sneakyrobots

Blog Moving

2008-04-06T22:31:00.001-07:00

Check out the action over at the new SneakyRobots.

Cheers

New Content In The Works

2008-02-24T22:05:00.000-08:00

We've not forgotten about this thing.

New content - in a whole new format - is on the way.

Cheers.

Neat MEL Trick

2008-02-03T16:28:00.000-08:00

I'm thinking it's time to get back to blocking out some of the shots in the first scene. I started trying to put together the first scene - not using references which we'll eventually do - but by bringing together all of the models into one scene. I ran into trouble with the clocktower model.

It's saved as a Maya Binary file and was modeled in Maya 8. Now, I'm working with Maya ASCII files in Maya 2008. For some reason it just wouldn't import. I kept getting a

"File contains unknown nodes or data."

I spent a good 20 min. going through the model in the Hypergraph, deleting history, looking for wonky nodes but I couldn't find anything. Then, well duh, I am taking a MEL class, right? Two little lines of code solved my problems.

select `ls -type "unknown"`;
delete;

Sweet.

No New Work

2008-02-03T02:20:00.001-08:00

On my end at least, progress on the short has been slow. It happens, of course, but once MEL/Python class is over, it'll be time for me to really kick some arse on this thing.

So, how's class going? Pretty well. This past week was my first introduction to Python, which is new to Maya as of version 8.5, I think. Python's another scripting language. According to Wikipedia, it's a high-level scripting language. That does make me feel pretty cool. It's not Maya-centric and it's currently implemented in XSI and Houdini as well. That's probably a great thing for some of the larger shops with a number of different packages in their pipelines. A programmer could write one set of tools and have it running within three different environments.

Python's also a pretty clean language. It takes whitespace into account, meaning it matters if you start a new line with a "tab" or with a single-space or with no spaces. That just seemed weird to me at first, but I'm starting to appreciate how it forces a visual hierarchy on your code. In a sense, it's like you're kerning and breaking your entire script, doing what you need to to make it look clean and readable. Ain't nothing wrong with that.

Right now we're doing things like writing scripts that automatically build IK chains and such. What's an IK chain? That's another post.

Off-Topic #1

2008-01-26T11:15:00.000-08:00

Is it a good idea for this blog to start hosting off-topic posts? James, please chime in with your thoughts on the matter. I see a number of reasons why it's no big deal if we drift into non-CG posts but I also see a few reasons why it's maybe not the best idea.

Maybe it's a question more easily answered with a concrete example. In that light, I present two tidbits in our first (and maybe only) "Off-Topic" segment:

How to "solo" layers in Photoshop.

Option-click the "eye" in the layers palette. On a daily basis I use Maya, After Effects, Photoshop and Illustrator. Each is a brilliant application in one regard or and a complete pile of c#$p in another regard. You sometimes wonder if the application developers even know that there are other applications out there with things that might be worth "borrowing."

On that note, one great tool in After Effects is the "solo layer" command. There's a small radio button in the AE composition window that, when you click it, turns off every other layer. It's a nice, simple thing that quickly becomes part of your workflow. It's great for troubleshooting and overall very nice at helping you figure out complex compositions. Well, why the hell doesn't Photoshop have this option? I mean, they're made the same company, you'd think that some smarts would flow between the two development teams, right? I've pined for a long time for this simple thing...

Turns out it's been in Photoshop since, like, version 4 or something. And it's just that simple, option-click (mac) on the eye in the layers palette to solo your layer, option-click again to un-solo. It remembers your initial state as well, meaning that if you have some layers turned off already when you solo a layer, when you un-solo that layer, the already-off layers remain off. Nice job.

Evo and Proud

I've just started reading a new blog called "Evo and Proud." It bills itself as "Peter Frost's anthropology blog, with special reference to sexual selection and the evolution of skin, hair, and eye pigmentation." I suppose it is all that. To me, it's just interesting.

One of my best friends is anthropologist at Emory U and I'm kind of a pop-science nerd. Give me some Pinker, Pollan or Carl Sagan and I'm a happy guy.

Well, that's it for now. The weekend kicked my butt with MEL class and my re-cutting my reel so I've nothing at all good to show, project-wise.

Cheers.

Maya Tip of the Day #3

2008-01-22T17:11:00.000-08:00

Or maybe this is "MEL Tip of the Day #1." You be the judge.

So, I'm starting up a MEL scripting class through CGSociety. I'm pretty excited, though it will definitely take a small chunk out of my free time and slow down my work on this project. My hope, however, is that at the end of the class I've have a few more tools at my disposal that will speed up my work on the project as I come out the other side.

From time to time I'll try and post some MEL goodies and here is the first:

JEdit.

JEdit is a text editor, Java-based so it's platform agnostic and highly customizable. I played with it a little bit and liked it but I didn't love it. There was something about the Java feel that didn't sit right with me. I played with a couple others, namely TextMate and TextWrangler and found them decent enough but uninspiring (this is on OSX, so the biggies like Crimson Editor and MEL Studio Pro aren't in the running).

And then I kept crashing Maya. I'd type some code into TextWrangler, copy it, command-tab to Maya, paste it, run it, command-tab back into TextWrangler, type some code...rinse and repeat until Maya said "ENOUGH!" Maya does not like rapid-fire application switching.

...sigh...There's gotta be a way to execute code in Maya right from within a text editor, right? Right. And the right choice for that is JEdit. Remember how I said it was way customizable? I wasn't kidding. Following a blog post on Sean Nolan's site, I found a tutorial on highend3d written by a guy named Ron Bublitz, who is way, way too smart for me to really get a handle on. He wrote up a couple macros and a tutorial on how to configure JEdit to send your script into Maya and have it executed there. Seriously.

I even did it. I typed "polyCube" in JEdit, clicked a button in my toolbar and there was a little wireframe box in Maya. Magic. Will wonders never cease? Not at this rate.

Tip of the hat to Mr. Bublitz and JEdit and keep yer eyes peeled for more insane scripting action coming your way. I may even write some MEL that would make TWO little boxes appear in Maya! That would be something...

Same Bird, Different Shader

2008-01-21T16:24:00.000-08:00

Just for fun, here is the same model as in the previous post, with a blinn shader, using Final Gather and an IBL Node. (Nothing fancy, but it shows the look of the model a bit more polish to it.)
*Disclaimer: This is just to get a sense of how things are coming along. The final Model will most likely not be a solid blob of metal..

Bird Number One WIP 7

2008-01-21T15:10:00.000-08:00

Well, I am happy to say that the first phase of modeling on the bird is complete. All of the basic shapes are in place, and in a good relationship to each other. Next is to refine these basic shapes, and add details such as seams and bolts.

I had to redesign the legs and feet so that they would be able to grasp things, as well as function on uneven surfaces. To do this I used a skeleton from a raven (Don't worry, a picture). I chose a raven, because I had a run in with one Thursday afternoon on my way through a small park in San Francisco's Financial District. He was huge, and totally un-phased by humans!

The raven run-in led me to Google ravens once I was in front of the computer. After reading a few articles and seeing some cool video, I was sold. I plan to use raven footage for reference once I get into rigging and animation.

You may also notice that the beak has been redesigned. After modifying the original design so heavily, it just didn't work to hang on to the original beak. This one too is (loosely) based on a raven's beak.

Comparing this to the original artwork is a real shocker. Nigel came through for us with a cool drawing - And I will admit this is not exactly the same bird. Many aspects of the design had to be modified to allow for certain types of motion to even be possible. As one element was changed, others followed to compensate - In an attempt to keep the look interesting. In the end I think this design is also successful - And I have tried to pull inspiration from Nigel's work.

Before I continue to develop this model, I will be taking some time to clean up my file. Things can get quite messy with this many individual pieces.. And so I want to make sure my Naming, Groupings, Pivots, and UVs are making sense before continuing on.

As a result I may not have anything to look at for a while. But have no fear - I will be working hard - and will post some new pics when I can.

My UV Layout Post

2008-01-21T12:03:00.000-08:00

So, James has been ruling the roost (pun completely intended) here with all of his awesome bird posts and I've been largely silent lately. Mostly I've not been able to work on the project as much as I'd like and also I've been doing the utterly unglamorous job of laying out UV's on the three buildings.

But it is time for me to post again. Here are some pictures of UV's.

The base building UV's.

The top railing. This could easily be a part of the main building but as birds are known for hanging out at the top of buildings, this seemed like a place for its own texture.

The pipes & lantern. The lantern is very low-rez at the moment and if it has any prominence in our shots will surely be art directed with more care than its gotten so far. This works for now though.

The first pic shows building two with a UV layout texture applied to it. The texture is hella ugly by most standards, but it's designed to make laying out UV's easier. The grid pattern & color cycle work as a visual guide, showing you how your UV's look on the model, where there's stretching, relative scale, etc.

I've broken this building up into 6 texture groups. One texture for the main building, one for the three lower doors & steps, one for the top railing, one for the windows, one for the pipes & lantern and one for the signs. This texture assignment is somewhat arbitrary as our shots aren't blocked out yet. I wouldn't be surprised if, on a shot-by-shot basis, the texture sizes & assignments change pretty dramatically. For background shots, for example, this whole building could be taken care of with one camera projection. On a close-up, any one door or window might actually need multiple textures.

I only screengrabbed pics of three textures but they're all there, on all three buildings. Laying all of these out like this was pretty tedious but it gives us the flexibility we'll need later on.

Cheers.

Bird Number One WIP 6

2008-01-14T22:22:00.000-08:00

I have finished the wing modifications - Now the wing has mechanisms to control all of different movements it will need. Also I have started on the upper thighs - refining their general shape and tying them into the sub frame of the bird.

Next is to add the lower legs and then adjust the tail feathers as they meet the sub frame of this creature. I have included renders without the wings or body plates to show some of the underlying structure.

As the bird will be in flight, it is important that it be able to withstand scrutiny from many angles.

I do want to refine the head - Especially the eyes, but that can be addressed in the next stage of tweaking and refinement.

Almost done with this phase of modeling!

Bird Number One WIP 5

2008-01-12T22:50:00.000-08:00

This post is just for fun. I decided to render a couple frames with Occlusion instead of just doing screen grabs. It a great way for me to see just how much (or how little) detail is needed in certain areas.

