Animation Weekend

I managed to make 240 frames of animation this weekend. Exciting times! Maybe the film will start really moving along now. And as far as the texturing goes, I am getting used to the way that it looks, and I actually think it is quite close to what I had imagined it would look like in it's final form. By the time that I finish animating this shot and film it in RCT3, I probably will not have any doubts about using it as the final texture. Sometimes I'm not sure whether it is good or bad when that happens. By "that," I mean the phenomenon where I make something, don't really like it, but I don't change it for a long time, (possibly because I can't [like this instance]) and then later on I decide to keep it that way just because I have gotten used to it. In the worse case scenario, that would be blinding myself to how cruddy a portion of work is, and in the best case, it doesn't really matter and by letting go of my perfectionism I save time. I hope this instance is the second one.

Tweaked Out

Well, I may have alluded to being close to finished before, but now it is official. I am finished modelling the model I was modelling. Now I am going to import it into RCT3 to make sure it will work. It has a lot more vertices than the Warrior of Light model. That model has 306 vertices. The model that I just finished has 8,333 vertices before subdivision, (that means 8,333 is the number of vertices that I worked with by hand) and after one subdivision (to make it look a little smoother) it has 33, 679 vertices. Using those numbers, the new model has 110 times more detail than the Warrior of Light model. That shouldn't be a problem for the RCT3 engine to handle, because I have done crazy experiments before where I have hundreds of the same Warrior of Light animation going at the same time. It does lag a little bit, but nothing that would crash the game.

Here's an interesting tidbit: at one point I was considering doing two subdivisions on the model instead of just one. That would give the model 134,341 vertices, which is 439 times more detail than the Warrior of Light model. I don't think I've ever successfully had that many WOL models in one park before (although I haven't tried), so I decided to step it back a notch for performance sake. And honestly, when it comes to sub-surfacing, there are rapidly decreasing returns for each successive division, so even if it would run in RCT3, it's a little silly to have so many vertices define such a simple shape.

So yeah. Done with the thing I started modelling ages ago. November 2010... was it? ...Nope, just checked and it was..... 0_o....... October 2010!

That's right, the model that I just finished is the model that I first mentioned in this post.

Man am I ever dragging this film out.

Tongue Twister Tues.... Aw crap, it's Wendsday

I didn't get to do that shot yesterday. So that's what I did today. I did the shot that I said I'd have done by yesterday, today.

Try saying that 5 times fast, haha.

That's pretty much it... I can't give many details about the shot, except that it was pretty short, and required impeccable synchronization between Animated CSOs, and the fireworks mixmaster. We're talking an acceptable margin of error of 1 frame. And I got it in 2 tries. BOO. YA.

Post 2 of March Madness, COMPLETED!

March Madness

Well, it's that time of year again, whether I am prepared for it or not. That's right! It's time for....... MARCH MADNESS!!!! It's time for me to make a crazy amount of posts in one month! I have a feeling that I will break last year's record, considering how I am starting at the very beginning of the month this time. It may very well also help me make faster than normal progress on Axis Mundi, since I am having to post so much! I know it has made a difference today, because I got back to work today because it was the beginning of March Madness!

So, about said progress; as of the writing of this post I have finished one new (animated) shot today. I will probably get another one done tonight, though. Also, the last time I gave a length of time for the film was a while ago, so here's a new one: 4 minutes and 16 seconds.

That's about 36 seconds of new footage from when I made this post, which was the last shot that I did before I stopped filming to do Research and Development on the Animated CSO aspect of the production. So you could say that I have done 36 seconds since January 15th, which is pretty much when I was able to start animating.

Small Progress

I've been making small progress on The Battle for Axis Mundi over the past few days. It's really only a couple seconds in the edited film. I only did one shot today.... but it did take 12 tries to get the timing right. And of course I had to make the animation and particle effects to film in the first place. I guess that one shot per day is starting to be a typical workday for this film.

Excited

Today I got to polish off those 200 frames of animation I was talking about, and I imported them into RCT3 and filmed them. And.... oh man this film is gonna be awesome. I can't help but be excited at this point in the production. I guess that it's normal to be excited when everything is starting to come together.

First Animated Scene

The past few days have been exciting because I have been doing the first animated scene in The Battle for Axis Mundi. The animation isn't too complicated for this particular scene, which is definitely a good thing as I am still learning the ropes of animation itself.

Although I have been getting some work done, some days are hampered a bit by me endlessly trawling through the sea of TV Tropes. If you don't know what TV Tropes is, then you should find out. It's Crazy Awesome.

Tweaking Animation

It's been a while since my last post because I've had a lot going on with Thanksgiving and various other family activities, but I have been able to successfully import my WOL animations into RCT3. The weight painting worked well in blender and transferred to RCT3 fairly seamlessly. At the moment there are still a few bugs to be ironed out, and there are also my other assets that I am still modeling, so I'm not quite ready to start filming yet. I am also not going to show any character animations because I don't want to spoil how it looks. I'd rather you see the characters in action for the first time in the film. However, since I am confident that the character animation thing will work out, I have decided to make this little teaser:

As always, once I make more progress, I'll post here about it. Sorry if it seems like this project is dragging a lot, but sometimes you just have to wait so that the technology can catch up with your artistic vision. Hopefully after all of this research and development, I can produce something amazing.

Texturing Completed

Woo! The rest of the texturing went by at warp-speed! And I couldn't be happier with how it turned out!

Prepare for awesomeness in 3... 2... 1 AWESOMENESS:

It look so close to the original! I am extremely pleased. Now I just need to finish my other ...secret... assets, and I can start animating some action scenes!!! Yaaaaaaaayyyy!

Completion of the Upper Body

So it turns out that I was a lot closer to finishing the arms than I thought. Now The Warrior of Light's upper body is completely textured. Check it out!

