So this week I have been concentrating a bit more on the Exeter project, which is starting to come together really nicely. The 3d team have been working so hard and we seem to be on schedule for everything that we are able to be on schedule for. I am a bit worried about the lighting and camera shots as we aren't able to work on those areas until we get some shots from the stop-mo team. But this week we have finished all the texturing and modelling and have started animation on some of the shots. I have also been able to add the finished assets to the block through and it nice to see how its coming together.




This week I helped out on laying out the uvs for the phoenix, which did set a bit of a challenge as it had been converted to subdivs, which meant I had a a more complex model to lay the uvs out for, but thanks to Georg's help he figured a way in which we could tell the subdiv model to take its uvs from the polygon it was modelled from, which made laying out the uvs a hell of allot easier. (Have no idea if that made any sense, but anyway). So once that was done I passed the phoenix body to Andy who did a great texturing it.




I also had to rig up the phoenix this week, it was just a simple rig using locators and curves, and I have to say that the work I had done on Dyson has really improved my rigging skill and I was able to rig the phoenix quite quickly. The phoenix had been rigged previously by Adam who had done a great job doing it, but because we had to try and transfer the uvs from the textured phoenix to the rigged phoenix, we had a bit of a problem as because the phoenix had already been transferred to a subdiv the transfer attributes tool wouldn't worked. So it was easier just to re rig the phoenix then rather find a way to transfer the uvs. (If that makes sense)





I have also been spending quite a bit of time working on Dyson trying to get him all textured and ready to animate. I have finished laying out his uvs and doing the colour part of the textures but still need to work on creating shaders that look like the kind of metal I want. Working on Dyson has really helped with laying out uvs and i have to understand allot more than I did previously. This week i really need to concentrate on animating Dyson as I really want to get him done for the pitch on Fri. We have almost completed every thing else for the Space junk pitch so I am quite happy with how that is going, but i think this week is going to be quite hectic with trying to get the Dyson animation finished and rendered as well as getting the Animated Exeter project complete so fingers crossed everything will be completed on time.

Hello again, ok so I’ve been quite busy lately trying to get Space Junk completed for the pitch in Dec and working on the animated Exeter project. So I have done a few more concept pieces on my character Dyson, just as little extra to add to the pages of our bible, to add a little colour.

We are kinda at the stage where all the work is done and we just have to put it all together. Justin has almost finished the storyboard so I have started to bring that together for the animatic. It was a bit of a pain as we wanted the animatic to have a bit animation in it, so I had to go through the storyboard and separate it out into different layers so I could animate these layers later in After effects, but I think it will be worth it. I have started to bring it into after effects and add the animation and I think it really livens it up which is good.

I have also been continuing working on my model of Dyson. I have fully rigged him up with facial expressions, and have also done a small piece of animation just to test him out, the animation isnt great but it was just to see if he works. I did have a bit of a problem with the blend shapes. For some reason when I grouped the head and adjusted the vertices to create the blend shape, the blend didn’t completely blend to what the actual blend shape was. So I tried again but using clusters instead and it did the same thing again. But this time I slightly adjusted one of the blend shape clusters and the base face just pop into place, and that seem to fix the problem. Kinda weird, don’t really know what happened there, but it’s all working now so I’m happy. I have also been thinking about creating a 3d model of Dyson using the 3D printer. So I have asked Georg how it works and he said he will find out, so will have to see if I can. But I think it will be quite a

nice think to have for the presentation.

Now with animated Exeter Project, my role is 3D producer. So we have assigned modelling jobs to each of the 3D team, and I have made a block through of the animatic so we can just swop out the assets as they are being built. Last week we have completed all the modelling which I have added to the block through. And this week we will be tackling the texturing and UV layout. I have also looking at some tutorials that Georg had shown me, on creating explosions in Maya, as at the end of the animation there is a phoenix that explodes and fireworks are set off. So will play around with them and see if they are wanted in the animation, aswell as the Fireworks.

Here is the Block Through I created

Here we have Sam's Tower and Jacobs clock face added to the scene

Here is a quick explosion that I have done using one of the tutorials. It isnt complete as I think there are a few things that need to be tweaked but you get the idea.

Another Week

So carrying on with the Creating an animation project, me and Justin are working quite fast and are almost at the stage where we can start putting our bible together. I have done some colour shots of some characters which Justin has created. Here is Dennis and Toastmatic 3K. Just painted some metal textures on in Photoshop so it matches up with Dyson and the planets and I think they look quite nice.






We have written out our character description ect. And we have gone through some ideas for the storyboard. Everything has come together quite well and there doesn’t seem to be anything which we have really struggled on, except for the slogan which we still need to work on. I think the next thing we need to concentrate on is making our presentation a bit more exciting. Andy suggested the idea of creating our bible out of bits of rubbish, which is something that I think we may go along with.

I have also just completed modelling Dyson, in Maya, and he doesn’t look too bad. I think I managed to get looking quite close to my designs, and I’m quite happy with him. I did enjoy modelling him and I hope he is modelled in the correct way. Georg suggested modelling his eye sockets into his face so that way I could follow the contours of his face so later on when I do rig him, it will be easier to create expressions. So I did and I think it will pay off later and already I think it adds just that little bit more character. I decided just to create him to give me something to concentrate on during our Maya sessions and wasn’t too sure how far to take him. Georg convinced me to go ahead and rig him, so that’s the next step. It will give me a chance to practice rigging as I have only rigged a character from scratch once and I think I can improve on it a lot more. Here’s Dyson so far...