As you can see I am a little further along with the wings, and the shoulder integration is in a good place. The last thing I need to do (at this level of detail) to the wings is to add a small indentation for the tabs on the wing sections so they can slot into each other when the wing folds.

Then its onto the legs. They will need some additional development & design.

After that I have a boiler to add into body of the bird, and some details to work out regarding how the tail section is structured. I have built a sub frame through much of the birds extremities to help with this, but I have not finalized certain aspects of how the tail integrates into this frame. Also I would like to add some tiny actuators for the top two tail pieces.

After that I will give a good once over to model - and maybe revisit the eyes. Then I should be finished with this stage of modeling.

I may begin to layout some of the UVs before continuing to model - As I may be jumping into Mudbox to add a bit more of an organic line to the design overall. (Yet to be decided.)

In the following stage I will be refining the profiles of each shape, as well as adding all of the nuts, screws, washers, seams, etc that make something like this really fun to work on. I got the idea today to add some sludge around some of the moving parts - Fun!

I feel like I am past the most challenging parts of modeling this creature - Now that the design is in a good place it has started to flow.

Bird Number One WIP 4

2008-01-12T18:13:00.000-08:00

Well I finally have a general profile and set of proportions for this bird that I am happy with. As you can see I still have a lot to do, but I think the main structures are in place. Next I will work on tying in the shoulder to the first wing section and then move down to the legs, which need some additional structures to allow for greater articulation.

Bird Number One WIP *Design Changes

2008-01-12T00:53:00.001-08:00

After a good deal of deliberation and discussions all around, here are the re-designed wings for our bird friend courtesy of Nigel Sussman:
As you can see they are greatly modified functionally and structurally. I will be working on these this weekend, and will provide posts once I have made some headway.

It is too bad to have to lose the work (rigging-wise) that was already put into the previous wing design, but it was helpful in exposing some limitations in that design, for our purposes.

As is the case with all of the concept art, this is not set in stone but rather a guide, many finer details will be finalized during the modeling process itself. That being said - This design will serve as the structural and artistic basis of what will be (I hope) the final wing design.

Bird Number One WIP 3

2008-01-06T22:55:00.001-08:00

Here are some screen grabs of the progress today. I was able to add most of the broad facial details in as well as (very) basic wings and a tail section. The tail and wings will be refined a great deal - But I needed something simple to get things started.

I modified some things in the model to make him feel a little more aggressive especially around the beak, which is larger than in the original art. Also I decided against the small metal supports on the sides of the mouth, as I want this guy to look like he could really open wide and BITE!

The wings were today's real head scratcher.

As I had mentioned in a previous post - Since this creature is metal - I cant have any pieces interpenetrating - And with the complexity of the wings , that was one tall order.

I didn't have a drawing of this in any type of bind pose, so I was having a hard time understanding how the wings would move as they were folded and unfolded.

I opted to create the scissor frame at a fairly high level of detail and then rig it. By doing this I can test the wings as they open and close, and by rigging a more detailed piece, I wont have to do it all over again later. (no user friendly controls or anything for now - Just basic parenting)

The scissor action on the wings is really creepy..! But I think I will need some additional support structures for them so that they seem strong enough to support the bird in flight.

I then keyframed the wing unfolding so I can check it through its range of motion while I refine the structure of the wing panels.

Once I had this set up I noticed that I will need to do some extensive re-working of some elements of the design - especially with these wings. Stay tuned.

Bird Number One WIP 2

2008-01-05T17:36:00.001-08:00

Due to the complexity of this model, I am using a hybrid approach here - Generating geometry from curves, edges, positive thinking.. Hey - I'm not picky. For now, I am concentrating on getting the basic structure sorted out.

Maya 2008's smooth preview is very helpful - and the features Barry mentioned in his last post are some of the main reasons I decided to bite the bullet and install it a home.

(That and the fact I have been using it at work since its release.)

As you can see things are not really far along just yet, as I am having to flesh out some aspects of the design as I go .

Because this guy is mechanical, as opposed to organic - I have to make sure all of these bits and bobbles will move correctly once assembled. That means a lot of minor adjustments as I rough in these pieces in a way which serves the design while allowing me to get the performance I need in the end. The frames here have the poly smooth preview on them for clarity - but the mesh I am actually working on can be seen in frame 1.

Also, I feel like the original concept bird is a little too friendly, so I may be tweaking the overall proportions some as I go.

Death from above!!!

Maya Tip of the Day #4

2008-01-05T01:14:00.000-08:00

The subtitle for this post is, "Getting To Know Maya 2008."

I'd planned on being cautious about moving into Maya 2008 on this project. It started, back in the "way-before time" on Maya 8. We were wishy-washy about moving onto 8.5, so wishy-washy in fact that Maya 2008 was out and about by the time we upgraded to 8.5.

Well, lo and behold, I look at James' latest post and, "what the hell!?!" Holmes is rocking the bird in fully up-to-date '08 style. Thusly, I'm happy to present the following post.

Unlike James, who's actually working in the program, I've only opened it a few times and clicked around on some of the "What's New" links. Two things that are new, that've drawn my eye, are the Poly Smooth and the "X-Ray Active Components" shading option.

I've not yet spent much time with the new Poly Smooth but it may be usable enough to replace the Connect Poly Shape scripts that I've come to know and love. Well, maybe not entirely replace them as they do lot beyond simply creating a smoothed proxy but it looks like a nice little addition to the toolset. I look forward to putting them to a more extensive test. The ability to quickly toggle the low-poly cage on-and-off, and to manipulate either it or the higher-poly model is great.

As to the new X-Ray shading option, I think it works for me.

When I'm modeling, I spend a lot of time jumping from X-Ray to regular flat shading. I'm always having to check if I've selected an extra face here or a stray point there. The gesture to toggle X-Ray shading via a marking menu is pretty damn ingrained in my workflow at this point. But this new shading option, which doesn't X-Ray the entire shape or scene but only the selected components, it's pretty clean. One of the tenets of creating usable interfaces is, "only show the things that are important At This Moment." The old X-Ray option, when you were trying to check your selection, showed more than you needed to see. It showed you what you didn't want selected as well as what you did want. Too much information.

Having said all that, I don't think I'll take the old X-Ray out of my toolbox entirely. This new option won't do anything for you if you're trying to add to your selection. In that instance, X-Ray is just what you need.

Okay, I've gone on long enough on very small subjects, but stay tuned for further "Getting To Know 2008" posts in the near, or far, future.

Cheers.

Bird Number One WIP 1

2008-01-04T20:10:00.000-08:00

Nothing too exciting here, since I am at the first stages of modeling this guy. One thing of note is that I don't have an orthographic side view, so when I sliced and diced the original concept art to create the image planes (see screen grab) I created one from the perspective view. These image planes are hooked to 3 ortho cameras within the scene and on separate display layers, so that they can be easily toggled. Also, I am not really counting on these image planes to be 100% accurate (to scale, etc.) - Since some minor elements may be changed as I go anyway. The perspective one is something to look at while I figure out the best way to tackle this model.

Bird Number One Concept Art

2008-01-03T21:35:00.001-08:00

Here is the concept art for bird creature #1, provided graciously by Nigel Sussman. Stay tuned as this progresses into out first completed character.

Holiday Slowdown

2007-12-30T09:54:00.001-08:00

No updates lately...but that's what happens sometimes.

So what's the news, both good and bad? Well, the work project that felt like a mini Bataan Death March is in a much better place now. It didn't air on the 26th as it was originally meant to but I think the pressure from Discovery has lessened a bit and we should be able to finish it working only "normal" hours. When this sucker does finally hit the teevee, I'll post an update.

Holidays were great with two sets of folks in town. One set's still here but all the hoopla's died down enough that I've been able to start laying out UV's on the first building. w00t!

With Borders gift card in hand, I went book shopping the other day. I had a long list of books I wanted, but on a whim decided to check the computer section for a book on mental ray. I didn't really want a book on mental ray but I knew that I needed to learn more about it. I only know what half (a third?, quarter?) of the mental ray shaders do and I'm far from being able to optimize renders in any way. Well, I found a damn mental ray book and forced myself to buy it.

mental ray, an artist's guide to rendering is one hell of a book and it's already making my brain hurt. a lot. I'm giving it a first read-through with a highlighter and without sitting in front of the computer. After going through it once, my plan is to go back through and crank out test renders, to see if I learned anything. Cross yer fingers.

The last bit of good news for now is that in a couple weeks I'll be starting a MEL scripting workshop offered by CGSociety. I'm excited to dig in to a little code. It will probably slow down the project some but I don't think it'll grind to a total halt. Hah! Of course it will, but I can dream, can't I?

No pics to post now, because there's nothing remotely interesting about UV layouts. I'll post painted texture maps but that's still a little ways away.

Cheers.

Two Weeks, One Building

2007-12-13T15:59:00.000-08:00

Now that is one hell of an achievement!!!

Or something.

It's the same old story, work is kicking my ass. On top of that I picked up a small page-layout gig that's been taking a bite out of what little free-time I've got. Having said all that, here's one little update. This is the end of the modeling for now and it's time for some UV layout and some basic texturing. My UV layout skills are not great so here's a chance for them to get better.

Cheers.

Some messed-up normals in that new building, fixed in the subsequent pics.

Off The Face Of The Earth

2007-12-04T21:49:00.001-08:00

So I actually have a few days of decent posts and then it all goes to hell. Arrrrghhhh!!!!!!

The last week, nearly two weeks now, just about killed me @ work. Lots and lots of styleframes to make in very little time with constantly changing goals. I canceled a few vacation days, including today which I worked from home while some plumbers tried to fix a leaking pipe somewhere in the bowels of my foundation.

Along with all that, James and I had a sort of "come to Jesus" conversation where we started talking about how the project was working and where it was going now that we're in different cities and both working hard.

This is all a ways of saying that I've done jack on the scene, or the project or the models - whatever scale you care to look at, it's been on hold. Today was supposed to be a big modeling day for me. Alas but no.

I should be back on the horse starting tomorrow evening - I hope, I hope, I hope.

Cheers.

