What's Been Going On

I haven't posted on here for a while because I've been hard at work trying to get to get my animation finished. Since the last post I've spend alot of time trying to get all of the scenes done and with a hand in due on friday, I have had to use all my contingency plans :S

I decided to change the storyboard slightly so that the pond became a rockary. This was purely because I was running out of time and needed something simple. Using water effects would have required even more research and tests before i could implement it into the garden.

Speech. I wrote about this in my technical study, that if I started to run out of time, I would have to subtitle the animation, and hopefully use the music score to its full potential. As I am running out of time, there's no way I can record voices and animate the lip syncing at this stage. It is a shame, but my piece is aimed at showing off my 3D skills, not my audio skills.

I did make slight adjustments to the storyline too, but only minor ones... nothing too drastic.

Lastly, in terms of an ending, I wanted something different.. where the heros didn't win for once... by letting the bomb in the garden explode, it would end the piece on a cliff hanger ready for the next episode...

Endings

I have started to animate now... finally. While doing this, I have come up with a few possile endings for the piece:

Ending 1 - Jack saves the day... he fights Compost Bin'Liner and gets back the remote to stop the bombs.

Ending 2 - Exactly like ending 1, except he takes the remote back to CGU and someone accidently detonates it, setting off the bomb!

Ending 3 - Jack is too late... the timer runs down to zero and the bomb goes off! Although this is a sad ending, it would be a great cliffhanger for a new episode...

Ending 4 - A slightly obscure one - Keeping with the escapist theme, it might be funny to watch Jack rescue the remote. Just as he pushes the button to stop the bombs, the screen fuzzes af if the channel has changed. Next, the audience hears a family arguing over the remote and a sky television menu screen appears. By the time it is switched back to 2.4, it has ended... what on earth happeded...???

I'm not really sure which I like the most yet but ill have to make a decision soon :S

Building CGU - Counter Gnome Unit

I had done some sketches for the basic layout of CGU and went with a simple one, which also had areas that fans of 24 would recognise. Using the basic shapes in 3D Max, I created a rough guide for how I wanted CGU to look. I then added more detail by editing the polygons to create objects such as keyboards or moniters. Here is the untextured scene:

After gathering the textures from the 3D Max library and free images of the internet, I began texturing the scene. After adding some specular and bump effects, I added some advanced lighting and the scene was ready to animate in:

Title Sequence

To get a break from 3D Studio Max, I decided to have a stab at creating the title sequence for my project. I had not had much experience with Adobe After Effects, but knew that it was used in industry and is a very powerful tool. I was told by a tutor that After Effects would be the best program to create my title sequence. In 24, the style of the title font is in digit form (like on a clock).



I played with the software for a bit trying to discover what did what and eventually started piecing together the sequence. First of all, I got hold of the sound clip that went with the sequence. I then added this to the timeline ready to start animating to. I found that I could randomly generate flickers on the bars using some simple code. I then set the random flickers to keyframes so I could manually edit them to make the bars gradually get brighter.

Spade Run Test

Rigging

I had attempted to rig models in the past, but found it very difficult and often, the joints didn’t work like I wanted them to.

Through Google searches I found a lot of rigging tutorials but unfortunately, they all seem to do use different methods. It got suggested to me that I should try rigging with a biped so I found a decent tutorial to righ with that method and tried it on my spade.

First, I had to remove all mesh smoothes and attach all of the parts of my spade together to form one object (not to group them as I had done in the past). The tutorial also said to leave out the eyes, as they can be attached later.

Next, I had to use the biped tool to draw a skeleton over the top of it. I then removed the arms (as my spade has none) and resized the different bones so that they fit around the spade.

I then added a physique modifier to the spade and attached the biped. Amazingly, it only needed a small amount of adjusting and the spade was able to be fully animated. What once would have taken me several hours only took several minutes!

I also found that by using a biped bone structure within my models, I could use pre-animated walk, run and jump cycles. (See ‘Spade Run Test' video).

