Friday 19 June 2009
...
well, i could hardly believe it when it happened, but after about a half hour after my last post, i figured otu the problem... deep in teh depths of the carpet id made for the stool to sit on, there was an old fur shader i had been playing with, which had been deleted and then id deleted its history, but some of its settings were still effecting the texture of teh carpet, but because they werent linked to anything, were causing all my troubles... anyway, its to late now, but at least i know what the problem is when i go back to render again, which i plan on doing during the bridging unit. below is a composite with everything in it...
Final Day of the Project
well, about an hour ago was the hand in, and its officially away and finished... well, until the musion contest... i spent today wrestling with the render farm, finally admitting defeat after about 2 hours of refreshing the queue and maybe 6 submitted files, then runnign around assigning batch renders to a handful of computers, which all also failed with the same 'fatal error, out of memory' messages i was getting yesterday. Im nto sure why, as all the objects render out safe and sound seperatly, as well as the set with teh lighting, but for some reason when its all together, i just couldnt get things to work. I ended up doing a high quality play blast and editing that into a final cut, which looks alright, obviously im far from happy, but ive also rendered out all of the objects in their fully textured glory and submitted those along with it. At this point, I honestly have no idea what the problem is, ive been tinkering with the project since the submission, and still cant get it to work... I have a feeling that i may need to re-model a few things, namely the drumset, in order to keep the poly count a little lower... ive rendered out more intensive scenes with more lights and materials before, so i honestly cant understand it. Overall, I think the project came together well, Im really pleased with how the models look, how the scene looks all layed and the progress ive made with maya over the past few months. looking back, i really should have been more focused at the start of term, but once i found out about the musion acadamy not setting up at rave on air, i lost the plot slightly... my decision not to animate i think was a good one, i would have been struggling with it the whole way through, and i honestly think that for working by myself it wasnt goign to happen...especially since i dont count myself as the strongest of animates/riggers... i plan on spending the following weeks pre-bridging unit modeling the charecters and rigging them, doing plenty of tutorials and getting them to look right, so that i can leisurly animate them in the scene. Anyway, here are the stills that i rendered out as well as the final edit of the film..
Production Schedules
Thursday 18 June 2009
what is this
lighting?
I htink ive pretty much finished the lighting now aswell, polished it off here and there... Below are some renders of the setup and things. IM currently trying to figure otu the depth of field settings on the maya cameras, pretty tricky in the way you have to render out to see what your settings are giving you, but ive got it pretty down, below theres a test movie of that as well!
tex-tured
Wednesday 17 June 2009
More Texturing
I spent most of today texturing again, just getting through more of the objects and i have to say im pretty pleased. I worked with mostly the mia_material and dgs_material in maya, and had to sift through all the documentation to really get them to work like i wanted, but i am pleased with teh results... below are the fully textured drusm(which took about 3 hours) and the guitar stand, which took about 15 minutes...
Monday 15 June 2009
rah
Well, we are into the final week of the term now. Ive been spending the past few days working on my contextual essay, but now that thats out of the way, ive been able to really dig my teeth into the texturing in my scene. I got through texturing the guitar stands and spent alot of time working on the bass today, but i think it looks pretty good now that its all done... I used just some basic textures with images for most of the pieces, nad the body is the mental ray car paint texture but ive been tweaking it around and seeing what it can do as id like to use it for the acoustic guitars when i texture them tomorrow. Maya on the computers ive been working on has been seriously acting up and when i render, i occasionally get fatal errors due to a lack of memory, hopefully this is resolved by using the render farm later in the week. Anyway, heres an image of the bass, im off home now to finish off a bit more work. x
Friday 12 June 2009
yes!
Well, today was a pretty good day in terms of maya... I finished getting all my models into one scene, and then worked the whole afternoon on sorting out the wires coming out of the various speakers and instruments, using just poly cylinders and a simple joint structure, then smoothing out the cylinder twice once the shape is right . I think that it looks pretty good now, this is just a AO render, this weekend will be consumed with texturing everything. Alright!
Thursday 11 June 2009
beginning the compiling!
Well, after my mullings last night, it meant i could get down and gritty with getting everything together on the set now. I got most of the things that Ive modelled already, i still need to rig up a decent cable which is provign tricky, i cnat remeber how i did the first one from the ceiling vocal mic. Other than that, it looks pretty good, i couldnt find the guitar or drumset models on the school pcs, and im praying i hvent acidentally deleted them at home, which would be a real kick in the teeth as i spent a good week modelling the drum set. anyway, fingers crossed....