A Few Building Shots

2007-11-25T22:26:00.000-08:00

Here are a couple quick AO renders of two of the buildings I've been working on. I'm happy with the way they're coming along but there's still a ton of work to be done on them.

Kinda neat, huh?

Ugly faceting on the doorway curves, way too sharp corners on the columns and a ridiculously under-modeled lantern.

Nope, neither building has a backdoor, or a back wall, or even a floor. I suppose I'll never make it in architectural previz.

Shutters and doors that look like ugly slabs of drywall.

I honestly don't think I needed to model the fluting on the columns on the right. I may rebuild them without it and add the details in Z-Brush later.

And a quick screengrab of the wireframe on shaded.

One thing I'm going to need to address is the uneven level of detail on different parts of these buildings. If you look closely you'll see some beveled edges here, some sharp edges there, modeled details on some parts, plain, flat polys on others. There is some method to my madness though. After I finish one more building, the plan is to unwrap them and take them into Z-Brush where I'll add some distressing and some modeled textures. The door and window edges that show faceting because there are too few polys will be smoothed and dinged up a bit. I'll add some weathering to the columns on the right-hand building and texture the shutters and windows. After all that I'll export a Normal Map and see what that does for me. I'm crossing my fingers that that solution works out. One thing I'm not sure how to handle is how to combine a Normal map meant to simulate textures and the normal information you get when you throw an Average Normals on a few polys or when you manually set normal angles or perform a Smooth Edge command. I'm confident someone, somewhere has explained this. In time I'll track it down.

Cheers.

Modeling Tools (Maya Tip of the Day #3)

2007-11-24T12:43:00.000-08:00

Today we'll be looking, briefly, at two tools. The first is from the Maya Bonus Tools toolset.

There are a ton of Bonus Tools. I installed them all when I had the option to because, well, why the hell wouldn't I? They're tools and they're bonuses. I like both. But there are so many that I spent more time being daunted by the long list than I do actually using them.

(that's like 30 tools or something!)

I'm sure there's documentation for all of these but I've not looked for it. What I was looking for though was a way to pivot a piece of geometry around one of its edges. It's a window shutter on a building I'm modeling and I had it placed right where I wanted it, then decided that I wanted it open, just a little bit. I knew I'd downloaded a 3rd party tool that was built for this but I couldn't remember what it was. So on a lark, I checked the Bonus Tools.

It's in there. It's called "Move Object Pivot To Component Center." It's a long name but it does just what it says. I selected the edge I wanted, ran the command and voila, the shutter was cracked open. After that, a quick Center Pivot gets things back to normal. That one's heading to a marking menu soon.

After finding that, I was still wondering what tool I'd previously found to do this. Well, it's Local Tools by Henry Korol. It's actually in one of my shelves but because I've yet to make custom buttons for my shelves, it gets lost easily.

The good and bad thing about Local Tools is that it's way more powerful than the Move Object Pivot bonus tool. The good part of that is, well, it does more. The bad part is that it does so much more that it's really worth reading online documentation. I've not done that yet but I've bookmarked the page. I'm sure that it's going to be part of my modeling repertoire soon.

Cheers.

Marking Menus

2007-11-22T12:48:00.001-08:00

I'm not all that stoked on my building models just yet so no pics of them today. I thought, instead, that I'd share my custom marking menus.

I have three marking menus set up, bound to Option + 1, Option + 2 and Option +3. I do 90% of my Maya work on a Macbook Pro and on that keyboard, those bindings work pretty well. They're not super-intuitive and I imagine that I'll try out some other options eventually but they're fine for now. I can't easily hit the Option + 4 chord, so this set up is limited to three menus only.

The commands in each menu are all loosely related. MM_01 (marking menu one) is commonly used modeling tools. MM_02 is commonly used viewport options and MM_03 is, well, I'm not sure what to call it.

Here they are:

So, I use these tools a lot. This menu is a bit too full for me to truly work gesturally with it, at least at the moment. With more time spent using it, maybe all of the tools will become gestures. Insert Edge Loop and Extrude are well-placed, I think but I don't know that Combine really deserves the "pride of place" of being the bottom tool. I should put something that I use more often in that place, maybe the Split Polygon Tool.

This one is nice and light. I use X-Ray all of the time and both Isolate Selected and Wireframe On Shaded are easy to hit gesturally. This menu I really don't have to think about at all.

The To Edge Loop and Delete Edge/Vertex don't really fit the theme of this menu so well but it only bothers me a little bit.

These are the, "all right, let's move on tools." The set-up here works well for when I've got an element just the way I want it, I can very quickly gesture up, down and up to the right, and then move on. Ok, ok, Duplicate Special has no place being here and, frankly, I forget that it's there. I nearly always grab that tool from the Hot Box instead of from here. Maybe I should swap Combine and Duplicate Special. That actually makes a certain amount of sense, because after Combining it's a good idea to "reset" your geometry before modeling away.

Well, there you have it.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Not Dead Yet

2007-11-21T08:42:00.000-08:00

Over a week since the last post, that's not great.

But I've been working on the scene in my free time and I'll have a new building or two to show pretty soon. I spent so much time earlier on modeling the clocktower (which I fear I will have to substantially rebuild) that I never got to model any buildings. So now, whether or not it's truly necessary, I'm giving myself the chance to kick out a couple of apartments. I'm quite enjoying it, though I'm having trouble integrating some of the steampunkish elements into the buildings. All of this means little without pictures, so I'll try really hard to have a picture post up this weekend.

Cheers.

A Few Random Shots

2007-11-12T00:25:00.001-08:00

The project is, or it may be, floundering a bit...I don't know exactly, but so what? That's what happens sometimes and even if it is, it ain't over 'till the fat lady sings.

Attached are a few shots rendered with temp geometry on the buildings and the birds, with no textures and with one ambient and one point light. Never the less, I like them. I like this scene even if I can't say what story it tells.

First Round of Concept Art Sketches

2007-11-05T14:49:00.000-08:00

We just started working with a guy named Nigel Sussman. He's a flash developer (programmer? Like I know the difference) and illustrator up in the Bay area, which is where James is now located. He's got some great illustration skills, a real strong sense of line and the good sense to realize that doing some drawings for this project was a super-cool thing to do.

Did I also mention that he hosts his site on Laughing Squid? Yeah, that means he's down with the digerati hipsters and pixetelegensia crowd.

W00t!

Thanks for coming aboard sir.

We'll have sketches up soon but I thought a shout-out was in order.

Cheers.

Essential Maya Tools

2007-11-05T14:40:00.000-08:00

As part of an ongoing series, I humbly present Lightgirl.

This lighting GUI, built in MEL, is absolutely insane and one hell of a lifesaver if you have a scene with more than, uh, one light in it. It was built by Ben Wronsky, who I don't know personally but is apparently a Senior Technical Artist over at EA Games. Looking at this, I wish I was a Senior Technical Artist but I have to realize that for all my many gifts, I just ain't smart enough to pull off something this rad.

It's available both on his site & on highend3d.com. It's a must have if you care at all about being able to easily control the lights in your scenes. I found it while looking for a tool that would allow me to change the intensity attribute of a cluster of four lights. Without a tool like this, it's a matter of selecting one, changing it, then selecting all of the others and repeating - one at a time. This makes for lots of steps and lots of preview renders if you're trying to find a setting that looks "just about right."

Bah! All that crap is behind me now. The one caveat is that the UI isn't perfect in the OSX environment, but that's what I get for using Maya on a Mac.

Cheers.

Why Does the Bird Have a Prussian Helmet?

2007-11-03T16:03:00.001-07:00

I don't really know. But it's kind of funny. The bird on the top left also has a key slot on its chest. I'm not sure what key might go in there, maybe it's a wind-up key to get the bird's interior clockwork mechanisms going. Maybe it's not but the key slot would be really ornate, with filigree and etching and cool stuff like that. It's fit into a torso that's more utilitarian than aesthetic. The torso's made up of a bunch of bolted on panels, or screwed on panels, with holes cut out for the feet and head.

The wings don't work at all like real bird wings but they pivot out from a couple of axles perpendicular to the imagined spine of the bird. The lower right wing is made up of lots of overlapping metal leaves (feathers).

Yeah, so that's that.

Moving Forward

2007-11-01T23:32:00.000-07:00

I've talked some smack about moving onto the animatic but after some discussion we've decided to put that aside for a bit. We've also shelved, for a little while at least, the idea of doing detailed styleframes for our shots.

Below are two super-rough styleframes that we did, one apiece, earlier this week.

While there are some similarities, (both have bridges, that being the main one) the two frames are pretty different in a lot of ways. Seeing these two frames side-by-side like this could've led to a knock-down, drag-out conversation about art direction and intent but we decided to avoid that talk and just focus on a scene.

We're picking the first scene, and why the hell not? For that scene, and for the next couple scenes, we're really gonna need some bird models. Therefore we're in bird concept mode.

It's tricky, this concept art thing. I've been sketching away and getting lots of crap. Hopefully some gold will shine through eventually. From there it's the simple matter of modeling and rigging. Yeah, those will only take an hour or two each. Then, after another hour or two, the whole film will be done.

Heh.

Still On The Weekly Schedule

2007-10-28T22:32:00.000-07:00

Yeah, this is lame, this current posting rate. But that's the way it goes sometimes.

Right now James and I are exchanging styleframes, looking at color & lighting & mood and trying to get a feel for the final art direction. These frames will also help establish which elements will be modeled and which can be done with imageplanes and matte paintings. Once we get to a look that we're at least somewhat agreed on, I'll post some pics.

So, work continues.

Cheers.

100th Post!!!

2007-10-21T23:19:00.000-07:00

W00t.

I didn't get a great deal of time to work on the animatic but I was able to get started. Here's a still from the first scene, not a rendered shot, just a screengrab of the Maya windows.

(The top shot is a split of the scene and perspective cameras and the bottom is a close-up of the little birdies. They've a long way to go before they reach co-star status.)

As I work on the shots for the animatic, I think I'm going to do a little more lighting than I'd originally planned on. I think it'll help in the sense that it'll give us a better idea of the levels of modeling & shading required on our geometry, plus it'll start to give these shots a little bit of emotion, which is never a bad thing.

