Almost Done

We finished rendering last night. We did all the rendering in a day, because we didn't have any fancy ray-tracing. We couldn't get it to work right and didn't have the time to learn how to do it right. Maybe if we didn't try for so long to get that annoying mental ray to work. Anyway it adds almost 60 to 100 times the render time by using ray-tracing. We will be editing it today. No it's not the most fancy but we kept to our production schedule.

I personal felt we had to settle with things, like the lighting and the texturing, in this project as we were learning as the project was being created. Hence, we didn't have the time to experiment with settings because everything was experimentation anyway. I would have preferred to have lectures to teach us how to do this things.

However after a lot of stress and long nights, I think we have a half-decent film. Hopefully, this will get us a good grade.

It has been an experience which I will most likely have to do again at many points in my life.

Rendering and current progress

We are actually rendering now. We had to settle on a lot of things, like some objects not being textured and only using basic depth map shadows, instead of fancy ray-tracing, to cut down on the render time. We split the project up into six scenes, the Opening map scene, the exterior scene with the bloke, the shocked scene, the picikle pick up scene, the door opening scene and the final interior camera pans scene. Scenes that have been rendered are the opening scene and the shocked scene. The exterior scene and the pickle pick up scene are currently rendering. The big scene is the interior camera pans scene, which will take a while. We cannot leave that to render as it has many different cameras in it. The curtains have unfortunately had to be deleted as something went wrong with them and they kept going through the walls. The shocked scene might need to be re-rendered as the lighting has been altered in other scenes. Here are some pictures from the currently rendered scene.

New Credit Sequences and Progress

I have edited the opening and ending credit sequences, making some
parts a bit slower. I have also added some music. For the ending
credits it's a mp3 I got from www.rareware.com called Ugga Bugga from
Conker: Live and Reloaded. The Opening Titles is the theme tune to
Doug. I just thought it fit.
Also here's a picture from one of the current scenes.
The Textures were finally finished last night. All that is left is to pllace the animations into the scenes and render. Yeah.

Current Progress and Conclusion

O.K, I would just like to take a few moments to write about the current progress of the project. The animations are all completed and have been saved as individual animations, some in clip format to the Public Folders. All early backgrounds and useless props have been removed from these files, so the new backgrounds can be placed in. Cameras have been figured out as well. Textures are mostly complete, some of the prop animations might need to be textured but that shouldn't take very long. I do believe that the outside of the building also needs to be textured. These will be ordinary planar maps as UV maps are proving to difficult.

On the rendering side, Harrison had decided he wanted to render in Mental Ray, because it makes the quality of the images better. Unfortunately, we had some problems with our reference files, and after many hours of trying to get Mental Ray to work, we eventually decided to give up on mental ray, and render it normally.

Unfortunately, Harrison only read tutorials on how to light in mental ray, so had to read some new tutorials.

Currently, my particular skills are not too useful at the moment. However on Monday, we should be able to place all the parts into one scene so we can tweak it here and there. Then we should be able to render it.

If all goes well, it should be completed by Friday, if we get a C I'll be happy.

New Opening Title and Ending Credits Sequence

I quickly did these credit sequences yesterday. I was going for a Monty Python like sequences. These are early drafts so can be altered.

Early Test Version of Film

Here is an early test version of the film. It of course needs to be lit and textured, some of the props need to be placed in and moved around. I think some of the cameras shots need to be cut down and the counter needs to be cut back so the bloke can be seen, but otherwise it gives a pretty good indication of the final film.

Composition Test

Here is an early test to see how we might go about composing the scene. It was done in Premiere with a background picture and the map scene on top. The effect is o.k., but I afraid that it might look a little bit composed.

Flag

Practice Flag for curtains.

New Models and Animation

Here are some new models and animation. This is the signpost, hope you like it. I also animated some props and have modified the previous animations, we don't have a door knob anymore.

New Models and Animation

Here are some pictures of some models I have done today. It is mostly of small, miscellaneous items. I have also done some animation of a glass and fork falling off of a table.

Map Animation

Here is the actual map animation. It turns out making a map fold down in Maya is trickier than it looks.

Modelling

Here are some images of models that have been made by me. The camera was made by Harrison. I am currently in charge of modelling little objects and miscellanious items.

Pictures from Animation

Here are some more images from my previous animations. Enjoy!

Map

We need a map for our project, so Simon suggested I print one off and soak it in tea at home.

The first attempt didn't go so well. I think I left it in too long, but the second attempt went o.k.

And here is what it looks like in Maya.

I have also done a quick animation of the map folding down.

Animation

Here are some of the early animations of the character I did over the weekend. They have been tweaked a little since then, but I have the current videos to show you now. Above are just some drawings I did to help me figure out rough timing.

In this first shot of the character walking, I felt that he would be very excited as this place he has been searching for many years. Hence I felt he might be a bit peppy in his walk with his head held tall. Then he would almost be bursting with excitement to be here so would be shout to the heavens. To savour the moment I felt he would take his time and slowly open the door.

Here is old timing with the rough camera angles and the new timing.

The next video is of the bloke shocked. I felt that he would be stunned and crushed to see his restaurant that he has been searching so long for in utter ruins. He would be so disheartened. I tried to show this in the animation.

Finally, he would be so happy to see the perfect jar of pickles he would slowly, but with eager anticipation try to reach out and grab it, salivating in the process.

The History of the Future

Here are some images form a book the Jared so kindly lent us, called

"The History of the Future, Images of the 21st Century" by Christophe Canto and Odile Faliu.

The book serves as a time machine, where the authors comb the past to find images of the fabulous future people believed would happen from the 1850's to the 1950's. Of course, we are interested in the later part of this timeline, the 40s and 50s mainly, possibly the 30s as well.

Some of these images are of prototype cars from 1965, spaceships and cars designed by people from the 30's, with trains that look similar to the ones designed by Raymond Lowey. Other images show Utopian societies of the future as imagined by people from the 40's and 50's of what life would be like in the far-off year of 1980.

What all images share are a fun, perfect view of the future, where man is shooting towards the stars, with designs and architecture that reflects that belief. Curves, simple geometric shapes, colours and chrome all serve to envision this future. These are all the founding principles of Googie design.

Raymond Lowey

All images are obtained from http://www.raymondloewy.com , the official web site of Raymond Lowey.

Raymond Lowey is one of the founding father's of retro-futurism. He transformed countless items by streamlining, a concept he originated. He described it as "beauty through function and simplification". His simple shapes, uplifting curves, chrome metal and bright colours all invoke the fun Googie artwork that we are trying to obtain in our project.

Desert Research

Here are some images of research I did looking for deserts in animation.

First and foremost I look at Road Runner cartoons especially the earlier cartoons from the 1940's. Later into the 1950's the backgrounds in all Hollywood cartoons became more simple, stylized and UPA like. Even though I like those backgrounds very much I felt these more realistic backgrounds are better suited to our project. Most of these pictures come from the Road Runner cartoon "Fast and Furryous", as seen on Youtube.

The other animation I research was the movie Home on the Range. This, the last Hand-Drawn Disney animated movie has wonderful backgrounds, that really evoked the American Mid-West. It also shows that deserts can be quite colourful with blue cactus and purple grasses, so we can have fun with the colour scheme. Here is a clip from the movie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6m2vmtN2f4

New Model Sheets

Here are some new model sheets of tables, chairs and counters.