Rethinking the final presentation
Well, Ive been doing some thinking. Yesterday we had a lecture from Frontier games, which I thought was pretty good, and there was a litlte segment at the end about what companies are looking for in new graduates and their showreels. The point was made pretty heavily about you only being as strong as your weakest piece on the showreel, and that companies are looking for more specialized individuals that a kind of 'well rounded' worker. Last night while I was trying to toil with some animation tests, I realised that I was in a way wasting my time. I rushed through the texturing of the models to get started on the things I felt were neccesery for a 'good' project. Looking at them now, Im going to scrap the animated section, and instead stick to what I enjoy and feel better at, enviroment modelling and texturing. This means that the final piece I submit wont have the animated charecters in there, instead will be a more polished flythrough/look at the set I built. I do plan on spending the summer months working on the animation to submit to the Musion Awards that Oliver told me about, but for now Im going to go back and really refine my texturing and set, and get some lovely shots for a litlte compilation to submit. I think that this is a much better use of my time as I do feel paticularly strong in teh animation department, adn that Id be doing it just for the sake of doing it in this project...
Monday 8 June 2009
Bass
The finished model of the bass guitar, looks pretty fresh I think... Tomorrows going to have to be spent working on contextual studies, and then back on it....
Monday 1 June 2009
Fannnnnnntastic
Well, In a wonderful turn of events, I got an email back from Oliver this morning informing me that Musion wouldnt have a set up at ROA... While it is a bit of a downer, it could be worse as he told me about the 'Musion Acadamy Media Awards' which will take place in November, and he invited me to enter into. One of the categorys included in this is a performace and music piece, so it looks like ill have a place to showcase my work after all on the Musion screen. In terms of for rave on air, I dont think Ill be presenting my work, but Ill just hand it in on the submission date and then go back and work on it for this coming November. I am slightly dissapointed not to have been informed, as now it loooks like I havnet done any work, but my showreel will hopefully be on display and so at least Ill have something there.
Friday 29 May 2009
Alright!
Wednesday 27 May 2009
Making up for lack of postings
In terms of modelling, everything is pretty much finished now, and rigging is coming along a treat. I plan on finishing it all by Friday, and then the animating over the weekend to get the lighting done monday, and the rendering done on tuesday. Ive been trying to contact Oliver in terms of the Musion setup(I emialed him last week) but I havent had a reply back. Ill try again at the end of the week if he still hasnt gotten back to me, but for now today ill post a few renders of the modelling.
Finished Drum set:
Finished Drum set:
Monday 11 May 2009
zzz
Its 3 am, Ive been working the past few hours on some of the little details on the floor tom and cymbal, just getting things to look right and its really coming together. Ill have it done by tomorrow evening along with teh guitars whihc sohuld be a breeze and then I can model and rig the charecters wednesday hopefully. Im pleased with teh way its looking, I feel like its a simple, but detailed model and it will look prime when its textured and everything.
Just a quick ambient occlusions render
And then the AO layer applied to a basic mental ray paint texture to see how it looks, pretty pleased really
Sunday 10 May 2009
Drums
Working on the drum set which should be done tonight, goal is to finish all modelling and rigging by Wednesday night... Ive only got the two guitars and then the charecters(the backup players will all be standard models with different hair, and beck will be the same but a specific face and hair/hat. Other than that, Im happy with teh way things are coming along. The only problem is the fact that Im not sure if maya 2009 files( which is what Im using at home) are able to be opened on the college computers since they are running an outdated version of maya. I plan on testing this on tuesday, and if it doesnt work, finding away to get my computer hooked up to the render farm. It would be a real pain if theres no way to get it all working together, it means having to render the planned 30 seconds of footage in 1080i HD on my home computer, which doesnt seem paticularly feesable, and working only in college never works because of the lack of computers there... anyway, heres what Im working on now, the bass drum. All hte modelling is done with the extract, edge loop and bevel tools starting with a cylinder. The inner drum head is a seperate object, which i plan on converting to ncloth and using a rigid object bumping against it to make it look likes its bouncing, whihc seems easier than animating it moving in and out...
Friday 1 May 2009
clothington
Ive been spending today doing a litlte modeling, but mostly playing around with the ncloth features in maya. I was planning on just modelling hte charecters with the clothes on, but looking at how powerful ncloth is, even on just a low poly shape, it seems silly not to try and get the clothes fitted on them. below is just a quick playblast of an "arm" bending and a 'shirt' interacting with it. the sphere at the end is just to stop the cloth sliding off the back of the cylinder when it raises up...
Tuesday 28 April 2009
more modelling!
Thursday 23 April 2009
zz
Modelling starts
Ive started getting into the modelling already, nothing fancy, just the hanging mic. dave showed me some pretty neat stuff using bones, clusters and locators to bend the wire around easily which as helped loasd....
Preprduction buisness
I dont have alot of time to spend drawing and on ideas this term due to the work load that ive dealt myself, but I did a sketch today whihc I think sums up the look id be happy to go with...
new project!
well alright! new term, new project... this term is rave on air, and all of the animation students have been asked to submit a 30 sec piece, basically of their chosing. ive opted to do a stage performance of a song by beck, called 10,000 pesos. (the song can be heard HERE). the most interesting part though will be the use of the musion stage which is going to be set up. Musion uses new technology to give the illusion of a holographic project (example HERE) pretty clever, and I think ill be able to pull off some really impressive results...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)