I thought I might go ahead and keep everyone up to date with what I've been doing this winter break. At this point, I'm still working on skinning my astronaut. Maks Naporowski was nice enough to stop by today and help out with the character. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the process.
The reason why skinning is taking so long is that the rig itself is pretty complicated. This is because it is composed of 'stretchy' joints. Unlike a normal joint structure, stretchy joints mean that there are extra joints in between the normal ones (for example instead of just two joints, there would be an extra 5 joints added in between the elbow and wrist joints).
The advantage of this is that I can accomplish greater movement and 'stretchiness' with my character. The downside is that I have to go in and connect the skin to almost every one of these joints.
Anyways, I should be able to finish that before Christmas. I'll also be able to replace my character stand-ins with my actual characters and achieve some basic blocking by the end of this week. I'll then begin my animation after Christmas and have everything done by late January.
Here is a picture of what my large alien will look like. He will be the primary antagonist who will try to eat my small alien. I'll model him tomorrow and he should be good to go after that. The advantage is that he will only be on screen for a short while (15 seconds) and I won't require him to move much. Because of this, I won't have to spend time rigging him. I'll update my progress on him next week and upload some more pre-vis while I'm away for Christmas.
Woohoo! Can you believe that an entire semester has passed? One down, one more to go....our semester here at USC. I want to congratulate all of my classmates on their hard work so far. Everybody's films look incredble. Fireworks for everyone!
Celebration is short because I still need to do a ton of work. I've composed a list of what I have achieved so far and need to complete for winter break. In terms of my schedule, I am a little behind, but will be able to catch up and even more during the holidays.
MODELING:
Here's what I have for modeling. For my characters, I completed my astronaut and alien. I've finished the exterior and interior models for the spaceships. I still need to model my large alien and my space landscape.
For winter break, I will need to model my large alien and space landscape. My large alien will only take half a week to complete and rigging won't be an issue. This is because he will be in the film for only a short while (30 seconds) and will not be needed to move around a whole lot. I can achieve the desired amount of animation if I create a few simple blendshapes and physically twist his body when he bounces on the small alien.
The space landscape will take the least amount of time to complete. I've already created the ground layer and will just need to model a few more rocks to dot the surface. I will model the rocks in ZBrush and import them into Maya.
RIGGING:
Overall, rigging is 80% completed. I want to thank Lisa Anderson for the body rig and Ryan Chen for the the facial rigging/skinning. They did awesome, incredible work. Everything is working perfectly and I am so glad that I turned to them for help. I am really impressed with what I have and greatly appreciate all the time and effort they put into it. Thank you guys! Here is an lip sync test with the astronaut made by Ryan Chen:
The rigging is done, but I still need to complete the skinning. For those who don't know, skinning involves conforming the skin of the character to their skeleton. I was hoping to finish skinning him before the faculty review but due to the complexity of the skeleton itself and time conflict, I will finish it up by next week. Maks Naporowski is helping me along the way. Here is work in progress:
For my small alien, Sean Manning is planning on finishing him up this week. It is looking amazing so far and I'm am extremely confident in achieving the desired animation I need. I especially love his expressions. Take a look!
TEXTURING:
I realized that texturing won't be as important or as time consuming as I thought. The only real texturing I will need will be for my space landscape. The environment will be very rich in red and pinks. I will use a rock texture for the surface and the rocks. A matte painting will be used for the backdrop. A sample matte painting:
Some examples of the colors I will be using:
In contrast, the colors and texturing of the spaceship will be very sterile. Very little colors and more white throughout. These would help emphasize the hunger and lonliness of the astronaut onboard. It will be sort of reminiscent of the coloring used in this fantastic, yet very similar short:
RENDERING:
I've determined that all of the rendering will be done through mental ray. Using this software will take a bit longer to output out, but it will look much better compared to using the normal Maya software. Plus, the rendering will take less than expected time due to the render farm being made available to us starting next semester. IN SUMMARY:
So a list of what I need to accomplish this winter break:
Finish skinning for astronaut
Model large alien
Model and texture space landscape
Texture spaceship, astronaut, and small alien
Render test footage
Begin animation
I'll be here all break so I should have enough time to complete all of these.
To my classmates: Happy Holidays and good luck next semester!
It's been a while since I updated the blog with some pictures of my work in progress, but here we go. Here are a few pictures of the updated interior shot from my spaceship. Compared to my last update, I included more mechanical objects inside and updated the desk. A new steering wheel, keyboard, gearshift, and other features on the desk to help spruce it up a bit more.
Now if you remember, here is what the outside looks like. I haven't really changed it but I might tweak the engines a bit to make them more realistic. But this will be what the final model will pretty much look like.
Wow, Thanksgiving was great and as usual, went by pretty quickly. I was up in San Francisco with family and it was nice to see all of the relatives again.
Fun as it was, I can unfortunately say that I accomplished nothing major in terms of my senior thesis. I was instead spending the majority of my vacation time writing papers for other classes. Thankfully, I just got finished turning in my final entrepreneurship paper for class today and spent an all-nighter trying to finish it. I have WRIT 340 to take care of as well this week and papers to revise...But after next week, it should be open roads for me. And I'll then begin to start finally animating my characters!
I got a little work done. I started some basic skinning of my astronaut character and also finalized payment issues with my riggers. My alien character should be finished by this week as well. That's pretty much it.
The facial rig for my astronaut is now completed! Ryan Chen was nice enough to complete the rig and do so in a timely and efficient manner. Overall, he did a fantastic job. I am completely satisfied with the expressions and emotions I'm an able to convey with it. As of now, the entire body rig is now being tweaked by one of my other riggers and it should be good to go by tonight.