That means the animatic will go a tad bit more slowly than it might otherwise, but ideally some of the lighting choices will then transfer over to the final shots, saving time on the backend. Or something like that.

Cheers.

Tricksy Camera, version 01

2007-10-20T10:13:00.001-07:00

So all the futzing and time wasting and random code typing is done for now. I've got a camera rig that I'm going to live with for a little while, see if my half-baked ideas for what would make a workable set up make any sense at all.

Here's a copy of the Maya scene file (Maya 8) and the script. To try it out, import the camera rig file into any Maya scene, position it roughly, then run the script.

(screenshot of the rig and the GUI)

Now that this is in a workable state, I'm moving onto the animatic for the film, just blocking out shots and figuring out rough timing. I'll probably have stills to show as I go along but not much very exciting as models I'll be using in it are going to be very, very basic.

Cheers.

Maya Tip of the Day #2

2007-10-14T21:52:00.000-07:00

This one is a little MEL script that's far from finished but that's gonna make it into my camera GUI in one form or another.

window -title "test Field Slider";
showWindow;

polyCube;
float $currentXLocation = `getAttr pCube1.tx`;
columnLayout;
attrFieldSliderGrp -min ( $currentXLocation - 15 ) -max ( $currentXLocation + 15 ) -at pCube1.tx;

This creates a slider that slides the cube on the X-axis +/- 15 units based on wherever the cube is when the script is run. Wow. Now that is...uh...what exactly is that?

The way I see it working is as follows:
The camera and aim are blocked in roughly using the 4-pane orthographic & perspective views. Once the basic shots are set up, I'm going to need to refine them while looking through the camera. It's at that point that I'll call up the GUI and there I'll have sliders and keyframe buttons to dial in the actual shots. Because the transforms are locked on the actual camera in my rig (to avoid gimbal lock and throwing the camera totally out of whack) you can't move the camera using the usual pan & dolly mouse controls.

This rig is taking me about nine years and seventeen days to build but an end is in sight. I think.

Cheers.

Maya Tip Of The Day #1

2007-10-12T23:25:00.000-07:00

Adding commands to your shelf the easy way:

Bring up your custom shelf of choice.

Hold down Control + Shift + Alt (the one with the apple on it) and navigate to the command you want to add.

Click it.

Voila! It's on your shelf.

Damn that's nice and easy.

MEL Script = Headache

2007-10-07T23:16:00.001-07:00

Ugh. I just spent the last several hours puzzling over how to do a bunch of different things for my camera rig. I've come the conclusion that a lot of the things that I put in my original rig & UI aren't really necessary any longer, particularly having two Aim Constrained locators and animation sliders for both of their weights.

I liked the idea at first. My plan was to aim the main locator at the main target of the camera and then have the secondary locator pulling it off target, bringing a little life to the camera. But if you think about how many possible animation tracks there would be in the graph editor with that kind of set-up, it gets ugly. Also that way of aiming the camera has no real relationship to the way an actual camera works. Not that a CG camera has to mimic a real world camera but I should probably have a decent reason for making it drastically different. Plus there are plenty of ways to bring life to the camera that would be more direct.

Alright. I'm tired. That's it for me. A copy of the rig will be up here eventually.

Moving Onto The Animatic

2007-10-07T09:58:00.000-07:00

Looks like I'm on a weekly update schedule, which I'm not very proud of but it's a schedule at least.

So, the brief is in the hands of an artist I've worked with before. He's giving it a quick pass for clarity and to assess the reasonableness of what I want to get versus what I'm paying. It's not that I have no money to spend on an artist but it's more along the lines of, I'm offering one day's day rate and asking for, probably, more than one day's worth of work. Nevertheless, it's very important to me that I am offering paid work. All of the time in this industry you see "offers" for people to do free work because it'll "look great on their reel/portfolio." Now, I've done free, low-budget and work-in-trade but on this thing, I don't want to go that way. If an artist I already had a relationship with offered to do the concept art in trade I'd probably go for it, but I'm not going to approach someone I don't know hoping that they're in the mood to throw me some charity. This film is, for me, a real project and I intend to treat anyone who works for me on it professionally.

Enough time on the soapbox. One place I am planning on going for some free help is the CG Society forums. Now that the storyboard is considerably tighter (though probably not "done") I feel like it's time to get the animatic cranking. Earlier, before our change of direction, we brushed past the animatic but I think that this time it's important to make one. It'll help us really suss out our shots, it'll suggest which shots are just plane lame and can be cut and it'll give us an idea of whether or not the structure of the scenes makes any sense. In order to work on the animatic, I returned to look at the camera rig I was building a few months ago. That's what I'm going to be asking for some help with. I'm pretty happy with that I've built but it's not working exactly as intended. I'm hoping someone up there can throw some pointers my way.

I'll post screens and the MEL script once it's in a place I'm happy with.

Cheers.

Progress On The Board

2007-09-30T23:40:00.000-07:00

Not posting anything just yet because I've not been able to run it by James, but the board's coming along quite nicely. Another sit-down or two with it and it'll be done. I'm not blocking out the shots all that completely but I'm taking them far enough to know what'll need to be modeled and what won't. I'm using this board as a chance to get more familiar with Sketchbook Pro and it's going pretty well. I'm still not as comfortable with it as I am paper but it's one hell of an app. I do wish it had a slightly broader range of brushes than it does but it's good. I like being able to add color quickly and easily, which is one thing I don't do when I sketch on paper.

Hopefully next week I'll have some progress to report on the concept artist search but even if that takes a little bit longer than hoped for, there's still plenty we can do while waiting for designs. There are matte paintings to paint and there are plenty of city elements left to model...This sucker is still a ways from being done.

Behind Schedule, Still Working

2007-09-29T10:12:00.000-07:00

Ver. 01 of a brief is done and I've got a few initial feelers out to an artist I've worked with in the past. I'm tempted to put the brief up to give a sense of where we're going, design-wise, but 95% of the reference in the brief isn't our work and I don't know that I want to do anything that would imply that it was. I could source it all but that would be one hell of a long post and I've probably lost links to some of the stuff along the way.

One fun thing has been going through a lot of forums and blogs and putting together a list of artists we're planning on contacting for the job. I've been scouring the forums over at CGSociety and ConceptArt and spending a little bit of time on Deviant Art looking for good folk - and finding plenty. Our problem is going to be that we don't have a lot of money to spend.

Now that that's somewhat in motion, it's back to storyboards. I'll start posting them as soon as I have enough frames that are working for me to make a decent post.

Cheers.

Arrrgh! Weekend Work

2007-09-23T15:05:00.000-07:00

Absolutely no progress to report from this weekend.

I spent most of Saturday finishing some animations for FX and right now I'm in the middle of doing styleframes for a new talk show on...I don't remember what network.

I'd hoped to get a brief written for a concept artist but once I'm done with this work, I really don't want to keep sitting in front of the computer. About the most I think I'll be able to do is to sit in front of the television for a while with my sketchbook. If I can get a page or two of sketching done I'll be happy.

Hopefully I'll have a brief Monday night and I'll be in touch with some artists over the next week. After the brief, my next task will be take a second pass on our storyboard. We have a new beat sheet/outline of the major scenes (did that last week) and it calls for some small revisions to the board. That's fun enough work and it'll be good to get done. I am so ready, though, to get back to modeling.

Bird Sketches

2007-09-22T01:32:00.000-07:00

This is another character we're going to try to get some help with. These mechanical/clockwork birds are becoming more important in the story and we want to make sure that the designs for these ends up being as good as it can be. These initial passes are telling me more what the birds shouldn't look like than what they should look like - but that's important to know.

This is some sort of mecha-dodo bird. Odd shape, not very menacing. The bird(s) in our short need to be able to do some menacing. This one is not spooky in any way. Nevertheless, I like the placement of the seams along the body shape.

Here I've moved from paper and pen to Sketchbook Pro and Wacom. I like the combo. It works for me. The sketches though...meh. The one colored bird head is ok, but that's about it.

And this is just my menacing guard bird. It works for what it is, but it's not much more than a notion of a menacing bird. It's not yet an illustration of one.

So, yeah, hopefully we'll be getting some help on these sketches soon and then, armed with awesome orthographic views, we'll be modeling fools.

Cheers.

Girl Sketches - First Pass

2007-09-22T01:06:00.000-07:00

None of these sketches are really nailing it but they're a sampling of where my head is at- sort of - in terms of the main character in the short.

She's a skinny girl, 9-12 years old maybe, tall-ish and gangly. Here she's rocking a very simple ragamuffin outfit, colorful patches accenting a plain, utilitarian dress, striped sleeves and maybe colorful knee socks to add character. Not too dissimilar from Sally in Nightmare Before Christmas - but our girl is alive, and not a puppet seamstress.

Abstracting the head shape a bit more, trying to work with simple shapes and not being too concerned with realism.

This looks a bit more like someone's still kind of hot, hippy mom, than it does like our girl.

A couple Courtney Crumrin-inspired sketches here. I'm a huge fan of this book, though it's not really a direct inspiration for this short. Maybe the next project....Who the hell knows?
And lastly, a girl with some spunky attitude, demon eyes and a scarf.

Yes, it's quite the mixed bag (and there are others I'm not posting) but it's been a good exercise for me. I think that we're in a position where we can start talking to a concept artist or two for some help in taking this character - and two or three others - all the way to completion.

New Tools

2007-09-13T23:33:00.000-07:00

I just ordered a new MacBook Pro and I feel totally sick to my stomach. I am a total cheapskate. I hate spending more than $5 in any one place, let alone spending way, way more than that on something that's gonna be obsolete mere weeks after I buy it. At least software updates are usually a year apart - and then you rarely need to buy whole new versions, you can just update them.

Nevertheless, I felt like it was time. It'll be a faster rig than my current desktop, which I'm not getting rid of, and the chance to be somewhat more mobile is awesome.

Oooh boy I'm excited.

Character Design

2007-09-11T16:10:00.000-07:00

With a title like "Character Design" you'd think this post would have some pictures. Alas but no. More than anything else, this is a post to kick myself in the pants and get a post up so that this thing doesn't succumb to blog-fade.

