Turntable Bomb...

Some of the turntables I haven't shown you yet. These were included in my presentation as well as most of the other ones you have seen from earlier. There is another two videos that I just cant be bothered showing. One of the lotus with textures (that I have decided to change), and one with all the plants in AO. I rather show the plants when they are textured and rigged, a bit more interesting that way.

The presentation went great by the way. Managed to take home a first (75%) and I am very proud of myself. Normally I am very nervous speaking in front of people, but lately we have had so much training that it is actually starting to feel pretty natural. Yes, I was nervous of course, but as soon as I started talking it slowly disappeared.

I had a few pointers in my feedback that I will definitely take into account. The camera angles are weak in my pre-vis and so is the story line. "Like a mix of a poem and a love story" it was said, and that I have to choose which path to take. I am not great when it comes to sorting out stories so I will need some help on these bits. And hopefully together with my supervisor I can make A's speakers work with the music as well. I didn't say, but I ended up scrapping them after rigging A, when they decided that no constraint, no parenting, and no binding would make them follow my rig as he moved, and after spending nearly a day trying to sort them out I finally gave up. But I was told that I'd be able to get some help on that part.

Anyway, I will have to re-visit quite a few parts of my animation, and bring even more to it. On my list for after Christmas is, obviously the animation, but I am working on some nice mate-painting for the background to bring more depth and to push the mood. I will look in to some tutorials that I got to create growing flowers in maya ( thanks Toby ), and other things to fill out my environment with, since it seems pretty plain at the moment.

But for now I am going to enjoy a long and relaxing Christmas with tuns of gingerbread, glögg and presents. Oh and a haircut!!!

See you after Christmas!

Pre-visualisation...

My 3D pre-vis is finished. I think I sorted the camera movement out exactly as I wanted and really put some thought into it. I really appreciated the pre-vis part this time, unlike last year. I think mainly because I didn't understand what purpose it served. This time it's really helped though and I think when it comes to the final piece I will have saved allot of time by sorting out my camera movement this early. It also gave me the chance to time my film a bit better since it was running or by 13 seconds before.

Tomorrow I will focus on my presentation completely. Rehearse and go through everything and write down answers to the questions that might be thrown at me, just so I don't forget what I'm doing or what I'm talking about. My nerves aren't the best so I better have some support notes.

That is that for now. Wish me luck for Monday! I will make a little entry when finished on Monday to tell you how it went. 

A and the lotus...

The animation test is finished. Had to re-render today since the first render made A way to glossy and cause of that he lost allot of his facial expressions. So I set down the reflectivity and he looks much better... Hope you like!

Animation Test Tender...

My little animation test is rendering and I am so proud. It's looking great and I can't wait to see it rendered. Will leave it work over night and tomorrow we'll see if it's been a success or not. Rig is working great anyway and so is the lotus so I am well happy.
Got some texturing tutorials tomorrow so I hope that I can have my flowers and especially the tree finished sooner than later as well. I really want everything done and dusted before the presentation on Monday. It'll also give me the freedom to take some time off over Christmas and just relax and love my sweetheart.

More to come tomorrow!

A and E's first meeting...

Yeeey! After many angry days my robots are finally working and tonight they met for the first time and they sure like each other :). Happy Days!

The animation test will be one day late since I am planning a nice one and I think I am done for tonight.

Rotor Test...

Just a very simple test for the rotor to see that things are working. The E rig is finished, weights painted and working nice. Want to have A done tonight as well and hopefully have some animation test for the tonight at some point, if not then definitely by tomorrow. 

Had some problems with deciding how to bind the skin so I spent all day yesterday on sorting the E rig out. I have used both smooth and rigid bind and it work great in the end. More about that later...

Display is working...

Yeeey! A's display is working, and this means that E's display is working to. I'd like to give myself a pat on the back for that. My brain is like a sponge this year and I seem to be able to work out most problems. I was supposed to assign an image sequence to the imgae plane behind the display glass, but I coulden't figure out how to do that so I started to use my imagination instead.

