Compositing

I am almost done with my compositing:

the main part of this was colour correction and adding motion blur.

I used a guazin blur on some of my shot to bluch the background and create focul points.

i used masks with expouse glow effects to get trevs eyes to glow.

the color chase effect/filter was a big help and fun tool i had a shot with a will where his texture didn't load by replacing the white on him with brown it turned him semi brown this was a bit of a failure and i did some smart editing to hide this as much as possible

using blur as an after image/ glow. in the shot where Trev sneaks up on Will the characters have a glow to them this was a test at creating an afterimage to my characters by overlaying the footage blurring the back on and setting a 10 frame delay wasn't a huge success but created a really cool look for the shot.

The Puff of smoke

really proud of this simple trick


By having a shape layer then duplicating it and adding some noise and distortion to the edges over time and inverting the top one you can create a puff of smoke that disappears. will get a more detailed breakdown of this technique out at some point.

The RunShot

This was my biggest shot animation-wise and took a lot of referencing and timing to line up the jump properly

I tried animation the two characters separately finish will run and then timing out trevs animation along wills animation

This worked and actually sped up the process as i could animate trev to react to wills animation frame by frame.

making will slide along and flip over trev was the last part to this shot as i added a second animation layer to will for this section.

The Dinner Shot

This shot i was really proud of  there were some cool tricks i used to get it to work.

The plants moving aside while the camera zooms in was a lot of fun and made fopr a cool fade form one shot to the next.

For Wills antena i used a latic to bent them forwad as i didnt have a blend shape fopr this and could not be bothered taking the time to make it look good the latic pluc one corrective blend shape saved the day for this shot

After finishing my first shot i am starting to move quickly through the rest as i dont really have alot of time so i have decided to start living on campus most nights.

With my first shot rachel showed me what colour correction can do so with the second shot i wanted to experiment with what rachel had shown me.  i played around with the lighting of this shot to make trev seem more threating.

some of my experimentation

Scene 1

I have Finished Shot One :



Key Issues addressed ;

Trevs reaction needed to have a bit more of a pop.
by making his lip drop and then sping up a bit as well as his eyebrows this created a more natural movement and looked a lot cleaner.
Rachel helped me to understand the overreaction then settle into an action pose. 

AI Standin : I am Not Sure Why but my AI standins are not rendering there texture in my text renders very annoying.

this was a stupid mistake Megan showed me I had not repeated my textures Whoops.

Camera Angles Are my Friend

Camera Angles Are my Friend!!!!

Soooo there are some pretty messed up ways you need to bend trevs skeleton in order for the Biped Frame to Work as a Quadruped.

I need to say a SUPER BIG thank you to Chloe Tapp. I am pretty sure that if I didn't use her advanced rig. The Range of flexibility and movement that I am relying on for his animation would have been a Real Struggle. 

SO The Issue at Hand.

Right Now I have a few Scenes where I need Trev to be a Quadruped. Unfortunately, Trevs Skeleton was based on a human, not a Tuatara to give the more Anthropramorphic look. I thought I had taken this into special consideration with his design. Yet I overlooked or didn't put enough attention into how I was going to move Trev into his design its all well and good to say i want to do Cartoon animation but a lot of the characters in this 2D animation bend their body in completely unrealistic ways.

So How to get around this became my weekend mission. 

Firstly Trev Just can't walk as a Quadraped or at least I cant show it. Side on or people will just see a monstrous mess of a creature. 

I Figured The easiest way would Just be Smart Camera Angles. and For the Most Part, this Works but it really limits my range of motion with Trev soo I needed a fix. 

I found my fix in a really cool place. Over the Weekend I watched Spiderman into the Spider-Verse for "research" and not cause its just one of my absolute favorite 3D movies since Brave. 

Set Design

Lighting Issues:

I am still having issues with Flat lighting. In my Renders. The main issue seems to be getting light underneath Treetop Canopy. One way to solve this is to do what Megan has done and use render Layers this will let me render the undergrowth as a separate layer and then be able to edit down the light level by bringing down the highlights and choosing a darker mid-tone. This is an initial assumption as I will be looking into more aftereffects stuff in the coming week as I move into animation, rendering and compositing my shot together.  This was just a test my next step forward is to start really hammering into my animating.


AI Stand-ins :
I was Shown Ai stand-ins today and wow what a cool tool. They allow you to have an object frame that is a template for your asset so this way your assest is only being calculated at render time making your scene a lot lighter and easier to manage.
 atleasts thats my understanding.

Ain't it just super Nifty Neato!

Setting Up Shot1.

Trev's Transformation Information:

Having an issue with Trevs Model.

When i imported him into the scene He was too big. So i had to scale him and correct my scale on Will so they match each others perspective size and the environments.

Issue/ disadvantages Of Advanced Rig:

The AdvancedAnimationRig Script that i used to build Trevs rig was a huge time saver and has created a very well put together skeleton. I have finally finished waiting and paring everything to the core character. The Rigging system has caused me an issue i have no idea how to solve and i think this just comes from me having a bare bones understanding of the script before using it. The issue is that when i go to set the character to his start pose it re scales him to his original size.

To counteract this issue i have set a key frame at 1 with the  proper size and build pose. my solution is to just copy this where i need it. 

This problem  is a small one and mainly serves as a inconvenience. Yet i feel it sets a good example of why having a understanding of the base functions and functionality of  Maya systems is very useful before just throwing them into your project. I only felt comfortable using the Script in the first place because it had a base understanding of Rigging and felt if there was an issue i encounter i could at least understand whats wrong and how to fix it unlike with a lighting set up. I would never just use a lighting set up.  Even the one Rachel provided helped make for me without understanding what each element does and why it is being used as this is a area i really struggle with. 

Animation

Smoothing and Relaxing wobbly animation using a blendshape:

This is actually something i learnt from an Animation Talk on Better animation Practices.

Using the Relax and smooth tool subtly to help bring down any pinching in your models and blendshaps. This is a big help especially with the big exaggerated emotion as it helps me to keep these looks with in the bounds of what is possible with still looking realistic to a degree.

Creating Set base posed for Trev that i can copy to other frames to get Trev in the general shape or position i want him in to start the scene 

'Getting the Character into position and set up. 

This shot has developed from what i had in my story boards after seeing what it is starting to look like i want to shoot this shot below. I ended up acting this out a few time to get a look that i liked footage to follow.  but i think i can add this shot in with a fad between the Weta popping out as this animation was happening in the background. I think it acts as a good intro to will instead of this object in the background. 

LMA refrence Footage