example of occlusion light on characters and environment

Here are two examples of the colour pass and occlusion pass on both characters and environment. The occlusion is the black and white image and will show where the shadows will appear on the final scene once the colour and occlusion images are put together in after effects.

Its similer to the layers in photoshop where you just place the colour on top of the occlusion and the light will show up in the final skit.

For shots where the camera was static only one image of the environment was needed, one of the colour and occlusion. but for scenes with a moving camera one for every frame had to be taken which one one particular scene took nearly 11 hours alone just to render the colour and occlusion of the background for a 3 sec moving shot.

setting up the scene for rendering

These next images are of the render settings such as frame range,occlusion layers, mental ray etc, checking each scene to make sure that everything is set up how its supposed to be before we eventually send the individual scenes of to the people who are rendering them.

This is the process we went through for all 14 scenes. Which is very time consuming but neccesary to insure that everyone was rendering using the correct lighting, render quality etc

4) To add the lighting to the character and the environment the process is virtually the same, you select the environment layer, right click and scroll down to over rides, then assign existing over rides and from that list choose what it is you want to put your lighting effects on. We used ambiant occlusion for the ligthing of the film as it creates nice shadows and would help with the atmosphere of the skit. Once the set was found in the list it was added to the layer 'environment occlusion'

3) Stage 2 is repeated for the environment, by selecting the layer you wish to add things to then highlighting what you want to add from the outliner box

2) After the layers had been named you then highlight which layer you want to add things to and go to the outliner box and select everything you want to be renderd on that particular layer. In this case it was the character

Once all the lights and textures were in place it was time to put everything onto a seperate layer for rendering. This would help speed up rendering as instead of rendering all the textures,lights, characters, set, set textures etc all in one go (Which would take a very long time) It would render the layers seperatly which would then be put together in after effects when it came time to edit it together.

For each scene this is the process in which the scenes got ready to render.

1) (in the above pic) 4 new layers were created in the render section. (bottom right of the screen)

This would be used to put the character/character occlusion and set/set occlusion on

missing door

There were several problems discoverd when all the final versions of the set and characters were put in place. The first being that at the begining of scene 1 the hero opens a door which no longer appeared in the set. I discoverd this was because when I had been setting up scene 1 the original modeller hadn't put a door over the entrance yet so I moved a door from around the back of the set over to the front to start animating.

The problem with that is that when I gave the set to the texture artist and the other modeller the orginal file had the door round the back, as I had failed to remember to alter the door in the base file of the set. So when i recieved the final version of the textured set the door was no longer there.

The way I solved this problem was to open up my old file of scene 1 with the door still in place and create a new door within the scene that was the same size as the one borrowed from the back of the set. I then transfered the key frames of the door over onto the new one so that the animation ran exactly the same.

Once that was done I then deleted everything within the scene apart from the newly modelled and keyed door and saved the file as 'door 1'.

I then opened up the final scene 1 file with the new set and referenced in 'door 1'. so that even though the character and the door were on seperate files they still moved perfectly. This was a tricky problem to solve but it was fixed using the method described above.

environment props final

Here are some close ups of the final modeled versions of the props used in the environment.

final set images

Here are screenshots of the final version of the set, The textures were eventually done in the traditional way rather then by cell shading as the lights in the set made cell shading appear far to dark. The textures in the set were done using photoshop and in the final renders show up more clear and detailed, as the lighting has been added and the correct render settings established.

close up of final hero

These are close up images of the final hero model. The male stand in version has all the same detail except the hair style is different and the gloves and elbow pads differ in colour.

male stand in turn around

Here is a turn around of the alt hero which will be used in place of the male cop.

male stand in cop

Unfortunatly the male cop which was to be used as the dead body wasn't able to be used in the final version. This is because the rig of the charcater was very broken and would have taken far to much time to fix then we had left. So instead of the male cop we decided the best way round this problem was to use another version of the hero but slightly alter her and give her a different haircut. That way the figure on the floor would still have a police uniform but be different enough to the hero that they wouldnt be thought of as the same.

This is an unfortunate thing to happen but you have to make allowances for potential problems and we solved this by re using a character whos rig was fully functioning.

lady cop final reference file

Here is the final base file for the hero. Again I have included a shot of the reference editor to show how you add a file for reference. There was however several problems with the hero base file, as in the actual file her hair and shoulder pads disappear, the reason for this is that when the character was referenced into a scene it was getting confused with the values of both those objects, So what had to be done was to shrink the heros hair down inside her skull, and do the same with the shoulder/knee pads, and then when the hero is referenced in the hair and pads are in the right place. So although on the base file the hair and pads aren't visible, they are hidden within the model itself. This also happend with the stand in male model and was fixed in the same way.

final character files, villain

Here is the final villain model that I will be referencing into the finished animated scenes.

In the image at the top you will see the model and the reference editor box open, what this allows me to do is to take a 'base file', in this case my characters, and reference them into the scene I am going to animate. This is very much like importing a character but the key difference is that once a character is imported it cant be changed or updated. Whereas with a 'referenced' charcater, work can still be continuing with the modelling,rigging etc, and once that character is complete you simply take the finished file and save over the old character file replacing it with the newer version.

This is how we decided to use the characters as the modelling process takes a very long time. so for me to be able to animate I had to be given basic versions of the characters, and then as more work was done on them I would gradually be given updated versions untill I had the finished pieces. This allowed me to start animating as soon as the basic rigs were ready and would also mean that once I had the final versions and referenced them into the scene they wouldnt loose any of the animation I had keyed onto the character, because the referenced model keeps all the animation values I keyed on the older model, the only thing that gets updates is the asthetics of the model.

This is the process I used for all the characters, the set and props. As all of these aspects where still being modelled and textured right up to the day when we started rendering.

So I had individual base files for all the characters, the set and props. Above are turn arounds and screen shots of the final characters in thier base files, Also anything which is changed with the characters must be done in the base files and not in the scene itself, as maya will be loading in the base file for reference so changes made outside of this file would not filter through into the other scenes that character was in.

research into hero movement

When it came to looking into how the hero moved, I sketched pictures of certain poses which I felt matched the heros personality and were appropriate to the actions she would be carrying out. I looked at several police images and broke down certain actions into poses to try and explore the movements better.

Some of the sketches were done at a time when I was still considering including a fight scene which is why I have included some action poses in the sketches.