Time spent constructing characters and set

From concept all the way through to the final finished 3d models there has been over an accumulated 12000 hours spent on all the 3d characters and environment (and animation!).Myself and my 3d modellers,editors and renderers have often been working 10/12 hour+ days to get the rigs,models,environment,props,textures,lighting,animation,rendering,editing,exporting etc ready in time for assessment.
The animation process is one of the most time consuming art forms there is because of the amount of pre production involved (My pre production was assessed in yr 1 of the madesign) and the fact that animation is a collaboration of many different specialisms coming together to create the final piece.
The rigging process alone can take several days just for one character, and that's only the first stage of rigging. This process had to be done for 3 different characters over 10 times each because as the models were improved upon throughout the past year/2 years the rigging procedure had to be done time and again to accomadate the improved mesh of the 3d model.
Whilst this was going on I continued to work away using the base rigs given to me to animate with and also continued to research game preferences both from the girl gamers and the academics point of view to try and get the most balanced, well rounded charcaters I could from the survey results. I also continued to model and texture extra props for the environment and do test animations etc.
After the animations were ready to be renderd it then took a full week and a half to fully render out the nearly 2 minute piece, with my laptop rendering continuously 24/7. Once the renders had been completed it then took an additional week to fully edit the piece together, this time using sound effects to inhance the atmosphere of the piece rather then a running music track like last time.
Animation is a group art form and I am lucky to have been able to work alongside the dedicated people that I have.It was an interesting experiance for me to be able to direct other people in my project but it was something I put in my learning plan that I wanted to do as in the future I would like to create my own works with my own team behind me, and this gave me a good idea of what balancing a project is really like, which is something I have found invaluable.

Final editing renderd images used in final movie

Rendering process continued 3

Rendering process continued

Rendering process continued

Going through the basic renderd files

These next few videos are of the stages the renderd images went through in the editing process before they got exported out into the final dvd submission. The scenes are renderd out in order but there is no sound effects, fades etc. This is the first export once all the frames from the renders have been put into the editing software.

Knife model playblast turn around

A close up playblast of the 3d knife model created for the villain. Unfortunatly the scene with the knife exposed had to be cut due to rendering constraints but will be included at a later date.

Playblast turn around of the cops gun

Here is a close up playblast of the 3d gun model used by the female cop character in several scenes throughout the animation.

Various renderd stills of the environment

Here are more renderd stills of the environment from different angles throughout the set.

Occlusion passes of the coloured set images

Again these are the lighting occlusion passes done for every environment image you see in the film. When the camera is static you only need to render out one frame of each of the colour and occlusion pass. With a moving camera, or if you have anything in the set which moves like a door, then you have to render out for the allocated number of frames which the scene is. This is the same process for the characters, and again if the charcater is static, like the dead cop, then you only need to render out one of each colour and occlusion frame from the scene and layer them up in the editing software and multiply the frames to the correct scene length.

Renderd still shots of the final environment

Here are several still images taken of some of the various props within the final environment. Because of the camera angles on some of the shots the environment can go by quite quickly so I wanted to include images of the set from perspectives that you will not be able to get from the animation. I did this to give a greater scope on the time and effort it takes to compile things in the environment which you may only see for a second, but would miss if they were not there. Little things such as a bookshelf,calander, bin etc, may seem trivial but these are the personal touches which helps to make it feel like a lived in environment and not just a set.

Villain eyes

This is something which was added to the cillain quite late on. To make the eyes of the villain stand out in even more startk contrast to the heros even more, We decided to add a red tinge to the corners. All eyes have the tear duct in the corner, and the villain had it already modelled in, but I wanted the villain to have a more wide eyed 'crazy' stare. So to make the eyes look more intense and give her a more penetrating stare I asked the modeller to adjust the texture of the corner eye colour to a more deeper pink/flesh colour. This helps to make the white/black eyes stand out more which helped to create what I was looking for with a more intense stare.

Lighting test for the villain

 

With these images above myself and the modeller were trying to decide which was the best lighting to use for the film, global illumiantion or final gather. Both of the lighting effects are good and add extra detail to the already lit scenes. So to test which one we liked we took several test shots of various levels of intensity and adjusted it to our liking. We decided that global illumination suited the mood of the scene better, final gather tended to make the villain appear to bright (see 2nd to bottom image) but global illumination, after we adjusted the settings suited the mood and cast nice,darker shadows without washing out the textures of the character or the environment.

The image directly above is the chosen light setting, and all of the images above this are test renders for the different lighting options.

Linking up the textures to the final rigs

This is the process I went through once I had recieved all of the final rigged characters. In the base file for each character I had to reload all of the textures which were also sent to me via email from the modeller. I did this by opening up the base file of the chars, in this case the villain and going into the hypershader, which is the box open on the left side of the image and going through the texture files and selecting the missing ones (bottom image) and then selecting them from my projects folder and reloading them from there new location in my project file set. This can be seen in the top image. Doing this means that when the character is referenced into a scene maya will know where to look to find the textures for the character and they wont go missing when referencing in the char. I did this for all 3 characters following the same process and then once the textures had once again been linked up, I saved the base file under the same name as before and was able to reference in the characters with all the textures fully intact.

renderd environment shots

When it came to rendering out the environment shots what I did was render out two versions of the same image. Th first one being white and black which is called the occlusion layer which shows the shadows in start contrast. The bottom renderd image is the colour layer, and when you have all of the images and put them into the editing software called after effects you layer the images on top of each other so that the shadows appear nicely over the colour version. This is the same technique which is used to render out all of the characters which are done seperatly from the environment.It also helps to speed up the rendering process because you render out all the layers seperatly instead of rendering the whole image out in a huge chunk, which can slow everything down and if anything goes wrong you can potentially loose the whole scene you was rendering out.

