Project 2: Written Work and Mentor Notes

Project Plan

 

 

DATE	ACTIVITY
	Initial Research
20/09/2013	Write my brief
23/09/2013	Mood boards
30/09/2013	Character Design Assets
30/09/2013	Environment Design Assets
30/09/2013	Thumbnails
14/10/2013	Story Boards
21/10/2013	Lighting Design
21/10/2013	Character Sheets
11/11/2013	Character Modeling
11/11/2013	Environment Modeling
16/12/2013	Lighting
16/12/2013	UVW Unwrapping Character and texturing
16/12/2013	Environment Texturing
16/12/2013	Character Rigging
16/12/2013	Character Weight Mapping
16/12/2013	Scene Cameras
31/01/2014	Character Animation
31/01/2014	Sound Recording and Music Sourcing
31/01/2014	Rendering
31/01/2014	Compositing
31/01/2014	Final Output

 

Production Process Plan

If nominated, my project will be viewed by the public, so I need it to be as refined and polished as possible. I will be spending a great amount of time making sure my idea is as good as it can be during pre-production. I plan to iron out any flaws in the way the story is presented, to make sure my character and environment are well designed using a wide variety of research materials and even spend time testing the timings of the actual animation to make sure it runs smoothly. This is a good stage to make sure I am incorporating some of the 12 animation principles which will give the movement within the film some degree of realism.

1. Pre-Production (To be completed by week commencing 21^st October 2013)

·         Create a research portfolio which will be heavily referenced from throughout the project. This will include both primary and secondary research evidence, such as photographs and videos. I will include references for other similar works created by others that inspire me.

·         Create fully referenced mood boards to refine my ideas.

·         Create colour boards which will help refine both my colour and lighting/contrast ideas for use in the animation. This can be useful in fleshing out the right mood and atmosphere of the short.

·         Write a full treatment for my project, including as much information as possible. This will include the full plot of my animation, sound plan and all other ideas which I will incorporate into the film. I will include a log line at the beginning of my treatment which will outline my project in 35-50 words, and then I will go into a lot more detail in the bulk of the document.  I can use this as a master document and can refer to at any time.

·         Create character sheets that include front, back and 45 degree views of my characters in a T-pose. The character sheets can then be used as a guide when it comes to modelling the characters.

·         Create a script

·         Three sets of 30-45 thumbnails that outline the story and actions involved

·         Go into further detail with 60-90 storyboards. Pay special attention to adding more storyboards into the more action packed sequences.

·         Create an animatic to cement down the timings of the animation.

·         Create text storyboards 10+ boards

2. Production (To be completed by week commencing 9^th December 2013)

·         Source Sound Effects, Voice over and Music bed.

·         Character modelling

·         Character UVW mapping and texturing

·         Character rigging

·         Character skinning

·         Environment modelling

·         Environment texturing

·         Character and environment lighting

·         Character and environment animation

·         Rendering

3. Post-Production (To be completed by week commencing  16^th December 2013)

·         Compositing and editing

·         Sound Levels

·         Colour levels

·         Final export

·         Submission

Required Materials:

In order to create this animation, I will be using a variety of production materials and techniques

• Access to college animation suite computers with internet access.
• Access to required animation software such as Autodesk 3DStudio Max, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Flash.
• Access to the Audio Network library of music
• A sound proofed recording studio for recording sound  as well as relevant recording equipment such as zoom recorders, microphones etc. (To be arranged with lecturer)

This project must be submitted at the latest by Week commencing 6^th January 2014

11/09/2013

Mentor Meeting

Today I met with my Computer Arts and Design lecturer Henry Broadhurst to discuss my project ideas and progress so far on Project 2 - Do It Yourself: In 3D
We discussed my mindmap and the various ideas and concepts that I had come up with for my project, including my thoughts on what the plot, character and environment could be.

Henry suggested I take a step back and have another look from a fresh starting point. He suggested I try to answer a few questions first

• Who is this animation for?
• What am I trying to achieve with this animation?
• What is my animations message that I want to put across?

Henry also suggested I look up some contextual examples of similar works that have been produced.
I should use this information and think about it when I create my own brief.

Audio Research

Sound Effects needed:

• Magic sound effects – Sparkle Effects
• Swish of waving wand
• Old chest opening
• Train flying around room
• Mobile spinning fast
• Smash of photo frame

Most of these sound effects will be created using Foley in a sound studio. For some effects, such as the smash of the frame, these can be substituted with audio files from the BBC sound library.

