...I'm trying not to lose my head (unlike Zeth's thesis). This was running through my brain when I woke up this morning--pretty appropriate for the state I'm in. I'm actually far more on target than I expected, but I am feeling the pressure of everything ending.
So, to calm myself down I've decided to create a checklist to organize all I have left to do.
At the moment I'm animating shot 10, fixing the camera and have yet to spline the animation.
Pre-render checklist:
1. FIXES and tweaks I haven't yet gotten to
2. DUPLICATE AND ANIMATE PIECES to float as stars and for the meteor shower in shot 6b
3. LIGHT LINKING on all the duplicated pieces
4. IMPORT everything so I don't have any rendering errors
During and post-render checklist (assuming the render comes out well--fingers crossed):
1. 3 RENDERS--galaxy, animation, ambient occlusion
(at the bottom of this post are notes on how to do the ambient occlusion pass for when I do it)
2. COMPOSITE in After Effects, throw music video card in lower right at beginning and end:
Justin Catalino
"When the Sky is Falling"
Welcome to Vacationland
Rizzo Records
Director: Matt Kushner
and, after fading to black, add a card that says:
©2007 aniMATTic productions
New York University - Center for Advanced Digital Applications
3. FINISH JOURNAL by copying it and pasting it into Word, write ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS, and POST THESIS CRITIQUE
4. PRINT and BURN two copies of paper, DVD and data disk
How to: Create an Ambient Occlusion Pass
-Make a new render layer with all geometry
-Apply a new lambert, color white
-In the shading group, go to mental ray options>custom
chaders>material shaders options
-In mental ray shaders, choose ambient occlusion
-Then play with the sample #s to make it more smooth, and take longer
-This render layer must be rendered with mental ray
Another option is to just use defaults...
-Make a new render layer with all geometry
-Right-click on the render layer and choose presets>occlusion
-This layer will automatically render with mental ray
COMMAND LINE RENDERING
After a bit of research, I have constructed a line of code for command line rendering that should be really helpful for organizing all the data I'll be rendering.
Here is the full test render code I wrote, and its deconstructed below:
/Applications/Alias/maya7.0/Maya.app/Contents/bin/Render -proj /Users/mattkushner/Documents/maya/projects/Thesis -rd /Users/mattkushner/Documents/maya/projects/Thesis/images/Camera1 -im Camera1 -of tif -s 0000 -e 0001 -cam Shot1Cam_Free -n 2 /Users/mattkushner/Documents/maya/projects/Thesis/scenes/Master/WorkingFiles/041607Shot9b.mb
The first section calls the Maya renderer to do its magic.
-proj project to be used (in case maya is confused)
-rd render directory where the images will go (can create new folders to organize images
-im image name (excluding frame #, and image type)
-of output format
-s start frame
-e end frame
-cam camera to be used (doesn't have to be set to be renderable in Maya)
-n number of processors to use
The last section calls the file from which Maya will render.
April 17, 2007
April 11, 2007
Final Group Meeting
Today was our final group meeting before thesis is due. We pretty much all showed something, and after spending about a week reworking the entire first half of my piece based on the industry critique, I felt a lot more confident--though I must say I'm surprised that upon seeing the other character pieces, it doesn't seem that they incorporated the critiques they got last week. Perhaps they're working on them and didn't want to show work in progress. Personally, I felt it was far more helpful to show half of my piece as a playblast since it was my most updated work.
Regarding my progress, I'm a little worried based on the "one shot per day" schedule that I set up--I only have a week to do the rest of the splining and polishing...definitely not much time--I still haven't finished polishing 6c and 6d and then I have 6 more shots. I'm hoping to be able to double up with a couple of them--6c is a really short, simple motion and 8a and 9b are similarly minimal in terms of length and complexity of the animation. It does seem feasible to get through the rest of the shots, though there are still things I want to go back and fix in the earlier shots (and I'm sure that after getting through the rest of the shots I'll want to work more on the later shots too). If I can get a render going by next Tuesday night, the 17th, of a first final pass (hopefully with meteor shower and floating pieces) I will have a sense of how long the render takes and can gauge how much time I have to tweak. Lauren's new laptop arrived today, so once I finish redoing the cameras I can start the galaxy render on her computer while I tweak the animation pass.
