Demo Reel

So, I've been fairly productive today, but it has not been animating Axis Mundi. I've decided that I'm going to need a demo reel of the best video work I can muster. I need a demo reel for two reasons. One is because I am going to try to get a digital media job for the summer. The other reason is a similar opportunity. Technically it conflicts with the aforementioned job that I'm looking to do. It's an animation internship at a company where I might want to work someday. It could be a bit of a long-shot, but I'm still going to apply and so I'll need a demo reel for that. So that's what I've been doing today. Getting together some of my past creations and putting some extra shine on them to stick them in my demo reel. Mainly I've been working on getting a pristine 360 degree rendered animation of the Pagani Zonda model that I made... more than a year ago? Hard to believe that it has been that long. Anyways, yeah. That's what I've been doing.

A scene from The Battle for Axis Mundi

So... I decided that I would upload something kind of out of the ordinary for me. It is a preview of a scene from The Battle for Axis Mundi. I don't generally like to upload "previews" of my stuff before it is done, but I felt like I should make an exception in this case. Firstly, because this preview is not using footage from the actual film. Secondly, because it has been so darn long since I started this thing, I feel like people should get to see some indication of what is in the works. The animatic takes place about 4 minutes and 30 seconds into the film. That's how long it is right now. So basically over the next few weeks I will be working on making the very scene that you see in this video. But in RCT3 with fully animated 3D characters. So go ahead and take a look at what I am talking about, and then I'll give you some more tidbits:

So yeah. Kinda basic, but you get the idea of stuff happening. You also may recognize my slightly Derpy drawings as the Warrior of Light. You also may see a creepy spiky dude that you have never seen or heard of before. I guess I am kind of revealing him here. Oh well. I don't think that it matters that much that it stay a secret. Since I have shown you a 3D model of the Warrior of Light, I might as well show you a picture of what this bad guy, who's name happens to be "Evil," looks like in the game:

Now you are officially kinda-half spoiled. But not really. Because the point of this film is the animation. And I haven't made anything close to these animations before. So hopefully you don't feel too spoiled. Given that this is the biggest update for Axis Mundi so far, I kind of feel a little let down. I was expecting to be like OOHHHH YEAAAHHHH CHECK IT OUT ITS AN ACTUAL VIDEO ABOUT THE BATTLE FOR AXIS MUNDI WOOP WOOP!!!1!!1!!

Maybe I'll feel a little more excited once you guys start talking about it. Wink wink nudge nudge.

Alignment Issues

Over the past week I've gotten 100 frames of animation done, imported, and filmed in RCT3, and about 100 more animated only. The second 100 frames are proving difficult to import, because there are two different rigs interacting with each other. In theory, this shouldn't be a problem, because I have technically done the same thing in an older shot. When I did it before, though, there was one complex armature and one armature with only one bone. Right now I am trying to import two complex armatures. They don't want to import in the same scenery file, so I have tried separating them, but there are major alignment issues that I have yet to fix. As I write this post, I think I recall that when I animated interaction between two models before, I imported them separately as well. So I should probably focus my efforts on correcting the alignment problems, instead of trying to get both animations to import in the same scenery file.

Yay 3D

So just now I actually made something in 3D! Yay! I love 3D! I should do this productivity thing more often. So anyways, it wasn't animation, but the start of another model. I know that I started another model around this time last year, and I only just finished it to the point where it can become a part of the film a few months ago, but I'm really thinking I'm not going to put as much time into this. In fact, I might even say that I am completely finished modelling it. Yes! I am completely finished modelling it. No if, ands, or buts about it. I will now simply texture it, import it, and film it! And there will be PROGRESS!!! MUAHAHAHAHAA!!!!!!

Logo Animation

I did another one of those one-day video projects. Last night I modeled and animated this video. It's a pretty awesome feeling sitting in class, knowing that during all the time you spend studying, something nice and shiny is being rendered for you back in the dorm. Anyways, the video features the logo for the "Edge Club," at ETSU. The Edge Club is basically where all the Digital Media people get together and have discussions about Digital Media awesomeness. The logo that they have for the club is this alien spaceship type thing, so I made it fly around and come to a rest in the logo. I used Blender for the video, of course, and Mixcraft to make the music.

Oh, and there's more info about the edge club here.

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.

Complete Success

I totally just imported the model into RCT3. And it worked freaking perfectly. I am happy.

