Final Film

I am very proud of this and despite a technical fault in Unity meaning the film can't be viewed in maximum quality which is annoying, I still think the film is beyond my expectations. The modelling and environment is beautiful, with the characters even though had so many issues still in my opinion look great. The use of hand painted textures help give the animation a more personal and crafted feel, and a part I particularly love is the use of edge detection in Unity making the whole animation, with the combination of the textures, look very similar to my concept art. I also think for none of the group having experience in animating he movement is pretty good, being the right amount of an exaggerated character and real movements like a platypus (such as when he's on all four legs) helping keep the animation a comedic value.

I think it was good of the group to early on decide this film would be cartoon like and similar to the concept art and PS1 games like Spyro, as attempting photo realistic graphics with a team of three people in eight weeks is too ambitious. I am glad we decided this as I think the visual style of the piece is its strongest point, which we all helped create. That said, I am very pleased with our musicians work and think the piece fits fantastically, which helps the audience get in the mental state of the character amplifying the comedy when it cuts out for the birds eye view shot of how he really looks. The script and voice over work emphases this, almost like he is narrating himself in third person or imagining someone is, like children narrating or commentating over their own football game as they play.

Over all I am very proud of how well the team has worked to produce this piece and am glad for the experience of the project, even the Maya stages, as I have learnt a lot from it. 

This is a link to our final animation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5-LKmIZe7Q&feature=youtu.be

Evaluation

EVALUATION

Since we worked very well together in our responsive brief, I thought this close group of me, Callum and Meg clearly work well together through good communication skills and trust, so we decided to collaborate again.

For me the most interesting and enjoyable aspect of this project was by far the start. I enjoyed coming up with story ideas and which direction this project could take, and I thought it was a good idea to try comedy as I had already attempted Film Noir, Western, Horror, Action and a drama throughout my film related education, so trying a different genre would challenge me in new ways and expand my learning.  We took this as a comedy western as we all were great fans of westerns, and the western of all projects before we felt was most fun and original.

I had a great degree of fun designing the Platypus Bill character, looking into similar characters and coming up with a design that could be taken both humourously and seriously in a different form of media.  I was very proud of my design as I feel he looks original, his colour pallet is fantastic and he is very memorable, with his strange nature and costume fitting the animal he is, which is common and normal in a foreign land.

Designing his environment was also great fun. Thinking about where he would live and about the game as a sandbox game and more explorable was great to imagine.  Also considering his size in relevance to for example barrel and creates would make his world seem much larger and help define his size. I even added a hammock on a tall tree, where he could live with his partner a possum (also Australian native animal), which is the purpose of the setting by the water (for him) and the tall trees (for her). These additions though not necessary make the environment seem more lived in and over all more believably inhabited.

I got in contact with a musician who worked on our Responsive brief who we liked the music off, and asked him to produce music based of Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns, mixed with the music of Red Dead Redemption.  The music he came back with we liked so much we decided to make the voice over more serious to suit it emphasising the lead characters incompetence.

The next part of the project was the part I despised the most. I knew I would not enjoy it from previous experience with Maya, and that my understanding of it was minimal but I felt perhaps this practice would improve my knowledge. I found many problems many times and even had to re-start the entire model Alien, I found this process I found very stressful. I followed the guides as closely as possible but always seemed to find a new problem. I eventually had to finish the character that couldn’t export to Unity for a still unknown reason, and complete the next stages with a new one. Though I have displayed every component necessary for this exercise and even shown some of them twice as I had to re-start, I was disappointed I had so much trouble with the programme as it ruined the project for me and feel if this element wasn’t a requirement I wouldn’t have done it and have enjoyed the brief far more.