I used exactly the same process on all the other tools and the gnomes so they were fully set up and ready to animate.

Creating the Gnomes

I concentrated on creating the gnomes next. They are to be the equivalent of the terrorists in 24. I decided to create one model and duplicate it, making minor adjustments and changing the colour of their clothes to make them differ.

I decided to build the gnome from the boots up. Usually when you model a character you would start with the head, but I wanted to keep the model simple and therefore the head would just be a sphere. I chose to start with the boots, as they would be slightly more complicated than the rest of him.

Here are the seperate stages:

Creating The Tools

Over the weekend, I modeled the rest of the tools. In the same way that I modelled the spade, I created a trowel, fork, hoe and rake. To keep them looking the same I gave them all eyes in the same way as I did with the spade. I also experimented with positioning the eyes in different positions but they ended up looking odd.

My Garden at This Point

Implementation - Creating the Rest of the Garden

Starting with the shed (which is going to be the garden equivalent of CTU from 24), I decided to complete the rest of the environment ready to animate in. Using the shed in my own garden as a guideline, I built the 3D shed similar to how it would be built in real life; the seperate side panels, roof then extra features such as the doors and windows.

Next, I added two strips of soil down the sides of the garden, ready to put flowerbeds in. I cut out a square in a corner of the lawn and added a patio texture onto a box that I put into the space. I then modelled two benches with box modelling and extrusion and put them on the newly created patio.

Again using my own garden as a reference point, I created two differing fence panels and duplicated them around three of the garden edges between fence posts.

I had to create a house front for the edge left over, so I created a box and extruded out holes for the windows and patio doors. I then created the window and door frames separately and slot them in the gaps. I then textured the walls with a brick texture and created tiles for the roof. Unfortunately, I had to create a false reflection in the windows of the garden, as adding a reflection map made the render times per frame ridiculous. I did this by creating a snapshot of the garden from the point of view from the windows. I then took this into photoshop, added a sky background and a gaussian blur. I turned up the brightness slightly then added the finished texture onto the windows with some specular and gloss added. Wa la, a garden window reflection.

All that was missing from the garden now was plants, bushes and trees. I attempted create some flowers for the flowerbeds, but they looked too stiff and lego-like and were obviously duplicated. I know that in industry, trees and plants would usually be generated with a plugin.

One example of this is the scene in The Incredibles (on the making of it) where Mr Increbible tries to get a cat out of a tree. For that scene all the trees in the background were generated to save time.

Unfortunately I didn’t have the facilities to do this, so I thought it was justifiable to download freely available plants from http://www.turbosquid.com to fill out the rest of garden.

Implemetation - Creating Grass

I needed to create a realistic looking garden for my animation. The only way I could think of doing this was to create the strands of grass in 3D, as opposed to using a texture on a flat or even bumpy plane.

After a lot of searching, I found a tutorial that suggested creating four blades of grass and randomly duplicating them across a surface. Unfortunately, to make the grass look realistic, I found a needed a lot of it. I had to make a compromise here with quality vs. render times. I found 100,000 blades seemed to give the best result, especially where the grass was being viewed close up.

Implementation - Attaching Eyes

I realised whilst doing the lip syncing that the eyes needed to move up and down with the top lip (shown in the image above) as the spade spoke. The problem I had achieving this was that when I linked the eyes to lips, they would stay in the same position, even though the lips would move.

The only way I could think of to get around this problem was to attach the eyes so that they were part of the same object as the handle. This had a major drawback in that I couldn’t texture the eyes after they had been attached with a UV map. This meant I could not make the eyes move or blink at all.

What I needed was a way of linking an object (the eyes) to a polygon on top of the lips, so that if the polygon moved the eyes would follow. After explaining my problem to one if my past 3D tutors, he got back to me the next day with the solution. Buried away under animation constraints in 3D Studio Max was a tool to do exactly what I needed.

This allowed me to select an exact polygon and attach the eyes to it. I then rotated and moved them to make them central by moving pivot point. I repeated the process with every tool that had a mouth.