So, by creating little curves that looks more or less like the different expressions I was able to make a set driven key in between the different polygon planes (each with a different texture assigned to them). I am only controlling the scale X, Y and Z axis to simply make it so small that it "disappears". So all I have to do now is to select the curve of the expression I want, change the attribute "on_off" from 1 to 0 and from 0 to 1 to make the expression show or disappear, and obviously 1 is "on" and 0 is "off".   

Lotus Turntable...

Did this Lotus yesterday. This is the flower the robots are meant to be "born" out of. Didn't take me long to model but I had to figure out how to make it animate right. Ended up assigning 3 different curves, one with each set of leaves, and adding an Open/Close attribute with a Set Driven Key. Worked great and I am very happy with how it animates. I know it's not true to a real Lotus flower, but it was never supposed to since it is mechanical. 

The ambient occlusion pass took about 6 hours to render, so today have been a total waste. I hope I will have at least one more model finished today. But first I am heading for a shower lol...

Flower 1 finished...

Here we are. First flower model finished. This is just an ambient occlusion pass, more to come with some nice textures...

 

Thoughts...

I was told in class on monday that the balance of my robots weren't right. I have done some tiny changes to them. Given them shorter arms, wider feet and a little bit shorter legs. The changes are next to un-noticeable but I think it made a big difference. If I could get some thoughts on this that'd be great. I am about to bind my models so I need to know before doing so. Thanks! :) 

Smile to the camera...

Blend-shapes for A done and dusted. Now to rigging uhuuuu.....

A and E

A and E are both finished. Here they are, ready to rig and then play around with. Now to plant modelling. Not looking forward to that. I have a funny feeling I will run in to allot of problems...

A - Turn Table...

First finished model. Here is "A" textures and all. Thank you Vaughan for helping me out with my problems today, I honestly think you saved my whole project and also gave me peace of mind haha.
Hope to have "E" done by tomorrow at some point and there after the plants and then the tree...

Base models done...

Yupp... finished. No textures yet though but in time. At least both models are done now, I just hope the rigging process won't be to hard... Either way I am not looking forward to it, since I hate rigging with a passion. But hey! you can't love it all right? ;)

I had to re-think the girl robot a tiny bit for things to work I hope you don't hate the changes to much hehe...

Modeling progress...

Yesterday I started modelling. Bumped in to a million different problems. Didn't know what round surfaces was so hard to model on but hey, you live and you learn. I worked on this ll day yesterday, so what lookspretty simple took me a good while to model. I decided to use NURBS instead of polygons for the main body, since it's going to be a hard surface anyway. I find it much nicer to work in NURBS and it gives you that nice smooth mesh with not to much information as well. Hope to have "A" finished by tonight. 

Next week wont have many updates since I have to work on my dissertation as well. I hope some of you will help me to fill out a little survey later in the week, but I'll tell you more about that when it comes to it.

Leica Reel...

The presentation went really well today. I was as nervous as ever but managed to take a deep breath and calm myself down. I must say after all the practice we've had lately, that it has become allot easier.

Anyway, here is the Leica Reel I've promised:

And here is my presentation if anyone is interested. Just hit play and then the right and left arrow to navigate.

Synthetic Eden on Prezi

Model Sheet: "E"

Presentation time! In about 30 min. Wish me luck. Here's the final femal robot design. Leica reel will be up later today, just didn't want to ruin the "surprise" for the class hehe...

Model Sheet: "A"

Just a quick model sheet before jumping to bed... I decided to re-design the robots and here is "A". Will finish "E" off tomorrow because my eyes are way to tired to stare at this screen any more tonight. Night night!!!

Tree...

Oh yeah I finished the tree yesterday as well. Didn't know how I wanted it exactly but think I got there in the end...

Moodboard #1...

