Lighting Test

Lodge interior with all the major props. Now to fill it with miscellaneous junk like a real ski bum bar would have! Just testing how the lights will work with the windows/chandelier. 

 

September Progress

Update way overdue.

Since last check in, I was able to troubleshoot all the problems I was having with my facial rig (big thanks to Ben Fox - rigging guru and CADA alum - for that). After make some adjustments to the Morpheus body rig, the head is attached and I’ve been able to use it to block out my animation without any issues! There are still a few adjustments to be made, particularly with fixing weights on Murphy’s jacket and smoothing out some of the geometry on the blendshapes. But overall I am really happy with his appearance and what I am able to do with him.

My thesis advisor is meeting with me next week. He watched my animatic and was able to give me great feedback about shots and camera work, as well as the story. I have now added a skiing montage and edited other shots to keep the length down and the animation manageable. I also had a Skype date with my matte painter to discuss the different backgrounds I need for compositing in each shot. Can’t wait to see what she comes up with!

Modeling is going great. The biggest component left is the skis and some more furniture in the lodge, but here is what the lodge interior is looking like thus far:

Cheers!

Pose Test

Nearly done with the head rig, but having immense problems dealing with the bottom teeth and getting them to follow the blendshapes. Might just leave them and the tongue out altogether.

Here's a quick look at what the rig is letting me do with Murphy's facial features :)

July Progress

Made okay progress this month, considering I had significantly less time to devote to the project than I originally planned when I made the gantt chart. I estimate that I am about 2 weeks off schedule, which I hope to make up when my internship wraps up in a few weeks.

I wanted the rig finalized and animation ready by August 1^st. Right now I would say it is 60% done; yesterday I skinned the head and built controls for the head, ears, and tongue. I’m really happy with the outcome. The next step is blendshapes, then attaching the head to the body which I hope will not pose any major problems.

Also really happy with the chandelier model I finished. Hoping that what is left of the modeling isn’t too time consuming because the complex stuff is mostly built out of antlers, which are already done (might model one or two more for variety). Also had great success building a mounted deer head, bar counter, and bar stools.

Still straddling modeling and animation and the clock is ticking to make a commitment and finalize the shots/block. Leaning more towards modeling still. This is also top priority along so that I can get one or two people working on the soundtrack for me.

I’ve brought CADA alum Olga Mayer on board to create a mountain matte painting, which I’m really excited about. She’s awesomely talented and I’m looking forward to seeing some of her concepts this week. More to follow soon!

Character Progress

Over the weekend I went to work modeling Murphy some mittens to replace the human hands on the Morpheus rig. I was pleasantly surprised by how simple it was to substitute my geometry in place of the rig hands; hopefully this bodes well for attaching my custom head when I have it set up. There was a little trial and error involved, but not much. Mostly me forgetting to delete the history on objects which messes up the constraints. I also modeled the mitten cuffs separately and applied them to the body geometry as wrap deformers. Also easy. Will probably need to go in and clean up by repainting some weights, but nothing drastic - always good as far as time budgeting goes.

Today I refined the jacket model I started and added some zippers. It's not officially skinned to the body yet, but here's a sneak peek of how Murphy's looking so far! I think his head is a little too big at the moment, but the antlers are pretty much to scale.

Modeling begins!

Thesis Pre-Production and Character Animation wrapped up a few weeks ago, which means classes are over and Thesis Production begins. Phase 1 is to model, texture, and rig Murphy's character, which includes finishing my ski boots, making alterations to the Morpheus rig geometry, and creating his head. Hopefully everything about his head mesh will go smoothly and I won't have too much troubleshooting to do with parenting the rig to Morpheus.

Modeling progress thus far:

Really happy with the result. I already laid out the UVs on him as well, so Step 2 will be doing some light texturing work using zBrush for displacement maps and Photoshop. The eye rig is complete on this; it has local and world settings, plus some blend shapes. A basic face rig is next, then skin weights and more blend shapes to really give him some expression. :)

Yesterday I played with some procedural textures so his tongue is bumpy. This image uses default Maya lighting, but with proper lighting I'm hoping it will be easier to see the subtle bump map that's on his antlers as well.

Blocked!

(That's a good thing.)

Follow the vimeo link below to watch Murphy's story unfold in 3D blocking. There are some rough ideas for sound effects thrown in as well, so turn up the volume!

Apres Ski: 3D Animatic

I'm really happy with the way the dolly zoom shots turned out, although I might make the last one longer. I'm also getting a better feel for shot duration in terms of frames, which is tricky. After completing this pass, I know that I need to make the mountain/clock overlay shot last longer on screen (with more goofy sound effects, of course.)