What we've been up to is looking at characters and sketching some and really trying to nail down who our main character is. When we first began this, we made a decision that we'd not go too "AmeriManga" with our main character. It's that I'm not a fan of the style, it's more that it's ubiquitous. AmeriManga characters are everywhere these days.

But, some of my favorite character designers show a definite manga influence. And a good AmeriManga character is also a good character, simply put. So I've opened my mind to that look a little bit and we're making progress in creating our girl.

I'd love to be able to show some sketches soon, with the understanding that I'm no character designer, but I don't have a scanner and my best drawings so far have been on that old analog paper. I am starting to make a transition to doing more digital sketching with Sketchbook Pro but I won't be doing really good work in it for a while, I think.

Cheers.

Further Explainations

2007-09-03T15:11:00.000-07:00

So, riffing off of Barry's post, this diagram is an attempt to illustrate (My Take) on the changes being discussed. They consist mainly of artistic and pragmatic changes and not a complete re-think of our story or primary art direction.

I choose this picture as it was one of the pictures included by Barry in his post "Rethinking Stage Design"; Regarding certain shifts in art direction.

***DISCLAIMER ***
These images were not photographed by us, nor did we have ANY involvement in the creation of the models, set, props, etc. The changes made in panels "B" and "C" are for illustrative purposes only, and will not be used for commercial purposes.

Image A:
The original image from our Tear Sheet.

Image B:
A more developed rendering, with emphasis given to the 'Space' in which this scene takes place. 'Space' here meaning: lighting, physical space, negative space, and the overall relationship between actor(s), primary set objects, and secondary or tertiary objects in the scene.

Image C:
A technical breakdown of the shot elements from the standpoint of production. (If this was a shot of ours and if we were to approach it from this revised direction - How would we do it?)

**So what's the point? What are you trying to show?**

Well, the main change here is not about puppets or stages - so much as it is about changing the way physical space is represented in our piece. Barry and I have been spending quite a lot of time modeling objects - In an attempt to represent the 'Space' of the story.

In other words making sure the spatial relationship of every object makes sense, logically, with other objects in the scene - according to our established art direction.

In attempting to represent so many aspects of each scene explicitly - Some of our focus on the artistry and elegance of the work as a whole has been put on hold. At times we have found ourselves asking questions more akin to civil engineers than artists.

In addition, the man hours involved to model an entire city - down to the last screw or nail - are proving to be beyond the resources of our limited crew.

The reason that stage work, stage design, and puppet theater have all become so important to us is that we have decided to borrow from them a more spartan design aesthetic - as well as their sometimes surreal depictions of time, space, and circumstance. (Usually necessitated by traditional stage works' having Real-World limits on time, space, budget, and the like.)

Having said this - The significant thing being illustrated in Image B is a more Stage-Like approach to Blocking, Lighting, and Set Design - As opposed to an all-inclusive 3D world - In which the scenes take place. (For example - It's okay that the Foreground Characters are floating in space and not grounded to anything physically - What is important is the overall impression of the frame upon the viewer.)

I believe our final approach will be a combination of stage, dream, and reality; Ideally in a space unique to this production. I suspect....Looking foreword, Some scenes will be detached from 'reality' - While others hint at the physical word beyond.. And still others are a more grounded - almost deliberate - depiction of real world relationships between objects and events.

This Weeks Homework Will Be...

2007-09-02T21:25:00.000-07:00

American Set Design, by Arnold Aronson.

It's another $10 find from my local used-bookstore, The Iliad. It's a lot of interviews, which I may or may not read and a bunch of pictures, which I'm hoping will be very useful.

Stay-tuned folks, this sucker might actually turn out kind of cool one day!

Tearsheet One, Rethinking Stage Design

2007-09-02T12:12:00.001-07:00

I've been looking at stages online, puppet theater stages, "experimental" black box stages, all that jazz. I've really been out-to-sea, somewhat, trying to understand where we're going with this new look.

I've had no trouble grasping what this will do for us in terms of character design. There are lots of brilliant marionettes and puppet designs out there that I'm more than happy to use as jumping-off points for our character. I've had trouble understanding the space that the film will be taking place in.

The photos leading off this post are the first stagings that have made sense to me. I can start to see how to construct a space for our short to take place in, after looking at these and thinking about them a bit.

They're from a production of "The Peddler of Swaffham" by the Bognoggin Theatre Co., at the Witham International Puppet Festival. Witham is a little ways outside of London, in the UK. I've never been there, never heard of it before, never knew they had a puppet festival there. Oh the wonders of the internet.

That's my post for now. I think it lacks in some particulars, particularly the part that explains the "why" behind the change of direction, but that's just the way that it goes sometimes.

Cheers.

Small Art Direction Re-Think

2007-09-01T10:04:00.000-07:00

Don't wait with bated breath for the next AO-shaded model post. We've had a small change of art direction. As we develop the concept a bit more, we'll start throwing up some reference images and, eventually, some tests of the new look.

The reasons behind this change are myriad, some purely practical, some aesthetic. I don't have a full-blown post in me right now but I imagine that one of us will explain our new choices before too long.

Stay tuned.

Overall Scene Progress

2007-08-27T11:03:00.000-07:00

Here are some stills from the scene camera as they stand at the moment.

Here are some stills from the scene camera as they stand at the moment.

Updates to the Hill (BTW CB14 and CB15)

2007-08-27T10:46:00.001-07:00

Well, I sat down to work on my current building (CB 14) but as I had said before I was going to work on the hill behind in tandem with the building, since CB15, CB14, and the hill all are elements in a large part of the shot. After working out the dimensions with my stand-in scene (mentioned here) I roughed in the hill and built a walkway which passes through the space between the 2 buildings. I also added a short wall almost at the top of the hill, just to extend to depth of the scene.

All of these details need refinement so, this is still just a rough blocking in of the next level of detail and composition.

The renderings here show the refined area.

Oh, I Know You Love My Little Updates!

2007-08-24T01:04:00.001-07:00

This is somewhat close to where the camera ends in the final shot.

This is just another angle, showing the new brackets and maybe some other new stuff. As I model this, I re-look at lots of pieces of geometry and I worry that I'm going to have to remodel tons of this thing when it's time to UV map & texture. I may be wrong. But, let's face it, I am not "Mr. I've Been Poly Modeling For The Last 10 Years." This thing has got to be full of rookie mistakes. I just hope they're not so large as to be deal-breakers on down the line.

One or two more posts and I'm moving on, I think.

Cheers.

The Hills Have Eyes (or CB 15 WIP 4 continued Pt. 2)

2007-08-20T21:20:00.001-07:00

Another part of this shot is the hill which can be seen between the buildings as the camera approaches the window on the left. Since our original scene was so basic, I had to do some gymnastics to figure out just how much hill needed to be developed. Now that I have it isolated; I will work on it in tandem with CB 15, to help insure that the placement is correct. To this end I created a new scene with: The scene camera, CB 14, and CB 15. (Most of the stuff in the top picture.)

CB 15 WIP 4 continued

2007-08-20T21:17:00.001-07:00

A few renderings from the scene camera - To see some of the alley in context.

CB 15 WIP 4

2007-08-20T21:06:00.001-07:00

Well work continues on this building.. Mainly the wall which faces the camera (As mentioned previously) Not much to explain here, just building up the overall details on the wall closest to camera in this shot. (Well I guess I should explain that the things that look like curtains will be corrugated metal.)

Another Lamp Pass

2007-08-17T00:48:00.000-07:00

I took the night off of modeling last night, but tonight I decided to take another pass at the lamps and the main wheel. I'm digging the changes, but now I need to go back and redo the smaller wheels. They look kind of like, uh, crap compared to the new wheel.

That's about it...though I did spend some more time with that MEL script. It's pretty boss. If I'm not careful with it though, it leads to some crazy-dense meshes, much denser than necessary for hard-surfaces. But what I'm liking about it, is how you can add edge loops to your low-rez mesh and immediately see the change in your smoothed model. It's helping me understand where to use edge loops to get the shapes I want. Not so much a modeling tool, in this case, but a learning tool.

Learning is good.

How Do I Know I'm Cool?

2007-08-14T21:14:00.000-07:00

Because I'm blogging about a MEL script written back in 2001.

Yes, it's Connect Poly Shape 3.0, written for Maya 4.0 by Dirk Bialluch, who is a certified Maya Master. Well, it may be old, but it's pretty damn swank. It provides a crazy-useful toolset for creating and manipulating low-poly meshes and associated higher-poly smoothed meshes.

Full disclosure, all I've done so far is DL the script, drop it into a shelf and play with it for 3 min. But if that 3 min. is in any way indicative of how useful this script'll be over the long haul, then damn!

Carry on.

Adding Lanterns

2007-08-14T00:31:00.001-07:00

Tonight I played around a little bit, adding detail to the front of the train car. All three lanterns won't wind up on the final model. They're on there now so I can look at different sizes and placement. I'm liking the shape of the top one the best. It's really the only one that has much of a shape. The other two are closer to the reference materials I've been able to find but they really don't stand out at all as being interesting to look at.

One thing that may end up being an issue is, what's the source of the light coming from these? James and I had talked earlier about every streetlamp having its own steam generator. That could be overkill on these lamps, but maybe something as simple as a pipe from the main boiler to the lamps would be enough. I'll give that a shot and see.

I think next steps are re-addressing all of the wheels and then figuring out axles & transitions and things. A lot of that will be hidden, but it needs to be addressed, at least a little bit.

Cheers.

Adding A Cattleguard

2007-08-13T00:57:00.001-07:00

The cattleguard is the big addition for this post, not a very big addition in general, but it's what's new. It was a tricky thing to build and I'm not sure that I'm going to keep it in its current incarnation. I may rebuild it after looking at some good train reference.

Obviously there's only half a train here, but once I get it in a good place, I'm planning on mirroring the geometry over to the other side.

Okay, more to come.

2nd Pass At A New Train Body

2007-08-11T23:20:00.001-07:00

So the deal is that I had to rebuild the geometry of the train base. The way I'd built it before, relying pretty heavily on the Bevel Plus tool, wouldn't support the level of detail this shot is going to need.

