It is an animation preview (Render Blast) for PACO animated short. It is the act 1. The act 2, 3, 4 and 5 should be completed by mid of next month. I spent few days to organize the render layers and render setting for these shots. Render setting in these shots have been nightmare. It is very easy to forget to turn "on" or "off" things. However, I glad that I was able to add soft body simulation on chicken's head top (can you tell me what is that call in English?), neck and their tail feather. I will add feather dropping animation in some shots and an animatable rigged feather in the last shots. The rigged feather will fly away and the camera will follows it until it reaches the main scene, the tiny town scene. Critiques are appreciated, thanks.
I use motion blur in render setting, however, the diffuse pass does not match with the occulsion pass. Therefore, I might need to find a plug-in or software to make the motion blur in post.
Here we have our very first animated test sequence. The animator for this sequence is Jim Ward. I did the soft body dynamic effect, lighting, rendering and compositing. The purpose of this render sequence is to test our render method. Since most of our shots do not have camera movement, so we separate environment and character to two different render pass sets. Basically, we only render one frame of environment and render character animated sequence without the environment background. In order to render efficiently, we have to be very organized with our massive render pass files. We are going to put this short in stereoscopy which means we have a right camera and a left camera in every shot. Therefore we have one set of render for each camera, which means render everything twice. Here we have some numbers for this sequence.
3 shots, 5 seconds. entire rendered frame without cut = 201 frames (402 frames for stereoscopy) 4 passes for character (diffuse, occlusion, shadow, specular) (8 passes for stereoscopy) diffuse: about 330MB, roughly 0.5 mins per frame occlusion: about 305MB, roughly 5 mins per frame shadow: about 160MB, roughly 14 mins per frame speculiar: about 180MB, roughly 0.5 mins per frame
5 passes for environment (diffuse, occlusion, shadow, specular, depth) (10 passes frames for stereoscopy) Remember, we only render one frame for environment (if no camera movement). diffuse: about 2.7MB occlusion: about 2.7MBe shadow: about 250KB speculiar: about 550KB depth: about 2.5MB
My pictures that we render at 1280 X 720 (Stereoscopy at 1320 X 720, need extra 20 pixels for each side)
We are happy with this test and the render setting/method is successful. From now til spring break (March 10th), we will work hard on animation. We won’t have any render sequence upload there, but we will have render blast sequence upload here in this month and next month. Ok, here is some update and feedback will be appreciated.
One year has almost passed and I still have lots to do with this project. First of all, I really appreciate Professor Albert and my two animator friends Jared and Jim for their helps. I remember I said I will complete this project by May this year in my undergraduate capstone presentation. However, I wasn’t quite realized creating a 3D animated short is such a long and complicated process. With all graduate course works, part-time jobs and freelance projects, it is very difficult to concentrate on this project. Today, I have completed all my graduate courses and one thing left for me is to finish this project. It is something I can’t have any distraction in order to finish. I had to tell my part-time employer that I have to quit it so I can focus on this project. I have to turn down many outside freelance project as well. I just feel I have to have one thing, I mean something major done when I graduate. I will end my school academic life with something is completely not half way done. For me, that is more important than anything else. I will commit 90% of my work time for this project in next half year. The two major parts that I still need to do for this project are animation and rendering/editing/composting processes.
The premiere of PACO will be either end of April or early May. It will be present at IT152 with stereoscopy projectors. It will be a 40 minutes presentation which talks about production pipeline and showing the final piece of animation.
Here I have my first two shots (out of 83) from my PACO animated short. This video show you how I render my shots with render passes. I animated the first shot (PACO jump in and then walk). My good buddy Jim Ward animated the second shot with all characters, PACO, Charlie and butcher.
Here is a render passes test for PACO's opening scene, a chicken barn where PACO got captured. There will have few more passes need to add in the shot. Plate and grass passes, character passes and fur pass. Since 90% our shots don't have any camera movement, so we will only render a single environment image for those shots and then add in passes for character animation. That way will save ton of time for rendering process. PACO is captured in the early morning, so I hope this initial test shot give you a feel of early morning.