Voice overs:

<!--[if !supportLists]-->·         <!--[endif]-->Woman snoring

<!--[if !supportLists]-->·         <!--[endif]-->Child miscellaneous noises such as breathing and grunts

<!--[if !supportLists]-->·         <!--[endif]-->Father

All voice overs will be provided by myself by recording the various dialogue that is recorded in the script

Music Needed:

<!--[if !supportLists]-->·         <!--[endif]-->Sad and lonely music – Possibly string instruments to show the deep sadness in the home since the father has been missing

<!--[if !supportLists]-->·         <!--[endif]-->Upbeat, down to business music – When the magic is being performed

<!--[if !supportLists]-->·         <!--[endif]-->Orchestral or angelic music - The revelation that the father is alive

The music bed will be sourced from Audio Network PLC

02/10/2013

Mentor Meeting

Today, we discussed how I was progressing on my brief for this project. We talked about how it is important that I look back at animation festivals and the entry essential and optional criteria for them.

• Which festival?
• What kind of festival is it?



I need to demonstrate some more research into this area.

I must also go into a bit more detail about my target audience.

• Who is the animation for and why is it important to reach that particular demographic?

I was also given advice that I went into a bit more detail than is neccessary when I spoke about colour theory. A lot of that information is best kept for a later stage.

In my brief so far, my image references are both works from Disney/Pixar. I need to include a far greater variety of images, such as entries and winners of various animation festivals. This gives me more to work on and is more relevant to my festival submission brief.

We spoke about how my project is progressing as a whole too. I seem to have jumped the gun in regards to my character and environment developement. I have already cemented down a basic character design and have missed out a large chunk of the development phase. I will need to go back and make at least 3 different character designs.

16/10/2013

Pitch

After I pitched my ideas to the rest of the class, we discussed the theme of my animation. Would it be a waste to aim my short at a younger audience who may not fully grasp the concept of a broken home/missing father? In real life, there is no magic wand that can bring people back. Will this be painful for people to watch?

Also, my pitch didn't go as well as I had hoped. I feel like I didn't get across my points as well as I could have. I need to remember to end my pitch well next time, instead of simply trailing off. I need to remember I am trying to sell myself as an artist in my pitches.

3D Animation Techniques

Key-Framing:

Key-framing is a technique used to animate objects within animation computer software. A keyframe can be set at a specific time within the animation that holds specific attributes of that particular frame, and if another keyframe is set later on in the timeline with different attributes, there will be a transition between those two images. This technique is useful for me to manually refine the way my assets move and interact with each other inside my animation this can be honed in further through use of curve editors and dope sheets.

Inverse Kinematics:

First of all, Kinematics is a way of moving objects that are linked in a chain within 3DSMax and other 3D software. For example, with inverse kinematics, if you move and rotate a shoulder joint in the arm of a model, then everything below the shoulder in that chain (Elbow, hand etc.) with move with it, however everything above the chain will not move. Inverse kinematics does things the other way round. If I move the hand of the model, the elbow and shoulder will automatically compensate to get into the correct positions relative to the constraints in the joint. Inverse kinematics is useful to me for quickly getting a correct key poses in the model, which can then be refined further using Keyframing.

Motion Graphs:

A motion graph, or as it is known in Autodesk 3DSMax, the curve editor is a useful utility that allows a user to see and edit parameters of a selected object on a 2D graph. For example, if I select a box object in my viewport and open the curve editor, I can actually see the curve of the box’s animation on each axis within the 2d diagram. I can then grab the motion handles and change the flow of the motion without adding or altering key-frames. This feature is available in most 3D animation software packages and even some 2D software such as Adobe Flash, though with much more limited functionality. This technique is very useful to me if I want to amend the speed or flow of the way an object moves in my animation and also for animation principles such as ease-in, ease-out, and anticipation.

Dope Sheets:

Dope sheets work in a very similar way to motion graphs in 3DSMax. The dope sheet function can display all of the animations key frames within a similar graph to the curve editor but omitting the curves function. The dope sheet itself looks somewhat like a spreadsheet that contains the information about the key-frames. The purpose of the dope sheet is to make it somewhat simpler for the animator to see where all the key-frames are and how they flow together. Traditionally, they were called exposure sheets and were used in hand drawn and cell animations to keep track of all the assets and camera angles needed. I could make use of a dope sheet whilst animating to try to cement down the timings of the motions for the purpose of gaining a smoother animation, I could even use dope sheets on a larger scene with multiple examples of the same objects or characters to offset the animations so it doesn’t all look the same.

