Brief Note:
In the final run-up to the end of the project, there was still a lot of work that needed to be attended to in order to completely move on into the rendering stage. Once completing my animation tasks, my next priority was to then help with any additional work that still needed to be completed.
In the last run-up before the deadline, I worked on completing my animation for the Grandfather, so as to be on hand for any more work the team required me to take on, and manage. Here I will document what I was assigned to work on and finish off.
Book Illustration Page 1 Layout (for Book Rig Render Test)
Font Adjustment
These illustration layouts were not made for the final layouts to be used as textures in the book rig; I was asked to create a sample layout for page 1, the reason for this was so we could have a test render of the book in Arnold with its illustration texture appealed to it in order to have an idea of what the final result would look like.
There was a slight change in font size, as the two example images above can show. I had originally set the size to about 43 font size feeling as it was a children’s book the font would be large. We changed this to 38 font size instead as the first attempt was slightly too big.
When thinking of creating this sample illustration layout, Niamh and I discussed briefly what the page should look like. She had created template layouts previously which I remembered. As I worked on this task she was on hand to provide feedback if I was going the right way with the design. Although, something I added purely out of interest was some paper textures to the page. I love books (especially ones with illustrations) and to me, the page is the best part of the book, the design and the way it is presented, and for some books the smell the paper has is incredible.
We had discussed illustration layouts, I had then had a spark of inspiration, as the description I was receiving for the layout design reminded me similar to Peter Rabbit book Illustrations. This was what I had in mind when creating the page layout.
Explaining the process for how to create the blur effect on the edges of the illustration for Julie.
Above are some example images that I created in order to use as an example of the process I used for creating this effect for the page. I thought if the other members of the team wanted to use this as a basis for the final illustration pieces, I could give them this helpful tip so they could create it for themselves if they wished. Emma and Julie were working on the final illustrations, they had been communicating and organising this side of the project together, whilst, I and the others were sorting out the minor areas that still needed to be finished off.
Cityscape Silhouette Painting Texture
The next task I needed to do was to create a cityscape painting for the team this needed to be done asap, at this time we were organising the scene files and applying the textures as we waited for more animation work to be finalised from our outsourced animators.
To create this texture I used alpha channels to create a transparent background, then I saved the file as a Targa format. When placing the texture into the scene, there became a problem when rendering the file the transparency would appear black. I also tried saving it out as a png format instead of Targa, in the hope this would help.
I used many references of Boston cityscapes, in order to create the mode and tone of evening atmosphere. What I decided to do so as to make this process move a lot faster was to create a collage of my reference images found online of the Boston cityscape, this I thought would save time on drawing out the scene for myself.
Above is the collage image for the cityscape I used, what I did next was to create a silhouette (black) and mask the layers so as to paint in the textures and tones without ruining the shape.
House Texture Painted Windows and Blinds
I was then asked to create some window textures for the houses, as these were missing from the final texture file of the house. To have a variety I created some windows with blinds and some I just left plain. Nothing else was needed for me to do on these files, only the windows were my added touch.
Composition Files Scene Clean-up
I was asked by Niamh to take her composition scenes; this was so as to reference in my animation work I had, and to save the files individually to their scene. However, before I did this I had to clean-up the scene file… in the Outliner I needed to properly name the objects that had been placed into the scene by Niamh.
These images show the scene file as I received it, there were a lot of unnamed geometry, and extra meshes of houses, trees, etc that I had to delete, I also renamed all the geometry names in the outliner to tidy this up… there were so many unorganised groups and undeleted history that I needed to clean up. I had to delete the lights and cameras for this scene. Niamh was working on rearranging them and sorting these out.
I noticed when going through the file that there was a larger house model in the scene too, this I also needed to delete as this would have caused problems to the render time and scene size.
Here are snapshots of the cleaned up scene file, that I saved on its own, this would be useful because others would need to reference in this scene for animation; with organised and proper naming in the outliner. Having a cleaner scene would make it clearer for outsourced members to manage and navigate the Outliner. Whereas before the file would have been a huge confusion to send to anyone.
Feedback for Mark Mullan
Along with animating the Grandfather, I also was in contact with Mark Mullan, who needed me to give feedback over some of his work he had been assigned for the kid shots. I replied feedback with him the same way Alec had for me through SyncSketch. Here I have taken some snapshots of the pieces of advice I gave him for his shots.
Provided with the notes I left to explain what he needed to improve and adjust with the scenes. Originally he had been exploring having the kid sitting on his knees, which I thought was a nice touch for believability to the character, as a child would not usually sit perfectly. Unfortunately, for simplistic reasons as the rig could not support this pose, due to limitations, for how the rig would deform around the butt area, we had to result to having the kid sitting on his bottom instead. This was also a good choice, as Mark Mullan had animated him kicking his feet, which I thought would be a nice touch to the performance. It created a believability to the character which was very pleasant to watch.
Some issues were that in most of his first attempts, some of his poses were not quite complete, and areas where floaty and looked stiff; as you can see in my notes, I annotated these areas to illustrate another approach. For example, the arm in Mark’s first attempt was too stiff and floaty in motion, it was a distraction to the performance. In order to keep it simple I thought it would be best to have the kid hold on to the chair, in the shot, he is playing with the toy and his upper body moved a lot. I felt that he would need to have some support, so the character needed to hold on to the chair he is sitting on to establish this.
What I had also noticed about Mark’s scenes were that he did not have the actual scene file for reference, so as to work from. I had to organise a clean file to send to Mark, which I had created for my own shots, so as he could reference the house and porch into my own scenes. This I felt would make things a lot clearer for him to work with; I also had placed in the grandfather to use as a guide for how much space the kid would have on the bench.
