I had shied away from using my macbook pro for rendering as I had it in my head that the renders might not match across platforms. I have had a lot of issues with the colour and gamma of photoshop files which contributed to this notion. I finally put it to the test and rendered a single frame on both windows and mac, then viewed both files on each machine together. They look identical to me – so I’ve just gained another render node!
OSX and Windows render the same
November 13th, 2008Texture paint is awsome
November 12th, 2008
I have just worked out how texture painting works in Blender and I have to say that it is awesome. It enables one to paint on the textures in the 3D viewport. Now although I couldn’t really see myself doing finished work like this what strikes me as incredibly useful is to use it to paint guides for the final textures. I really should of looked at this earlier, but I could say that about any part of the project I guess. Read the rest of this entry »
Decent shadows are difficult
November 12th, 2008I am still struggling to understand the various settings for lights, what they do and how to use them best. I am confident I will have a good understanding of it after the experience of this project but it would be nice to know a bit more about what the hell I am doing now. One of the biggest things I have trouble with now and again is getting nice soft shadows.
The glowing eyes work!
November 12th, 2008My plan for the monster’s eyes worked. The eyelids don’t block all the light so it is best to keyframe the lights and just synchronise the energy value going up as the eyelids open.
The trajectory of the lights had to be tweaked to get the right spill
Tools to make tools
November 12th, 2008
Disconnected from my COG *sniff*
It has been good using my own armatures for this project as they are far from perfect but this means that I get a chance to experience the pitfalls of various methods and appreciate how much of a difference the quality of the rig makes to the animation process. After reading and working through how to make rigs and the principles I am confused about a number of things. Firstly, I have been cursing the lack of a COG (centre of gravity / root) bone in my lil-boy setup but after using the monster rig that does have a successful COG bone I learnt that this destroys the use of IK legs as the feet then glide unless you adjust the controller backwards in sync with the COG. Moving the COG bone forward and then attempting to sync a scurry (in the case of the monster) proved to be futile and thus by the end of the scene my monster was quite disconnected from its COG bone. I am unaware at the moment if there is someway to pin the feet to the ground so that a walk cycle can coexist with COG movement, but that would be nice. Read the rest of this entry »
Almost ready to unleash my pretty…
November 12th, 2008I have just finished the burial scene and it’s looking actually looking really good. The texture painting really helped guide the matte background so that they meld with the scene better and also avoid that skewing problem I had with the world ring (tree line and skyline).
I have purposefully been leaving the “fun” shots till last – those to do with the monster for a few reasons:
- Given my inexperience with 3D animation I thought it would be good to iron out some issues before getting to the money shots
- Under pressure the fun shots should be easier
- A lot of the shots I am doing now I believe are harder as they are to do with expression and animating the little boy – whose rig is very difficult to work with in certain circumstances
The kid is twitchy
November 12th, 2008I am noticing that the IK spine is acting oddly. It seems that in certain positions the hips/stomach twitch as if the solver can’t decide which way to pivot the bone. It is making it awkward in the crouching positions. I discovered a “Hinge” button that makes bones not inherit the scale and rotation of their parent bone – a little late in the piece but possibly useful to know in the future to make better rigs.
Want hair
November 11th, 2008Yes I do want real hair but it is not going to happen. Perhaps on the next revision given that this character is successfully linking into scenes. For now it will just be mesh hair. The texturing kinda looks like wood but given the context hopefully it’s good enough… still got all the matte paintings to do – eep!
Treant scene mood
November 10th, 2008This last scene need particular attention to be paid to the lighting and effects. This represents the deepest part of the kid’s subconscious and also links the fantasy world to the real world. I wanted the mood to be dark but serene and to change rapidly when the lilboy is pulled up. I’m still really irritated I haven’t been able to solve the sparkling issue. I’ve tried increasing the sample on the lights and changing the textures to images but it still sparkles which destroys the shot.
It’s all about the Time node
November 9th, 2008
After considering how I was going to each scene in the story board I was worried about the “sunburn” shot where the butterfly goes into the sun and it flares up. I played with having a bright off-screen spotlight with a strong halo but that looked crap with the dark fringe on either side of the beam. From playing with the nodes in the first shot I remembered how interesting certain settings were just with simple curves nodes – so I put it to work. A distant keyed spotlight and a timed composit setup and I got the shot I wanted.