At this point, I've ultimately decided to go ahead and perform the skinning on him. For those who don't know, skinning is when you connect the skeleton to the geometry of a character. I will be doing this by 'painting' influences on the geometry. Influence on a vertex is the amount the vertex is controlled by a specific bone.
Maks Naporowski was kind enough to provide me a tutorial and the tools involved to get the deformation looking right. Although I am not familiar with the process, I'll try my best to learn and get it done as soon as I can. Once the skinning is completed, I can finally begin animating him!
Here is the newest animatic that I'll be presenting to the grad-level students on Wednesday. Overall, I changed a few scenes and added one at the very end. I also added a few more sound effects and made several scenes a little clearer. At 5:20, it is longer compared to my previous animatic but will most likely be shorter after the critique. Let me know what you guys think!
Here are some pictures of my spaceship interior progress. Still deciding what to put inside.
Although I already uploaded an animatic earlier this week, I'm preparing a newer one for the grad presentation on Wednesday. I'll upload that when I'm done.
David Fain was kind enough to look at my previous animatic and provide copious notes on ways to improve it. Based off of his suggestions, I cleaned up a lot of issues with regards to timing and shot placement. Overall, it's a vast improvement over my previous version and it's now 45 seconds shorter. Enjoy!
So my alien is finished and was sent off for rigging this week. I had to tweak some edge loops and added some where the joints will bend. I also made some proportional changes where needed.
I'm still debating whether to use The Face Machine for the rigging of my astronaut face. The software itself would cost around $60 and it would be a very easy learning curve. Unlike Face Robot for Softimage, this would integrate more easily with Maya. Either I do the rig myself or possibly turn to someone to do it for me. A link to the website:
So here is my completed alien model. I've made quite a few changes to him since the last time I posted. I've already sent him to my rigger, Sean Manning, and I might make some last minute changes before he starts the rigging.
So far, here's what I did. If you've noticed, I changed up his hind legs quite a bit, making them more squirrel and ferret-like. Before they resembled a very weak chicken leg, which wouldn't me conducive for rigging. I went ahead and lengthened the bone a bit in the front and made it larger. Now for the other changes. I made his claws more menacing, rounded out the tail more, made him skinnier, fixes his neck. perked up his ears, and made some other proportional changes. Take a look!
Anything else I should change or add before it's finalized? Suggest away!
In addition, the body of my spaceman is rigged. As of now, I've already narrowed down a facial rigger for him.
So I'm just finishing up on the body for my alien. Here is the head and I should connect it with the body by tonight. Pretty much done!
I'm having trouble with the back leg and making it less 'cat-like' and more 'ferret-like'. What do you guys think? Here are some reference images of ferrets:
And a side profile of a cat:
RIGGING:
And finally - Rigging. Here is some work in progress shots. Lisa is doing an awesome job!
I was able to accomplish a lot this week. I began work on my alien head and am going to use a ferret body I found on Turbosquid as his body. I should be able to finish that up this week and then get started on my spaceship model. By the start of next week, I'll send off my model to Sean Manning so that he can begin rigging. Here are some pictures:
In terms of my rigging, it's going much faster than I anticipated. Lisa Anderson said that she'll be able to complete everything by November, right on schedule, and I can then begin animating from there.
MUSIC
I'm also very excited for my music! I'm basically going for more of a orchestral, slow-moving style with bits and pieces of percussion intertwined. I've also looked into 3 composers I am interested in, some part of SMPTV and one who graduated from USC last year. I've already emailed them and I should make my selection sometime soon.
So in terms of the musical style, I'm thinking of a mix between two of my favorite composers, Thomas Newman and John Powell. Newman composed a number of major films including my favorite, WALL-E. Here is musical selection from the movie I'm going for:
John Powell scored the amazing soundtrack for the film, How to Train Your Dragon. I really can relate this movie to my own because Toothless, the dragon, resembles my own small alien creature in a way. Also, the music in this film is phenomenal. It perfectly matches and enhances the overall visuals, which something that I want the music to do for my own.
This powerful scene really echos standoff between my astronaut and alien:
The music in this scene would go well with the bonding between the two:
And of course, the lovely 'Forbidden Friendship' scene would really relate:
What's been happening
So I was able to finish up my astronaut this week and send him off to my rigger. The rigger sent me back a few notes on correcting my edge loops and I'll be able to make the changes and send it off to her tonight. I'm also going in and correcting the shape of the arms and legs, making them look more proportional.
Scheduling
I was camping all this weekend and had a blast! Only problem is that I didn't get any work done. So in terms of my schedule, I am somewhat behind because I'm supposed to be finished with all of my models this week. But so far, I've only been able to complete my astronaut.
Here's what I need to do. I need to begin modeling my small alien this week starting today, Monday, and finish him up by the end of this week. Once done modeling him, I'll send it off to my rigger. After that, I'll most likely begin modeling my larger alien next week and my spaceship after that. So in 2 weeks I should have all of my characters modeled. Also on my schedule I'm supposed to be modeling my spaceship now but will definitely have to postpone that until next week.
I need to finish modeling in time for my basic animation, which is supposed to begin early November after which all of the characters are rigged. I have allowed enough time for my riggers to complete the other characters and I could give them a couple more weeks if needed. I only really need my astronaut rigged by the end of this month.
EDIT: I've already sent the model to the rigger and here are some pictures. In addition to adding more edge loops around joints and straightening them out, I tweaked the hands and arms so that they are more proportional. I also bent the legs a bit more so it would be easier to rig.
Now that this is done, on to the alien! Thankfully I have all this week to work so I should be able to get back on track.
