UNIT 8
Final Major Project
For my final major project I decided to a 3D environment animation almost similar to the opening of Deadpool movie and similar to the frozen heist scene. The will used the knowledge I have learned thought the year about Maya and Mudbox to create a scene telling a narrative.. The story is about a man who struggles with life, living in a run down house, old broken down and all so turns out to be a fight scene between him and another mysterious man and now he has to figure out why his fighting for. I well design characters and then model them the poses I will be able to mimic in Mudbox.
Post-production I will be to add some elements of 2D animation like Rotoscoping we have learn about in unit 5.
Rough Idea
FMP Proposal
click to download
Research
The frozen heist aka Carousel is a short video that a narrative in a very unique way, everything in the scene is standing still almost as if time was frozen. The unique part is that the camera moves through the scene while everything is completely frozen . At first when I watched it I had no Idea there was a story being told until the second time I watched it. Everything was well thought out, the pace of the camera move through and some CGI for the fire and broken glass floating as the person being pushed through the window , even to the music choice makes you more engaged.
This is a trailer for the game uncharted 4 for ps4. In the beginning the main protagonist is narrating about himself as if thinks he does things for greed. At the same time he dives for a coin and everything falls in the background and explosions . Some other characters also shown that is after him. Almost like the frozen heist (Carousel) it goes around one scene telling a story as well making you sympathy for the main character. Color sets the atmosphere and tone of the trailer and plays a big role making it a good trailer.
Project: Overdrive is a CGI trailer introducing a new character to League of Legends a PC game. What i liked about the trailer is that it is a mixture of CGI and two dimensional animation. This creates a unique style to it. Most of the effects are drawn like smoke, dust and the explosion at the end. These effects are rotoscoping and really adds to the atmosphere of the cyber punk theme.
Like the music video take on me from A-ah has this similar effect with the 2D animation and gave a more rough finish to the art style of the animation but similar in a way where they both are using 2D animation in a video that is 3D or real video.
This music video of the song a-ah - take me on. What I find really interesting about the video is the use of rotoscoping and how they successfully pulled of the a comic strip look and brought the pages to life. The animation has this paper look to it makes it more comic like and with the rough line work adds to that as well, cross hatching is also used to give color and shade and gives it a much rougher look. This is used in Japanese animation uses line art animation, there is no color used and looks as if a illustration. I can say I have gain inspiration from this line art and do some sort of it in my final project.
Week 1 : When trying to come up with an idea that would be unique to me and just overall different to what I have done in my previous project like the rooftop and the time leap. I want to map memorable environment but also having you wondering about the place and having a eerie tone to it.
So the idea of a empty abandon parking/ parking garage and would be great for a fight scene. The over atmosphere that the parking lot give can be calming and silent or just frightening making you feel uncomfortable. The reason for this choice I want make as if the character was lonely in this the open area and could relate to the viewer as well.
This pictures has a very uneasy tone to it but will give you the feeling of being lost, like it has no end to the parking and just like a mystery ghost town or like a endless loop of wonder and loneliness . I heavily focus on the atmosphere and see how all the images portray this very well . The first two shows completely different parking lots but the I was focusing on how empty the parking lot is and the open area around it Which can be related to Agoraphobia, what is Agoraphobia? Well it is a fear of open spaces and can be the feeling of detachment from others. Agoraphobia panic attacks are linked with a fear of places where it is hard to escape.
For the next two images with all the graffiti, when you look at it first glance it you just see and open area with graffiti tags all over but this will make you feel more at ease instead of the empty parking lot that would make you feel lonely and lost. Focusing mostly on the overall atmosphere, atmosphere is one point of making the story more appealing or affecting your emotion towards the video or image. Like the color theory where certain colors would affect the viewers emotion making them feel joyful, happy and cheery or it can be frightening and scary.
How filmmakers manipulate our emotions using colour - The Verge (2015) this is a very useful video and shows how filmmakers use color manipulation to make us think and change our emotion without notice a different. The change in color can make a huge shift in tone. Like horror movies would be more on the cooler side colors and family would be more warmer side. Plutchik's wheel of emotions is a color wheel that show what each emotion and color are connected to each other.
My pictures of a underground parking lot
I went to Treaty center in Hounslow to take pictures a of the parking lot. It was hard to find a parking lot that was empty but found one at the Treaty Center right on the last floor. I was trying to capture the same similarities that the abandon parking lot would have. I tried different angles seeing how light would have and a effect and using the grid as a guide to help me use the rule of thirds. I was trying to get the full understanding how high roof should be and how the columns are spread out.