Today I rebuilt the body about three times, trying to get a decent base mesh. It's not that complicated of a shape, but I was having a fair number of issues with it. Here's the wireframe-on-shaded.

I'm not entirely happy with what I've got here, particularly the lower wheel supports. The smoothing on them is rather unattractive. But I've got an unsmoothed copy saved if I feel like I can't save this one. The railing was just done on a lark. There will be a railing, but probably not one with the snaky endings you see above.

Progress does indeed progress - very, very slowly. I'm dying to take a week off of work and concentrate on this project only but I don't think it'll happen too soon.

Train Base Tests

2007-08-06T23:54:00.001-07:00

Two build-outs of the train body, still grasping for what it's gonna look like.

I have found some inspiration, however, in the form of The Lore of the Train. I found it at my local used bookstore (The Iliad, one of the top three used bookstores I've haunted) for a measly $10. I wasn't looking for a train book but there it was. Alas, I have no scanner, but trust me, it's filled with brilliant line orthographic line drawings of some really incredible trains. I am using an illustration of The North Star, built in 1837 by Robert Stephenson and Co. as my main reference as I move forward and I think that it's really going to make all the difference.

The model above needs a ton of smoothing and more detailing but I'm really happy with this mini-breakthrough. Next steps include changing the wheels, adding another railing, adding elements to clearly delineate the front from the back and more and more detailing.

Gonna call it a night for now but expect more updates this week.

CB15 WIP 3

2007-08-05T19:38:00.000-07:00

So, continuing from the last post, here is the window in position. From this render, you really get a sense of the variety of detail levels this building includes. The first floor of the wall facing the camera (the one with the ornate wrought iron widow covering) will be detailed to a fairly high level. In other areas (almost everywhere else) the building is only seen from a distance, making additional modeling detail unnecessary.

Due to the very high poly count of the window, it was modeled in a separate scene file. While I was putting the window together I set up a small backdrop to test how things were progressing, and how well the window would work in context. Here are a couple of those test renderings. Again, these are only tests and do not represent the look of the final scene.

CB15 WIP 2

2007-08-05T16:11:00.000-07:00

These pictures are elements of the wrought iron which will cover the window the camera passes through. These are a great example of what I was talking about in the previous post regarding the challenge of having multiple levels of detail within a single building. In the case of these elements they will be very close to camera, and as such they are extremely high resolution. I have included a snapshot of the mesh to illustrate this point.

The second picture is an example of what this might look like with texture and lighting in place. This was done to insure that the model would hold up to scrutiny in its final form. Just something quickly put together for test purposes.

CB15 WIP 1

2007-08-05T02:31:00.001-07:00

This is a sample of the next building underway in the project. This building is the one the camera passes through before revealing our heroine. After panning along the front of Building CB14, the camera enters this building from the small square window visible in the second image. It then briefly arcs through the building's first floor and exits through the wide bay window at the front of the building. This building is interesting because it contains many different levels of detail, according to which parts are visible throughout the scene. Some elements exist only to create interest when the building is seen from far away, while other, more detailed elements will be seen up close. So the challenge is not to over develop elements which will not be seen in the shot.

Another Tiny, Tiny Update

2007-07-28T23:32:00.000-07:00

So it's a....steam engine tractor-y-type thingy now!?!

Yeah. So get over it already.

I'm somewhat embarrassed that my updates are so freakin' tiny, like "hey, I spent 15 minutes modeling, check it out!" That's what they feel like and, in many respects that what they are. I've been prohibited by various personal issues (none bad) from working on this much at all lately, hence this cool object - one object in an entire scene of objects - is turning into a Sisyphean hurdle. I should be able to knock this sucker out in a couple days, tops, with room to revisit it later for tweaks.

But this is the pace it's coming along at. I have to just deal with it, model when I get time, try to make more time and stay positive that his project is, indeed moving forward. And I have to keep posting. This blog is a great tool for me to gauge how the work is going and unless I'm using it, ain't nothin' getting gaged.

Oh, and why am I still working on this when in my last post I said I was moving on? Well, me & James, we talked and coming out of it, it seemed best to take this sucker closer to final before moving on. So, in three or four months, I'll have a finished model of the steam engine/clocktower. Hooray three or four months! (That's supposed to be sarcasm. Let's hope that time bears out its un-seriousness.).

Don Ho Loves Tiny, Tiny Bubbles...

2007-07-24T00:18:00.000-07:00

...and I apparently love tiny, tiny updates to the clocktower.

I'm officially making the decision to move on. The clocktower isn't done but right now I feel like it's as done as it needs to be, given how "undone" so many other parts of the scene are.

A quick to-do list for me when I return to this is as follows:

Add more steam engine elements to the top of the train car.
Add tubes plugging this whole assemblage into the pavement surrounding it.
Add detail to the body of the train car.
Remove polys that no one's ever gonna see.

Those refinements are all well and good and I'm happy to do them but I've spent enough time working on this and I've been away from the scene proper for far too long. I need to spend a little bit of time with the big picture, to make sure that all this modeling has someplace to live.

Cheers.

I Am Taking Too Long...

2007-07-18T01:36:00.001-07:00

...to finish the clocktower.

Nevertheless, here are a couple more WIP's.

I'm just trying to streamline it a bit and have it make a bit more sense. More of the pipes are actually connecting to tanks and boilers and whatnot and the smokestacks all connect to something that, in some world, might conceivably create smoke.

The uber-basic peaked roof is a stand-in. That's what I've got to sort out next. After that, the train chassis gets a 2nd pass. Then I'm moving on to a building or something else in the scene. Frankly, I need to kick my arse in gear and put this sucker to rest.

City Building 6

2007-07-15T21:35:00.001-07:00

The official name of this building in the scene is "CB14". That sounds very cool and a bit like a spy film, but it stands for "City Building 14". In any case, it is finished. At least for now. Further revisions will have to wait until we have a few more shot elements in place. As we complete pieces, it is becoming obvious that we may have to shift a few things around.

It is difficult to sense scale when you see something like these renderings, which are completely out of context. But this building is fairly large. For a point of reference, the railings along the staircases are almost 3' tall.

Maya on the Mac

2007-07-15T17:34:00.001-07:00

...I don't know why I install Apple's software updates. All they do is f-up my Maya experience. Oh, and Logitech's dropping the ball too.

Yesterday my right-click button stops functioning properly. "Huh, that's odd," I think. "Maybe I should check to make sure that I have all the correct drivers." Bad idea. After updating my Logitech drivers and restarting, my middle-mouse button's not working. A quick trip to the Logitech forums shows that there's a known issue with their most recent software and the most recent Apple OS update.

Christ on a crutch.

My next computer is either a dual-booting Intel Mac with a copy of XP Pro, or one of those sweet Dell M-90's.

For the record, I am accepting donations for the new computer fund.

2007-07-14T11:46:00.001-07:00

So, this is the deal. I'm loving the occlusion renders and the more time I work on just the model, the more I like it and want to tweak it out in dozens of different ways.

Oh, and one thing RE the two frames above, they show a slight difference in how the back of the clock mechanism is treated. In the top one, the clockworks are fully exposed. In the lower one, I've built a back plane for the clockworks. My thought behind that was that it might mellow out the complexity somewhat and allow the clock faces to read as coherent shapes. I don't know if it works at all.

But I get a little bit worried when I throw it into the scene. I've got to take into account that the level of detail on it vs. the rest of the buildings is huge, but sometimes I wonder if it doesn't fit.

In the last three frames I threw on textures that were already in the scene, but that are by no means final textures. I guess that helps a little bit. Still, the whole structure is so spindly and intricate and....just plain odd. Of course, it's supposed to be odd. It's a different object than all of the others in the shot. But there's a line between being different and being part of a different world. I'm afraid that I'm really close to that line.

One last note is that the camera move may need to change a bit. The last frame is not from the active camera and it's really the only one that lets us see the tower.

Hmm. A lot of second guessing, a lot of thinking that sometimes your babies are monkeys. I'll explain what that means a little later.

City Building 5

2007-07-14T01:10:00.001-07:00

Here are a couple of renderings of the progress made on the building. There is still lots to do, but the form is really starting to shape up.

City Building 4

2007-07-12T18:21:00.001-07:00

Here is the same building - a little further along:

This is the same building, with an angle similar to the end of the shot.

City Building 3

2007-07-12T01:29:00.001-07:00

This is a rough shot with the two new buildings in place.. No lighting to speak of, and as you can see some of the placement is far from perfect. At this stage we are just replacing our Lego buildings with the actual models to refine things and get them into the scene to see how they are working out. The previews that follow are for the building in the far left.

This one is behind the clocktower for a large portion of the shot, But the camera comes very close so it will need a big chunk of time before it is completed. Right now it is still at the earliest stages. Obviously since no work has been done on lighting or texturing, these still look very low rent...But not to worry the detail (and beauty) will come with time..

Finally, a post of this model in a bit more detail:

Clocktower Updates

2007-07-12T00:54:00.001-07:00

I'm too tired to talk much about these. They show some improvements but also need work. I'll get on that as soon as I can.

City Building 2

2007-07-09T08:17:00.001-07:00

Here are some renderings of the nearly finished building model.

This represents the second or third-from-highest level of detail we will be modeling into the foreground buildings of our city scene. Models with this level of detail will be used for medium shots.

Once this model is brought into the main scene, some additional steps will be taken to integrate it into the scene itself, such as power lines, dirt buildup around the building's base, and a few outlying props to really sell it.

In the case of this building, such props would include barrels under and around the water collection system, and a specialized dolly to move the barrels. Final details will include some of the power lines and pavement details as well. With additional refinement to be done as needed.

As will be the case with most of these buildings, many of the final steps will be handled based on the building's position in the scene with respect to the camera's view & other buildings in the scene.

For now now no additional detail has been added to the rooftop, as I am not sure if it will ever be seen in the shot. The roof extension which has been added to this model really exists to carry our European / Mediterranean art direction throughout the model, and to increase the interest of the building's profile.

City Building

2007-07-04T09:17:00.000-07:00

This is a concept skematic Barry worked up to describe the structure of the city buildings in more detail:These screens show the 3D model in its current state; I hope to be finishing it up soon. After our discussions concerning some new additions to the buildings I will be adding just a touch more detail, in terms of power lines, and a support structure for the drainpipe and water tank. As a final touch I will put a few crates inside the exposed space in the second level, as well as adding an internal staircase from level 2 to 3.

