Compositing, Comics and Comeuppances

We had a class with Malcolm on Friday on compositing in After Effects. 

The set up is so similar to Photoshop (and it's so much easier to grasp than Nuke) that i'll probably use this for my compositing for my project and multi passes - although Nuke does have a strong allure.

I also think using AE will cut down time because I won't be spending my hours and mind figuring out Nuke.

But that's another thought for another day!

I've also finally finished all the rough pencil lines for my comic! Got them done in about 4 days which i'm really happy with. So now i'm ready to ink all the pages and i'm hoping to have this done by mid week - i've already started work so i've only got about 7 more to go.

I've really been trying to incorporate my perspective studies and what I've been learning about cinematography into this. I've definitely go heaps to learn, but as a first stab at an actually completed comic/story i'm really happy with it.

And then on to texturing... i've been watching a few toon shade tutorials and I want to work on some testing this weekend, so screenshots and rant will definitely follow...

I really need to get my head in the game with texturing properly - part of me is still trying to ignore it and but it off, but it's really setting me back so I just need to crack on with it. O_O

Toons, Texturing and Tribulations

ackkkkkkkkkkk.

Texturing.... ackkkkkk. I've been doing a bit of testing to figure out how I want to texture my character... i'm losing. ackkk.

I've worked out a way for it to work for me in terms of how I approach it - my brain works funny and I actually need to be able to visualise the face as a whole (as opposed to sections or what not) in order to paint it - but I still haven't managed to achieve the look i'm going for.

Using my model sheet to trace over her face :(

I've been working with different styles to try and get the 2D look I want to achieve and have been using a few references from some of my favourite comic colourists including Fiona Staples (Saga), Dexter Soy (Captain Marvel) and Greg Tocchini (Low).

Dexter Soy

Dexter Soy again

Fiona Staples

I think i'm gonna need to go back to the drawing board with this an approach it differently. I'm going to spend the next couple of days doing some more research on methods as opposed to style and hopefully i'll be able to achieve some results over the weekend so I can move into production territory next week.

As if I love painting but not texturing. pfftt..

Week 24: Dancer, Prancer, Dashser

I'm fast approaching my date for production to begin O_O and I still need to get a dance routine sorted. I've been doing a bit of research and I really need to settle on  style first and think heaps about the body language and what i'm trying to convey.

I want the moves to be rather exaggerated and to be the complete opposite to how my character appears when she first lands, which will be more closed over, nervous etc.

For the next few weeks all my sketching warm ups will consist of dancing sequences of different styles, and hopefully i'll be able to piece together an idea of what I want.

Croissants, Comics and Pumpkins

OK, so i've had a very very arty weekend and have decided I really need to pull my art shite together (comic in particular), so i've pulled together a schedule and given myself 3 weeks to complete it (lollll).

Current working title is Photosynthesis and the plot is short and simple I think. My main character (new working name of Lily) is VERY Toph (The Last Airbender) and Chihiro (Spirited Away) influenced, and it took me a couple of days to work on a design but i'm happy with what i've got atm! Simplicity!

Got a couple of panels done, but really need to tighten up my story before I go any further. Taking a much more different approach to this than I usually would because of time. Normally I try to complete a whole panel (inks, colours etc) before moving on, but I get so hung up on that then end up stopping, so i'm just gonna have all my pages sketched and inked in the next week and half (haaaaa) before colours etc.

Again I want to keep it all as simple as possible for now - especially juggling it with Going Live and my final project, but i'm hoping to develop it once i've got more time :).

Even if I don't finish it in time it would still be nice to finally have a finished comic project haha.

Playlist and development inspiration for said comic is mostly side 2 of The Smashing Pumpkins Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness (In The Arms of Sleep being my favourite). It's also the influence for my character's name Lily. There's also some Laura Marling thrown in.

UV Maps and Traps

ack. I've fallen into the trap of UV mapping... it's easier to do now than before but still doesn't mean I can do it quickly ack.

Sean's Transfer attribute method has worked so far but need to do some proper tests with the rig to make sure! I've also UV mapped all my assets including the cave.

So now I have a whole week of texturing ahead of me which should be interesting!. I've tried to do my maps in a way that I feel will be easier for me to get my head around when it comes to painting, which mean making them as frontal and close to the shape of my model as possible.

pod seat and body

face and cave

In other-words i've realised that I can't actually paint if everythings already mapped out for me so to speak - it needs to feel more organic and less procedural. I may cut off the back of the head when i'm painting it so my mind can just deal with the front of the face.

Dolly Takes Revenge: Sean Saves the Day

UPDATE FROM TODAY'S EARLIER RAMBLINGS.

Sean has saved the day and my rigging 'career'.