Regarding my progress, I'm a little worried based on the "one shot per day" schedule that I set up--I only have a week to do the rest of the splining and polishing...definitely not much time--I still haven't finished polishing 6c and 6d and then I have 6 more shots. I'm hoping to be able to double up with a couple of them--6c is a really short, simple motion and 8a and 9b are similarly minimal in terms of length and complexity of the animation. It does seem feasible to get through the rest of the shots, though there are still things I want to go back and fix in the earlier shots (and I'm sure that after getting through the rest of the shots I'll want to work more on the later shots too). If I can get a render going by next Tuesday night, the 17th, of a first final pass (hopefully with meteor shower and floating pieces) I will have a sense of how long the render takes and can gauge how much time I have to tweak. Lauren's new laptop arrived today, so once I finish redoing the cameras I can start the galaxy render on her computer while I tweak the animation pass.
April 5, 2007
Industry Critique
Tonight was our industry critique, and though I felt rather flustered--rushing to pull together my stuff and get there on time--I got some good feedback regardless. Here's a breakdown of the criticism and where I'm hoping to go with it:
Bordering on funny
My piece has a kind of sappiness to it that is hard to balance so that the audience gets caught up in it and it doesn't go over the top. Its especially hard for me since I'm so used to comedy and comedic timing--so I have to work really hard to get it to feel right. Jared suggested that I tone down the facial expressions--he can still be all the emotions I want him to be, but it becomes comical the more extreme they go.
Trash the Lip sync
Jared also suggested that I remove the lip sync--not only does it add to the "over-the-top-ness" of the piece, it also adds redundancy...it feels as though Justin is singing about what he's doing, instead of an omnipresent voice commenting on Justin (Omri suggested that I can leave in the large version lip syncing, then i get to do it some and its as though the large Justin has been singing the whole thing looking at the small Justin--I really like this idea). Frankly I added the lip sync because I felt I needed to and now I feel okay about getting rid of it---most of it wasn't working with my blocking anyway--it just means I have to figure out more body posing---SHOOT REFERENCE!!!
Slow emotional change
Nick made a good point that a character who is so down in the dumps isn't going to be so happy and surprised by a random piece falling in his lap...he should slowly transition as the pieces arrive...becoming less dejected, more curious and interested and then completely absorbed. (This comment was a reminder that this instant surprise is really a hold over from my original concept that one piece would fall, Justin would be delighted, and then all the other pieces would come together...having them fall one by one should draw out this gear change).
Change camera moves
Todd pointed out the most glaring error in my piece--the opening shot ruins the reveal--you should start close up and not make it obvious that Justin is sitting on a puzzle piece. In fact, when the camera pulls out at the end perhaps it should only be the green piece still and not the whole planet--the big Justin could be just starting to put together the puzzle--the connection between the big piece and the first piece would be far more obvious that way...(this may change some later camera shots...we'll see). Todd also commented that the last shot is kind of jarring...that the big Justin feels like a menace, not a caretaker...if the camera could somehow spiral outwards then the movement would be a little less of a jerk of the camera and could portray the big Justin in a better light---not sure yet how to do this, I'll work on it. Its definitely important that the big Justin is revealed in the right way.
Basically, it seems I've gone a little over the top in the amount of posing I've done and the range of extreme emotion Justin goes through. It seems its my style to go too far and then to slowly push back until a good balance is met--but this is good, definitely better than going too far. I'm hoping that by ditching some posing and working within some of the main (better) poses I already have, I can tighten my piece substantially. Hopefully this won't take too much time as I still have about half of the piece to spline. However, I've decided that I had better go back and figure out the beginning before dealing with the end because it could potentially change the ending poses. I'm definitely worried as to whether I have enough time to go back and rework the beginning with so much left to do at the end. But I'm realizing how much I care about this coming out well and the suggestions I got tonight were really good ones--so I should take them into account.
I've already redone the first shot--the camera starts really close and only pulls in a little very slowly. The breath that Justin takes is a lot more readable, so I like that, and I added a finger scratch on his leg and a slow eye blink.
The second shot needs some serious reworking--the change in his back arch is too much...if he is only mildly interested and not excited when the first piece lands in his hand his reaction wouldn't be so big. The whole right side of his body would barely move and his left hand would react to grab the piece almost unconsciously. I haven't figured out yet what to do about his right leg sliding down...this may wait until later. Shot 3 may stay in this pose---I definitely need to get rid of the surprise (too big regardless, and definitely too much this early). Jared also mentioned that this pose is way too symmetrical. When the camera spins upwards, maybe Justin slowly looks up, confused as to where the piece came from.
Shots 4 and 5 can probably be combined now that theres no close up on the lips for "Hey". This shot would be best as him vaguely curiously playing with the piece...some nice hand and finger manipulation.
Then in 6a and 6b he can become more interested and begin to play with the pieces.
