have fixed a few minor issues but now I have plenty of time to add my sculptural elements and rework any color/lighting/layout issues that are getting in the way of the bigger story. it looks like my texturing and shading final will get a blog post all to itself!

VFX final turned out sooooo well :D I couldn't be happier with the result! it's one of the best animations I've ever done, you can download it from here if you want to check it out.  So the result was good but getting there though, that was another story.  I lost simulation files repeatedly, had major trouble with batch renders and had to baby sit multiple computers while they each rendered frames one at a time.  The bottom line is that I wound up with something like 4 hours sleep over 3 days :*(  but I got it done :)

I opened Zbrush for the first time since term 2.  I was very rusty and it took a while to get back up to speed but I think this little guy turned out pretty cool for only a few hours work :)

I put together some of the props for my scene and uploaded it to sketchfab where you can look around the scene in 3D. I haven't uploaded anything there for a long time so it was a little funny to look back over my old models :p

All I want to do right now is sleep but I still have animation history homework to do for tomorrow (written Friday before VFX class)  I have no idea how well my animation history work will turn out, its a lot to do in a very short time frame while I am totally exhausted.  For you guys reading this though you can just scroll forward in time down the page to my hand in! time traveling blogging cool... lets take a look.

So I didn't see this coming but I totally rallied and put together an OK animation, check it out  here.  I think the timing needs work and there is plenty of smoothing I could add but overall I am happy with the result.

I haven't posted a lot of stuff for Motion Graphics this term since most of the homework has been exercises with little to no room to do anything creative.  I will link in my final piece though here.  There was so much rotoscoping for this project that it didn't leave me a whole lot of time to develop the UI design or effects.  I think the story works though and overall I don't dislike the finished result.

Week 8 - A tough one

Ramping up to finals! Week 8 is usually one of the hardest weeks out of the term, mostly because its not the last week so there is a little temptation to relax but if you do then week 9 will be impossible!  I tend to over work week 8 just in case something happens in week 9.  Everything appears to be progressing on schedule (except from a little surprise in History of Animation) and the end of term is in sight :)

 For VFX I decided to try out a video game proof of concept.  I am using some of the assets from my space station attack.  I am adding some extra props and redesigning the characters too now that I have a little more time to do so.  I tried out using Phoenix FD which is a dynamic simulator plug in for Maya that Gnomon has a license for.  It was really fun and quite easy to play with.  I can see that mastering it would take a long time but I have a cool looking effect for my in game grenade :)  I have all of the effects done for this shot so mostly its texture work and a little extra animation this week.

 I am progressing with texturing and shading 2 but since its the only class I have moving into week 11 I will have a little extra time just to work on this project.  I am hoping to nail down a some extra texture work, tighten up the lighting and maybe add a small camera move.

 I fixed some of the issues from last weeks walk cycle.  It was hard inking the final poses smoothly, I was also really tired but I managed to add the costume too check out the walk cycle here.  Next week we have to do a 'take' which is a character reaction... I didn't know we were going to have that assignment... that really throws a metaphorical spanner into my work schedule :*( hopefully I can figure something out.

Well I don't fully know how but I managed to finish the modeling portion of my Hard Surface project! woop.  If I can find a little time next week I would really like to build a simple rig and have a very small idling animation but there is so much still to do in other projects.  I still want to render a turntable and wireframe view but I will leave that until class.

Week7_Slow down where's the term going?!?

Only a couple weeks left of term now! every class has moved into Finals! which feels pretty intense as usual.  I am trying my best to scope my final few projects to ensure I can actually pull everything off by week 10.

Another piece of the final done! The legs were a little easier than the arms, definitely fewer parts but they were also less primitive which did make them a little trickier.  David is expecting us to hand in a finished model by next week!?!?! Just to make sure we are only working on corrections for the last week.... that wasn't exactly my scheduled plan... I don't know if its actually possible but I'll give it a try.

Another fun week for VFX.  My cute little knights show up again, this time in a more comical animation involving the very important defense of a single wall in the middle of nowhere :p check out the full animation here.