This is a quick render of a building I am working on for the city space.

Modeling Clock Faces

2007-07-04T01:00:00.000-07:00

I jumped from the rough clock face Illustrator designs into the modeling and I'm okay with the results. I'm not through the moon, though, as the scale on them probably needs some tweaking. It's hard to tell how much of the detail I've put into these is going to show. If it's just going to get lost, all those beveled edges and extra gears are gonna have to go.

I'm also wondering if the style I picked is too complex for where the tower sits in the scene. I'd been thinking that as it's so large (to scale the clock face is a good 5' tall), I could use one of the more detailed clock concepts. I'm not sure that that's the case, looking at this first pass. Still, I don't have the back of the clock faces figured out, nor are there any textures on these. There's probably a lot I can do to make these current designs work a bit better in the scene. I will try and do some of that tomorrow. No promises, though, as it be a holiday and all.

Cheers.

Oh, one shout-out I wanted to toss out was to Davvey, over on Highend3d. I used his pretty amazing Gear Generator MEL Script for some of the cogs in the clock face. I didn't dive too deeply into it but what was great is that it gave me correctly interlocking teeth on a couple of the cogs. Thanks, Davvey!

Clock Faces, Round One

2007-07-02T23:28:00.001-07:00

I'm too tired to type much, so I'll let these incomplete clock face explorations do the talking.

Cheers.

Thinking About Clock Designs

2007-07-01T23:23:00.000-07:00

Based on James' last post, I've decided not to stress about the base of the tower. I did a little bit of new modeling, concentrating on the actual clock part of the clock tower, then decided that I needed to go back to the drawing board. Literally.

So instead of pushing around polys and CV curves, I spent the better part of the night surfing the web's best watch porn site, The Watchismo Times and making sketches for the clock face. I've got some drawings that I like. I'll turn them into Illustrator art tomorrow and pick one or two to move forward on modeling. The clock face is, in some ways, the focal point of the clocktower. As such, it should look damn cool.

The images over on Watchismo are so freakin' good, if I make something even 60% as good, we're gonna be stoked.

Cheers.

Re: Clocktower Revisions

2007-07-01T01:59:00.000-07:00

: Wow! I just looked at the NEW clock tower.... and I have to say I think that is a great idea! Obviously there is still lots left to do, but it is SO out of the box.. That is just what was needed.. And it sends my mind in a dozen different directions as to how to build off of this idea to improve the city square thing as a whole. I had told you I wasn't too into the shot from a certain point in, since there just wasn't much to look at... but this opens a door that was sorely needed.

I started thinking first about how to integrate the chassis into the scene - so it didn't look like someone dragged it in the day before. This led to ideas for all types of slight modifications to the area directly under and around the chassis and extending around the courtyard that could really be the missing ingredient.

PLEASE don't touch the base of this thing for now. Just figure out how the clock works!; If I did have anything to say about the overall design as it stands - it would be that the proportions of the chassis to the tower seem reversed from what I would expect.. (I have been reading books on Bonsai today). But the overall scale of this (monolith?device?) in proportion to the girl is perfect.; The basic idea - that it is built upon the chassis of something else is awesome and I think once we work out how to really ground this in the surrounding space and to the ground plane; all of those small adjustments and changes that will be required to the scene will be for the better.; By ground it I mean things like:; Really old remnants of track - or other cars / chassis'. Or, if it was dragged into place, huge chain links and some type of guy wire system built into the surrounding buildings. Or part of a bombed out train station or departure arrival gate. (not literally bombed out, just super old) Or one of those things they put up at the end of the line across the tracks..

Then, imagine time has gone by and people just built around these things - That they could not move. Went on with their lives... Its crazy to think about!

Its like the train chassis (or whatever it ends up looking like ultimately) gives us a strong visual mythology that we can reference throughout the scene... when I saw these frames I simultaneously realized why I was a little unhappy with the way some things had been going - and how we could move forward at the level we expect.

I was disappointed because although we have written a script, boarded out an entire narrative and done reference studies on almost every aspect of the art direction.. It still didn't feel like a 'world' to me. I felt we were still left doing one-off pieces that we were hoping would fall together and become the world.

Now having seen this beast of a clock tower - I have the answers I needed to some of our most difficult questions:

How steampunk are we gonna go?

How are we going to make our largely European influenced city feel integrated into the later scenes which are SO mechanical? Where is the transition? And what is the specific nature of the relationship between the two?

What are we going to do to keep the whole clock in a courtyard thing from looking like a giant set piece?

How are we going to add the needed detail to the city space as a whole to give it an identity apart from any other place?

How are we using all of the weird wires and such / why are they there in the first place?

What happened here - to make this world what it is?

Some thing epic happened here.. and this is what is left.. And that is where our story picks up.

Kick ass work.

Clocktower Screens

2007-07-01T00:49:00.001-07:00

I feel like I've been modeling my arse off and that I still have soo, sooooo, soooooo much more to do on this.

I did take the last three days off of modeling. I've been working from home, which is great in a ton of different way, but it makes getting work done after work that much harder. After sitting at my one desk for ten hours, I really don't want to sit here for another four. I love my desk, and my home, but I need a break from it sometimes. What I need is a decent laptop, so that I can leave this room and spend the evening modeling in the living room. I am accepting donations for the laptop fund. It's currently at $0.00.

So, about the screens.

I'd been unhappy with the legs/feet of the clocktower when I first posted shots of it, so I went in a different direction with it. After looking at a lot of steam engine photographs, I thought it'd be interesting to have the base of this thing be an old, rusty train engine. I'm not even 50% done with the modeling of the train chassis but I'm not sure that I love it. It may not be the right solution for this one piece. I'm gonna spend the rest of the night away from it and see what I think of it tomorrow.

What I'm finding is that not having done proper concept art for the 'tower, modeling is going very slowly. Every piece that I'm building I'm figuring out as I go along and I feel like I'm probably not getting the absolute best results I could ask for. If I don't like the train parts when I look at this tomorrow (and after talking about it with James), I may hit the paper for a while.

Cheers.

Technical issues

2007-06-28T07:59:00.000-07:00

Well I think another technical issue has been fixed. My entire account
was in limbo for a while but things seem to be going smoothy now. Even
mobile blogging and blog via email seem to finally be sorted. This may
seem unrelated, but it will mean more frequent, more consistent posting
on my part.

Background Elements 4

2007-06-28T00:05:00.000-07:00

These two renderings are from alternate angles within the scene. (Not a part of the first shot.) I decided to include them here so we could get a look at the world from their point of view.

Background Elements 3

2007-06-27T23:30:00.001-07:00

This is Frame 139. The camera has just swooped under the walkway (visible at the beginning of the shot) Here the background elements begin to establish our setting, as well as creating an additional layer of visual interest and texture by breaking up the skyline.

This is frame 250. The camera has begun to descend into the town square area and the clock tower begins to take over as the main point of interest.
This is frame 941. The camera has just come around the clock tower and is headed through an open door (not visible in scene). Here the background elements are included to maintain visual and stylistic consistency while enhancing the overall interest and composition. In addition these dark shapes looming ever closer to the viewer enhance the drama and foreshadow things to come.
This is frame 1156. We have just seen our heroine for the first time. In contrast to the preceding frames, here the sky is wide open - allowing the viewer's main focus to be on the mechanical bird as it lands on the building. At this point in the shot the movements of the bird take center stage (quite literally). Background elements here help to enhance the depth of the shot.
This is frame 1271. This is near the end of the shot. What was a sunny and happy town has become somewhat foreboding. Here in the shadows of the buildings and clock tower we begin to sense the smallness of the our heroine.

Background Elements 2

2007-06-27T23:05:00.000-07:00

Here are a few renderings of specific frames from our first scene with some background elements added.

First though, you should know a few things:

(DISCLAIMER)

All (or nearly all) of the models you see here will be reworked significantly. The purpose of this scene in its current state is really to help Barry and I with blocking and general shot composition.

As such everything you see here is only an approximation of the final scene. Modeling, texturing, lighting , etc. All take a great deal of time - So by working loosely at first we can make broad changes that would be difficult further down the production pipeline.

A great example of this can be found in the shadows that you will see in the scene. By working with very simple shapes as stand-ins, we can quickly make adjustments to the angle of the shadows, or their color..Without spending a great deal of time on the task. Although these shapes aren't much to look at, they tell us important things about the nature of the final shot and help us to determine which areas need the most time and detail.

First up is a rendering of the first frame of shot 1 without any of the background elements.

Next is the same frame with some of our newly created background elements in place.
In the next post, I will show a few more key frames with the background elements included.

Background Elements 1

2007-06-27T22:52:00.000-07:00

Well it's been a while since I have posted, and I have some new images to share. These are some early designs for a windmill type device that will serve as one of the props in the background of our first shot. The shot is extremely wide, and covers a very large area, so it is essential to have objects in the background of the scene to help establish mood and scale.

These are very WIP..But I thought they would be fun to share. In an upcoming post you will see these as well as a few other new items that have been created for this purpose in context through a few rough renders of our scene as its stands now.

I Just Posted This...

2007-06-27T18:10:00.001-07:00

...via email.

Now that's pretty damn cool.

New images up tonight.

Cheers.

Been Doing Some Modeling

2007-06-25T02:41:00.000-07:00

I've walked away from the camera, for the time being. Instead I've been working on the clocktower, which is the central feature of the plaza we see in the first shot.

The first two stills are from the active camera view, the third is more of a "money shot" to show off some of the upper parts of the tower. It's still far, far from being finished. I had a couple of concept drawings to work off of, but they were unspecific for some of the features so I spent a fair amount of time trying this & that out as I modeled.

The obvious question is, do the gears work? Uh, yeah, they'll move and all but they won't really "work," so to speak. No gear will actually be driving anything else but they'll all move as if they have real purposes. That's the plan for now, at least.

Tired. Goin' to bed now. More screens in a day or two.

Back On The Horse

2007-06-23T00:10:00.000-07:00

Well, the project's slowly creaking back into motion.