I know that the roof is not that high up and approximately two and half meters high and indentations for support strength for the level above and gaps between the wall almost like a balcony as small and high up from the ground making it safe small children can`t climb the wall. There is a lot of light and that can be imitated in Maya in adding the necessary atmosphere. There are signs and pipes and fences near the elevators. I was able to take pictures that can be very useful.
Going to see the parking lot gave a better idea on how the whole place was constructed and how I how simple shapes make up the parking lot. Since my whole idea was have fight since in a abandon parking lot and have a big potential meaning as well but the story will show it more as it being developed the more I create the environment . I will try to explore more modeling techniques to make it more quick and time saving .
Shacks and Broken House
The next idea I had was a fight scene was in a forest like an open area but was too simple for me to do and create. I then thought of a house in the forest and could probably have more story added to it like who lived there and why. The two ideas were rather random, since the abandon parking lot that the house would be in mint condition but rather a old broken down shack or a house.
The appearance of the shack or house could be in bad shape whit holes in the wood and roof, but maybe the inside could be in better shape than the outside. I know that the shack or house will have more potential in telling the story and more visually interesting . I prefer to be ambitious and test knowledge of modeling and see new ways I can model low poly and have a good amount of detail.
My Pictures of Broken/Old Houses
Concept Art
Why concept art? well I think that is the easiest way to get an overall idea what you what to create for the final piece of art or model. All though it`s just a concept, an idea it can give you a better understanding what you exactly want in the end result. My idea was fairly straight forward put a old, broken down shack in a underground parking lot and see what type of atmosphere would be grate and go to the story. I wanted to make something that was unique and different as well as being odd. When I was painting the concept I kept referencing to many different shacks like old, broken and modern.
Then looked at various artists seeing how they were adding the atmosphere to their paintings. I would keep referring to Ross Tran aka the Ross Draws on YouTube, he is a concept artist and good adding that atmosphere to his paintings. I wanted the concept to feel safe but magical and lonely, I think I managed to create that atmosphere clearly. With the warm and cool tones in the painting can give you mixed feelings adding he wonder and awe to it.
When I was sketching out the shack I didn't want to go into detail but trying to get the overall shape like the windows, door and the porch to the entrance of the shack. I know that this would not be the final idea of the modeling. Modeling can change when I'm creating the shack because of the translation from a two dimensional drawing into a 3D object is harder to stay accurate.
When I was thinking about a story thought about, it was about a man going though something and he would do self harm and the second character would fight him and then realising that is was himself. This would show that self harm is like beating yourself to a point.
Well this is the concept basically of a fight scene but I had trouble trying to developing it more In to a story and get something out of it. Japanese animation has a great way of storytelling, emotions and more of my influences came from it. So the idea was to put fight in a underground parking lot to add some value to the story and making it unique.
Inspirational artists: Ross Tran
One of my major influences is Ross Tran. He is a concept artist and I would refer to his work to see how he would add this atmosphere to all his paintings and drawings. A good drawing or painting will emphasis highly on the atmosphere to make you connect to the art work in a way and be amazed by it or disagree. When I do the concept art I not to focus too much on the detail but ways I try and bring it to life.
Progress
WEEK 2: The progress I have made, I started with the shack considering that most of the story will be told inside of the shack. Overall I did not add to much detail just yet I wanted the shape and layout first I added textures so I wouldn't have to go back and spend more time for the texturing after the whole entire models were done. I created a scale model as a place holder for the character so that I could keep everything to scale.
I know that the inside of the shack is quiet small I would need to make it big enough to fit all the necessary things that one would have in the shack. Once I got the layout of the shack I would do test renders to see how it would look and then I would vision the final outcome. I then would make the changes and add the windows and the door. placing the wood panels was a hard, having to place to texture right on the objects,
, I also ran into problems using Booleans, I was trying to make window but the wood panels would just disappear and not show up in the view port and had to end up making a new side wood panels in the end and tried again and it worked. I do different experiment to see how I can model more efficiently and quicker and still have a low polygon scene with a lot of detail.
Bumpmap/Normal map/Displacement map
I found a open sources software called CrazyBump. It is a simple to use software that allows and helps you create normal maps, displacement maps and few others from a flat two dimensional image, changing flat surface that would look extruding outwards. The software can be very useful for people that are good at surface texturing for games and film assets. crazy bump can be a quick means in creating your maps for that extra detail.
