Pushing on... - 31/03/2016

With my first major scene, textured and mostly animated along with the drone, I decided to continue with animation where parts were missing. Ofcourse that meant the shots after the spinning vault. My story had some additions at this stage as I thought the drones/midwives could be introduced earlier on  so that they have a bigger presence and importance in the film, rather than a stuck on after thought.

I thought the midwife drones could pull off the pipes on the chamber pod, where then the door opens and the audience is lead inside to where the car is placed and the ritual is taking place.

I had real trouble animating inside the Maya scene where all the action takes place, in the first scene. The animation was really laggy inside the scene and I could not animate in it whatsoever. I had to export the parts out to a separate maya file that I needed to animate, and do the animation in an individual maya file. Some of my animation tests for the missing shots are below. I decided my shots and made my animation at this stage. I play blasted them and put the playblasts together to see how the animation as a whole would look.

Once these animations have been perfected, I will bake the animation and then export the file as an fbx and then import it back with the cameras into the main Maya scene. Whether this works, I shall see.

I pressed on with the second Maya scene present in the film, which is when the audience is led into the chamber. On the other side you are welcomed to a tower. I initially thought of some sort of Bench in which the car would be encaged as shown below:

Instead, I thought to place the car on an electrical tower which the camera would follow.



Above is the tower, the car will be placed on. I also used the steel material here to keep the assets looking consistent and also, the material just made sense. I want the core of the tower the shutter off electrical sparks as the camera spins up towards the top of the tower.

Texturing Continued, Ncloth simulations, Render Testing... - 15/03/2016

My next step was to get the flags perfect texture wise. I had lost the animation on the flags which was a huge pain as getting the cloth to behave how I wanted was a big trial and error run. I had to play with the dynamics of the cloth, and the wind and field force along with the mass, drag and lift of the cloth. I had to also set the world space of the nucleus to 0.1 which was accurate to the space in the environment, setting the gravity of that "world".

To texture the flags I had a look at masonic flags and satches that members might wear during rituals.

    Reference: www.mckim.nescotland.co.uk



Having a look through the types of flags, it became evident to me that I needed to make the flag quite vulgar and almost have some sort of symbolism on there. I wanted to stick with the gold/purple/black theme and so my result and renders in Vray are shown below:



Some of my renders and some render test are shown below:





By this point, I had also Uvd and textured the hinges aswell, applying appropriate materials.



I found that my renders came out a little noisy in areas where there might be loss of reflection. I had to render and re-render in attempts to get the noise to lessen.



I used a glass material in Vray for the pipe holder.







I had managed to get quite a bit of the noise dow by using some of the settings in the Vray quick settings tab.

Before I did, my renders looked like this. (Shown below)





After having done some render tests, I attempted to get the ncloth simulation back on to the textured flags. After many many, test, I have still been unsuccessful in getting the simulation I need. I found that I would get a nice, smooth flow, and then all of a sudden the flags will jitter and jump.

Some short playblasts of my animation tests are shown below:

No matter what I tried, the cloth simulation just does not co-operate with me and how I want it to move. This is a working progress, as I feel I will have to continue working on it to get it just perfect.

Texturing Continued... - 08/03/2016

I had begun with applying a chrome material to the chamber pod to begin with but quickly found that although it fitted in well in the environment, it was not particularly fitting well with the chamber extension. I wanted the same material on the chamber pod that was on the chamber extension. This was my first render test in Vray before I carried on with the materials in Substance.



I had altered the base colour and the metallic reflectivity to make it fit in more with the chamber extension. (Shown above)

Below, is the original chrome material with only the base colour altered. This section is a rendered frame in Vray.



Although I liked the look of the chrome material, I felt it was a little rough and not reflective enough. I liked the streaks that came from the altered steel material I made and so I applied the same material on the chamber pod.

When rendering tests in Vray, I found that I would have many close up shots where the textures became distorted sometimes and were appearing quite harsh. For example for the wall behind the chamber, even though I had exported the maps at 4k resolution, it still seems distorted. This can be because the whole texture is spread across a large surface area. To get rid of this problem, I could use small chunks and apply the texture to the chunk of a wall and duplicate it across.



Above is shown a rendered frame in Vray. I applied the same steel material I had created for the chamber extension. The bumps and scratches were too evident, especially when rendered in a close up. (Shown below)



This was rendered from one of the camera's in the film. The gold accent was rough and the dirt material layered on top was too bold. I had to decrease the amount the scratches were shown hugely. I did this in Substance, altering the opacity of the specific attributes of the individual material.



Above is when I had decreased the opacity of the height. Below is when I had decreased it furthermore to get it just perfect. I had also added a layer to the material and painted only a metallic map on the UVs, which is why it comes across as more shiny.





The following renders below are images of my progression and render tests to get the right look for each individual part of the chamber pod.












Above I had tried the aluminium material on the pipe running through the holders, but it came out too crinkly and not like a pipe. I then made an altered version of the glass visor material which came across much more like a pipe, as shown below.