I'm kicking out a playblast in the background as I type this. I'm not using the camera rig that I've been struggling with for the past several weeks. Meh.

Once this playblast is finished, I'll be kicking it over to James and we're going to get started modeling buildings. Ooooooo. I'm excited to be modeling soon. The playblast had to come first, though, so that we'd know exactly what needs modeling and what corners we can cut (literally, in many cases).

I'm not going to post the quicktime that comes out of the playblast, because I just don't like the Google Video embed that happens. It's ugly. Oh well.

And the 'blast is done and I'm outta here for now.

More updates to come.

Broken Cam

2007-06-19T22:45:00.000-07:00

It's no longer being called "TricksyCam." It's now "BrokenCam."

I've not been testing the changes I'm making to the script as throughly as I should've been. Now, several steps on down the path, all sorts of transform controls are conflicting with each other.

The major issue is that the motion path is messing with the pivot points for Roll, Tilt and Pan.
The pivots are staying at 0,0,0 - the place where the camera was created. When the camera's offset by the motion path, the pivots should leave 0,0,0 and go wherever the camera is. Centering the pivots doesn't work/change a thing.

This has to be a problem plenty of other people have dealt with, but it's incredibly frustrating to meet right now, this far into the process.

Ten Days, No Posts

2007-06-18T22:19:00.000-07:00

...sigh...

Have no updates or progress to show for the last little while. Seems like that's the story for a while now but the project is not dead. I repeat: It is not dead.

Just sleeping...

The GUI saga continues

2007-06-08T10:11:00.000-07:00

This week has been just as busy as the last, meaning work on this thing is lots of little fits and starts and very, very little sustained attention. I'm really ready to get this GUI nailed down and move onto the next part of the shot, especially as I did have a little bit of a breakthrough while doing sketches for the central clocktower. Hopefully I'll have the chance to scan my drawings and post them up before too long. I wouldn't call them final concept art or anything, but they've got me excited about the tower. I'd been feeling lost on it for a while now.

As ready as I am to move past the camera GUI, one thing about it is really nice, and it's that I'm taking the time to build this thing correctly, right from the start. One of the difficult things about working in production, on "one-off" sort of spots, is that so many of the elements we build feel like hacks. They're built just for one shot, or to be used at only one angle - fake 3d stuff, for example. These hacks are fine most of the time, but they come back to bite you when the client wants your 2d ribbon, faked to look 3d, to wrap around the star of the show, or push in a completely different direction. Had it been 3d in the first place, no sweat, but it was built in 2d by the designer and used that way in animation.

Often enough to be frustrating, the hacks used because someone felt like there wasn't enough time to do it all-the-way, end up costing the same amount of time on the backend.

All that's a long way of saying that it's fun to put the time into this GUI right at the start and build it a bit more fully than it really needs to be for the shots we have in mind. I'll try to post a new screen of it soon, but this weekend looks very rough in terms of free time.

Too, Too, Too Busy

2007-06-04T23:59:00.001-07:00

Work on this project has nearly, but not entirely, ground to a slow burn. Not to a "halt." I didn't say "halt" and I'm not going to.

I'm still in GUI mode and I'm somewhat embarrassed to show how little progress I've made in the last three days as it only represents about 3 hours worth of work. Nevertheless, I need to stay in the habit of posting here, so here's the updated GUI.

There's what, three extra controls on there?

The Wander on the camera is a really nice effect that I grabbed from Richard Morris over at The Jackal's Forge. He put up a great tutorial on building a very detailed, multi-variable camera shake utility. The Wander I'm using here is actually what he calls "Destabilize." Of the four shaking functions he describes, this is my favorite. It gives the camera a very natural-feeling sway that you don't really notice until you turn it off.

Moving on from here I'm going to add a couple of sliders to control the frequency and intensity of a more traditional "jitter" camera shake. That's not a ton of work, assuming that I can get a block of time to do it in, and from there it's back into the scene proper, using this rig to nail down the camera move.

Cheers.

I'm a Freakin' UI Designer

2007-06-01T10:29:00.001-07:00

This week has not been the most productive week ever, but I did get busy trying to make a good control rig for our camera. It's been pretty fun and my crash course in MEL scripting is just impressing the hell out of me in terms of how usable Maya can be once you put in the time to figure it out.

The above rig is as simple as they get but it does have a check box that suggests that I may, in fact, be awesome. I'd check it.

This GUI and rig are, arguably, overkill for what we need the camera to do in this shot but this is an opportunity for me to learn how to make these things and make them useful. So, some overkill is just fine in the long run. It's all helping me in the end.

Crazy busy weekend coming up, but my goal is to make a much fancier GUI and then move on to dialing in the camera move.

2 Screens

2007-05-28T01:16:00.000-07:00

Getting some work done over the long weekend, blocking in some of the background buildings and finding - then filling - holes in our modeling reference.

Every once in a while I'll fire off a render and have the wrong window active. I did that twice today and I liked the renders enough that I saved them.

There's something about the rendering style that I like in these shots. Granted, neither is anything at all close to how we're finishing the shots but I guess that's why I'm posting them now. If I don't, they'll never see the light of day.

I'll update within a day or two with notes on what's going on in these shots.

Staying Productive

2007-05-24T23:36:00.000-07:00

It's been a quiet few days on the blog front, yet work's been progressing on the first shot. It's been progressing somewhat more slowly, but progressing nevertheless.

As neither James nor I are working on this project full-time (due to those pesky day jobs demanding our attention), what we get done is what we can cram into the few hours between work and sleep and then on the weekends. It's a lot of time, when we're both using it optimally but sometimes optimal just doesn't happen.

Tonight I'd given myself one task only, to tag all of the reference photos we have that relate to the industrial landscape we'll be seeing the background of the first shot. A simple enough task but with this, that and the other thing, it's 10:15pm before I'm even getting started.

But they're tagged now, thanks to Bridge, my favorite application of all time. I Bridge so much, HERE's a link to all of the Adobe Creative Suite Video Podcasts that relate to Bridge. Damn, I can't wait for CS3. But even the CS2 Bridge is brilliant. Live Collections are revolutionizing the way we're collecting photo reference. Because of the Collections and how they're basically just saved searches, I'm totally not sweating having some sort of elaborate, multi-tiered folder structure.

I can imagine trying to organize photos without Bridge and having something that looks like

Exterior > Buildings > Residential > Building Details > Roof > Roof Tiles.

But then a photo that shows some great roof tiles, might also be great reference for wires running between buildings and then a reference for those cool little windows that are up in the peaked roofs of little Euro buildings. Do I have three copies of the photo in three different folders? That's dumb.

With Bridge, the one photo has three tags and it's in all three sets, my Roof Tile set, my Wire set and my Cool Little Window set.

Lovin' it.

City Layout

2007-05-20T00:16:00.001-07:00

I just glanced up and saw the thumbnail of this image and for a second thought it was a spilled bowl of Fruity Pebbles.

Needless to say, this colors here in no way reflect the art direction we're going for. No, what this is, is simply a breakdown of all the visible buildings in the first shot. 53 visible buildings, counting only the garishly colored ones.

That's all for now. Tomorrow or in the next day or two I'll drop in a post about how we wound up with this layout and why we needed to have this reference document.

A Whole Page Worth Of MEL Scripts

2007-05-18T23:43:00.000-07:00

Edvard Toth has a whole slew of MEL scripts, several of which look very, very useful.

A search for "duplicate along curve" is what brought me here. Lord knows why doing this in Maya is a total work-around. I've been using the "animation snapshot" method, one of, I'm sure many ways to do something very simple and basic.

That's one of the quirks of Maya that I'm hitting my head against, having come to it after first learning 3d in Cinema 4d, the lack of nice, pretty buttons and clearly designed dialog boxes. Cinema is very friendly, with lots and lots of surface polish.

Maya, eh, not so much. It's a bit more like the less attractive step-sister who is way smarter and more interesting - not to mention fairly stand-offish. She's the one you want to spend time with in spite of, or maybe because of, the fact that it'll take a lot more effort. You just get the feeling that it'll be worth the investment.

Building lots of buildings

2007-05-17T23:47:00.000-07:00

This first shot is gonna have a fair number of buildings in it.

I'm only about a third of the way through breaking down the scene into discrete units and I'm at 16 buildings that need close-to full modeling. It's no Coruscant, but it's gonna be pretty damned poly-dense.

In order to streamline the actual design & modeling of the buildings, as we have no dedicated concept artist, I started building a couple "schematics" or visual quick-references for how our buildings will look.

These are still very much WIP's but they're the beginning of our town and they've establishing a few rules for how things will fit together.

One of the next steps is for me to start organizing our photo reference library and creating meta data tags for each picture. Bridge is the "asset management" tool we're using and I'm totally a fan. It's turning our huge dump of photos into an easily searchable database of references that should allow us to quickly find modeling and texturing references as we work.

How we're doing it is as follows:
We have a central folder of images, mostly grabbed from Flickr, numbering somewhere in the hundreds and growing every day. This folder has plenty of sub-folders and the photos are all accurately named. For a while I thought that would be enough, but that's not turning out to be the case.
So what's happening now is that all new photos and, slowly, all our older photos are getting meta data tags, examples being "window shutter," "cobblestone," and "drainpipe." The really brilliant thing with Bridge is that it allows you to create live sets, like iPhotos Smart Sets, that are dynamically created every time you access them. What that means is that when it's time for me or James to model some window shutters, all we need to do is click on the live set labeled "Window Shutters" and every photo we have that's appropriately tagged will be referenced in that set.
Eventually we'll have live sets for every aspect of our models and textures right at our fingertips.

The most recent version of the reference folder lives on my iPod and I sync it to both my work and home computers a couple times each week, so that we've got copies. It's not failsafe, but it's better than nothing.

2 more MEL scripts

2007-05-14T16:42:00.000-07:00

The first is a camera shake expression, haven't used it yet, but I didn't want to forget about it.

2nd is a way old (2002, before I even knew what Maya was) script called GI_Joe, which may be somewhat obsolete these days but it creates a light dome for faking GI.

Wow

2007-05-13T13:31:00.000-07:00

We covered a lot of ground this weekend! ... more to follow.