Speaking of Goofy, here is one of the videos that inspired Murphy to try skiing (with similar results):

Short Cuts

In the interests of time and focusing on skill sets (1. modeling and 2. animation) I have decided not to fully rig Murphy the Moose. Instead, I am going to model and rig Murphy's head, then parent it to Josh Burton's Morpheus 1.0 rig. Coincidentally, Josh decided to allow Morpheus to be used for commercial projects only last month, so that works out well. This will also make my animatic blocking more fun / interesting, since I can use the rig in there to set some key poses. I did a quick block of Murphy's head and parented it to Morphy's neck, and also parented an unfinished version of my ski boot to both feet. I will need to model some mittens for Murphy as well so you won't see Morphy's fingers. Murphy is humanoid like Bullwinkle, but I don't what him having realistic human hands. Below is a quick render of the blocked rig:


I'm making some changes to the opening shots because I don't think the edits were reading too well. Will post an updated animatic with more blocks this weekend!

Color Palettes and Design

With my rough pass of shots being done, I spent some time fleshing out color palettes and style ideas. While the palettes never changed much from my original vision, I abandoned the idea of a sort of Nordic/Scandinavian design early on in favor of a retro ski poster style. This influenced my palettes insomuch that I am going for tonal values that match those seen in old VistaVision technicolor. I'm referencing "White Christmas" (1954) especially, since it takes place at an old Vermont ski lodge. See my palettes and images below:

Introduction

This blog is going to be a space for me to share my pre-production process and production progress as I inch closer to completing my graduate thesis at NYU in December 2012. Here's hoping it will be a good ride!

A little about the development of "Apres Ski":

Because of my screenwriting background, I was really committed from the outset to doing a short film for my thesis. Having been part time throughout my studies at CADA, I also witnessed the evolution of a lot of ambitious thesis ideas, so I knew I needed to establish a few basic criteria for myself. Namely, a simple story featuring one character, in a setting that was relatively easy to create, with a good punchline at the end. I made a basic list of sparse environments that would not involve too many simulations (i.e. water): desert, ice, etc. Ice was interesting because it led me to the idea of a ski slope, which is an environment I'm very familiar with being both a skier and snowboarder. Its also an environment that I haven't seen explored in mainstream animation films. "Happy Feet" and "Ice Age" have done ice environments, and "Polar Express" and other holiday films have done the North Pole. But nothing with a ski resort. As someone who main strength is modeling, I also liked this idea because it is a setting that features mechanical and organic elements in equal parts.

My original concept, then, was to model a character (Murphy, seen above) and put him in this environment as someone who is trying to learn to ski. It seemed lots of fun from an animation perspective, and I envisioned a sort of Chuck Jones "Wile E. Coyote" style animation for him as he crashed into trees, snowballed down the hill, etc. In thinking of the punchline, I thought a lot about the diverse styles of ski lodges I had visited. Deer Valley, Utah leaped out in particular, because all of its properties are very opulent compared to smaller adirondack resorts, and they incorporated a lot of antlers into their decor. So while it celebrates deer in a way, from the deer's perspective it would be an absolute nightmare. So for Murphy, "Mont Moose" resort would sound like a paradise, but the punchline after his distasterous run would be discovering the inside of the lodge to be more like a personal torture chamber, culminating in a stuffed mounted moose head on the wall.

My biggest concern with all of this was (and to some extent, it still is) how to design the story to showcase my modeling skills as opposed to animation. Its easier to tell a linear story with animation than it is with just modeling, but I didn't want to animate a camera and just move it through an environment. (I considered just building the lodge interior and maybe having some taxidermy that would talk, like the bass fish gag, but I didn't want to give up Murphy.) I talked some of this out with advisors who pointed out that in my pitch, most of the action took place on the mountain and not in the lodge, where most of the modeling needs to be done. So I started hashing out ways to spend more time with the lodge. My current solution is to have lots of close up shots of Murphy donning some of his equipment, and when he enters the lodge, to have lots of close ups from Murphy's POV of all the terrifying antler and moose paraphenalia - ending of course with the head mounted on the wall.

If I have time, I would like to show Murphy getting on the chair lift first, starting down the hill and making a wrong turn onto an expert only -- "Double Diamond" -- trail. The next shot after he goes over the edge will have him entering the lodge in a leg cast and bandages, so I've edited out all the elaborate ski animation. I feel this plan affords me a little bit of flexibility depending on how well I can get all of my components modeled in my schedule.

First Animatic

The following is a link to my first draft of the animatic for "Apres Ski." I will gradually be substituting the photoshop panels with 3D blocks and cameras in Maya.

The snowflakes seen throughout are a proof of concept pass on instanced particles.

Apres Ski: Animatic from Jess Bennett on Vimeo.