Book Rig Issue
When animating the Grandfather I noticed that the book rig was rotating a little funny, this only happened whenever I referenced in the rig… when I opened the file on its own, the rotations on the controls would act normal.
I created some recordings to explain this to Blaine, as he was working from home fixing another rig problem for Mark Lisk.
Sending Files to Outsourced Animators and Creating a new Animatic Example for Matt
When we got back after Christmas just on the edge of the last week, I had to over the weekend send out more files to animators who were missing certain files in order to complete their animation scenes.
I was not aware that they had not received all of the files as this was managed by Niamh before the Christmas break, and the team has been notified by her that the scene was given out to the animators and animation was underway.
Anyway, this only took me a little while to sort out, and explain in further detail a description of what the animators needed to animate.
As I was doing this, I needed to send Matt out the animatic as he had not received one which I had been told before Christmas that he had… no matter, I uploaded a new animatic, cutting to the parts he was only to animate. These scenes were not centred on the Grandfather too much, so not a lot of work for him, as I knew he has his own project to complete as well.
Link to Matt’s Animation Scenes Animatic: SyncSketch: Animatic for Matt’s Animation
In this link there is also some notes I left to explain which scenes he was to work from; and also the importance of the scene describing what the Grandfather would be doing within this shot – his emotion and actions. Although I wanted Matt to have full creative control over his animation, he is a very good animator and I knew whatever he would do would be great… however, I did also need to specify exactly what the scene would be and certain elements he would need to be aware of.
Feedback for Matt’s Animation
Once Matt had roughed his first attempt at the scene I was very happy with his result, there were some minor pieces of iteration that I felt could improve the performance and body mechanics of the character just a little bit further.
Here is a link to the syncsketch annotations and notes I made for Matt: Feedback on Matt’s Animation
This was a note I gave Matt on the chuckle he was creating for the Grandfather, this is the scene when the little boy is repeatedly slamming the toy onto the book. This amuses the Grandfather he is happy to see his grandson back to normal and playing like a kid again.
My notes for this piece were to raise the shoulders as he makes his chuckle, this will give the sense that he is chuckling. I had thought that if a person chuckles their shoulders usually bob up and down… however, acting this out for myself, made the motion feel forced given the amount of time to animate this action. It would seemed odd and it felt odd, so I discarded this tip in my notes. Matt had had a similar idea he had told me when we discussed the notes I had made with each other… his reasons for not going with this idea were that it might seemed as though the character was choking. This I agreed, it would be much simpler if there were to be only one bob up of the shoulders in the chuck action.
Render Testing and Putting Things Together into the Scene
Lastly and not least for my tasks was to then prepare the scenes that could be ready for rendering, these images are to demonstrate that process. There were some slight issues to tackle along the way before completing the scene ready for rendering… we had had an issue with the outsourced kid rig. Mark Mullan had not referenced the rig into his scene and therefore this became a problem, with changing the rig to the clean-up version, our scenes compositions were tiny in scale to our character rigs. We had to resize the cameras to fit the scene, as there had already been cameras and lights set out in the scene.
The problem with the kid rig was that there was not scale in Mark’s original file, Blaine had correct this to the original rig file… but, unfortunately with Mark’s animation not being referenced in the first place, there was nothing to do but to delete the eyebrows of the kid character. When scaling the kid, his eyebrows would not scale along with the body, so in order to save time, I had another solution which was to do as the Grandfather’s eyebrows had been created… to make them a part of the kid texture.
This was my next task…
So, I took the texture file back into Photoshop and simply created eyebrows, this solved our problem as the only issue with scaling the rig was that the eyebrow geo would not follow the body scale.
Another issue was that the eye material for the characters rendered with white eyes, this issue came from having 2014 texture materials in 2017 version of Maya. Which were not compatible. What we eventually had to do was to hide the outer eye material which had a transparent geometry for the eyes, creating the effect of a glint which real eyes have, that would also be reflective.
As you can see with the mother and son eye materials were rendering as black holes, this was again an issue with 2014 Maya materials in 2017, which was not compatible… the Grandfather’s eyes, however, did not do this, the eye textures have the same texture material applied to them… the only thing different with the Grandfather was that I had changed his original material to a lambert in 2017. As when I first opened the file I could not find the import for the characters textures in the attributes editor… I did not understand why. I think this is what needed to be done with the mother and son also, which could solve the problem of black eyes.
Reading List:
Friedlander, J. (2013) Children’s Book Templates Now at BookDesignTemplates.com. [Illustration] Available from: https://www.thebookdesigner.com/2013/08/childrens-book-templates-now-at-bookdesigntemplates-com/ [Accessed 11 January 2016].
Hildenbrand, W. (2006) Sunset Silhouette of Boston Skyline. [Photograph] Available from: http://www.treklens.com/gallery/North_America/photo422746.htm [Accessed 11 January 2016].
Lynch, S. (2016) New York City Panoramic Photos. [Photograph] Available from: http://shawnpix.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/New-York-City-Panoramic-Photos/G0000jeeZ7GOgR14/I0000QISUI7uYxk4 [Accessed 11 January 2016].
Newburn, S. (2016) Peter Rabbit Eating A Carrot. [Illustration] Available from: https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/137570963588872549/ [Accessed 11 January 2016].
Reeve, J. (2011) London City Skyline Sunset. [Photograph] Available from: https://www.flickr.com/photos/36250307@N03/5976148834 [Accessed 11 January 2016].
Wash, P. (2012) Sunset City Semi-Silhouette. [Photograph] Available from: http://fineartamerica.com/featured/sunset-city-semi-silhouette-paul-wash.html [Accessed 11 January 2016].
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