My first (graded) presentation is up and coming. This Friday to be more precise. Yesterday I spent hours in front of the computer to get things the way I want them for the presentation. My leica reel have bored me to pieces this time though. It is soooo boring to draw in black and white all the time, hence why I haven't finished it yet. It is very close though, but I decided to throw in some mood boards in between, just to break it up a little and please my eyes with some colours. So here's the first one. The scene won't look exactly like this I am just trying to establish the colours (which are many) to go for. Hope you like!

Bot poses...

The bot poses for my leica reel are finished. Now I got about 23 scenes left to do in my leica reel and it should be finished by next week at some point. I am aiming for Wednesday.

Forced work...

Yes, today is one of those days when I find it really hard to work. Weather is grey and so un-inspirational it's not even funny. And the fact that my World of Warcraft subscription runs out tonight and the fact that I won't play for a very long time again makes it very hard to stay away from it. But by working hard I will treat myself to a good WoW session tonight and then wave a long goodbye to my baby.

So at the moment I am working on the poses for my little robot. These will go in to my leica reel so it's not work that's being done for no reason. The leica reel is coming together nicely and I think I'll be proud to show it ones finished. Till then, here's some photos on my working area and stuff

Plants pt 2

Totally forgot to upload these 2. Just some more plant concepts. There will be one more coming but at the moment I am working on my story boards and trying to get my leica-reel put together. 

Plants...

Some new additions to the concept folder. I have been drawing plants for days and finally come up with about 5 designs that I want to use. I thought I'd stop there since the modelling part will be way to challenging if I have to model a gazillion different plants. Now I only need to model five and I can change shaders and colours on them to make them look different... Anyway, here's the 2 first ones coloured...

The tree...

Here's a very rough sketch of the tree and how I sort of want the vegetation to grow. I will refine the vegetation designs allot more, but it's hard to not repeat yourself. So working hard on that at the moment. 

Inspiration...

Since music has been such a big part of my life, making a music video was the obvious choice for me. At first I tried doing something I thought people would like to see but realized that I didn't stay true to myself by doing so. And these music videos here inspired me to make "Synthetic Eden"...

Spacious Thoughts - by Fluorescent Hill

Instrumental Video Nine - by beeple

Kwoon - I lived on the moon - by Yannick Puig

Apache - by Oneedo

Thank you guys for being the greatest inspiration!

The Story...

Synthetic Eden

This is a story about a little robot called A. He is born into a world through a mechanical lotus flower that has come from outer space.

He wakes up to a very boring and empty world, but there is a reason to why he’s been sent here. He is to create a new world, a perfect world for him and his love E.

It is a simple story with some eye-catching scenes. We will follow A as he creates this world through a little display on his forehead. He will have a way to communicate his next step through this display and as the symbol for say tree comes up on the display he shines a leaf on to the ground and the tree starts growing.

The scenes will be heavily composited and animated. This is a bit of a challenge for me but also something I love doing. I will use the knowledge I already got along with allot of research on how to make things come alive the way I want them to.

This will be more like a music video than anything else. There will be a few sound effects for the robots to give them more personality.

What I thought here was to combine my biggest passions music and art. I love being creative and without music it is hard for me to be creative. The music track I am using is a dance track made by a boy called Jesse Valentine. His tune really inspired me and I came up with this story to his fantastic music. You can listen to this track here: http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/448029
I have edited the music though so the bit that starts around 1:00 have been taken out since I thought it being a bit too fast and up tempo for the actual animation.

I hope to have at least a thumbs reel up by the end of this week if not even the finished lica-reel.

Synthetic Eden

Since I have scrapped my first project Ellie Brown I have changed the name and address of this blog and from tomorrow this will be the production blog for my final year Major Project called "Synthetic Eden". Here are my main characters, well the first concept drawings of them anyway, I am sure the will come to change a bit along the way. I will tell you more about the story and my ideas tomorrow...