Correcting Colours

We did it! It all came together in the end, I would like to say nicely but it came together with a lot of late nights/early mornings, days that felt way too short and a fair bit of madness but the outcome was definitely something I think the whole team is proud of. Being the first short film I have been a part of it was an experience that I will take a lot from in every aspect within film making and animation. Thankfully all the stress and work isn't a deterrent, most likely because it paid off and it is a great feeling to have accomplished something that requires such commitment and dedication to produce. Working as a group is still an new concept to me and I think overall we worked well, I assume like most group projects there are bound to be some issues, which we had and the way in which issues were dealt with was in a very professional way (as professional as students can be). One of the best things about this particular film is that we can all walk away with something personal and something shared that we're proud of, great job everyone!

Park Scene - Compositing Break Down

In this clip the break down shows our compositing method to reach our final look, one that we aim for throughout all the scenes. There was often colour correcting for the matte paintings and the models which varied from scene to scene to achieve an even feel throughout. The characters were often softened to reduce some of the overly sharp details in comparison to the matte paintings. The shadow comp/final look was developed by Juan where multiple colour shadow sequences were multiplied over one another and slightly offset to produce a smokey and fluent look. The coloured shadows were contained with the original shadow masks but each layer contained a variation of a fast blur or radial blur. The particle render of the smokey colours was created by Isaac. 

Joe & Bully 2 Textures

The feel and look for the characters need to match with the rough painted feeling of the backgrounds so our approach was to start with a Plasticine/clay look and maintain some of the matte/flattened feel. Using mental rays mia_ materials, it gave us flexibility to reach this look and it allowed for multi-layered bump maps to distort the surface of the characters. These two characters were painted in Photoshop using the UV maps as a base, James on the other hand was started this way and then taken into Mudbox and cleaned up, by Juan.

Door Matte Painting

With the door matte painting we decided to match the background, it would be best to hand animate and paint the door. So I painted seven frames of the 30 frame shot and because of the limited movement I was able to composite it without having to paint all 30. There are three variations of the door movement and what best suits the edit will be used.

Pool Matte Paintings

The matte paintings for the pool scene take place inside of James' head, where he is mainly contemplating and for this reason he is mostly still until he decides to dive. To aide the still, isolated feelings of the shots the mattes with sky have been separated into layers which will allow us to have subtle animation for the clouds. Shot 430 is for the dive sequence where the camera follows him until he hits the water. The splash is a 2D animated splash that has been created by Nur and plan for the water is to render out a sequence using the ocean shader in maya, mainly for the highlights and then composite it with the water in the matte paintings.

Backplate Tests

Testing how we are going to approach the moving camera & backplate with the current animation and without textures or lighting. 

The following shot was done by creating a half cylinder that ran behind and under the characters which could then be textured with the matte painting. The matte had to be slightly altered to help counter any pin cushion distortion. The shadows can then be rendered on a separate layer without the background to help ground the characters.

Street Scene Animation

Here the street sequence has the mostly finished mocap animation of James (need to animate his hands) with the added animation of the characters, Joe & Bully 2. The secondary characters were blocked in by Isaac & Nur and then I was able to do the other passes to finalise the animation.

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Matte Paintings - Room and Street

Below is the matte paintings of room sequence and some of the street shots. At the moment we're using ambient occlusion, shadow and a master beauty pass to aid the painting process which is being done in photoshop. The passes are blended with the paintings to bring out forms and set up the direction of light. 

Facial Rig & James Pool Version, Rig

The modelling was done by Juan and Isaac for the pool version of James. The body rig was created the same way as the Joe and bully rigs, using abAutoRig by Supercrumbly. The facial rig is one that will be applied to all the motion captured animation because our captures were only for the body actions. The facial rig makes use of blendshapes and set driven keys. With this particular rig the face includes goggles and a swimming cap. The cap is effected by the eyebrow movements, the other versions of James (8 year old & 16 year old) include hair, which does not have a rig and at this point in time it may not be necessary. A few problems that arose when developing a facial rig were mainly to do with transferring it to the motion capture version. The Transfer script was what we saw as our best option but it caused some issues with constraints, particularly by breaking the connection with the neck controller. After several failed attempts with trying to prevent the neck control from breaking when transferring the facial rig, we decided to not include it and that any head movements would have to be made in the MotionBuilder clean up stage. 

Prop Constraints

Above I have constrained the props (pencil & backpack) to the control effectors in MotionBuilder. Each prop required a joint for the parent/child constaint to function as well as an effector. 

Mocap Clean Up

Below is the street sequence with the mocap set in with the previs and layout of the cameras. The mocap did speed up a larger portion of the process but it does have other requirements to get everything working as desired.

This includes applying the captured data and clean up to another rig which has the facial rig and corrective blend shapes. At this stage it is without that rig but the process to transfer the keyed motion captured data to the other rig will be done using a python script and a mel script. It will work by selecting the root of the mocap rig and then running the python script which will selected the rest of the joints with keyed animation and record that data into an .xad file. Following, the mel command will store the joint selection sequence which can then be transferred to another rig along with the saved xml data.

James Rig & MoCap

The James rig was first created using abAutoRig by Supercrumbly but this version had to be set aside when we decided to use motion capture as an option for animating James. The reason was because MotionBuilder was not importing the rig from Maya with the correct constraints and skin weights. The alternative was to create a simplified fk rig and in MotionBuilder we were able to characterize and rig James to the motion data.

Simple fk setup for James

Here is an example of the simplfied fk rig after it has been characterized and applied to the motion data.

From here the marker/optical sets are baked to the control rig and fixing or adding animation can be achieved by using animation layers. At the moment I am testing the best options to animate, one option is to animate in MotionBuilder using the control rig or by exporting it into Maya and doing it there. We will most likely use MotionBuilder to clean up the captured data/animation but at this current stage in MotionBuilder there are no controls for facial animations and this is my main reason for trying to transfer across to Maya.

Bully 2 - Face Blends

Bully 2 has little screen time and his action and demeanor mostly remains the same, so he has a range of blends but they're fairly simple. 

Secondary Characters - Rigs

Here are some examples of the rigs with simple actions. These characters were rigged using abAutoRig by Supercrumbly with some added aspects to the head. The fingers have detailed movements down to each knuckle and the feet have a variety of rolls and twist features. The characters required some modelling changes so the mesh was referenced in and was able to be updated. This however did cause issues with skinning and some constraints mainly to do with the eye rig. The solution was to make sure labeling didn't differ when changes were made and to create a new reference and bind that mesh to the bones then copy the skin weights from the old mesh to the new. This method did speed up the process but also required some re-painting of the skin weights depending on how heavy the changes were.

Room - Painted Background Test

The Room test has a much softer look, this is much stronger on the texture so toning it back or refining the detail could reduce the overly textured brush feel. The character and his shadow painted like this, becomes a little lost in the surroundings. I'll have to add a test render of the textured character into a painted scene to help define how soft or detailed the scene should be.

Street - Painted Background Test

First trial at painting the backgrounds over an early 3D model of the street. Basic lighting was set in the scene to help define form and lighting but it still has a strong 3D design and feel to it. Trying to aim for something a bit more textured and painted. The early design of the scene is still too straight and rigid and the sharp corners take away from the painted effects. Softening the scene lighting and also adding more detail while painting could help to add character to the scene.