I did have some issues trying to create textures, some looked really distorted and uneven to the point where textures were stretched and was showing holes in some areas. I did not use it yet in my project because the of the distortion but if I used it more then I would have found is easy. I found out that you only need the displacement map, a black and white image of the original texture.
Bump mapping is a important aspect because it adds that level of detail without having to many polygons in your scene.
The resolution of the image plays a big role in having a good amount of detail in the texture. I find that the clearer the image quality the better every object will look.
displacement maps are much easier and simple to make and will give you the right amount of detail you want. I found that it was much simpler to make it in Photoshop. What is a displacement map? well its essentially a black and white image that is much better for bump mapping. black and white makes it easier for the extruded of flat something needs to be.
white will extrude outwards and black will be extruding inwards and gray will be in-between. In Photoshop I would take the same texture with color and turn it black and white. You would go to image tab in Photoshop and then go to adjustments and all the way down to Desaturate this would remove all the color from the image making it black and white image.
Next I would go into adjustments and go to curves and then just play around with the levels make the grays darker and making the whites stand out more. Getting the correct values can make a better and a grater difference. To emphasis the height on the surface.
Testing Displacement maps/Bumpmaping
Testing Displacement maps was interesting and was fairly straight forward I knew how some materials are in Maya and how to use them. I've done research and testing in unit 4 where I was introduced to Maya the for the first time. Referring back to that work I learned about bump mapping and also Mia or mental ray materials. When I was testing the displacement I test to use really high resolution textures to get all the amount of detail and the material Blinn, considering that the surfaces I wanted to be reflective,
Blinn had this surface and the end results was not what I expected but turned out to be perfect. This was more of a experiment trying out this material. The two top with the bath images I was unsure of so I asked my peers on the their opinion on the surface floor being too reflective on the left and the one the right . Most of them chooses the one on the right as it seemed to be more realistic with the detail and more natural.
Lighting and Surfaces
There were quite a few of materials to use within Maya and could had the realism to the models .The most material I tend to use was Blinn because of it reflectivity properties. I had use lambert as well but lambert does not reflect on its surfaces like blinn.
Using the Mia material X I was able to create metal using the chrome preset and tweak the roughness and weight the realistic metal bin. At first I wanted a the bin to be reflective and to show the environment in but I was not happy with how it looked and spending some time tweaking the setting but changing the roughness and weight to make it look like metal , I also adding a texture to the reflection channel because if I had to use a PNG image in the color channel the whole thing turned out back and not looking like metal that is scratched.
When texturing the foot of the bath I wanted a marble look but have this rusty look to it. When using reflective material and bump maps can give really good results I found the best way is to use a area light to see the detail in the surface with the textures and just to see how the light will bounce off other objects and reflective against other materials.
When coming up with the idea of what map to put in the scene was a hard finding one. so I began to think not why make the map as a reference from where I was born or the country I came from as a little Easter egg which made me more interested. I found that Easter eggs can be a fun way to get you more engaged and more personal and by means of showing a different story other than the main idea. I also used a displacement map on the map to give the surface a more realistic look to it a also stayed away from blinn material because i didn’t want to make it shine so I used lambert for a matt finish.
Parking Lot Progress
WEEK5: What I done was making the parking lot once again I Difficulty to get the layout so I went back the my research and reference pictures and saw that one side of the parking lot was quiet small for one level and I just needed one level. First I began to layout the pillars and I’m trying to get this realistic look and scale.
Class crits. The whole class had to present their entire work to everyone, so they get and idea what you are working on for the past five or six weeks. I think this is away of giving inspiration to the other peers. We talk about what or whom we have as inspiration and just showing the overall progress. No has really had any questions after the presentation for me but have revived good feat back on my work that it is really good and that it is unique.
Simulations Test in Maya
For the underground parking lot I wanted to have a more natural way how things would break or being pushed through a wall. The parts of the wall would be flying everywhere but with really extreme force that the surrounding area is being affected by it as well. What I would do, simulations in Maya and use shatter to test how it will brake a block into smaller pieces.
Testing in Maya Is quite complex but easy once you understand the idea. We first learnt about it in unit 4, how to add gravity to and object and ridgit bodies making it a passive colliders and active to interact with other objects. Each simulation is always different to each other and unpredictable.
I mostly experiment with the simulations with ncloth and bifrost and all making the more realistic but how ever it does take much longer to render which can be a issues for the time constraints we have so each would take about six minutes but with dust and rain it would take close to twenty minutes.