As he takes cover in 6d and 7 he can really start to care about the piece...as he does, but it will mean more since his build up has been slower.
8a and b are probably fine...I like 9a and 9b too...though at this point maybe his face should be really eager...wanting to finish the puzzle...big surprise in 10 works well...then work on the camera, maybe have the big Justin in a different orientation relative to the piece to allow the orbiting camera concept to work.
Thats all for now, shooting reference in the morning!
Bordering on funny
My piece has a kind of sappiness to it that is hard to balance so that the audience gets caught up in it and it doesn't go over the top. Its especially hard for me since I'm so used to comedy and comedic timing--so I have to work really hard to get it to feel right. Jared suggested that I tone down the facial expressions--he can still be all the emotions I want him to be, but it becomes comical the more extreme they go.
Trash the Lip sync
Jared also suggested that I remove the lip sync--not only does it add to the "over-the-top-ness" of the piece, it also adds redundancy...it feels as though Justin is singing about what he's doing, instead of an omnipresent voice commenting on Justin (Omri suggested that I can leave in the large version lip syncing, then i get to do it some and its as though the large Justin has been singing the whole thing looking at the small Justin--I really like this idea). Frankly I added the lip sync because I felt I needed to and now I feel okay about getting rid of it---most of it wasn't working with my blocking anyway--it just means I have to figure out more body posing---SHOOT REFERENCE!!!
Slow emotional change
Nick made a good point that a character who is so down in the dumps isn't going to be so happy and surprised by a random piece falling in his lap...he should slowly transition as the pieces arrive...becoming less dejected, more curious and interested and then completely absorbed. (This comment was a reminder that this instant surprise is really a hold over from my original concept that one piece would fall, Justin would be delighted, and then all the other pieces would come together...having them fall one by one should draw out this gear change).
Change camera moves
Todd pointed out the most glaring error in my piece--the opening shot ruins the reveal--you should start close up and not make it obvious that Justin is sitting on a puzzle piece. In fact, when the camera pulls out at the end perhaps it should only be the green piece still and not the whole planet--the big Justin could be just starting to put together the puzzle--the connection between the big piece and the first piece would be far more obvious that way...(this may change some later camera shots...we'll see). Todd also commented that the last shot is kind of jarring...that the big Justin feels like a menace, not a caretaker...if the camera could somehow spiral outwards then the movement would be a little less of a jerk of the camera and could portray the big Justin in a better light---not sure yet how to do this, I'll work on it. Its definitely important that the big Justin is revealed in the right way.
Basically, it seems I've gone a little over the top in the amount of posing I've done and the range of extreme emotion Justin goes through. It seems its my style to go too far and then to slowly push back until a good balance is met--but this is good, definitely better than going too far. I'm hoping that by ditching some posing and working within some of the main (better) poses I already have, I can tighten my piece substantially. Hopefully this won't take too much time as I still have about half of the piece to spline. However, I've decided that I had better go back and figure out the beginning before dealing with the end because it could potentially change the ending poses. I'm definitely worried as to whether I have enough time to go back and rework the beginning with so much left to do at the end. But I'm realizing how much I care about this coming out well and the suggestions I got tonight were really good ones--so I should take them into account.
I've already redone the first shot--the camera starts really close and only pulls in a little very slowly. The breath that Justin takes is a lot more readable, so I like that, and I added a finger scratch on his leg and a slow eye blink.
The second shot needs some serious reworking--the change in his back arch is too much...if he is only mildly interested and not excited when the first piece lands in his hand his reaction wouldn't be so big. The whole right side of his body would barely move and his left hand would react to grab the piece almost unconsciously. I haven't figured out yet what to do about his right leg sliding down...this may wait until later. Shot 3 may stay in this pose---I definitely need to get rid of the surprise (too big regardless, and definitely too much this early). Jared also mentioned that this pose is way too symmetrical. When the camera spins upwards, maybe Justin slowly looks up, confused as to where the piece came from.
Shots 4 and 5 can probably be combined now that theres no close up on the lips for "Hey". This shot would be best as him vaguely curiously playing with the piece...some nice hand and finger manipulation.
Then in 6a and 6b he can become more interested and begin to play with the pieces.
As he takes cover in 6d and 7 he can really start to care about the piece...as he does, but it will mean more since his build up has been slower.
8a and b are probably fine...I like 9a and 9b too...though at this point maybe his face should be really eager...wanting to finish the puzzle...big surprise in 10 works well...then work on the camera, maybe have the big Justin in a different orientation relative to the piece to allow the orbiting camera concept to work.
Thats all for now, shooting reference in the morning!
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