Final version of the villain head

Final villain textured turn around

This is the final stage of the villains creation.

Base model for the villain

Mesh stage of villain

Villain stages of progress through rigging,modelling and texturing phase

Final textured version of the dead cops head

Final textured version of the dead cop

Base model for the dead cop

Mesh version of the dead cop

Rigging,modelling and texturing developments with the dead cop

The next several playblasts are turnarounds of the development of the dead cop.

Final textured cop head turn around

Final textured version of the female cop

Continuing on from the previous video uploads of the progression of the female cop throughout the modelling,rigging and texturing stages.

Turn around of the base grey scale version of the cop

Mesh

Mesh turn around of the cop.

playblasts of the chars in stages of development

Here is the character in its basic rig stage.

set 3

The set turn around with the outside textures showing.

set in basic form

The set in its basic grey scale form.

playblasts of the progress of the set in various stages of development

details of new char from academic research

Here is a turn around of the new character which came out of the academic research.

Her name is Grace and her profile is as follows.

She is 10 years old and works with her grandfather in his antique shop.She has a natural gift for inventing/fixing things and is often found at the back of the workshop creating new gadgets.She has a youthful inquisitivness backed up with a love of history and adventure.
Her grandfather teaches her how to fix things and he has a rare collection of antique clocks which he keeps under lock and key.One day the grandad explains the mystery of the most prized antique watch and tells Grace of the secret mission passed on from generations back.The clock allows the user to go back in time and solve mysteries.
Grace then starts to go on missions taking along some of her friends.

This is a very basic story which has allowed me to accomadate the findings gained from the academic research, Which was to include a more focused puzzle solving game, along with a female character which you would'nt often find in an inventor role.It allowed me to broaden the scop eof my design choosing to pursue a non caucasian design, as the majority of the playable chars male or female tend to be white and nearly half of all people surveyed would like to see a more diverse ethnic background choice in playable chars. This was also the reason why I made the villain from the girl gamers research chinese.
The survey again wanted to see chars with athletic ability so I made the char a child and an invernot because this allowed me to meet several of the academics desires at once. The fullfillment of a different role (inventor, usually a male role), puzzles, solving mysteries through time using the clock and the ethnic origins.
Also female chars with weapons also came up again and with the new char being an inventor it would allow a lot of scope to come up with all sorts of fun gadgets to use in missions. (Think Data from the goonies or Ratchet and clank game series)

The asthetics of the char was coverd both with the ethnic background.I chose to make the lead char a black 10 year old girl to address the issue of the absence of coloured chars in general. I chose this age range for the char to be of a younger age firstly because it made a nice contrast alongside the other two chars from the girl gamers survey, and allowed me the chance to create a more child friendly game as opposed to the 18+ age rating of the first characters game.

This will allow and interesting compare and contrast evaluation to go on when I analyse how both academics and girl gamers alike find my chars, and which one they feel addressed the issues raised better (If at all).
This is better done if the chars in question have fundemental differences both aesthetically and genre/story wise.

All the survey answers will be analysed during the dissertation section of the next module.

For now I was only focusing on the aesthetical ramifications from the surveys in question and created characters from each one according to the findings I recieved. I have only created one char for the academic survey because I felt it suited my story better to have it focused on one main char rather then two.

clothes concepts for the new char hero

Here is the final concept coloured in using photoshop. More detail such as shadowing needs to be added etc but this is the final as far as the asthetics of the new hero.

Here is the full length version with the pockets included and above this just a quick sketch up of the chars trainers.

The full length sleeve reminded me of some baseball jerseys and would again add to the tomboyish look I was after, Also it would allow more scope for the inclusion of yet more pockets for the char which is why I eventually chose a 3 quarter sleeve top for my char.

These next images are of me choosing the style of tshirt to go under the full length dungarees. I concepted them out using the folded over version so I could see what they looked like, and very soon it became apparent that if i wanted a thin strapped vest of some kind it wouldn't show under the full length dungaree version.Which is why the concepts start to focus more on full length sleeves near the end.

Final design choice. Lots of multiple pockets for the gadgets.

I liked the folded over version but again I needed something with a lot of pockets and from this design I went through to design my final choice which is basically this except with the straps on the shoulders. This is a variation which could be used in cut scenes when the char is working on a project etc.

I originally intended for the char to have short cut off dungarees as I felt that these were more feminine, But one of the things which I wanted to include lots of pockets throughout the entire outfit to help get across that the hero was very much into her gadgets and had inventions stashed away in her numerous pockets. The short dungarees didn't leave as much oppertunity for that as longer ones did. Which is why I eventually dropped the idea of the shorter ones, which was a problem in some respects as I felt that shorter ones were more feminin, but I could balance out the contrast with the colour pallette of the char later on.

The above images are variations on the style of dunagrees for the char.

These next fewimages are of me trying to figure out the outfit for my new char.Again sticking with the more tomboyish theme I wanted the char to have dungarees, but I went through several different styles before I settled on one that I thought suited her the most. The above image is a base sketch I used that allowed me to experiment with the clothes.