Implementation - Spade Creation and Mouth Movement

I had already created the spade which was going to be my main character, Jack Trowel using the software 3D Studio Max. I used box modelling and shape deforming to make all of the sections then grouped them all to make one object.

To create the mouth movement I used morph targets from four other models with different mouth shapes. Once I had set them up, I could use sliders to move the mouth using any combination of the four shapes.

2.4 Time Schedule

As I was told I wouldn't complete the piece in the time I had left at my review, I made a time schedule to use to try to keep me on track:

Review Feedback :S

Ok, so I had my review today and it didn't go how I had planned :S

Basically I showed my storyboard and some of the earlier models I had made, but it was pulled to shreads somewhat... talk about demotivation!

Unfortunately, it was my fault... I didn't show any of the research I had done to back up decisions I had made. One key one was why I had put eyes ontop of the tools. I have justified this at least in my sketchbook if not on here too, but I didn't show that which is why I think it went so badly :(

I was also told to try and condense the idea down because they didn't think I could do it in time I have left... I think, or at least hope I will, because I've finally got an idea I am happy with.

Well best get cracking I suppose :(

Finished Storyboard - Well Almost...

Well this is my almost completed storyboard... I still need an ending but I am happy with the rest of it. I will show this at my review in a week or so:

A Slight Change

After thinking hard about the characters and story, I made a few changes:

Jack Bauer - Jack Trowel (the garden spade)
Head of CTU - Mitch Fork (the garden fork)
The rest of CTU - The other tools
The President - N/A
The Public - The Flowers
The Terrorists - The Garden Gnomes

The main change is the garden gnomes as the terrorists. There are several reasons behind this change:

- From 3D modeller and animators point of view, modelling and snimating swarms of insects would be a complete nightmare! I don't really have the time now to starts researching how I could even attempt this, let alone do it.

- Gnomes would let me practice proper rigging skills with bipeds (something I really need to learn to do - but have tutorials ready and waiting).

- I also think it would be more funny to have the gnomes as terrorists as they are usually cheerful looking and would be unexpected.

- The motivation for attacking the flowers would be that they get all the attention from the humans, and the gnomes want it for themselves.

Chosen Idea - Continued

I developed a bit of a story too...


"The piece begins with a trowel walking in the garden. Suddenly he is swarmed by a bunch of insects and kidnapped! Back at CTU, they realise he has gone missing and send out a search party. All they find is a note. It explains that if they want to see the trowel again, they must let all of the insects eat the plants in 2.4 minutes, and so the timer begins.

Rather than let them get their way, Jack traces the insects slime trails and footsteps and finds that the trowel has been taken to a bee hive. I thought about a funny fight scene here where he has to fight insects with guns maybe? He wins and rescues the trowel but still needs to stop the other insects who have made their way to the flowers already... will Jack save the day?"


Thats all I have so far, but it has some of the morally challenging decisions similar to the series in and is quite fast paced.

Chosen Idea

I have decided to persue the 24 idea, as it it my strongest idea so far and my time is starting to run out. I even came up with a name for it; "2.4".

2.4 is a play on 24 and 2.4 minutes is actually 2 minutes and 24 seconds, which is a good length for an animated short. I can even use the 24 title graphics and add a decimal point to make it my own.

I have also begun storyboarding my idea. I thought about the different character sets in 24:

Jack Bauer
Head of CTU (character varies)
The rest of CTU
The President
The public
The terrirists

Note: CTU stands for Counter Terrorist Unit

I thought about relating these different character sets to characters you might find around the garden, then i began to vreate a story.

Jack Bauer - The garden spade
Head of CTU (character varies) - The garden fork
The rest of CTU - The other garden tools
The President - The Humans?
The public - The flowers (i thought that this could b the flowers, as the tools help to grow and preserve the flowers in a garden in real life)
The terrirists - Insects (i thought about insects because they attack and eat plants in real life)

My New Ideas - At Last

Well I have to admit, the workshop week was extremily helpful. I got to see some presentations from people in industry, and although none of them specialised in 3D animation/modelling, some of the talks were very useful. The main benefit of the week for me was that I developed some fresh ideas and actually chose one to persue.

