w00t! I finally uploaded Home Delivery to Vimeo for everyone to watch. It’s been a long 2 weeks of modeling, rigging,rendering and post production but I’ve finally got it out of the way. I’m quite happy with it though there are a few things I would have liked to have done but couldn’t have due to time limits. All the models and textures (apart from the plants which I exported from Vue e’spirit) were made inside Cinema 4D using photographs I had taken when on a trip to kew gardens as a reference. Once I had modeled it all up I put it all in one giant scene added the plants from Vue e’spirit in (this really made my mac pro groan) and got to animating the fly’s movement, and then after that the spider’s. Using a picture I had taken of the sky on the day I had taken the other pictures I made a sky object and set up the HDR lighting, I also added 2 lights into the scene to help with lighting issues. Once everything was in place I rendered out TIFF images of the camera positions I was using at 1280 x 720. I then used the sketch and toon render settings to add a light blue background to the renders. Using this setting I rendered just the fly moving across the screen. After these clips where rendered I put it all into After Effects where I did a colour range key to take out the background on the fly clips, added any overlays (such as the tree branches in the first shot) that were needed and exported it all out at 1280×720. I then used Final Cut Pro to edit the clips together (this was important as I had to match the shots to my animatic) and to add the music in the background.
But enough technical mumbo jumbo just watch the clip ( I suggest watching it over at Vimeo as that way you can see it in HD)
I have some great advice for anybody looking to make some awesome plants, download the free trial for vue espirit. I did and it’s awesome, I don’t know how to use it properly so I just exported the plants and used Cinema 4D to make my little garden. As I type I have finished the environment the Home Delivery will be set in, and I rendered out a beautiful shot of the opening scene (though it took 30 mins to render!) which will be at the end of the post. The file is killing my Mac Pro but I think once I have all the elements in and have the primary animation path sorted out I can then split the main file into the different camera angles then delete the stuff I don’t need for that particular shot, also I haven’t baked the lights yet so that will definitely cut down render time. I doubt I’ll be able to get it done tommorrow but I think after that is sorted I’m about 3/4 of the way there, so I should have it finished by the end of the week. MEGA HAPPY!
w00t I finally quit spoons and have just finished my spider model and it’s all rigged, which didn’t take too long (so I don’t understand why people moan about the process.) I have yet to texture it, so I just shoved a simple shader on it and put it in a scene with my fly. It looks sexy
Finally finished texturing my fly model, I still think the wings could do with some work, but for my distance shots this model will do. The body is just near-black all over apart from the eyes which are light red (should add highlights on the spec map at some point). I then made a specular map which has light green,purple,and reds blended in to give it that awesome fly-y look. The bump map is just a simple eyebrow brush all over.
The wings are a bit cartoony, I had originally planned to use an existing picture from the web but I decided against that as it wasn’t a good picture. I’ll probably go back and do them properly with splines so I can make sure everything looks awesome.
I did a test render and tried to match it up to a photo I had taken of my desk.
A final comp of my fly model made in photoshop
I made it in photoshop from a render pic and the image I mentioned earlier.
I woke up at like 2 today so I missed my lesson (yet again…. ) but my issue of 3D World 112 came(though bizarrely there was a giant hole in the packaging it came in, I hope there wasn’t any free software for me in there, damn thieving postman!) and they are doing an issue on animals and it contained an excellent tutorial on texturing a lizard using bodypaint and photoshop. Needless to say I shall be following that tutorial later tomorrow when I get a chance. As I would have been doing Cinema 4D stuff in class I decided to rig my fly model and do a bit of a test animation (see video). One problem with rigging my fly is that the legs are small and because I used a weird image to model it from I’m left with some very dodgy leg problems but I seem to have solved that by removing any IK I had and animating everything by rotating the bones. I also realised I put too many joints into the legs but I seem to have got round any of those issues. Either way I know what I shall be doing once I have sorted out my Double Project images, as I haven’t started modelling my spider yet, though I can’t see it being any harder then the fly.
I decided to not go in today as I wanted to get to grips with z-brush (which I refuse to pronounce zee-brush, it’s zed-brush!!!) as I plan to use it to make my CGA models shit hot.
Now I know this app is sacred among CGI artists but my god does Zed-Brush have issues with the viewport, its so hard to just switch from a side view to a front view, I also had issues with the x mirror option. But I shall continue using it in the hope I might get the hang of it. Then I will be awesome at it and my CGA animation will look awesome
Talking of which I really need to pull my finger out, I haven’t even started texturing my models yet and havent modelled some of them
But first I have to work on my interactive mannequin idea
I’m well proud of myself, I managed to stick to something(though that might just be the relentless helping me.) Either way, all links to my Animatic will no longer work as I have changed the folders name, given it a make over and made it look like a proper website (or at least a roughly thrown together one). Anyways you should check it out
Oops, seems our animatics were due in today. I’ve done mine so could have got away with it but Andy has given us til monday to do it so I’m gonna get stuck in.
GULP!… Andy’s not happy with me, I had a good start doing my animatic but all I had to show this week was the same thing (be it with a few gaps where I need to add some stuff) but with music. I’ve got most of the extended sequences sorted out and I’m now trying out some dynamics, to make the web react to a fly hitting it, which makes me think if I can animate an object and the web will react to the animation or if I have to actually have to keyframe it all. Have to face that when it happens I suppose.
So I’ve fired up Cinema 4D to do these tests and yet again I’m finding problems with Alpha maps and shadows, I have a web drawn out on a plane but when it renders you can see the planes shadow. Hopefully I’ll work it out cos that could get annoying.
I need to take some more pics of spiders, Maybe I’ll head back to Kew and just photo the place up(I’m basing my animation on a dead fly on a window seal at Kew Gardens that I took a picture of..
CGA is probably going to be my week point, I’m no good on the whole graphics thing but meh, I’ll give it a shot. Joe got pissy today because I have all my end projects sorted out, it was funny but yeah maybe I have over thought everything.
I had a one-to-one with Nick on wednesday about my Double Project and he helped point me in a more subtle direction with some uses for ARToolKit instead of my entropy idea which though I thought was awesome Nick seemed to think was a bit too easy to understand and could just be looked at. Back to the Drawing board.
( I suggest watching it over at Vimeo as that way you can see it in HD)
) but my issue of 3D World 112 came(though bizarrely there was a giant hole in the packaging it came in, I hope there wasn’t any free software for me in there, damn thieving postman!) and they are doing an issue on animals and it contained an excellent tutorial on texturing a lizard using bodypaint and photoshop. Needless to say I shall be following that tutorial later tomorrow when I get a chance. As I would have been doing Cinema 4D stuff in class I decided to rig my fly model and do a bit of a test animation (see video). One problem with rigging my fly is that the legs are small and because I used a weird image to model it from I’m left with some very dodgy leg problems but I seem to have solved that by removing any IK I had and animating everything by rotating the bones. I also realised I put too many joints into the legs but I seem to have got round any of those issues. Either way I know what I shall be doing once I have sorted out my Double Project images, as I haven’t started modelling my spider yet, though I can’t see it being any harder then the fly.