I also had to work a lot with the Platypus character and finish this of the first model, which I had just as much trouble with even though I had completed an Alien before. I had applied my learning to make the process of the second Alien and Platypus much quicker but still found new issues to over-come. My knowledge of Maya has improved tenfold, and I know far more than I did at the start of the project but I still have no desire to touch the programme again, and now I know what can come of it if I wanted to use it in future I would collaborate with someone who enjoys using the programme as I can admit I am not talented with using it nor do I enjoy it, it is certainly one of my weaknesses. I do see the uses of Maya especially for a transmedia subject that could flow into film and game from a comic.  The final character and environment look fantastic and very much like my comic styled concept art, which I found hugely rewarding, and I know Maya was a necessity for this. I simply can identify my weakness and strengths, and though with time I could improve with the programme it isn’t where I want to concentrate career wise and feel my time would be better spent perfecting my skills in comics and film.

Despite my annoyance in creating the Alien I do see it’s a required component especially for when it comes to making the actual characters, as having done the texturing I was able to make what are in my opinion brilliant textures twice for the Platypus characters (as he too had to be re-modelled.).  I had animated the Alien without issue, so animating the film with the group became easier and quicker as I was confident in it and I didn’t come across a problem. This interactive machinma piece has also allowed more creative film making skills as camera angles that couldn’t usually be used can be in a game environments, such as shots that would either wise require a helicopter or crane being travelled to a very remote location.  Being able to create this digitally means being able to stay exactly faithful to the concept art and have characters that could not be filmed without the addition of photo-realistic CGI.  

To conclude I would say my biggest weakness for this project was time management, as I did do work on PPP which on reflection I shouldn’t have in the time span we had left. Also, during this module we had a week when we had four deadlines which meant for a period of time this module had to stopped being worked on. If I were to do it again I would leave more time for technical hiccups in the software as we have come across many which has delayed the project. I consider my achievements and strengths to be the design of the characters and the textures which I am very proud, and my ability to persevere through many difficult parts of the brief for which I did not enjoy and I had many issues with that often professionals couldn’t identify the problem with. 

Dopesheets

By Stuart Brown

We made dope sheets firstly from the anamatic to the Maya animation so we knew what had to happen where. We then made on the Maya animation to help with the position of Cameras  these are our following notes:

Anamatic to Unity DopeSheet

Frame = Action

1-96 = He gets out of the water

169-6748 = He walks to middle of boxes

649-696 = He jumps of four legs

697-1008 = Sniffing around in circles

(104 frames each rotation)

697-801 = First circle

802-906 = Second circle

907-1008 = Walks to next point

1009-1089 = Needs to see raccoon

1090-1176 = Raccoon looks up

1176-1210 = Platypus walks toward Raccoon

1211-1248 = Cut to lying on back

1249-1440 = On their back snoring.


the Next Dope Sheet was for the Cameras and what they need to be looking at. We did this by counting the shots in the anamatic and writing down what the shot needs to be concentrating on.

Cam 1 = gets out of Water

Cam 2 = Beak (PANNING)

Cam 3 = Shocked face walking to midddle

Cam 4 = Shot of Camp fire

Cam 5 = Shot of Fishbone

Cam 6 = Shot of Applecore

Cam 7 = Shot of knocked over barrel

Cam 8 = Shot of knocked over create

Cam 9 = Confused  face with question marks

Cam 10 = Magnify glass shot

Cam 11 = Shot of foot prints

Cam 12 = Dino thought bubble 1

Cam 13 = Shot of scratch marks

Cam 14 = Dino thought bubble 2

Cam 15 =  Shot of fur

Cam 16 =  Dino thought bubble 3

Cam 17 = tracking run and jump

Cam 18 = Side shot as he crawls and sniffs

Cam 19 = Shot of his bill from front

Cam 20 = Shot of his tail from above

Cam 21 = Shot of Platypus walking (PANNING)

Cam 22 = Birds eye view as he sniffs round the camp fire

Cam 23 = Platypus sees Raccoon

Cam 24 = Shot of Raccoon (ZOOM IN)

Cam 25 = Platypus stands up and walks toward Raccoon

Cam 26 = Birds eye shot of them snoring in the floor (ZOOM OUT)


We then married these up to the former Dope sheet while working to we knew which camera was looking where and for how long for.