ALSO, mere seconds after I finished my meeting with Sean (and after blaming Dolly for all of this), Dolly Parton's You Can't Make Old Friends came on O_O, I feel like this is a sign. Soz Dolly.

But yes, all issues have now been resolved (yet to be tested) without the need to RE-RIG!

Problem: Skinned model without a UV map
Solution: Duplicate the model - edit / unwrap it's UV's, selected the updated model then the old model go to Mesh -> Transfer Attribute options, make sure everything is OFF, except UV (set this to all), and sample space to Component. New UV should be applied to the old model HOPEFULLY with no rigging issues.

feeling pretty smug at the lack of stretching before i've even cut any edges. ha

Problem: 'Forgot' to scale my model before the bind, now scale attributes have been added to the global control/group
Solution: This shouldn't be a problem! as long as everything else is 0-ed out on the controls. Scale it to the size I need then lock/hide it (if needed)

Problem: Mariachi blendshapes are being mean
Solution: Head was combined to the body, so vert numbers done mate the mariachi blendshape head! Duplicate the whole body and redo the blend shapes on this. Change the input order so blendshapes are last and under the cluster - this way the blend won't reset to 0 when the rig is moved.

To celebrate a potential rigging free weekend pizza was ordered and digital paintings were scribbled.

Storm averted (a terrible yet effective joke)!

oh and I also rigged and set some drivers to my assets :D

not creepy at all

Setbacks, Scalings and Silly UVs

Ack, well that's what avoidance gets me.... I'll blame Dolly Parton for this one.

In an attempt to avoid texturing and killing my laptop with I had put of scaling up my character and UV mapping... Only to realise that I kinda should have done that before rigging. Which really really sucks. I know there are ways round it but there's a chance I may need to break all of my rigging connections which may include the drivers and connection edits which sucks urggg.

Uuuurgggghhh.

Also no having issues with our Going Live rigs... In the rush to get everything rigged to start the animation the blendshapes had been pushed aside. Luckily I made copies of the mariachi's heads before skinning... But im now having issues attaching this cause the head is combined to the body etc etc etc.

Rigging has turned on me. I feel like a betrayed Captain America during Marvel's Civil War.... Rigging has become a sneaky Tony Stark in a dodgy Iron Man suit. 

Week 23: My, Myself and Rigging

Also doing a bit of 'creative problem solving'. Basically using what I now know / learned to tackle certain issues.

For example i'm rigging 3 of our characters for our Going Live project. They have rather large moustaches which will be rather important to emphasis their expressions.

The internet failed to reveal it's secrets into the best ways to rig this. So I took it upon myself to try and be awesome about it and use the eye rig technique for this. So basically I added joints, created an overall moustache control, created attributes for the joint axis's then ran these through the connection editor.

NOW, I know im not reinventing the wheel, but for something that could barely create geometry in Maya, let alone use it a few months ago, i'm feel like i'm coming along quite well.

This extra level of detail may not be needed, but I wanted to give our team as much control as possible, and do some tests.

I just a basic FK rig for this (with IK in the legs), but i also found that by going back to basics (after the hubbub of my rig) i've picked up a few things I missed before in my early rigging chaos. Like properly understanding FKs and IKs and their capabilities, and a better understanding of the constraints system etc. Ooo and creating controls for my blendshapes =D

I'm enjoying the creepiness of this all a bit too much...

The moral of the story, I <3 Rigging

Walking, Running, Winning

Alas we finally cracked on with the walking and running cycle today in Sean's class, and I must say it was definitely a lot easier than I though (especially after the ball bounce and actually knowing how to use Maya).

Picked it up quite quick, and I think again my understanding of anatomy and muscle movement has really helped, so i'm understanding what parts of the body will shift to where and why, and what controls what etc

It's DEFINITELY helped me to feel more confident to tackle the animation in my personal project. It is also highly addictive.

Working with Sean's model which I am stealing cause it looks awesome

Will definitely be sure to use a walking image sequence as a reference, and i'm also aiming to add more body language in so the audience can pick up on my characters emotions etc.

Ah yes also one thing i'm still getting a handle on with animation is making sure to use the graph editor for  bit of clean up, but also to alert me to any issues.

Also will sometimes work purely in silhouette mode to make sure i'm not getting distracted by the textures etc and am focusing purely on the shapes.

LOL my first attempt at both (put them into premier pro to get a loop hence the slight jump.



This is definitely the kind of thing I get OCD about to make sure its perfect, and I already found it this that I started tweaking individual frames a lot which started to have a more negative impacted, and my movements/transitions were less soothe. So I need to make sure I avoid doing that when animating my project! After all the fun and games did a quick slight jump test with my model (ignore the horrid armpit deformation.

