References available upon request

Referencing

In the past couple days I have entered the land of references, building my scene files out so that I can begin to animate. I'm spending quite a bit of time on naming conventions and testing various aspects of my files to make sure that all the manipulating of files I will be doing is feasible. I've already dealt with quite a number of problems...

I began by reorganizing my scene files into subfolders, as below:



These folders (Animattic, Environments, Justin, and Master) allow me to continue working on the planet, its modeling, texturing and other environmental elements separately from remodelling and skinning Justin. I can, within a subfolder of each of these categories (as is visible in the Justin folder), continue to hone each element, saving regularly, and then resaving as the _Ref file when an element is completed and the file is clean (doesn't have extra Geo, Layers, Utilities or Shaders). The changes will ripple through the pipeline and when I open the Master_Ref file, everything will be updated.

Originally I was going to have separate files for each Shot so as to keep the files very light, however, this makes a couple things very difficult. I would have to animate linearly so that the end pose from shot 1 matches the beginning pose of shot 2, I'd either have to resave Shot 1 as Shot2 or copy all the numbers, which is a waste of time. Also, the one huge benefit of a camera rig is being able to playblast the entire piece very quickly. If I do all the animation in one file with separate cameras for each shot, I can always create a new camera, orient and point constrain it to all the cameras and key it so it jumps from shot to shot, allowing a quick playblast of all of my individual cameras. I can then delete and recreate this rig whenever I need to.

So, I've decided to do all the animation in one Master file, where the environments (the planet referenced twice as the Big and Small, and global sphere for the universe, as well as floating planet pieces throughout), and Justin (also referenced twice) are all referenced into one central file where all the animation exists.

Problems

The first problem I have come across during my referencing stint is with the IK/FK Switch script that is designed to allow seamless transitions from one to the other. Its a really useful script, and, like much of the Norman rig, a great thing to take advantage of since I have it.
After referencing Justin into my Master file I discovered that the script didn't work, causing a downward spiral of depression and self-loathing. No, but seriously--it meant I had to go back and figure out at which point the script stopped working. Fortunately, after some exploration, I discovered that none of my modifications to the rig were the problem, and since I was using distinct namespaces for each referenced rig, the reference wasn't the problem either. Unfortunately, something I expected to do very easily is now a problem--scaling Justin. Apparently, when the Placer is scaled it completely screws with the IK/FK script. I'd love to figure out how to fix the problem, but I have yet to attempt any rewriting of the script or creative grouping.

The real issue with scaling (in addition to the fact that I have two Normans that need to be scaled differently) is that the smaller the scene is the better--as Lauren pointed out, render times are exponentially faster the smaller the scene is--less calculation time for lighting, and the smaller the numbers, the less processing overall. So, I could potentially leave the small Justin at a scale of 1 so the switch would work, but that means that the planet is bigger and the big Justin is enormous. I probably won't need to use the switch on the big Justin since he basically holds a pose, however, then the scene is very large. My plan had been to make the large Justin at scale 1 everything else would be smaller. As of yet, I have no idea how I'm going to deal with this...

Moving along, I decided to take my camera rig and duplicate out each shot as a separate camera. In my hasty stupidity, this ended up taking many tries. I figured out fairly quickly that the duplicate options allows you to keep keys when duplicating. However, I discovered this using the Duplicate Input Connections box, which means that all duplicated objects share the same keys and deleting keys from one deletes them from all the others. After multiple attempts I realized this was the problem and changed to Duplicate Input Graph which creates a distinct set of keys (a distinct graph) for all duplicates, allowing modification without affecting the original.



So I'm currently at a crossroads where the cameras from my animattic are separated out and I can begin to get them set permanently. I'm a little unsure about the scaling issue but I'd rather sacrifice the IK/FK Switch and have lower renders, so for the moment I'm continuing as planned. I hope to set the cameras by the end of the day tomorrow so I can update my story reel with some beginning textures, my Justin rig thus far and some solidified camera movements and positions.