Here's a look at the UV map:

Like I mentioned in my previous post, it's kinda like patchwork. And allow me to take a moment to emphasize the WORK in patchwork. This was definitely a challenge for me, because I had never done any UV mapping before this. There was a lot of editing in Photoshop, then looking back in Blender then editing in Photoshop then.... You kinda get the picture. Anyway, hopefully I'll get better at it and the whole process will speed up a bit.

Blender/Axis Mundi Update

So I got bored enough with making my new model that I started texturing the Warrior of Light again. It is slow going right now, because I am doing the most difficult part of his upper body: his arms. Since his arms are the least flat part of him, it is harder to take a picture and just use it without any editing. It was easier with the chest, for example, because the chest is relatively flat. Another thing that makes the arms more difficult is that they are the least cleanly unwrapped part of my UV texture. This also stems from them being less flat.

As for the fore mentioned "new model," I am still not ready to fully disclose my progress so far. I'm debating on whether or not I should keep it a secret until the final release.

More Blender stuff

I've been working in blender some more, creating assets that I'll use in The Battle for Axis Mundi. I don't feel like giving away everything as I make it, so I'm not going to post pictures of any of these models. Just thought I'd let you know that I was making something. As far as the Warrior of Light goes, I'll work on him some more when these new models start to become boring to work on. But for now, since I've got something new to work on, the newer models are more exciting.

Texturing

I made a little bit of progress texturing the warrior of light today. I'd say I'm almost halfway finished with his shirt; I got his back and the sides of his chest done. Now I need to do his sleeves.

I don't want to over do it with the screenshots, so just picture it in your head.

Texturing

I've started to texture the model. It's definitely a learning experience for me, because I really haven't done texturing as serious as this before. Not that this is anything close to professional. It's just more complex than what I've done previously.

Here's a screenshot from blender:

There are still a few kinks to work out with the bit that you see here. This process is going to involve a lot of tweaking.

Oh, and yesterday when I said that it was the last day that they were accepting entries for the SCAD contest, I meant today.

Another update bites the dust.

Latest Model Update

Good news! The importation of the Warrior of Light model into RCT3 has been an absolutely smashing success!! I would say that the model is 90% accurate to the original. In most shots, the peep looks identical to it's CSO doppelganger:

It is only in shots where the two are juxtaposed that you can see any real differences:

This means that I should be able to switch the "stunt double" for the actual peep, and you really shouldn't notice a difference.

Another great thing is that UV mapping works properly. In order to test UV mapping compatibility in RCT3 without going to the trouble of actually texturing the model how it is supposed to be, I rendered an Ambient Occlusion pass to a UV image of the model's unwrapped mesh. I then used that texture as the model texture. This meant that if the model looked like AO was applied to it in RCT3, then UV mapping works. If the texture looked like a garbled mess, that would mean that UV mapping wouldn't work. 

As it turns out the texture mapped properly. As you can see, there are indirect shadows on the model below, which was rendered in RCT3. Notice the area on his forehead behind the right eyebrow. See how it is dark right behind his eyebrow, and gets lighter farther away? This is the effect that Ambient Occlusion has when rendering. Since the UV texture was mapped properly, these "indirect shadows" show up in the correct places.

As for the SCAD Film Festival: today is the last day that people can submit their films. Then on the 15th the winners will be notified and the online voting for the "viewers choice" will begin.  So......... yeah. Still waiting.

That's all for this update.

Warrior of Light Model

Right now I am smack dab in the middle of waiting for my submission to the SCAD film festival to be judged. In the meantime, I have been making a model of the Warrior of Light, for me to animate and import into RCT3. This of course will be used in The Battle for Axis Mundi.

Here's a screenshot from Blender and a screenshot from RCT3 in a side by side comparison:

Pretty close, eh? I modelled it by hand, based off of reference images that I took in RCT3. So far I have only completed the head, but once the entire thing is finished, I'll be able to import it back into RCT3. It should look exactly the same as the original peep, but since I can animate it, it will be able to kick bad-guy-butt in a spectacular, cinematic fashion.

Chunk

I got to spend a good chunk of time on Axis Mundi today. About 4 productive hours. I bagged a few shots and recorded some dialogue. So it was pretty good.

Yep.

Some Axis Mundi Progress

I've managed to get a shot filmed for The Battle for Axis Mundi today. Yes, just one. If you recall, my mantra is "You can't rush art." That's definitley still going to apply, but I might be able to get on a more regular filming schedule in the coming months. So just keep waiting as usual.

I do have a few random screen shots from filming today. They are just screenshots of the greenscreen set. There's no way that you will be able to tell what the actual shot looks like from these.

I hope that you guys haven't lost your patience yet on this one. Enjoy the random, meaningless, pictures!

Return of the Filmmaker

Hey everyone! After 5 long weeks away, I am finally back, and I've started working on The Battle For Axis Mundi again. It's nice to start fresh after a long break, actually. It's helped me to cut some garbage out that was dragging the film down. Now that it's sleeker, I'll be able to stuff more action into the middle.

So yeah, I'm back. Hooah.

Little by little

I managed to do one line of voice work for Axis Mundi today. I also was figuring out how I wanted the edit to go. It wasn't very much progress, but at least I got to work a little bit on it.

Also, I have recently discovered some really great tutorials for FL studio (the ones that are made by NFX of www.warbeats.com), that do a great job of explaining the basic elements of music. Since Mixcraft is a DAW just like FL Studio, I have been able to apply the principles from the NFX tutorials to my own music in Mixcraft. I wish that I had found his tutorials earlier, because they have helped me get much more natural sounding music. The result of this is that I have been able to make a really nice sounding song for my Mom, for Mother's day. I guess it's a good thing that she doesn't read my blog, hehe.