To celebrate she also took a selfie.

Getting Perspective

I'm always wanting to make sure that i'm balancing all this work with personal art to build a portfolio. So i'm keeping up with my daily sketches, with bigger pieces every couple of weeks. I'm continuing to try and branch out an try different styles with different techniques.

The legend that is Ron Swanson

I've also decided that I need to kick my perspective studies into gear. I was doing little bits here and there, but I think im finally ready to properly tackle the theory and actually do it probably.

I'm going to be using the perspective and composition tutorials / seminars by Matt Laskowski, who's an artist i've been been following for YEARS. His composition and perspective pieces for his comic project are amazing and I really feel like i'm finally in a position to start working on it.

I really believe that this will really really aid my story boarding process as i'll be paying more attention to composition, POV, FOV and things like the rule of thirds. I also think it will help me in the matte painting department AND help give me more confidence to tackle landscape / cityscape  pages for my comics.

Weighted with painting

Flipping hell.

Well, i've been avoiding binding / weighting my character mainly cause it's not a process I particularly enjoyed last semester, and as per usual now that i'm doing its screwing me over and i'm beginning to become a fan of it.

Now that I actually understand what i'm doing and why etc, i've found myself sitting her for 2 hours just doing the bloody leg. Making mistakes and finding ways to rectify it.

Basically all the little bits of armour are annoying, so i've realised that I don't need to actually bind them / weight them, by grouping and parenting them to the relevant skeleton they should work... in theory. By doing the same method for the eyes /teeth etc I should also avoid the problems I was having earlier with deformations and looking all crazy.

The whole process has also alerted me to other issues like making sure things have been scale constrained to the skeleton after deleting mesh history. oops.

Also threw in a global move control for good measure!

I've definitely learnt the most about Maya through the rigging / binding process. Most importantly I have learnt that the process needs to be done with a glass (or 3) or gin.

No wonder the boob was screwed...

UPDATE #1:

So I was wrong, weighting is still kicking my arse and not playing ball, but I may have found a way that listens to me more! I might try making a few of the trickier tweaks listen to me via the Component Editor.

ALSO on a brighter more 2D note, i've discovered Blank on Blank - animations of interviews from famous people (dead or alive).

I've been listening to a lot of Elliott Smith again lately so this was pretty cool to see. Once i'm out of heavy 3D mode with this project and Going Live i've bribed Natasha into giving me some 2D lessons hehe.

UPDATE #2:

So with a clear head and the soothing sounds of the Buffy 'Once More with Feeling' soundtrack cause i'm cool and diverse like that, Weight painting has suddenly clicked (as stuff usually does with me when I leave it alone).

I'd been view each influencer as their own separate influencer... if that makes sense - it hasn't really occurred to me that the weight influence on one influencer affected the weight painted on another one - e.g that they were split percentage wise. So I was just whacking 100% everywhere not understanding why a change i'd made earlier had suddenly disappeared. How ridiculous.

So with a song in my heart and a skip in my models step, i'm finally making a dent in my weight painting schedule.

Week 22: Assets, Avatars, A lot of cous cous

I've been working on modelling my assets - I set myself a week for this to give myself some buffer time to make any design changes or test out a couple of things.

For the flag I had a little go with nCloth - it was a lot easier to do than I thought it would be, and to be-honest i'm not sure if i'll need it, but was still good to get myself associated with and know that the option is there if I need it.


Also finally found an easier way to create the cave. As I only really need the entrance and then side views i'm just going to create a couple of planes and add bump maps / textures and some clever lighting.

Did a test render of one of the scenes kinda (without a UVed cave hence the stretching)

The 3D previs really did give me a heads up on what i'd need to look out for, and building a quick temporary set helped me to get some things out of my system, in terms of figuring out how I would structure the assets.

Also thinking about texturing, I really do want a 2D look so i'll be making the textures look A LOT more painted. So will probably tweak my matte painting aswell.

Found another really nice example of a more painted texture style!


Contre temps from Contre temps Team on Vimeo.

Nuke it...pt.II

Compositing is probably my weakest area at the moment - I just haven't seemed to click with it like I have done with the other aspects of 3D - it's taking me a bit longer for certain elements to click with me mentally, but I know it's mainly down to the way I learn and process etc etc.

But I really want to work at it as I know it'll be really useful for elements of my final project, (I think at least) and it started to make sense when I was using it for Multipass rendering (It felt like more of a Photoshop-esque process at that point).

We had another Nuke session on Friday focusing on tracking. I think I understand it a bit more now, but I know I really need to work at it to find away of using it that work best for me.

 It was cool to see how the tracking then links in directly with Maya

Need to start fitting in Nuke sessions into my personal time D=