BOo ya

BOo ya

i'm going to try push out a technical journal or somthing later on today if not when i get back home in time for deadline .. as i'd love to talk about it yadayadayada ..

I don’t know how (as I have never played it ) but Bioshock has influenced me greatly on this
Which actually has shocked me , cos it never really appealed to me at first.. But something must have been going off in my subconscious self .. As Scene 2 (& in general) does remind me of Bioshock.. Maybe it's the general layout of things?? I’m not to sure ..
Defo a fan of bioshocks lighting in the environments . Definitely make the most of the blues & greens to create that murky look you want .. Change that colour to red and u have an almost mars like glittery dusty colour, almost space like ?? (hint hint) .. Amazing .The type of colour *theme* is a quite obvious inspiration for the lighting in scene two .. (take a look @ previous posts) it really brings out that little extra .

It is quite obvious

That the second scene has been a lot more successful than the first. I had numerous problems in the first one . Especially when it came to the lighting , the curvature of the scene made It bloody hard to make something work .I’m no expert at lighting , so I made sure I applied every OUNCE of knowledge and experience I got from the first scene and edited the lights in the second scene by removing/replacing/changing colours etc and making it 10x as better . Also the second scene had a lot more *going* for it than the first scene .. Both me and stew knew from the start that this was truly going to be a focal point in the 30 second long clip .. I think we spent more detail and time on it as we both knew it was going to be the better ..
I noticed a HUGE difference in the texture quality between the first and the second scene . A massive leap , and is quite Cleary an evident sign of me quite literally *getting better over night* I’m quite happy with the results .. As well as the lighting !
Overall the first scene didn’t come out 100% how I’d of liked but it worked in the long run and fits reasonably well in the 30 sec clip as it acts a very good filler
The 2nd scene on the other hand came out better than either of us could of imagined . Period. Despite the fact this was the hardest of the two for me to texture/map etc.


Apologies for any grammar/spelling mistakes throughout these .. Kind of tired

Poly Counts

done

I’ve been compositing the film throughout the week with stu and finally today I had the chance to finally put all the frames together as one & put the sound onto the footage ..
And voila , it is done !
Ill try upload the video if I can

Time

Final image from one of our scenes


=]

Test pictures .. you name it !

some collection of pictures that were... TESTS haha cant stress that one enough :P

What can I say this has been tough to fit in for 9 weeks considering we are still ,realistically beginners (though we are all finding our way now)

ARTIST INFLUENCE?
The biggest artistically influence for me in this had to come from, not just 1 but EVERY and any artist that tickled me fancy . It would be hard for me to list them all .. So I shall list a small amount of games and FILMs ! they have worked on . Beowulf , Doom , half life .

SHOT

Shot from one of the cams + some fun post edit

Having a lil trouble getting these renders off in this scene with the character , nout to do with the scene itself .. jst the polycount on the character .. which is completely pooHave to see how it pans out and if the renders come out or not .. if they dont ..then the simple solution is we will just have to scrap him in some of the shots, and render the scene only .ANDalso we should of rendered this thing off in layers , was planning to do that from the start . But somehow we never got round to it :S .. bizarre .

Also as i have completely finished my part of the project (just waiting for the renders and stew to finish animating) i've decided to give some AfterEffects Titles ago , see what kind of fancy looking cool intro titles i can get for the project.. worth a shot :)

donnne

DONE

I was working like a blue arsed fly today .. managed to get it all done and ready to render for monday! (today)

i can say it defo looks better than the first scene BY MILES

the contrast between the two is huge ..

we both knew that this scene would be the best out of all of them .. but hek .. not by this much... screenshots will follow !

REALLY chuffed with this tbh

obvious things i need to improve on.. but with every bit of work i do .. i get better .. .. so *shrugs*

much to learn :)
anyways.. like i said .. screenshots will follow .. with a breakdown and what has happened etc

fixing things

today was alrite.. glad i went in to check on stuff.
silly stu wasn’t using the correct screen ratio .. so i made sure that got fixed and altered it bk to PAL etc etc
also the Muppet was re-rendering same video footage over and over and was wondering why quality was getting worse :P haha. So made sure that wasn’t happening again.. apart from that everything was cool .
　
Having some difficulties at the moment with trying to texture this sodding feature in this 2nd scene ..
It's like trying to work out a puzzle made by Picasso .. seriously , I’m getting a head ache trying to map this **** loool

:)

*breathe* lol
ok cool
We have got the 1st scene under wraps .. it's going smooth .. some problems , nout me and stu couldnt fix :)
hope to have Scene 1 done and all complete & POST tmoz .. and have a week to fiddle with it.
scene 2 i hope to get dn by monday.. LATEST tuesday
This is gna be a huge problem .. cos of sm certain other people (year above us )
nicking our comps .. leaving us with no option but to fight for a spare PC and sacrificing our work for another dude in our class (year) so he/she can at least get sm work off ! (cos we are nice people)
Not to mention the amazing-ness of the computers turning off magically and somehow someone else’s work ends up rendering on it .. MAGIC .. I wonder who could that be???(hint is above) Someone’s asking for a kick in the fanny

3rd years

SUCK MY ********

Just a reff for myself .

