post production and more bits and pieces

i was able to finish my scenes as planned but i know there is still alot to do in such a short amount of time.
i am quite proud of the turn out and i really cant wait til this is finally finished.

for most of the scenes, i had to go and re render most of them again. i know, its pain in the ass to create but its worth the time especially if you are aiming for perfection (which is what im doing). i had to re render out the scene where the robot has to be a blur in the background when i the tap is dripping, when he poses at the end and when the tap get hits by the wrench. these scenes require my attention the most and i have to redo every animation on it, plus the different passes, to get it to the level where it is now.

here are just some snippets of the scenes in after effects. these are being colour graded to suit the scene and added with particle effects for a more realistic feel.

the last bit that i really have to do is add the wiggle on the tap scene. the reason why i wanted to add the wiggle is because of it will give us the hint of strong the impact as he hits the tap. and to do this, i had to look at the tutorial for it which can be found here: http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/camera_shake_with_wiggler/. it was a really easy tutorial to follow and it explained to me the purpose of each tool in after effects.

now off to add sound effects!
will blog more soon!

trish x

reflection pass and other things that almost drove me to insanity.

as suggested by the title, i had to make the reflection pass for my assignment and it did almost drove me to insanity because i wasn't too sure on how to make it. but with the help of my supah awesome friend Andrew (Hi Andrew) i was able to understand it in a simpler way possible.

the idea of the reflection pass is to render out subtle reflections on the surface where the model stands. take this one scene as an example. we see here bobbie casting a shadow on the wall but at the same time casting his reflection on the floor. the reflection here is a bit too strong though but forgive me, its my first time having a ball at this.

the reason why i need a reflection pass is because the surface of my scene is quite shiny and it needs that subtle reflection to sell it more.

now to the important bit: adding the actual reflection pass. it was pretty easy once i learned how. it was just a matter of copying all of the exsisting elements from the scene and pasting them in the new scene with the label "reflection_pass". next is to tweak with the surface shaders and override the reflection limit (right click-over ride command) and just mucking around with the mental ray settings.

when you are rendering this, just go to passes, then click on the button that says create new and select reflection passes. dont forget to tick the claptrap on the bottom of the first screen to enable this on your layer.

and yes, approximate time of waiting for this to render is about an hour tops. which was good cause the whole time i was waiting for it, i had a good snooze to just get myself psyched up again.


 and here is what it looks like for the meantime:

it definitely needs to be re rendered with the shadows though. for some reason, the shadow pass didn't render out properly. but im happy with this outcome.

overall, i've finished with all of my scenes. just alot of tweaking to do and lots of colour grading/matching and sound effects. i plan on finishing this assignment early on so i can just fix bugs and all that before submission date. hopefully, i can get alot of stuff done for my assignment over the week im away for adelaide that way theres much less hassel to do for everything else.

whoo, final 3 weeks to go. i really cant see myself finishing just yet. ;)

more soon. til next time :)

trish! x

creating scenes.

while creating this assignment, I found out a couple of things.

first off, i realized that most of my scenes were similar to still images and only a couple are actual moving videos (like the dripping tap and when the robot is moving along the surface). this is a good thing because it cuts down alot of work for me when it comes to motion tracking, the semi-good news however, is I have to be ridiculously patient when it comes to key framing with my characters movements. the first video below is my first attempt at doing/creating my assignment. i have to say I do have the patience for key framing and it brings out the extreme OCD side of me that many people like to point out. :)

it wasn't the best though. it was dull, lacks shadows and the perfect lighting and so on. so i went back into maya and did the whole thing again.

i was lucky to have some of the people in my class to help me out with this assignment. they gave me really good feedback and tips on how not to hate maya and make my workflow better (THANKS ANDREW AND ROBBIE :]). they taught me how to create shadows in maya and how i can recreate a few elements in my scene to make the shadows flow alot more smoother. below is the final result of what i did for the whole day.

im planning to have a go and try to finish all of the scenes since im heading to adelaide in 3 weeks time and probably wont have access to any comupter with 16gb of ram in them for a week. that way all i have to do is tweak it by bits and pieces, but for now i'll see how this all goes.

off to do more work!
cheers!

trish x

stabilizing scenes

just testing out motion stabilization for one of my scenes. the first being the shaky image (even though it was on a tripod). its a good piece of footage but i need it to be more stable so i can track my robot better. :)

the second one that i have was with stabilization. it is a bit better than the old one.

in all honesty, i haven't done image stabilization in such a long time, so this is kinda a second or 3rd time of trying this out. i have to say i had to find my old notes on it and experiment with the different controls in order to achieve this. im currently working on how to use boujou for my scenes. it is a good motion tracking software for 3d especially when you want your scenes to be perfect for your models.

now off to finish scenes off!
blog more soon!
trish x