Mental Ray Rendering

Rendering Analysis:

render 1

0:39
custom settings

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render 2
rendering time 0:38
bsp size 10
bsp depth 60
sampling 2

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render 3
rendering time 0:41
bsp size 10
bsp depth 50
sampling 2

***

render 4
rendering time 0:34
bsp size 10
bsp depth 60
sampling 1

rendering time 0:34,bsp size 10,bsp depth 60,sampling 1

Motion Blur:



Maya Software 3D motion blur (Shutter angle 90)





Mental ray 3D motion blur (No deformation)

Depth of Field:
 Foocal lenghts is set to 20,  F-stop to 15



No Lens-bokeh

the setting for Lens-Bokeh in this image were :
Plane 4.1
Radius: 0.6
Bias: 1
Sampling: 12
Anti-aliasing: 0.04

The lens effect gives a very interesting effect and appears to be worth-while to experiment with . Especially interesting to me is the posibility to plug in custom bokeh shapes, which give such interesting effect

Realy really impressive...

Ivan the Bird: Progress, Week 8

It's been a while since the last update on the project. But here it is.


Recently I worked on second environment, the outside of the house. It's taking reasinably longer to build as the space is many times larger than the workshop set's as well as include a variety of elements to consider.

Such as, to start with, the rendering of water and shoreline. I'm working on ocean shader and for the shore line, using dynamics to create foam.
These (VERY) developmental  images show what I have so far.

Other than that, the house has pretty much reached its final looks. It serves as a background detail for the most of the time.

Also, the field is now textured as intended in the concept. Also, Instrad of using bump maps, I used Normal maps, as the camera angle never reaches the point to reveal 'fake' bumps.

What still is not yet resolved is tree texturing.

Other than that this environment is in the stage of refining, but  to stay honest.. it doesn't yet have the right feeling even if all the elements are brought together (apart from lighting)  in the place. The idea   somehow hasn't translated yet  into 3D as I imagined  it.

So that was the set building of the project.

The other part is the acting. 

This is right after when Ivan encounters the Island and after a thorough look notices the house in the tree. Immediatly he is overwhelmed by desire to reach it. The ending of the clip suggests he realizes his ship-qualits.

But to keep on pushing the second act forward, I had to get back to rigging stage, where , quickly enough, system was created to help control Ivan's flight sequences. Motion path with additional groups for translation and rotation control is aded.
Here is the initial test of the motion path system ( no inentions of properly animating it there). I also aded aditional controls to the rig.



I used it to acquaint with the changed way of animating and see how the fall of from motion path would work.

To continue on, one another field of this project was lighting and rendering set up. ( this is where I failed to guess how long it would take to finish, where originaly I gave 3-5 hours it took me a week) .

Here is an example of lighting set up in one of the scenes from act 1

The lights have separate linking and affect only specific parts of either the scene or character. They are also animated to follow or change intensity according to storyline. Every scene has approximately 6-11 lights.

Here is an example of lighting adjustment int he scene:

At the beginning the general set lighting never seems to suit the specific scene. I first solve volumes of lightness then go and adjust how it falls, and causes shadows ( particularly concerning character).

And so, after quite some of adjusting and problem solving I have a scene which (supposedly) is fully resolved and should go to final sequence.

The Bird is waking up:



At the moment I'm dealing other scenes of act one in the same way, to get them rendered and ready for postproduction. Also I work on second act's flight sequences and set building. Oh and show reel element, I have an idea for that.

Dynamic's: Instancers

Past few weeks maya classes introduced Dynamic's Instancers for various uses, from the obvious, having loads of pre-made objects in the scene, to using it for randomly placing elements in the set.

Instancing: Scale

Dynamic's Instancing: object index

Instancing: Vector based rotation

Using velocity to control direction

Direction

Instancing: Rotation index ( between velocity, aim position, aim direction)

Rocket direction is controled using velocity, particles which drive rocket geometry aro also ''cloud'' emitters.

Using instancers and  random rotation script to achieve random tree positioning

Project progress: Lighting and Animating

Today the time was spent to get the lighting working when character was finally set in to the scene.

Each bit of  scene ( in total 7 for act 1) is lighten separately.

For example in this scene  four more lights support the character to create a volumetric lighting. Key light,  few section boost lights and rim light shape the bird in this image. I think more work is needed still. For example light wings. Also it is clear now, the background is to empty .

This scene I'm pretty happy with. Though it looks like it still needs some tweaking on shadows.

In this scene I used rim  and Rembrandt short lights (light which is 45 degree to the character) to separate  the character from the background .

All the images have render layers combined. So this perhaps would be the end result of animation looks.

And here is the portion of animation. The Bird after encountering the enchanting Island rushes towards it and gazes at it in chill amazement.

As usually after seeing a sequence of animation I go back and do some curve cleaning, but essentially it is the same what's in the video.