I set myself a brief at the start of the week. I had pretty much ditched my old idea(s), yet I had put a fair bit of work into the character development and even set development. I decided not to let this research go to waste, and set my guidelines for the brief:

- I wanted to use existing characters and sets for the piece (the spade and garden).
- An underlaying theme of 'escapism'.
- I needed an interesting storyline in which audiences could escape.
- I needed an original style to the piece.

After thinking long and hard throughout the week I came up with two ideas!


Idea 1.

Garden Wars - I thought about having two sets of garden tools, each one from gardens next to each other. The tools would differ either with different coloured handles or maybe old and new tools. The rivalry between the two sets has got to the point where they start a war between each other. In a series of small clips, I could create a comedy animation about how two sets of tools battle each other within two gardens with only a fence seperating them.

Some of the ideas I thought about were flinging burning soil over the fence, cutting tool shaped holes int he fence for them to get into the other gardens, throwing tools in the garden shredder, etc. In terms of endings, I thought it could be funny to use the classic 'standing on a rake' gag or put some meaning behind it - i.e. the old tools win and it goes to show that old tools are just as good if not better than the new ones.


Idea 2.

24 Parody - I was watchin 24 this week and it struck me that I could do an interesting animation mixing the crazy life of Jack Bauer (the main character) with one of a spade. I thought about using certain areas of the garden as areas from the series and character sets aswell (i thought about the tools being workers at CTU - Counter Terrorist Unit, and maybe insects as terrorists eating the plants).

In terms of the points I set in my brief, this idea would furfil them all:

- It uses the existing characters I created
- 24 is very 'escapist' its self so this mixed with a toy story; objects coming to life theme would be perfect.
- 24 has twisting, gripping storylines that keep audiences wanting more. If I can create one for the tools in the garden, I would be onto a winner!
- 24 has its own unique styling. As the piece would be a parody of 24, I could use the style (multiple screens and the digital clock) but with the twist of using my own characters.

Both ideas still need some work but I have to say, I'm leaning towards the 24 idea.

Mid Term Workshop Week

Well this next week we are going to be having a workshop where people from industry are going to come in and talk to us!! Also we get to show them the stuff we are doing and we'll get some feedback on that which sound great!! ...Should be good :D

Back To The Drawing-Board

Right... well a week or so on from my last post and I have decided to ditch my idea all together!!

I'm just not as enthusiastic about it as I was when I started the project and I really want to produce a piece that shines!

If I can, I am going to stick with the garden theme as I have a couple of tools and a bit of a garden already modelled so it would be a shame to waste them :P

Unfortuntely, I don't have any ideas as of yet so its back to the drawing-board, but as usual I'll keep you posted.

Filling In The Gaps - My Project Once More

After a week or two playing around with ideas of what my spade might want to sing about I basically came up with two which seemed to stand out as the strongest.


Idea 1: Carry on with the original idea

My original idea wasn't that bad (in my opinion). By altering it towards the mind-set of a spade, I thought it should work better. I decided to ditch the daydream of him driving a car and instead, want to be a big JCB digger! - Being sick of the mundane life of a spade in the garden, he would fantasise about the wonderful life of a JCB: The huge loads they can lift at one time, the shiny glossy yellow finish, the"wow" they get from children as they pass by, being one if not THE most important part of a building team!

Interestingly, through my research into the thought processes of spades and this first idea, I came up with a second!

Idea 2: 'The grass is always greener'

I thought it would be really cool to do the original animation (idea 1) but from a two point perspective... The garden spade would daydream about the fast-paced, exciting life of a big JCB digger, and on the other hand the JCB would daydream about the simple, relaxing life of being a spade.