Animating

 By Stuart Brown

Animating was not as big an issue as we initially thought it would be. I came across a strange anomaly where the mesh simply disappeared from our animation, despite the layer being on, the controls and skeleton stayed and animated but the mesh was gone, which thankfully Meg found the solution too. The process was repetitive and slow but not entirely unenjoyable, thou I think this was because I was thankful something hadn't gone very wrong for once!

By selecting every control joint from the end of the joint hierarchy and shift selecting each joint until reaching the root, and finally the master control, I went to Create>Sets>Quick Select Set and adding the set to shelf I was able to make animating far easier and quicker by moving all joints, and then pressing the quick select and pressing S. The animating process was very straight forward but as the initial character needed re-modeling it did leave less time for animating, which I would like to have had time to perfect and fine tune. That said I am very proud of this and with the help of my team mates I think this process has turned out better than we all expected, as none of us have much experience animating nor do any of us have a plan to per-sue this particular section as a profession. The next stage was to add the animation into Unity to film with the environment.

Here is a quick video of the animation to help with the sound creation and key framing for cameras in Unity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2XbEEhDIQA&feature=youtu.be

Game Art and Machinima: Animating Problems

By Meg Sugden

During the process of Stuart animating we ran across a very strange problem where the geometry was not attaching to the rig or skeleton. We appeared to have yet another problem and I spent most of the time this morning thinking of a solution when I noticed that we had two sets of geometry, rigs and skeletons. This really confused me but then I remembered that when creating the environment I had used the raccoon model as a reference for creating the environment so I could check the sizes of the objects. I deleted this but we still had the problem that the rig was not attached and the platypus was just stood in its original pose in the middle of the environment.

At this point we were very confused and didn't know what to do so we just decided to reopen the project, and to our surprise the model was back and was rigged just fine. Stuart continued to animate and we got half way through doing this, but I wanted to test the animation so far in Unity to check it was still working. I took the folder and opened it on my computer and we encountered the same problem again. So once again I had another look and noticed the the platypus had a strange input from the raccoon model which appeared to be the source of the problem. I trailed through the Hypergraph Connection's menu to try and locate the abnormality and eventually managed to find the influence from the raccoon model which I deleted. We then reopened Maya and our rig was back on the skin of the platypus and was moving correctly with the entire animation still in tacked. I once again tested in Unity and found that it was working perfectly. I was so happy that I managed to find the solution to this problem as it was me that created it in the first place technically. But I'm just happy that the model is no working correctly in Maya along with Unity.

Game Art and Machinima: Weight Painting Problems and Solution Part 2

By Stuart Brown

After our original model had issues with being imported into Unity, The character of the Platypus had to be re-modeled again in a very short space of time. My role in this was to texture the model and finish the UV mapping. I took what was given to me and made some adjustments to make my process easier, such as sewing UV edge, widening some small areas which were actually larger faces, and planar mapping the beak and mouth.  

I then re-textured the model as quickly as I could but as similarly as I had done with the last model as I was very proud of it. The fact I had previously played with UV maps recently sped up this process and as I had already made a very similar texture this made it easier and quicker the 2nd time round, as I knew which brush to use and had an exact reference of colour to use from.

I then re went over some weight painting issues I found in the model to ensure it was perfect and ready to animate, again this was far easier a 2nd time round as I already knew how to fix some problems and which tools were best for which job.

I am very proud that this model has been re-completed so quickly and still looks in my opinion just as good as the first, which has as taught me along with my alien how to apply my learning to a similar model twice, and how much easier it can be having already done the process.

Game Art and Machinima: Weight Painting Problems and Solution

By Meg Sugden

When testing my platypus model in Unity I found that we had encountered a few problems. I first just wanted to test to see if the model had gone in correctly, which it had and I really liked the look of it.

I then tried to move the pose of the platypus so that I could see if it was moving correctly and this is where I found my problem. There was something wrong with the influence of the weight painting on the legs/feet of the platypus so I had a look at another version of the model, this time in the crawl position, to see if it was still an issue there, which it was. 