Beginning to UV/Texture - 09/03/2016

I had begun uving and re-uving the assets. I had been advised by some of my colleagues to look into texturing in Substance painter. I spent 14 hours on YouTube tutorials in order to be able to use the programme properly and efficiently.

I first Uvd and painted something simple so that I could test exporting the maps for Vray to see how they would turn out. I tried the wall that is behind the entrance door for this and got the following result in the first try:

Above is shown a rendered frame in Vray. I found that the maps came out more prominent in Vray and even though there are sliders to alter different setting in the attribute editor, it did not affect how the textures looked in Vray at all. I had to alter the map settings in substance painter to get the desired look in Vray.

I also Uvd and painted the wall for the hallway.













I began UVing my entrance doors which will be seen in the first scene of the film. I had laid out the UVs and exported the assset as an OBJ (as that is the only file type and FBX, that Substance will recognise when creating a new project)  but I found that the UVs overlapped when I imported the file. I later realised after a continuing attempt to solve the problem, that I had to set the asset up correctly in my used 3d programme before exporting the file. I had to create UV sets in Maya before exporting the file. For my entrance doors, I had made 7 Texture sets and applied a different material to each set and then exported the file as an OBJ. 

I textured the generators using 5 maps. Roughness, height, normal, metallic and colour. All together combined, they created this look. After I had textured the pillar, pipes and fuse boxes on the arch, I realised that other texture sets had not been set up properly and I had to therefore create seperate files in substance and bring the texture sets of the two files back together in Maya. 

On the right of the screen displayed the UV layout of the texture set and on the left, the 3d model that you were painting. 

I had used the technique of using preset smart materials and altering their properties and adding layers along with black/white masks to create my desired looks. For example, for the pillars I had used a preset gold material and added a metallic layer to it to make the gold a little more shiny. I altered the dirt properties of the layer within the material so the material wouldn't seem as distorted and gave a more clean outlook. I also added a black mask and painted where I wanted the gold to show exactly, which meant the altered copper material underneath would show on the rest of the generator.

Below are images from my progression:

Above, I was trying to alter the Vray material settings in the places I plugged in the maps. No matter where the slider went, the outcome of the render would be the same. Due to this, as explained earlier I had to work around this and set up the materials appropriately in substance painter. It meant I had to do many tests before I was absolutely happy with the outcome in Vray.

These are the completed doors in substance painter. I had to use a separate file as explained earlier as some texture sets weren't set up correctly. 

Above is shown a rendered frame in Vray of the doors. I chose rocky marble for the walls as earlier on in the project, when I created the mood boards, I envisioned the chamber to be in a cave type layer. I also feel the rocky marble works well with the materials on the entrance door.

After having textured the entrance doors, I moved onto the chamber door extensions. I thought that the chamber doors needed to resemble something heavy. I textured parts of the extension with an altered glass visor material. I used an altered steel material for the rest and painted the edges with gold to compliment the theme. I used this technique for all the accessory assets on the chamber extension.

The floor was textured well by my year 2 partner and so I went onto texture that too. I applied an aluminium material to it, which I then altered to make a dark grey/blue. I made my own Vray material for the glass sheets which cover the pipes running through the floor. I altered the reflection and refraction in order to get the opacity and reflectivity correct. I had to do a few render tests before I was completely happy with the outcome. When altering the aluminium material, I also had to add a roughness layer and painted in parts of the floor. This was so the floor wasn't too reflective everywhere, as everything else in the scene was going to be reflective besides the wall. My results are shown below:

The main chamber where the plaques are placed and the door after were Uvd well by my year 2 partner so I did not need to redo any of those. The spinning vault, the hinge and the pipes I had to redo to get the checkered pattern material lay appropriately on the asset. After this, I went onto texturing the chamber pod.

Camera shots/Developing Shots/Animation - 03/03/2016

Referring back to my storyboarding stage as reference, I went onto shoot my first animatic. I figured I'd be more comfortable knowing exactly what shots would be in place. I came up with the following animatic:

I wanted to have shots established before continuing but after having compiled this animatic, I knew I had to continue working on my shots. I had to do many shot tests in order to configure which one fitted and looked right. In the end, I came up with the following animatic from which I felt I could move on from. This is shown below:

I thought these shots displayed a more accurate story of what was happening and about to happen. There was less camera movement which was displeasing to the eye and a more straight forward tone. After I had these shots in place, I went onto the UV mapping stage. I had the help of a year 2 student, but unfortunately I had to UV unwrap 90% of the models he had given back to me, as the checkered texture sheet did not sit correctly and many of the models were auto unwrapped which did not give good UVs.

I animated as I set up my camera shots. For the flag movement, I used the FX tab in Maya and applied an ncloth to one flag. I then ncached the animation on the flag from fram 180 till 1500. I had then duplicate special the flag over to its appropriate places. What I had unfortunately not known, was that I could not texture the cloth as it was not UV'd. If I did UV the cloth with the cloth still on the flag, the texture would move incorrectly when the cloth would play.

I also could not transfer the UVs over to the flag with the ncloth, as once I later had UV'd the flag and textured it, I found both flags did not have exactly the same geometry.