I will boost the lighting up even more i thinks .. see how it looks , if it turns out poop .. then i will revert back (not a problem )

As you can see .. very bloody , very gamey ..

All necessary texture maps used

no occlusion added

anyways .. this is just a quick reff image for myself .. have a gander if you wish .

haha!

LOL!


I played around with the lighting ..


The scene now looks like smthing from silent hill HAHAHAHA

Lighting needs to go up =]

As you can see the room is lil dark . So i'm gna have a lil fiddle with the lighting stu put in .. I've already added sm tiny tweaks to it. Now it just needs to be slightly brighter .. Who the hell Sits in a dark lounge area? .. unless ur in space and the electricity is **** .. oh wait ..

the new scene

well the 2nd environment is coming along ok . It's is defo going to need more objects in it for sure .. It looks Hellishly empty .

i will post pictures later

Update

Time has been stupidly tight at the moment . Its ridiculous.
I don’t feel like I’m getting much of a benefit in this term to be honest ! . I like putting a shit load of detail into my work (we are mainly talking about textures here) and I cant do that at uni ! Isn’t possible . So , unless I’m able to work at uni in a bigger group and know everything is equally shared out . Ill be fine .... .. Oh wells ,what can I do eh ? Lol
Anyways ..
Time has been taken up with this show reel business that’s been going on , thankfully now its over but I’m now having to rush along with these scenes .. Fun times (NOT)
I asked Stewart to put character into the environment .. Turned out crap ( as the character that stew chose is insanely high polys , but more importantly his colour doesn’t fit so much with the environment , he looks like a Christmas tree ), so that needs fixing. So for mean time?? I’ve been left with another task to do and possibly fix(on top of everything else , such as textures , sorting out other models ,possibly making more(as I’ve come up with a theme for the scene --see posts below-- , matte paints, lighting, rendering, fixing camera attributes , then editing in Photoshop & that’s still not even all of it .. . I’ve arranged a meeting round mine so we can fix this problem for scene 1 as no doubt it will be a problem for scene 2 … we need this character in the environment !!!!! If he isn’t fully animated inside this scene , we will have to go back to what I initially had planned and having the character go from key pose to key pose within the scene (still doesn’t fix what the character looks like , he is too bright! And 30 k polys!! )

ARH lool

***** lol i hate deadlines


....


expect progress update soon

Quick production plan for myself to see what i can do .

I’ve always stressed about making it a little different , even normal cliché scenes , I have a habit of wanting to add my own touch to it (obviously not without consulting anyone else) . Always making a theme within a theme . It tends to tell a story that way as well ! , draws the audience in more , and makes them believe what they are seeing that little bit extra .
Anyways
This seems to be like a good idea, the Environment already is a lounge/semi cafeteria area for people , so it would seem like a excellent idea to make something of it .
As you can see I’ve also added sm notes to myself seeing if other objects will be needed . Though ill decide on that when it comes to nearly finishing the scene .
The debris outside is something I’m really considering to have in this scene . I will talk to Stewart about it , and see what he can do . Would look amazing to have it in ..
Also obviously ill be playing around with the lighting in the scene as it progresses .

Update

Corridor has changed , yet again .. but for the better . Gave it more cams to choose from etc .
changed the lighting slightly
the corridor hasn’t come out entirely how i wanted it to be .. but hek !
currently I’m on the second scene , and that’s looking alot more promising !
Pictures of the corridor and details about how i developed it will come later . As well as my time schedules , as they have actually changed a lot due to unforeseen evens happening .

... in relation to pictures below
they do not have anything applied to them .. no occlusion .. nothing

It's pure lighting and texture

duuh

lighting .