Therefore, as I had previously been exporting as an FBX I tried doing it as an original FBX DAE export instead to see if this would fix the problem as it can help cancel out unnecessary commands in the history of the model, but this only made it worse.

Therefore after consulting with a tutor about what to do to fix this problem she suggested that there was definitely some problems with the weight painting in the feet/legs. I thought this too seen as the top half of the model appears to be fine. So what I thought would be best is to do the weight painting again in the feet. The problem with this, as told by my tutor is that there could be a problem during the initial weight painting and binding so suggested that I should go back to the pre-bind stage and then do this process again to ensure that there is nothing wrong with it. As I knew that I didn't have a lot of time left I wanted to do this as quick as I could, ensuring that everything has been done correctly and without any issues.

After some time Stuart eventually thought he found the solution, which was that we had smooth binded the model too early in the rigging process and this created too many vertices that were hidden inside the geometry and therefore was not effected by the weight painting as these were not being affected. Unfortunately we did not have an earlier save of the model before we smoothed it meaning that we had no choice but to start the whole process again.

This was very annoying for the group but we realised that it was initially our own fault as we should have created new saves at the beginning of starting each section of the tutorial videos/rigging process. This is since a skill that I will try to keep in mind, especially when I am going to be redoing the platypus.

I managed to get it modeled again and UV mapped all in one day which then left me Sunday and Monday to get ready to the animating stage again. This was a big struggle and involved a lot of work but I managed to be able to model everything pretty quickly as I had previously done it anyway, but UV mapping was a little bit more difficult. It was a long process but I managed to get this stage done without any problems, ensuring that I deleted the history at every stage in order to not have any of the problems from last time when it came to rigging.

I then moved onto rigging the platypus, again as I had already done this stage with the raccoon model, as I was not there to do the platypus', and I had done my aliens as well, so I was fairly confident that I could get this stage done quickly and without ease, which I was able to, but I still did use the video guides that we were provided with, just to be sure that I didn't make any mistakes like what we had with the other model and rig.

I actually got the rig set up very quickly, even when watching the video guides I found that I was moving ahead and remembering details that needed adding in even before they are mentioned in the tutorial. I think that because I have had to remake this model so many times is actually a good thing as it has made me more confident with using Maya and I now feel confident about just getting on with rigging a model as I know how it should look and how the joints are going to end up working and how they parent to each other.

I then moved onto adding in the control points. Again I had to watch the tutorial videos in the background, but once again, like with the rigging, I was able to get this process done very quickly, especially the first stage of it when I added in the circular control points as they became second nature and I knew where they all needed adding.

I then colour coded them and ensured that each part was colour coded precisely to avoid any errors.

 
I then started to constrain my control points to the skeleton to ensure that they were connected properly. Again I used the same tools as before to do this using mainly the orient constraint but then also the parent and point constraint as well. This was exactly the same as before and once again I was able to redo this stage very quickly using all of the appropriate tools and also using our tutor Mat's video for reference.

I was then ready to bind the skeleton to the geometry, which is something that I nervous about due to the amount of issues that we had last time, but I am first creating a new save so that if something does go wrong during this stage I can start it again without having to worry about the model at all, I just have to paint the weights again.

So, once the model was bound I quickly checked that it was moving okay, which it was. But I first wanted to do a quick test in Unity to check for any problems with moving the skeleton so that if there was I would know that it is the binding that isn't working.

I was very happy with the result, there were a few issues with the look of some of the geometry being influenced where it shouldn't, but this is only due to the fact that I haven't started weight painting yet. So at this current time I then started to do this, first ensuring to once again create another save file.

I then continued with the weight painting until I was happy with the final result. Stuart then textured the model again with the UV Map that I gave him and we were ready to start animating. This part of the project was very distressing as we had to complete over 3 weeks of work again in a very short space of time, but we managed to get it done and I am very happy with the final result.