I know it must have been strange reading my posts. Since I have not given much away about this model, you've had to go on basically nothing. Sorry about that.

Anyways, it is now fully imported! All my test animations work perfectly. I just have to texture it and it will be complete. I love conquering stuff. Or rather.... I like at the end when you get to step on the back of your foe's head, smashing his face into the dirt, as you strike a badass pose and gloat about how great you are and how much he sucks.

Nope wasn't the X-mirror

I am so confused. Every time I think I've figured out what is causing the problem, it does something I was not expecting. The X-mirror thing was not accurate at all. The best guess I can come up with now is that its something about the way that the bone weights overlap. But its difficult to figure out exactly what the "rule," is, so to speak. At one point I thought that it was "Only adjacent bones can have common weight." But that's not what causes it alone; I did a test model of a segmented rectangular prism where weights from a grandchild bone overlapped with weights from the grandparent. It imported fine. I really hope that soon everything will become clear.

That blasted X-mirror

Today I worked on the re-weight painting as much as I could. At first it was working. I was periodically checking if it was importing as I went, and it was going ok, until one time after I painted close to the middle of the mesh, and then imported to test it. Then the old error showed up. I'm thinking that it must have to do with the X-mirror option in the weight painting. I might try just painting one side, then using that script that I actually thought was the culprit of the problem at one point to mirror it all at once. Ironic that it might be what turns out to be what saves the day.

The Wrong Solution, and Pure Awesomeness

Today I started classes. This semester is mainly General Education, but I do have one Digital Media class. And that was the first class I took today. And. It. Was. Awesome. The entire class was Pure Awesomeness.

In Axis Mundi news, I have about half of the vertex groups in my armature on a "White List." This means that they will not cause a failure in the importer. Then there are 2 vertex groups that I have on a "Black List." This means that if they are imported they will most certainly cause a failure in the importer. I have not classified the remaining bones. The good news - in fact very good news - is that when I clear the weight painting on a Black Listed vertex group, and then re-weight it, it imports correctly. This means that I've pretty much figured out how to fix everything and make it import properly.

I thought I had also figured out something even more elusive about this whole importing fiasco; the cause of the issue. Sometimes the cause of a computer issue is significantly more difficult to determine than the solution. In this case, I thought I had found the solution AND the cause of the problem, however during the course of writing this blog post I tried to verify my hypothesis and I got results that I did not expect. However, I think it is still worth including what I was thinking up until just a few minutes ago. The text in italics is what I wrote when I thought I knew what caused the problem. It still contains true statements that are relevant to Blender and describes what did in fact happen, it's just that the conclusion of the sequence of events is not actually what caused the importing error.

I'm pretty sure that the cause of the importer's problems with the vertex groups can be described by the conclusion of this sequence of events: At one point during my weight painting I accidentally painted without having X-mirror enabled. (This wasn't my fault, by the way, in Blender 2.48a the X-mirror option does not stay turned on between sessions. That's one of the very rare times I've thought something in the Blender interface is completely nonsensical.) I then proceeded to weight paint one side of the mesh for a while, without realizing that the painting was not automatically being done to the other side. Once I had completed a not inconsiderable amount of work, I realized the mistake that had been made. Of course I didn't want to have to do the same work over again for the other side of the mesh, so... (and here's the punchline).... I used a script that copied the weight from one side of the mesh to the other. More specifically, the script "Mirror Vertex Locations & Weight." I've never used it before, and while it was helpful, that's probably what caused the error in the importer.

So anyways, all this post really amounts to is me talking about a whole bunch of technical Blender stuff because going to my Digital Media class has gotten me more excited than usual about all things 3D, Blender, and Computer-y.

AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH DigitalMediaexcitedblendidhfilmovifajsdfhaklehf.

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I probably need to calm down before I develop an aneurysm.

Even Closer

Today I successfully imported many of the vertex groups for the model. That means that some parts were deformed by the animation, and some weren't. I'm going to slowly add groups until I find the one (or ones) that are causing the problem. This post is very good news, because it means that there's nothing wrong with a good number of the weight painting that I did. So I can at least keep about half of my weight painting at this point. I'm hoping I'll just narrow it down further and further until there's only a couple of vertex groups left, and those will be the ones that are causing problems and have to be re-done. And then it's on to texturing!!!!