Characters
When making the characters I found it to be quite challenging task. I kept the designs fairly similar and because there are two different character s but they of the same design but the only difference would be that on is wearing a cloak and the other just flying in the sky and being frozen at the same time. . The challenge of the character was the positioning of the limbs and then modeling the cloak around the character.
I had trouble modeling the character the first attempt the model was done in Maya it had to many problems, Maya would crash and the model would just not work so I got a model from Mudbox and just imported it into Maya although it was hard to pose the character and we were not taught rigging and it is very complex and difficult. So what I have done was dethatch the arms and legs where joints would be and just adjusted the pivot point to make it move freely.
Rotoscoping/Animation Research
My Rotoscoping Effect /2D Distortion Effect
I think that 2D rotoscoping animation in 3D or CGI is a unique mix and can go really well together. I try get my own style of animation but really wanted to keep it similar to rough line work to give a eerier look to it.
Dream Sequence
Rendering
StoryBoard
The storyboard is the most important aspect when planning to render out a video with many scenes and saves time. I wanted to keep every simple as well but see what I can make still images where the camera would move. When I was drawing out the, I was considering the song from Ed Sheeran: bloodstream because I was basing a lot of the lyrics and making objects that would relate to the lyric so that when you listen you piece together a story and see the reveal a ending of who the characters were and why.
Change in Direction
However my direction has change in how I wanted the final video to be. I wanted when I was drawing up the storyboard I wanted to make it really atmospheric so I using camera angles that capture everything and would look more like architectural visualization but with a story element to it. This is my final change because of the time constraints I was not able to model everything I wanted but had enough to have some sort of story.
The Story is about a man who had difficulty with life and who suffers depression because had lost someone but wants to find where the person he loved and be together again but gets mixed up with bad people and tried something getting out but end up fighting some one in a cloak with no face.
Camera Movement
For the camera movement I went back to the storyboard and decided what should be in the final video what would flow with the music but in a cinematic and atmospheric video. Although each image took to render above six minutes up to 12 for one image. I had to carefully plan how I should render and how many frames should be rendered but the video just to be much more smoother without doing to many. I would render on 4 different computers just so that I can render a lot more in a few days but I plan to have still images in between the video.
Rendering Problems
There were a few problems like the camera would render out the sky black and would make the scene darker but what I had to do was to delete the physical sun and sky and would update to the new camera. Some of the textures would render out distorted and would appear above the ground and flicker and gave unexpected effect but helped with my 2D distortion animation with light flickers like the game Quantum Brake. What the game would have is this effect when time was frozen like a glass like effect.
Animating /Rotoscoping
For the rotoscoping animation I wanted to have a more pencil like animation to it and would not be able to do in flash because of it vector brushes that will makes lines look really smooth Photoshop has a raster based paint brush which will mimic pencil way much better. Animation in Photoshop is much a longer process but will have a more fluent movement and look natural. Once the rotoscoping was done I took it into after effects, after effects has a frame blending option and it would try and smooth out the video and even create its own in-between frames and is useful when you use time stretch.
Video Layout
The layout is critical that each scene is correctly laid out and will everything flow together. Before everything I wanted to have the song of Ed Sheeran- bloodstream but seem to not be satisfied with it and had to choose a new song by PVRIS- You and I. Ed Sheeran`s song seemed rather so happy and would take away from the video atmosphere, where the song from PVRIS had a more eerie feel to it. So the song adds to the end result and making you feel some sort of emotion towards it.
Final
Evaluation
This project was really ambitious I had difficulty but the final piece was challenge and came out better then I thought having a mixture between two different styles of animation, 2D rotoscoping and 3D animations. In the end everything had a meaning to it if you are really looking for it. This was more of a personal project as a person who has been through depression and anxiety this is something to look past and carry even through a rough time.
What is the meaning behind the house or shack is that when you look at it you can get the feeling of being safe and some sort of nostalgic toward it and can be really be dark as well. Now the parking lot would have feeling lonely when looking at and connecting it to isolation of ones self and can lead to depression and more. The man in the cloak is the same man but is more of a manifestation of every bad emotion building up inside and will try at nothing to bring you down.
This comes back around to dealing with self-harm.
The overall project I did encounter some problems but could easily been fixed. My research did have a major influence on the final out come just to quantum brake and the rotoscoping animation to add the 2D distortion in making it really unique and different.
What I did enjoy about the project is the making of the charterers and texturing. I did challenge myself and learned as I was modelling the project and experiment with Easter eggs and just be patient.