...

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..

Final Film

Production Schedules

Here are my production schedules from the past term, first is from the first few days of college after i decided on my project, second from around May 20th, third is June 1st and the last one is from June 10th...

playblast

what is this

what is this, its causing me some serious greif right in teh last stages of my work... im hoping that its just my version of maya 2009 not liking textures made in maya 8.5, or my laptop getting a litlte bugged down, but only a render on the farm tomorrow will tell....

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!

exactly what i liek to see....

tex-tured

well! finished up all the texturing today, and i mus tsay im pretty pleased... its all looking pretty slick and together, and with a few lights around i think itll really look fancy. ill go into detail about some of the things tomorrow while im rendering, but for now, its back to work...

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...

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

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!

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...

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....

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.