3/4 of the way there

So today I managed to get the Mesh, and all 64 bones (that's right, I said 64) of the Armature to import correctly into RCT3. But there is a catch. The importer will only accept the armature if I delete all of the vertex groups that correspond to all of my tedious weight painting. So, the model imports, but it is not properly deformed even though the armature is imported with it. The suspicions that I had a few posts ago have now been pretty much completely confirmed; it's the vertex groups. Now I just need to figure out what the heck is wrong with them.

Halfway there

Good news. I've successfully imported the mesh of the model that I am still not revealing. But only the mesh. I had to take off the armature, and replace it with one that was different. Why that should make any difference at all is very strange to me. But it supports my theory that whatever is wrong has to do with the vertex groups.

Call me Michelangelo

So I continued weight painting today. I am at the point where I realize there is no more to do technically (Every bone in the armature will deform the mesh pretty much correctly) but for some reason It doesn't feel like it should be done. I guess I will just keep posing it until I am satisfied that no more adjustments need to be made. And I probably should import it into RCT3 for goodness sakes. I keep saying I'm going to do that but for one reason or another it never happens.

Painting, and a commitment

I hit the weight painting really hard today. Only about halfway done, but I'm doing it completely manually instead of creating the vertex groups from the bone heat of the armature. It's a fun challenge at the current resolution, but any more vertices and I'd be very frustrated. I'm glad I never spent this much time trying to weight paint the subdivided mesh.

I generally try not to make any promises when it comes to my filming schedule. However, I believe that most things in life are a balance. And I don't think that making promises about my filming schedule is an exemption to this rule of thumb. So, although I will not be stating anything having to do with specific dates, I think it would be good for me to announce that I will not be taking any breaks in work for the foreseeable future. I will not spend a day getting distracted by Minecraft. I will not spend a day benchmarking Crysis. I will not spend a day owning people in Modern Warfare 2 Multiplayer. I will not spend weeks taking a break from production to do "mental production." My work is engaging, has clear direction, and there is NO JUSTIFIABLE REASON (that's in caps to help me remember, btw) for me to not be working every chance I get. This is not me stressing myself. This has nothing to do with when I finish The Battle for Axis Mundi. But it's the season for work. And my work is pretty darn fun, so there's no reason I shouldn't be working.

Should've done that earlier

So I finally did what I said that I would do a few posts ago. I tried to import the model into RCT3. Unfortunately, I ran into a snag. It looks like the RCT3 Importer doesn't like how detailed my model is. It doesn't give me any error messages, it just appears to begin loading the .modxml, deliberates for a good while, then hits me with a classic "ping!" with no accompanying message. I am guessing that it is just too big. So I'm thinking I'll just have to go with the base mesh that I modeled, instead of the subdivided one. Like I said, I think RCT3 would be able to handle the subdivided mesh, but I didn't think about the fact that it might not be able to get through the importer. That's OK, though, because I was starting to get a little overwhelmed with the weight painting of the hi-poly model. Hopefully I'll have an easier time with the lower poly version.

Rigging

Today I got into the meat and potatoes of rigging, i.e. weight painting. It's a lot more time consuming painting this model than with the Warrior of Light, because it has so many more vertices. But I really like how it is looking so far. I can't wait to get it fully rigged and textured; I think that there's a lot of creative stuff that can be done with the animation of this model.

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.

Modelling Minutiae

I still haven't gotten the model imported into RCT3 to test it. I kept finding little things I wanted to perfect and that took up all my time. Not a bad problem to have if you ask me, because it ended up in me improving the model.

Oh, and for some reason I'm compelled to vocalize my gratitude for my awesome chiclet keyboard and laser mouse that I am using to create this blog post. I am blessed with stuff that I totally don't deserve for reasons that I don't understand.

Mysterious Silhouette

Got to model some more today. I'm going to import what I have so far into RCT3 so that I can get a feel for what it looks like in the game engine. After I rig it, that is. I haven't textured yet; I want to make sure I like how the mesh deforms before I go to a bunch of trouble getting the UV mapping just right.

And now you get to see a small preview of this model that I have been working on for all this time:

Yeah, I know, you can hardly see anything at all, but I still don't want to give away the best parts of the film before it's done. I would suggest clicking on the image to view it in fullscreen. You should be able to make out more of the mysterious silhouette that way. Hope you like it!