Motion Capture:

Motion capture is a process that animators can use to reduce the workload and simplify animating a character. Rather than tediously moving each and every characters body part for each motion that they make, the technology exists to simplify a lot of this by using live actors and mapping their real life movements into the animation software. In order to use motion capture in a project, I would need a motion capture room that is equipped with several motion capture hi-res cameras and a computer capable of running the ‘mocap’ software. This could be very useful to me in the future if I am ever part of a high end animation with life like character movement, but will not be needed in my project as it only runs for a short amount of time.

Particle Systems:

A particle system is a function within 3D software for generating lots of small objects to create effects. A particle could be as small as a bit of dust or a snowflake or as large as trees falling from the sky. The system generates lots of the particles which can be directed and animated then renders them in the final animation. I could use a particle system to create 3D effects such as dust in a room, smoke, snowfall, even rain and explosions. This will be useful in many of my projects as these examples are prevalent in many story arcs but I must be wary as lots of particles can be detrimental to the computer if it does not run fast enough and it’s very time consuming to get the desired effects.

Multi-pass Rendering:

Multi-pass rendering is a rendering technique that can be used within 3D programs such as 3DSMax. Instead of rendering out the final scene as one memory heavy file, a multi-pass render can export the scene in separate layers such as scene environment, character, effects, lighting etc. This technique is useful to me if I wish to create large scenes that are graphically intensive and would not be possible to do as a single pass render. This method of rendering also offers me a greater amount of control over the individual layers within the composition. I must be aware however, that these sort of renders must be planned beforehand and the composited together afterwards.

Multi-pass layering:

Multi-pass layering is a digital compositing technique that utilises multi-pass render files. A scene can be broken down into separate layers as they are rendered. After you render out each layer, they must be composited back together in the correct order in a program such as Adobe Photoshop, Premiere or After Effects to build up the final film or image. This is useful to me as I can simply edit a particular rendered layer of the rendered image instead of having to re-render out the whole scene again which could cost valuable time.

Character Rigging:

To rig a character basically means preparing that character for animation. This process is very similar to creating a wire armature inside Claymation or puppet characters such as Wallace and Gromit, however the process is fully digital. First the completed model must be given a digital bone structure with linked up controller points that can be manipulated whilst animating the character. Next we need to skin the model. This means giving the characters bones directions on what part of the mesh it can move as the controllers are shifted around. This process of skinning the character is called weight-mapping. Rigging and skinning my 3d character will be essential in most if not all of my character animations. The characters simply need to be rigged or they cannot move, deform and be controlled correctly. Rigging my character is essential in my project to allow my character to move and deform correctly.

Case Study 001 – Advances features of Tangled

In the Disney animation studios movie ‘Tangled’ of 2010, the protagonist Rapunzel is brought to life in a 3D animated feature film for the first time. The most difficult aspect of bringing the old brothers Grimm story to fruition was creating Rapunzel’s impossibly long hair and animating it in a believable and convincing way.

According to Dr Kelly Ward (Ph.D. in computer animated hair) who is the senior software engineer for Walt Disney Animation Studios and was in charge of the design of Rapunzel’s hair, she and her team had to animate 70 feet of hair which would in reality weigh about 60 to 80 pounds. The hair had to be conveyed as realistic on screen, but not overly so, as Rapunzel’s small frame could not accommodate dragging such a large weight behind her all the time.

One of the problems the studio had with the hair was actually down to its sheer weight. The artistic direction that the film was taking called for Rapunzel to have a small frame which would contrast with the other stocky characters in the film. Because of this, Rapunzel would have a very hard time dragging her hair around the scene fluidly as she was not built like a wrestler. The animators overcame this by reducing the amount of friction that the hair had in relation to the ground, which meant that it glided effortlessly along with little strain on Rapunzel herself. This was a very effective way to get around this issue.

The team used a special hair simulation software called dynamicWires which includes a system that can simulate the springiness and flow of many hairs that would flow from Rapunzel’s head. This was necessary because the hair would quite often pile up on itself and other objects in the scene, so the springiness was essential so the hair could land correctly and keep its volume.

The springiness of Rapunzel’s hair was created using a method based on Hooke’s Law. I have read up on Hooke’s law and I have gathered that it is basically a scientific way of explaining elasticity. I surmise by staying true to this formula, the Disney Animation team had a good understanding of the physical properties and the physics of how Rapunzel’s hair had to move to be considered lifelike.