Just fixing up sm things currently
Pc just messed up so i had to fix it .. GRRRR
i want to sleep ==]
anyways
Lighting ..
Sm examples of lighting here . both different lightings . but they compliment one another really well when mixed into Photoshop
its taking me about couple of days to get the lighting done .. (its still not done to how i want it to be , need to make it lighter , but may just do that on Post edit )
previous attempts will be posted later ..
I feel that this was a good idea to go bk to the red/yellow theme as it does slightly differ itself from the cliché blue/white look you can see below in the reff pics .
SAYING THIS . i have tried to do sm trickery with the lighting , only filling a small amount of the scene with the rusty look and actually the rest of the scene with white-ish colour.. it compliments itself very well i think ! (needs tweaking i know , but im no master on lighting in Maya lol , give me a paint brush any day *shakes fist* I’ll be able to do it pro some day =] ) ..
The lighting seems to make the environment look neither hot , or cold . very normal , and nor dark .. nor light , pretty much on the basis of a neutral ground for something in this type of field ...

Apologies for grammar and spelling
When your pc messes up and you spend sm good several hours fixing the bugger .. You stop caring about grammar . WHEN YOU NEED TO SLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP .
　
Expect another more detailed write up later on , when I’m not so tired lol .

peace :)

added note .. more cams are in the scene ! u just wont see them till later on ;)

Corridor

Few more tweaks then complete!



Ive now started on the 2nd room today


I will change my time schedule to due to changes

like rave on air deadline changing etc ..


MASSIVE update coming soooon ;)

:)

Lighting

PRobs the most important application to ANYTHING is lighting & currently while this environment is rounding up to be finished off I’m changing it . As it had far to many lights , I’m trying to shorten down how many lights are in the scene . also trying to effectively make the environment have lot of depth and render quicker . Lighting is a bit hit and miss with me at times as its not something I’m confident in (yet). I know how to do it , but it sure isn’t one of me *skills* as of yet , but it will be & has to be .

Update

corridor is pretty much complete!!
few more things to tweak , not a problem .
now to texture this other room , which i need off of stu as soon as poss.
now the deadline date has been shortened its proper ****** up my time plan and I’m rushing to get this done so we have enough time to sodding post edit!!!!!!!!!!!
STUPID rave on air :@


Pictures etc will come later to show u progress

update

I plan to get this room done for Friday. So changes to my schedule shall be made.
Then i shall work on the second room and hopefully have that completed for the 25th (preff before) then we can get started on Post
Post will take a reasonably long time I think . So thinking caps on now .

added note

I think I’m gna change the colour of the lights in post production LOL
why the **** didn’t i think of that before.
It will be such an easier way to obtain the look for this scene that we REALLY want .

Hoorar !

=]

UPDATE

Progress picture of the environment,nothing special at the moment . Many things yet to change/fix/alter etc and many more textures to ..
Lots and lots :P
Anyways
Here’s the scene so far with ---
The textures and lights I’ve done so far for the scene .I'll upload previous environment tests and old pictures of the scene later .


Note ;

I 've tweaked the image so ur able to see alot more within the scene , as the lights arent fully complete :)

Also i'm thinking about making the depth of the camera alot stronger .. I'll test it out , see how it goes .

Cams

To obtain that depth that I wanted in the scene ,( in which you can see below in my previous post within an example picture ) I’ve been playing around with the cameras . FINALY getting a nice depth of field that gives the environment that little bit extra .
I will be playing around with this more , as I want the cams to make everything look ultra good (or at least compliment everything).

Lighting

During the process of me rendering the scene and doing the texturing along the way . I’ve noticed the original Red atmospheric lights we want may not be that complimentary towards the final product . I have decided that when the scene is fully completed I will render off two different scenes with different lights atmospherics .
The most complimentary light source seems to be a blue white and green .Instead of the original red/rusty orange colour .
The blues tends bring out the environment A LOT more than the red colours , and makes the place look a lot more ambient than the red . I’m determined to get a red atmospheric feeling in the environment , but at the end of the day I will choose which one compliments the environment the most .no point in choosing something it if makes everything look **** .

ATTENTION!_!

well, textures are coming along Swifty , every so often i get thrown a bitch of a thing to texture but i over come it somhow lol .

anyways

Its come to my attention that not enough *clutter* is in the rooms . So i shall be playing around with the scene/scenes more making it alot more dynamic within itself .

Examples shall be posted of before and after

In relation to below

Very useful key information that come from these pictures . A lot of spacey themes have a similar feel to them , though that can be a good thing , it can also be a bad thing . So a little bit more of a variety I think is in order for us . Hopefully the post production editing will provide us with the feel that we really want to convey over .


We don’t partially want to break the *feel* for these types of atmospheres and go off and do smoothing amazingly different and spectacular , simply because people buy or like these types of games for a reason . The dark dingy haunting feeling . it’s the same all over . For instance, same script with a horror film , Heroes wins the day for an action film etc . So we don’t want to break the connection to much , its still going to look relatively similar to our reference images . A lot of the *difference* in this will come down to the post editing . I just HOPE we can do it , because its after effects and I’ll admit , I don’t know that much about it . Should be interesting !

