Online Version

As usual, here is the online version of the final.



mpeg2 rocks

AE and premiere, it's done!

I rendered out the project in two versions, quicktime(600mb) and mpeg2(20mb) because after I did the quicktime, I realised 600mb....40 second clip... doesn't really match up, it would run properly if you drag it onto your local desktop. But, mpeg2 does a good job too, it didn't seems to lose much quality as far as i can see. Anyway, both are on the CD. Have a nice Easter.



there are mainly 3 layers composed in After Effect:
the foreground which includes everything animated: buildling, grass, robot and spaceship.

the background: buildings behind ravensbourne.
the moon and star: that's just a still image.
*this two were needed camera tracking in AE.


Sound has been done in Adobe Premiere. I found some transformer's sound effect on youtube, I downloaded the audio through... listentoyoutube.com as well as the airplane's sound effect.
The music is from Transformers the movie's Soundtrack ('Scorponok')

Rendering finished

Just got a automatic message sent me 'Job: 982 - complete'

That means everything is done.
During the weekend I used the playblast to worked out the timing for the sound effect and music. All I need to do Monday is to replace the playblast and render out the video from premiere.

Rendering

I've left one machine to render over night yesterday. It rendered out about 200 frames. I've also set up the render farm to render the whole sequence. But sadly, this morning I found there was no texturing on the buildings. It was some setting problem of the texture's location. I fixed that and did another render farm. By the time I checked it this morning the render farm finished all the frame needed. So hopefully it could finish soon....This time I checked it, the tiff file looks OK.

a blast

spaceship/robot texturing/lighting...

Just as what I've planed, I did not UV map the spaceship at all because I knew it would be dark. It has been done by using lighting and some material settings (transparency, glow etc). Worked out fine.

OMG

This single frame took 5 min to render


THIS is a 10-minute frame

without the ground as I've turned them off to increase render speed.

With the ground, I can imagine it would probably take 15min/frame.

This is a serious problem, espacilly when i'm still in the development stage. I did put the project into layers. 7 layers it has... but still
I had to reduce the explosion effect, as that's what i think ate most of the memory.(and the grass ofc)

about the finally rendering...hmm,I don't know, we have render farm! maybe it would render it them out in sec.

Depth of field

This is the final result.


Trying out the settings in the camera's attribute channel.


This is without the depth of field. I don't know, it just doesn't feel right. That remind what Mike said before about the problem of 3D animation...he said because the job in 3D is so dedicated/specialised/boring, everyone want to make their own bit looks stand out/high definition. But unfortunatly that's not how human eye works. High def stuff all over the screen would just make the viewer's eye tired and hard to catch the real important bit.


wrong setting, full blured.







and here's some pre-view. fire!fire!fire!

Robot finished modeling

As you can see not every bit is in detail, espically the lower half...since they won't be seen on the screen.

Robot modeling arm and body

Here is the robot. Spent 2 days on the development. Compare to ZBrush, i have to say... maya is not as quick in terms of modeling/initialing idea, but has much better control. (altough both softwares are good at crashing your PC and getting people's nerve.)

Spaceship Modeling

No more love for ZBrush, at least for this project, as that software is more for character/creature modeling. So I went back to Maya and spend a day modeling this spaceship. It was fun. and I'm acturally feel better about maya now.

Is it worth it?

Is it worth it ? to create a detailed 3D model to achieve a more 'realistic' perspective sence of movement. For example, the gate.

It's a question of how much attention those 'flat' area would attracted by the viewer. This is about to trick the viewer to believe that it's real/3D through the use of perspective. In a real sence, even in the industry this is very often being applied before going to spend a high cost making more detailed 3D evironment if needed.

In other words, this is about making it believable rather than make it real.

I decided not to go furture on the detail for the gate becuase I think it is not a centre element or spot on the screen, and
Not worth it.

New playblast

hmm... the robot looks a bit dodge. it supose to MOVE.
and the spaceship should be visiable for few more second but the cloud(background plane) is blocking the view.