Another problem to animation team had to overcome in the movie production was the sheer volume of individual hairs on Rapunzel’s head. In an interview with ScienceFriday.com, Dr Ward stated "hair simulation is difficult, because the average human head has over 100,000 strands of hair." The team overcame this massive animating task by grouping the hair together and only simulating 173 hair groups. Dr Ward said “the hairs that are near each other tend to move pretty similarly to each other." This meant that instead of individually animating 100,000 individual strands of hair, only 173 had to be, which saved a lot of time.

In conclusion, The Disney Animation Studio Team that created Tangled were very effective when using very advanced animation techniques to create the final film, and also they had overcame quite a few obstacles on the road to bringing Rapunzel’s hair to life for the first time in 3D.

References:

Das, L., After a decade of bad hair days, Disney has finally made Tangled, a film about Rapunzel!, (2011), www.dailymail.co.uk [ONLINE], Available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/reviews/article-1351268/Disney-finally-Tangled-film-Rapunzel-decade-bad-hair-days.html Accessed 30/12/2013

Disney.co.uk (2013), Tangled Synopsis, [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.disney.co.uk/tangled/about.jsp Accessed 30/12/2013

Jessa, T., What is Hooke’s Law? , (2010), http://www.universetoday.com [ONLINE], Available at: http://www.universetoday.com/55027/hookes-law/ Accessed 03/01/2014

ScienceFriday.com, (2012), Untangling the Hairy Physics of Rapunzel, [ONLINE], Available at: http://sciencefriday.com/video/04/20/2012/untangling-the-hairy-physics-of-rapunzel.html Accessed 03/01/2014

Ward, K, Simulating Rapunzel’s Hair in Disney’s Tangled, (Date not known), https://disney-animation.s3.amazonaws.com [ONLINE] Available at: https://disney-animation.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/production/publication_asset/56/asset/rapzHairSim.pdf Accessed 30/12/2013.

Warrilow, C., Disney's "Tangled" - An Exercise in Physics and Computer Animation, (2012), http://www.gpb.org, [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.gpb.org/blogs/passion-for-learning/2012/06/06/disneys-tangled-an-exercise-in-physics-and-computer-animation, Accessed 03/01/2014

 

Case Study 002

Advances features The Lord of the Rings Trilogy Army Simulation

 

When Peter Jackson began creating the Lord of the Rings Trilogy of films, based on the J.R.R Tolkien series of novels of the same name, he met a technological challenge that had never been overcome before in movies up to that date. Within Tolkien’s classic novels there are several notable wars and battle scenes that quite often include several thousand participants. War scenes with many extras had been shown in the past on other titles by using live action extras but Jacksons challenge was to replicate this with tens of thousands of men and orcs, this was simply not practical or cost effective if live action extras had to be hired. The answer came through digital animation. This had also been done in the past, albeit with some rather unrealistic looking effects. Previously, each animated character was first created as a particle which was moved around in the scene in relation to other particle characters. When the animators were happy with the way this simulated crowd of particles interacted with each other, they rendered the particles as fully animated characters by replacing the particle with an animation of a person walking along for example.

Peter Jackson turned to fellow New Zealander Stephen Regelous in 1996 whom he had worked with on a previous production and asked him to become a crowd’s supervisor for his first Lord of the Rings movie, The Fellowship of the Ring.

Regelous then spent the next few years writing a computer program he called Massive for use in the huge battle scenes within the Lord of the Rings films. The purpose of this innovative new software was to create a dynamic and fluid movement within a crowd that could interact with itself and the environment in a way that was as realistic as possible. The way that Regelous managed this was by engineering a system that allows for the individual digital character’s AI to control what its own actions will be.

For example for a digital character within the scene there are a number of different animation that are given them such as running, swinging a sword, dodging a weapon and falling over. Some characters are given as many as 350 different motions which are roughly a second long. The characters AI then identifies an animation that the character will use based on its surroundings and what other characters are doing around them and to them. When this system is applied to a crowd that is fifty thousand strong and you have a dynamic animated war scene composed of intelligent warriors that think for themselves.

Dan Koeppel, who wrote about Regelous’ work in the December 2002 edition of Popular Science stated “Massive [Regelous' software] endows each character with a digital brain and gives it the power to act completely on its own. In an AI sense, the characters fighting in Helm's Deep are, well, fighting ...”

Regelous went on to receive an Academy Award in 2004: The Scientific and Technical Award for creating Massive.