I also uploaded my animation history homework to that folder too, we are working on our first 2 week project.  This week I blocked in my walk cycle trying to get the timings and smoothness correct before I commit to drawing my own character 24 or so times for the final.

Texturing and shading is getting there.  Thankfully we missed a class meaning we are going into week 11.  Didn't think I would be so happy about that but it means I get a full 4 days to really work on nailing this piece :) I want to make a lot of changes so having extra time is always a plus!  The plan is to make some extra parts in Zbrush (since the displacement I was planning to do isn't working very well for the more hard surface parts I need). I only just got it into Maya from Substance so I need to tweak the settings a bit to get it all working. Since we just covered sub surface materials I can work on the wax seal too phew! there's quite a few little cosmetic changes I want to make too but I won't bother listing them here.

Another couple of weeks of Gesture Drawing homework.  We have moved onto clothed characters which brings with it a whole host of challenges, mostly stylistic, since it is near impossible to draw a clothed character in hyper real style with a 2-3 minute time limit. It's actually getting really fun recently because we are moving away from drawing purely from observation to drawing with story in mind.  Because of that shift the last few homeworks have been a little different. Last week we had to pick an artist and do some master copies to get a handle of their own style so we could draw in that style in class the following week.  I picked Jamie Hewlett, the artist who worked on The Gorillaz animations and 2D art.  The next week we did an exercise from a few terms ago which was copying frames from an animation or movie to work on composition.  I picked the Heart of the Swarm cinematic since it inspired my Hard Surface 1 final too.

Motion Graphics is ramping up also.  I have my footage all in after effects and I spend a loooooooot of hours rotoscoping out my actor.  The masking is a little rough at the moment but I will wait till I have the actual graphics in place before I clean up the masking just to see if I can get away with ignoring certain parts.  The file is a little big to upload now so I will probably just upload the final piece instead.

Week6 - It's starting to come together

zzz... too tired, hard to be articulate :p

Another tough week even with the Texturing and Shading class cancellation there was still so much to be working on.  I blame it on Hard Surface but the final is starting to look pretty cool so I guess if I survive this term the ends will justify the means. 

No animation this week just 5 gestures from our character.  I wound up with a little bit of extra time (otherwise designated for sleeping) to try out a cell shaded style of lighting.  Linking this to the work we have been doing in Gesture class really helped with grouping values and designing the shadow shapes.  I like the outcome and I might start to use this in the future (if appropriate) since it is actually quite a quick process.

I haven't been updating my gesture work for a while so here's some homework from the last few weeks.

Facial animation! I was pretty nervous about this one after my work from the NFTS I know how hard lip syncing and facial animation can be.  I didn't have enough time to really polish this and make enough blend shapes but I think it works. Check out the footage here

Hard surface is progressing on schedule.  This is my first full rez piece.  The plan is still to add a completed piece each week hopefully I can get the whole thing to this quality by week 10.  Getting the topology and flow to work is a real challenge but I am definitely learning a lot from working on this guy!

For Texturing and Shading I moved onto blocking out all the colors for my props.  I think I have a unified look going now.  I also designed an Ultramarine style banner for my scene with a few bunny themed graphics sneaking in. I get the feeling substance painter has the same issues as Zbrush in that its really easy to quickly get to the fine detail noodling part of the design too fast.  So I am trying to slow down and make sure all my colors/materials/composition etc work before I start playing with generators and smart masks.  Having said that I think it may be time to start working on the ware for my bolter now to set a precedent for the scene.

A couple of weeks ago I went to the Gnomon screening for the Ningyo, a short film project by a teacher at Gnomon.  It was a beautiful piece and an incredible amount of work for only 3 years in production!  It was very inspiring not just for me but for the whole audience, after the screening everyone was a buzz talking about their own work and big future ideas.  It was so fun to be a part of that energy! I am going to try to make it to more events at Gnomon even with the lack of free time :p

Maybe I am tired so this seems funnier to me right now but for last weeks rampaging space worm animation I was working up to the wire and I wound up taking over the entirety of the LAB 7 computers to render out my scene.  I managed to render out 500 frames in 15 minutes! Waaay cooler than leaving it to render over night on 1 computer! One of the many perks of being at Gnomon.