Probably penultimate project post?

I am very close to finishing this! I wish to do some animation tweaks on two of the shots, some lighting tweaks on a third shot and add the last voice (recorded yesterday) as well as more polished sound effects.... but it's almost there.

oh, also, I have to replace the music. But I'll worry about that after the visuals are locked.

But here it is, in its almost-done state. Comments and critiques are welcome, because it's never too late to iterate. And once all the fixes go in, and the music and effects and re-renders, I will post the final version here. So this is the penultimate time I will post the storyreel for this short film! That feels nice to say. Or type. Whatever!

Thesis in a nutshell (or more accurately, three images)

As part of the thesis submission process, I had to send in a blurb of text about the project a few images that summarize the project. Here are the three I picked:

Busy and backpedalling

The blog has been woefully quiet as of late. I've been really busy, but not much noteworthy of sharing here, unless you think me flailing my arms around and ranting about Maya crashes or Source bugs is entertaining. The animation portion of production is just about to be finished. All the model assets have been built and textured, and our last animator is finishing up the one remaining shot, and then it will be nothing but fixes, tweaks, and sound/music additions.

One thing I did decide this week was that I was not going to render the entire thing in mental ray for comparison to the game engine. It was important to my original idea, and it was sort of relevant to my amended project once the original idea was made obsolete. But now, so close to my project's completion, I realize that it's a little silly. My project is more about the process of making animation in a game engine than the comparison between the two, so why not just focus on that? Also, I must be honest, I'd rather use the time to focus on my upcoming job hunt.

So I have picked two shots. And a possible third if I decide it's necessary. I'm going to render those two out as high-quality as I can, point out the comparative difference between them, and wrap it up. So at the end we'll have:
-2:20 short film using game engine tech
-25 seconds of mental ray renders for select scenes
-A short visual comparison between the two

Think of the first part as the feature film, and the rest as DVD EXTRAS.

In which greg trades sleep for progress

I'm so very tired, but that's okay. I can sleep after thesis is done, right guys?



In the meanwhile, here's an updated story reel, featuring (for the first time) a majority of what will be the final animations! WOOO! Over the past few weeks I have come up with a few tricks to slim down my work process even more, trimmed one scene from the script lengthened others to match what their acting required. In the end, the film got slightly longer, and we are now just a hair under 2:20. That must be a good sign, because that's my lucky number. Yay superstition!

Based on the comments and feedback of my advisors, a lot was changed from the last version. For starters, I re-rendered the entire thing. Thanks to the game engine, this was a quick and fairly painless process :) Both scenes were 're-decorated' and almost every camera angle was at least slightly changed. And some of these camera angles are already doomed, and will be changed again. Look forward to the next one!

A real studio just did what my thesis is doing

I feel relevant!

A studio called the House of Moves just basically did what I'm doing on this thesis project. Only they used the unreal engine instead of the Source engine. Also, they were paid cashmoney to do it, whereas I (as a student) am doing quite the opposite.

Small differences aside, they did the same project: used production tools to make stuff, rendered it in a game engine, and saved lots of time rendering. In the article they mention some of the limitations that they faced, and some of their statements mirror my own description of game-engine limits on previous blog posts. Some of the similarities are almost word-for-word.

So yeah, further proof that this is a solid idea and that I am on the right track. Here's the article if you'd like to take a peek:

http://www.fxguide.com/featured/capturing-the-guardians/

Story Reel update

This is what I have so far. Lots of work needs to be done, but you can start to get a flavor of what it'll look like when we get the final version out of the Source engine.

First scene with a voice track

I didn't feel well tonight. So rather than go out and have fun on a friday night, like every other 20-something in the city, I came home to recover. But instead of wrapping myself under a blanket, I completed the rough animation for another shot in the thesis' short film. Why did I do this? Maybe because I really enjoy doing this stuff. Maybe the looming deadline for the short film has me scared silly.

Probably both.

Either way, shot 06 is green on the animation! Woo! Like all the other shots, nothing is going to be polished or finalized until the whole kit'n'kaboodle gets completed. But for now, this is good enough to move on. And hey, it's the first lip synch in the script! I like the voice on him, I feel it matches the Thrall quite well :D



Also, one of the animators on my team has delivered their first shot! That'll appear next, once I get all my stuff imported and compiled for it.