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...