Reff material

Some colour idea

Character pose / cloths based from photographic reference

















A very recent painting of mine , though Initially it has nothing to do with the environment its struck me to have a similar colour theme to what we are eventually aiming for .

The colour we want is something rusty , red ,cold , alert . Though we may/maynot be able to get the exact colour , we are going to try our best at it .

I’ve already put down some lights in the environment from the start to see how well it interacts with the environment and its objects . It needs a lot of tweaking but the feeling is about . Once the textures are in I can then proceed to edit the lights properly .

Corridor - done

The corridor is finished (models only)

Here is a quick run through of how it went ( as I now have to do some textures and work me butt off)

Environment was planned with me and stu

I proceeded to go off and make the Shell/skeleton of the Environment & Stewart proceeded to add details to it like pipes , screens etc etc as we had planned out in the pre production stage . Always under each others supervision to make sure everything came out perfectly how we wanted it to . I’m now about to start the textures on this environment, while Stewart starts building some models for the 2nd environment .

I shall do a detailed run through of this later . (when I have time )

Whole scene is 3325 polys

Construction & idea

The construction of the mirror with the data on either sides is a very typical theme of a futuristic ideal of how we see things yet to be and futuristic . So that will most defo will be going into the environment if given the chance ,If not, something like it for sure! . The blocky-ness of the sink as well shows good constructual design for something industrial yet modern and space age . So that’s defo something to considering when modelling the rest of the environment

camera/layout

This image is pretty much the basis of what camera styles we are aiming for . Though I don’t want to focus too much on cameras/lens’s on this blog as I don’t know that much about them, so it’s a little hard to convey what I want haha . On the other hand I know what cameras to use inside maya and how to alter them to get a similar feel to this ..Though we don’t want the final proj to have an exact look as this warped image, just an essence of it .

Also the curvature of the scenery within the image is directly having an influence on the shape of our environment. I want to create a really nice depth of field going on

collecting research

Stu has the images of reffs for the environment . I cant upload them here , as he has them and i don’t.As they are on his USB

LOL

great ..

so here’s some of my own personal reffs for this environment

development

very quick build in maya of the corridor made at the start of the proj .Going to be editing this a little bit more + adding in more objects etc & beef it up more .Also using diff materials Etc

this is purely a maya concept thats going into development .

Update

I've Started the corridor(pretty much finished the key parts of it , details will come in later) got stu to model some objects , gota try keep the poly level as low as we can . That way less problems will occur .. hopefully

Diablo III

http://www.blizzard.com/diablo3/world/environments/tristram.xml

Still shot .. But it has animated parts to it .. This is the main influence of animation for this project ..

Plan

The plan



Spent most of today planning the general layout of the rooms , roughly gathering our ideas together and displaying them in small boxes on a piece of paper .


We have come to the conclusion we are going to do only 3 rooms .

Corridor
Storage room
And lounge area

These rooms ALL vary from one another and have different feels to each other , but will still have the same *feel* about them as they would technically be apart of the same *space station?*

So its vital we are able to convey that these rooms are still apart of the environment but making sure the rooms carry their own characteristics accordingly


Cameras have also been sorted

Layers have been planned

Overall *look* of what objects should look like have been planned

If I can get hold of the piece of paper with the drafts on it ill upload here .


I intend to concept the corridor over the weekend . I cant make that a promise to myself though as these coming week and a bit are extremely hectic . For many reasons . Uni and outside life.

Start

I’m working with a good mate of mine for this brief who I’ve also worked on many projects before with , so we have sound knowledge of how each one of us works and how we go about it.

For this project we are going for a space future theme . Nothing *post apocalyptic* nothing tacky . Something that should actually compliment itself .

Main influence for this include

Dead Space
Doom 1 2 3
Half life
Duke Nukem
Star Wars
Etc etc pretty much Anything and everything that has that flare of spacey-ness & some degree of blood .


The *animation* itself (term used loosely) will be the environment, with most of the room being still shots. The animation will lye within key detailed parts, like ambient effects like fog, various lights , tv screens , etc will be the *stuff* that’s animated . Of course the character will also have a certain degree of animation but he will look more Animatic *style* , rather than a clean animation. He will only br doing key frames ( aka key poses to properly communicate the feel of the environment ) of course the deadline we have for this brief means we don’t have much time to work on it ,So less hassle we have to deal with the better.

Brief

"An animation piece to your own design"



so the planning begins