Second Environment's Development

Slowly the second environmet is reaching its intended definition.
Together with matt paintings I'll be using tree models to build the set. Here is the variation of models for that.

In my opinion the most of the appearance will be achieved through the use of paralax planes. As  it can be seen in this set build image they take the largest part of  it.

The house is much like in the concept with few other details as in some shots the house looks too simple (not saying it now is much more interesting)

So yes, as yesterday we had a discussion with Alex, the environments are generic and simple. In this case they serve as a playground for story. Nothing fancy really...

Next on is more of animating.

Workshop Set

The first environment seems to be ready now. Textures and lighting are set up and good to go.
 Storyboarding indicated areas which required special attention as they have most of the screen time.

Also, as planned, I've created render passes. Ambient oclussion really  brings the graphical details back into the scene.

Ambient Occlussion pass (Max distance 0.7):

 

Beauty Pass:

Combined passes:

Workshop is the place where Ivan was built. In comparison to other environments it is least colorful, bright and to a degree least uplifting. Though intentions weren't to separate this space from others entirely. It still offers coziness and wishfullness. Little models, wooden plain and symbolic cutouts busy desk suggests someone here is creating enthusiastically and lovingly.

Animation progress: the Beginning of Act 2

This week I've started animating Act 2.
The story reaches the point where bird is exploring both the world and himself. As he is discovering more and more, he also discovers the Island.

The pacing in second  act is  much slower. Also Bird's position is changing: he moves from his infancy stage to a more mature one.  To convey the point camera angles are used (  from slightly up above him to facing straight), his overall pose changes ( legs are longer now, pelvis more straight, wings looser and open and so on).

Here is the video of aniamtion sequences:



the animation when played in the set up sequence showed some issues. I went back to animationcurves and cleaned them up, also checked camera moves (especially vertigo shot).

Normal Mapping and Dynamics, Week 4

Normal mapping was very interesting to learn. Especially that  it has such a potential for application.

Dynamics from week 4:

First Act: wrap up of performance and set building

At the moment I am working on workshop environment. Almost everything is in the place for that environment.

 

A lot of atmosphere will come from texturing as modeling for this set is .. pretty basic. the workshop is crowded with little bits and bobs, nothing too major though still (and hopefully) enough of detail to keep the environment interesting for the eye to look at.

Essentially There are a round of... 15 different objects in the scene, but they are varied in the looks (scaling composition, staging ). Also, texturing will push this forward.

 

Started from the base, texturing the room. The very usefull tutorial I've got from Alan, tutorial of Gnomon workshops, had a set of tips how to enhance the looks only by painting colour, specular and bump texture passes.

Work is in progress. Here the scene has colour map only. Also the lighting is set up and in place . But it will be adjusted and animated in  each scene.

Also the last scene in first act was Ivan succeeding to overcome the first set of obstacles and he is about to find the new.





The video isn't the latest update. I changed the head shake animation and some other little details. But in all honesty I found animating the character  interact with the world especially ..complicated. This  took me two days to get  working. Gladly ( :D) in my entire animation this was the only bit where he had to lift, open locks etc. On the other hand,  soon he'll be swimming in the waters and diving in the air.. that also doesn't sound straight forward :D

First act shots were animated in the manner to appear that Bird is somewhat rushing. He is too enthused to explore the world  to become aware of himself. But through interaction with the world he  does explore himself (second act).

Game Character's UV layout

a bit different approach in laying out game character's UV's.

Letting it Loose and Inspection

Before I started animating the scenes I once again prepared the dope sheets/production sheets, as all the past animations, in particular trailer's project,  showed how they can really help to ,manage and improve the production of animation. The head is free from little bits of notes to remember, what in my case actually doesn't happen, I forget the little ideas :/
These are few examples:

Sheet 1/10

Sheet 3/10

 This is the little modeling I do when there isn't an opportunity to focus on some more serious tasks such as animating. These objects will crowed the workshop.

Also the basic representations of other mish-mash models are being prepared. I'm planing to render out a still image of these mish mash models staged in the workshop and  in basic white lambert shader and then paint in the colour and texture . This still image would then be connected with the actual 3d scene.

The still render will give me the precise perspective, shadowing and shapes to work with.

Shiball

The next in the pipeline is the scene of Ivan reacting to the window and running towards it.








I'm animating with the soundtrack uploaded to the timeline. And here also music suggested the sudden change of Ivan's body language where all of a sudden the bird forgets his confusions  and lets loose towards what he's attracted to.



the bird reaches the window and inspects the new. Again he is only assured he wants to reach outside, but has to come up with the way to overcome the first obsticle - shut window. He comes up with an idea after he sees the little lock.

These two videos were yesterday's and today's animating. I'm taking the time there. But these scenes are a great warm up before the much more complex animating still waiting ahead.