I do like this second idea, but the problems I have with it are that I would have to lose the original soundtrack (from idea 1) and also come up with an ending that would be either interesting or funny! I'm still unsure as to how original this idea is too. Hmmm...

Filling In The Gaps - My Project

Taking into account all that had been said by Jen and in my end of term review (which seemed to go ok :D), I knew I had to expand on my original idea...

I had to almost put myself into a mind-set of a spade and ask myself:

What is my background? - Where did I come from? - Have I only been in this garden?
Am I a new spade, or an old one? - Wise or a bit dippy?
What are my goals in life?
etc...

The most crucial question was; If I could be anything, what would I be?

You'd think these would be simple questions to answer, but coming up with interesting ideas that would make my piece more original was extremily difficult!!

Filling In The Gaps - Dissertation

I haven't been on here updating my blog for quite a long time now!! Over the next few posts ill try to sum up where I have been and what's been going on:

Well I got my dissertation handed in... just! I had a complete nightmare with it, as my laptop crashed and corrupted pretty much everything I had on it (including my dissertation, the emails from Mark Griffith and the papers he sent me)!!!


After nearly 3 days of using about half a dozen recovery packages, I finally gave up and realised I would have to re-write the thing! I had done well over half of it, and believe me it was gut wrenching having to do it from scratch again!! One week later I managed to finish it just in time for the hand in (thank god I still had all the notes from Mark Griffiths lecture as I would have had no primary research otherwise)!!

I can safely say I learnt the lesson "ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR WORK!"

Explination

I haven't posted on here for a while. It's because I have eased off work on my project and concentrated more on writing my dissertation. Its getting there, but I still have quite a bit of work to do!

In terms of my project, I showed my course tutor Jen what I had done last week. I created a rough storyboard of what I wanted to happen in the animation and also showed her some of the renders I had already posted on here.

She liked my passion for the idea and it seems I have done enough work towards it so far, but unfortunately, I was told I wasn't on for a First with it :(

She said my idea wasn't original enough to get that kind of level of degree... I was thinking to myself... "What? A singing spade's been done before?!" lol. But she meant the concept of the idea (i.e. inanimate objects coming to life in a cartoony style... yeah, I know, its Pixar all over).

Jen suggested I stick with the idea (because of the work I had put into it so far), but to think about the dream sequences in the song (where the instrumentals are) and try to do something original or different with those. She also suggested trying a different look maybe with either textures, lighting or maybe cameras?

I don't really want to change the look of the piece, as this is going to be my showcase for potential jobs, so I want it to look (or at least be similar to) how I imagined it looking. I can understand where she was coming from though (that I need to have or find my own style within my work). Hmmm. Well for now, I'll concentrate on different storyboards for the dream sequences.

Game On Summary

Well the Game On event was quite different to how I imagined it. The event in the day was basically a load of consoles and arcade machines set up with key games from each gaming era to play on them... put it this way... I wasn't complaining ;)

I got to play on consoles I never thought I would see in the flesh (or plastic) and play them too including the Atari 2600 and even the first home game console, the Magnavox Odyssey. It was really cool! The only thing I was bummed about was that if we had gone just one day later we would have been able to play on a Nintendo Wii! They were setting up the area where it was going to be while we were there!? (I didn't have a choice of day though because I needed to see Professor Mark Griffith speak later on)

We were told we were only supposed to be in there for two hours when we went in. Three hours or so later, after I had crowned myself the official Halo multiplayer champion ;), I grabbed some tea and went back to listen to Professor Mark Griffith in the 'Gaming In Mind' presentation.

Again, this wasn't quite what I expected either. I was hoping he would talk about the effects of violent and sexual content on gamers, but instead he talked mainly about the effects of addiction in gaming. Luckly, this was an area I wanted to cover anyway, so I got quite alot of useful information. I also emailed him, and he sent me five papers he had written on the subject aswell. Considering, he is seen as one of the leading researchers in this field, I should be ok in this section of my dissertation at least :P