References:

 

Awntv.com (2007), fxguidetv Interview: Stephen Regelous, founder, Massive Software, [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.awntv.com/videos/fxgtv-interview-stephen-regelous Accessed 10/01/2014

Imdb.com (2014) Stephen Regelous Visual Effects [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1106186/ Accessed 10/01/2014

Imdb.com (2014) The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120737/?ref_=nm_knf_t1 Accessed 10/01/2014

Koeppel, D., Popular Science, December 2002 edition, Pages 38-44, Available online at: http://scrapbook.theonering.net/scrapbook/view/5012 Accessed 10/01/2014

MassiveSoftware.com (2014), About Massive, [ONLINE], Available at: http://www.massivesoftware.com/about.html Accessed 10/01/2014

Massive Software.com (2004) Massive founder Stephen Regelous receives 2004 World Technology Award nomination [ONLINE] Available At: http://www.massivesoftware.com/news_091404.html Accessed 10/01/2014

Nzonscreen.com (2014), Stephen Regelous Visual Effects, [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.nzonscreen.com/person/stephen-regelous Accessed 10/01/2014

 

Case Study 003

Motion Capture in Beowulf

Motion capture technology has been around for a while now and it is common to see the technology in movies, video games and advertisements today.
In 2007, film director Robert Zemeckis, who previously created the ground breaking motion capture film The Polar Express (2004) completed his new epic fully cg feature film, Beowulf.
Beowulf, set in 8th century Denmark tells the tale of a warrior who goes head to head with various demons such as Grendel and its mother, a dragon in the guise of a woman.
The innovative feature film is fully computer generated with live action actors that were digitally motion captured and used as references for the characters final animations.

Post Magazine interviewed Jerome Chen, the visual Effects supervisor on the film and asked him how much of a step forward Beowulf was to the Polar Express.
He replied “I’d definitely call it a leap forward, in both technology and creativity, which work hand in hand. The more advanced the technology we developed, the more time we had to work on the creative aspects of creating the imagery. What I’ve found in most visual effects work is, if you spend, say, 75 percent of your time trying to work out how to do it, you only get 25 percent of the time to make it look good. But here, it was more a 50/50 split, and it shows.”

Zemeckis set up a motion capture stage that was 7.5 meters by 7.5 meters. The actors were then set up with their motion capture suits that comprise of a body suit, each with 78 pre-set body markers that tell the computer software where the actor’s body parts are at any given time in the shot.
The 44 cameras at the motion capture set then capture every minute detail of the performance. The data is captured in real time by the cameras which stream them to special computers where the layout crew could prepare shots for review by Zemeckis each day. This data is then used to animate the 3d character models (created in Autodesk Maya) in the film in a very realistic manner compared to manually manipulating the characters and key frames.

The most difficult aspect of using the motion capture technology for every character in the film was the fact that not all of the characters were fully human. Take the 20 foot tall demon Grendel for example. The data from motion capture data could not directly apply to that character model, as there are no 20 foot tall actors around today that could pull it off. Animation supervisor Kenn McDonald who integrated the motion capture data into the character models said “For the humans, we stuck with the captured performances, but we used the performance capture only as a basis for Grendel. We had to work it over so much.”

To capture the facial performances that the actors made, the crew used a combination of live action video for reference and a technique called performance capture curves which helps to map the facial movement to the character rig within the Maya scene file. McDonald had the idea to paralyse one side of the character rig for Grendel to further dehumanise him. McDonald said “When we applied the performance capture data, the rig limited the range of movement”

References:

Billington, A., (2007), From Motion Capture to 3D: The Technology of Beowulf, firstshowing.net, [ONLINE], Available at: http://www.firstshowing.net/2007/from-motion-capture-to-3d-the-technology-of-beowulf/ Accessed 11/01/2014
Blair, I., (2007), VISUAL EFFECTS: 'BEOWULF', postmagazine.com, [ONLINE], Available at: http://www.postmagazine.com/Publications/Post-Magazine/2007/November-1-2007/VISUAL-EFFECTS-BEOWULF.aspx Accessed 11/01/2014
Filmeductation.org, (2014), Filming Beowulf, [ONLINE], Available at: http://www.filmeducation.org/beowulf/filming.html Accessed 11/01/2014
Imdb.com, (2014) The Polar Express, [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338348/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 Accessed 11/01/2014
Imdb.com, (2014) Beowulf, [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0442933/?ref_=nv_sr_1 Accessed 11/01/2014
Montgomery, J., (2007), Beowulf: Breaking Ground with Mocap, fxguide.com, [ONLINE], Available at: http://www.fxguide.com/featured/Beowulf_Breaking_Ground_with_Mocap/, Accessed 11/01/2014
Robertson, B., (2007), Beowulf Effects, pages 1-3, cgsociety.com [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.cgsociety.org/index.php/CGSFeatures/CGSFeatureSpecial/beowulf_effects Accessed 11/01/2014