After two months of working on our own free time. Jared, Jim and I have finally putted together the animatics. We are happy to see how everything come together so far. We all learned timing, staging and camera angle in this process. For sure we will have more changes in the future process. Our next step will be blocking process and we still need to decide who will need to work on which shot. Here is our animatics, PACO
Thanks to Jared's hard work, this is our final storyboard. So far we have about 80 shots in this animated short. In June, we will block out every shots and test the timing for each before we start the actual animation process. Project organization is gonna be crucial in this project, so we have came out with a system to keep files and tasks organized. File naming structure has also created. We also found the Google apps are very helpful and useful in order to keep our production schedule organized. It is very nice that we can share our calendar and Excel & Word Doc in Google appes.
After five months of struggling with my graduate school works (first semester). I finally ready to get back to the PACO project. I got two new team members this time. Jared Price and Jim Ward. Both of them are fantastic animators and that is just what this project really need. We have been working on the revision of the storyboard. We have pretty much settle down all the shots and story. Now, we are in the character testing process, which is very difficult for me to fix all the rigging problems that all characters have. Our next big step is to have a solid animation layout. This project is under the animation phase, so animation will be the main focus until end of this year. Anyway, more story and animation progresses will be posted in here pretty soon. I will also come up with a project timeline by next week.
This is an image that I create for our IUPUI ACM SIGGRAPH Student Chapter Halloween student contest. It is just for fun, my final project won’t have any blood in it.
Some progresses on my characters’ textures. All of them have base textures on them. Bump map and specular map are not yet created for them. Also they need more detail works such as their fingers, clothes, teeth, turkey’s win, feet and mouth.
After another month of work, I have finally rigid three of my main characters. Also I have finish most of modeling job, including the town center. It is time to move on the texturing job next week.
The town center is in working progresses right now, and it still needs a lot of works. It has so many details need to add. I guess I will spend lots time on texturing it in August………Well, I hope I can finish all model by end of August………really hope that will happen.
Modeling the turkey is actually easy then I thought, but I run in so many troubles when I skinning it. I still can’t figure out how to make its eye lid open and close properly and smoothly………by the way, his toes are actually human characters’ fingers…..well, it works well.
Well, I need a few reference pictures so I can model my turkey character. I made the chicken in sit down and run poses. This study help out a lot and it makes the modeling processes faster. However, the facial blend shape drives me crazy. Too much works actually. Anyway, it is kind of fun to work with this chicken..... or turkey character. I watched "Finding Nemo (the bird)" for facial shape reference as well.
Here are sketches of my three main human characters. The Turkey is not here yet, because I haven't got a chance to buy a really turkey or chicken for the image reference purpose. All Character models should be done by end of July with all facial shapes and textures set up. Also bone set up by the same time.
Here comes the town center. I don't know how to name it yet, but if you have any idea, please let me know. It is a European style building. I mixed with different styles of roof together and to make it has a more interesting look. By the way, the entire animation will be in this scene. There are three shops on the street. A fruit shop, a butcher shop and a cafe shop.
New Image for the portfolio review section tomorrow. The new butcher head is here. I modified it by Zbursh from the old model. I will have a chance to talk to Rich McKain who is an Animator from the Blue Sky studio.
Here I am. The newest member of the Roofers. Frank's been kind enough to invite me into the project, so I'm in and ready for action. My camera's out of batteries, so I just used my scanner and got this crazy looking portrait of myself. Anyway... I'm glad to be here. This project is going to be a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to working with the Frankster!
Look Look , it is my new weapon. Just arrived last week and I have been working with it pretty well. It helps a lot when I create different facial shapes in Zbrush. It is WACOM power.
Well, it is my first concept of my new portfolio web site. I think I am gonna use my roofer characters as the main concept. Hopefully I will finish this site before this coming September.
Monday, April 03, 2006
Storyboard process, the story should be complete by end of this month. It needs more detail. It takes me three of four days to draw all those little pictures.
It is gonna be my capstone blog. I will keep updating new images whenever I have something new or exciting done. The project should be done by December 2006. By the way, this is my profile picture on the Facebook.
