The lack of updates for the last couple of weeks have been due to the amount of work I have been working on. Below is a brief summary of what has been completed when, I will update again including .movs and screen shots.
4th March (Alpha) - 11th March (Seminar 2) - In the week after alpha I committed myself to getting the first shot (the long outdoor shot) done. I fully textured the hut and other assets such as palm trees, the mask, ladder and stand. I merged these to a new scene where I then set about making all the different flower and leaf variations. There were done in Photoshop from scratch and were all placed on 2d planes with various bend modifiers applied to add some shape. This method was again used for the grass, however I am currently encountering some problems at the base where I get a dead straight line against the floor geometry, this is being worked on. I also painted a rough matte painting that is currently in place and is suitable for using (as it will be blurred in post due to depth or field) However if I have any spare time I will be going over this to improve it slightly. A sphere has also been added around all the geometry and a sky material applied.
The scene in it's current state is just over 860,000 polys but I plan to do some 'poly pruning' and cut away some leaves and trees that aren't visible to the camera as well as the back of huts. My computer is handling the scene fine and also renders it but for the sake of render times (mental ray is not loving the sheer amount of opacity planes) and ease of work I will be cutting the poly count before rendering this scene out properly.
During this week I also did a quick test of a 2D parrot, as Kevin mentioned it would be nice to see some secondary movement in the opening scene, either birds flying from the trees or butterflies. So I wouldn't have to model, texture, rig etc a parrot in 3D I drew one in 2D and split it up into 3 simple parts (body and 2 wings) these were then applied as opacity and diffuse maps as a material to planes in max and animated with a simple bend modifier. I like the result and hope to use it, the birds won't be close to camera and will hopefully blend into the scene well. I also plan on adopting this method for some butterflies too. During this week I also lit the scene.
11th March (Seminar 2) - 18th March - My task for this week was to rig and skin both characters to a useable level. I had many technical difficulties and a multitude of little problems which hindered my progress and really made the process a struggle to get done with regards to personal motivation. However I rigged and skinned both characters and to date only have to link some controllers and add face morphs before I can begin animation. It is also during this week I had problems with my max which a reinstall didn't solve. The selection box along the toolbar (geometry, bones, camera etc) is constantly blank in all files, this is more of an inconvenience than a problem especially when it came to rigging and not being able to just have bones selectable. I also have a couple of files where I tested the skinning of my characters where Oulou's cloth tabard moves to the same place every time the file is reopened, even straight after a save, it moves in world space and also has a different pivot point. This also happened with both of his necklaces, this was and still is highly annoying as when I use these files it really is a case of one step forward, two steps back. I've tried merging into a new scene, re-naming files and also saving to different locations (external HD) but to no avail. As this was only a test scene this is also more of an inconvenience than a big problem but I would like to solve it as I don't want it happening in my final scene files.
It was also during this week where I posed both characters for the ATI competition. I rendered them off on a plane background and also merged them with the opening shot. This tipped the poly count to over a million polys and max crashed once or twice when I was moving large amounts of polys around but all in all I was very happy it rendered fine and looked good, I took both the character pass and the environment pass into Fusion and Photoshop afterwards to add a fake DoF and do some subtle colour corrects etc and was quite pleased with the resulting image. The characters are not in the opening scene of the film so I don't need to worry about the poly count with regards to that.
March 18th- March 25th (Seminar 3) - After finishing the rigs and with all the problems I had and was still having with max I hit a real wall with the production process. I didn't want to continue making the film and felt very un-motivated. The problems had set me behind on my schedule by almost 5 days and I didn't (and still don't) know whether I will finish the film. I always thought that when I got to this point of the film I could envisage it finished but I still can't and it's starting to worry me. Although I have been reassured by both graduates and 3rd years that most people hit this stage and then get over the hump onto the home stretch i'm still finding it quite hard. This week has not produced much physical work as my target was to model, texture and light the interior environment - Oulou's hut. This involved a lot of research into Polynesian tribal trinkets, from all the assets individually to the table, chair and bed. At this point I have the interior modelled and mostly modelled and textured the interior and have modelled all of the assets and textured almost all of these.