Formative Assessment - Schedule check

Project Starting Date: Thursday 15th Jan 2009
Project Submission Date: Friday 13th March 2009

1st week: 15J-22J
2nd week: 23J-29J
3rd week: 30J-5F
4th week: 6F-12F
5th week: 13F-19F
6th week: 20F-26F
7th week: 27F-5M
8th week: 6M-12M

Project pipeline:
(Pre-Production)
Research
Idea Development
Storyboard
Animatic
(The Production)
2D concept
- the building done
- robot half done (Zbrush*) need more detail
- spaceship
- background
- foreground
- sky half done, need to make clouds. adjust the collour
3D modeling&Texturing
Camera work
(Post Production)
Compositing
- the foreground, background, the sky, the building and the spaceship will be rendered as one layer.
- the robot as one layer. explosions will be added in after effect and maya.
- explosions as one or more layers
Gamma Correction
- This job can be divided into 2 stage as I'm already doing some Gamma adjustment while im doing 2D concept.
Rendering

So right now I'm doing 2D concept and 3D modeling. 2D concept includes all the photoshop work as well as some of my drawing for the robot and spaceship.

*As I explore the use of ZBrush, I discovered another path of modeling and... generating ideas. Initial ideas can be created very quickly in Zbrush, just like in Photoshop. So the production pipeline slitly changed as I no longer need to draw down a detailed design, for example, the mechanic details for the robot.

left wing texturing

This is two picture combined and adjusted in gamma. oh and the two THINGS at the front are removed.

More texturing, front section

Texturing

ZBrush report

Low poly model generated in Maya


Imported into Zbrush


Just found out low poly model doesn't work in Zbrush.So i went back to Maya, added divisons about 5 times, the file is now 16 MB.


Export back to Maya for rendering.

And yet the number of polygon is still not enough for Zbrush, as you can see on the chest area.

Model positioning and camera angle

The 3D modeling of the building is behind the projection. Took me a while to track the same prespective.

export .obj file from Maya to Zbrush

Last night I tried to import a .dfx file into Zbrush but it didn't like it. Seems it only eat obj file.
In Maya:
windows->settings preferences->plugin manager
load the objExport plugin.

Some camera movement

this is created by a single image with the adjustment of prespective angle. The next step I want to build a 3D modeling of the building using this as a projection.

Photo taken and edited

3 pictures took from the same spot with different angles.


Combined in Photoshop.

2.5D, This is ZBrush

ZBrush is a digital sculpting tool that combines 3D/2.5D modeling, texturing and painting. It uses a proprietary "pixol" technology which stores lighting, color, material, and depth information for all objects on the screen. The main difference between ZBrush and more traditional modeling packages is that it is more akin to sculpting.

ZBrush is used as a digital sculpting tool to create high-resolution models (up to millions of polygons, and theoretically unlimited) for use in movies, games, and animations. It is used by companies ranging from ILM to Electronic Arts. ZBrush uses dynamic levels of resolution to allow sculptors to make global or local changes to their models. ZBrush is most known for being able to sculpt medium to high frequency details that were traditionally painted in bump maps. The resulting mesh details can then be exported as normal maps to be used on a low poly version of that same model. They can also be exported as a displacement map, although in that case the lower poly version generally requires more resolution. Or, once completed, the 3D model can be projected to the background, becoming a 2.5D image (upon which further effects can be applied). Work can then begin on another 3D model which can be used in the same scene. This feature lets users work with extremely complicated scenes without heavy processor overhead.

Zbrush was created by the company Pixologic Inc, founded by Ofer Alon and Jack Rimokh. The software was presented in 1999 at SIGGRAPH. The demo version 1.55 was released in 2002 and the software is in 2008 arrived at version 3.1. Ofer Alon is also widely known by CG artists as "Pixolator".






ZBrush texturing

2D to 3D automatic tool

Researchers of Carnegie Mellon University has managed to teach a computer to recognize and transform 2D images into 3D.

well, it's a good program I can understand how it works. It's designed to recognize the V.Point and Eye level then generate a simple 3D model, apply the mapping. But this will be different from what I'm gonna do. My work will need to involve recreating some of the texturing in photoshop which are not seem in 2D image due to prospective. If this program can generate textures... then it would be revolutionary tool.

Idea development

Some ideas how the elements could come together. I really like the idea of the spaceship flying over the college and then ... the college being crashed by the demoliation machine. AND then... the word 'Ravensbourne is moving' appears on the screen.(or is it?)







This is two photoshoped image which i used to set up a sense of mood.

Future City Research (image)