Sat 16th May 2020:
This piece will discuss the idea, development and testing around the final stages in the production of the hell environment animation and this stage focuses on the colouring in of the character and sorting out of the last details of the project overall.
When producing the lava river, it became evident that this needed to be to re-rendered. When I observed the river within the animation with the other students in the class, it was noticeable that it appeared to be slowing in and slowing out of the video which was not the desired effect I was looking for.
In order, to change the speed relating to the flow of the lava river, I had to go into the animation graph editor in Maya and alter how the frames moved from A to B. I, therefore, used the tools within animation graph editor to alter the line, from a wavy line to a straight diagonal line which appeared to work within the animation. The lava river then appeared more linear and moved at a constant speed, which was the desired effect.
After feedback from my peers during the video lecture, it was suggested that my environment did not look natural. The lava rocks appeared too flat and looked more like a collage effect within the animation and did not seem to fit well within the environment portrayed (insert video of flat texture here). It was suggested that if I was using the same renderer for the background environment and the lava rocks, then I should perhaps put these together, so they look like they are embedded into the scene.
Following on from receiving peer feedback, and to make appropriate changes to the animation to produce the effects I required, I imported the lava rocks into the scene and into the places where I wanted the lava rocks to be placed from where I had placed them originally in After Effects which was in the front of the scene (see 00:02:43 – 1:16:12). I also had to place the lava rocks closer to the camera so that these looked like they were placed in the same position as they were in After Effects. The lava rocks were floating within the environment, however, when they were viewed on the screen they appeared to be in front of the environment, not floating. This was due to the camera angle appearing to make them look like they were not floating.
Furthermore, after having viewed the video on numerous occasions, I also became aware that it would be beneficial to change the colour of a previous lava rock using the Ramp tool to change the gradient on the rock, so it looked like a different colour. This produced another lava rock which contrasted against the larger lava rocks giving another dimension and depth to the animation (see 00:25:23 seconds – 00:35:43 seconds).
Additionally, I felt that repositioning of the lava rocks would also add more of a 3D effect into the animation. I subsequently, moved the rocks whereby the smaller lava rocks which originally were flat objects placed at the front of the scene in After Effects, were moved closer to the camera, producing the effect that these were in front of the larger lava rocks, producing a more natural and 3D effect overall. I then had to replicate this process on the right-hand side of the screen with three rocks instead of two to give definition to both sides of the screen (see 00:43:41 – 00:47:37).
However, on reflection, it is now apparent that the lava rocks on the right-hand side do not seem to sit well in the front of the scene. Inspecting this more closely, I am now aware that was due to the positioning of the smaller lava rocks behind the larger lava rock. Therefore, for future animations, I would plan out the alignment of the assets before deciding where everything would be positioned within the scene.
Peer feedback also highlighted that the trees also looked unnatural, they looked like they were floating on the surface of the ground, instead of being rooted there. Therefore, it was suggested that I put the trees behind the rocks, which I could then embed into the environment, and then also place a mask over the trees so they looked like they were behind the rocks.
I made the background lava rocks merge into the floor of the environment to look more natural and 3D. I, therefore, saved this scene as a reference single frame render so that I could judge where the rocks had to be placed (see 1:10:37 - 1:17:16).
After placing the rocks in the desired position I thought that I should work on my characters texturing. I noticed that when I went into the character that the palms of the hands were too thick; I, therefore, thinned them down, so they looked more palm-like. I did this by adding an edge loop around the arm of the character to give me enough space for selecting the polygons of the wrist so that I could scale the x co-ordinate down so that it would be a flatter shape. This worked well and produced the characters palms of the hands which were more realistic.
Also, after discussion with my family, they advised that I should give the character three fingers and one thumb rather than just four fingers because they had noticed that this seemed to be the norm for most of the animated characters they had seen. Interestingly, O’Connor (2017) highlights the same point, expanding that this type of hand formation within animation is as a result of hands typically being the most difficult part of cartoon characters to animate. I, therefore, decided to adopt this hand shape and it appeared to work well.
The character's hands also appeared quite dumpy and shapeless, therefore on further examination, it was decided that I would give my character claws, which also appeared more appropriate given that I wanted that character to look like a devil. I, therefore, extruded the fingers out to make them longer so that I could curl the tips and round these. I also scaled down the tips of the fingers, so these looked sharp and claw-like. I then rotated the whole arm so that the characters shoulders were forced forward and the nails faced to the front of the camera, so the modelling of the nails could be seen more clearly.
I wanted the eyes of the character to be different from the rest of the characters colour, so I made them green to appear cat-like. I also coloured the eyelids in a pale red colour to match the colour palette of the character and appear more natural. I then went on to texturing the rest of the body of the character using Hypershader in Maya. I found that when texturing I did encounter some issues. I used UV Editor in Maya to peel off the character's skin, so I produce a template to draw over. But this did not work well because all of the polygon shapes were joined together which did not create the desired effect. I couldn't figure out to spread the UV map apart (See 1:45:00 - 1:50:05).
I, therefore, decided to deal with this issue by utilising plain colours and by choosing the polygons where I wanted the colours to be placed on the devil. This took a great deal of time; however, I did produce the overall desired look for the devil character (See 1:51:03 - 3:36:56).
After colouring the devil, I went into After Effects to see if the rocks were under the trees so that I could put a mask over the tree trunks so that the bark of the trees would look like they were embedded behind the rocks placed in the environment (see 3:40:51 - 3:46:34).
Subsequently, placing all the assets in the correct places in After Effects, I had to render the lava river with the lava rocks imported inside the environment so that would render all 699 frames to create the moving river. I started the render on 16/05/20 at 11:11pm and then finally finished on 17/05/20 at 3:52pm so the render took 16hrs 41 mins to finish all 699 frames.
Finally, I went back into After Effects to delete the unnecessary layers that I don't need. Afterwards, I replaced the reference lava river environment with the render following an import into Premiere that I export the images as an MP4 (as the problem of the missing frames [See blog post]). [But I deleted the background images from the environment layers folder, then After Effects replace the missing footage with multi-coloured error image]. So previewed the animation and all looked right.
Later, I made an export of the newest development of the hell environment to show my progress. After I did this render it looked like it was finished but I thought the character needed to stand out so I put a brightness & contrast effect on the devil layer to brighten him up. Previously I got lecturer feedback saying "your background should be a complementary colour so the character can stand out".
So to complete his task given to me, I tinted the background assets with light blue to map with white and dark blue to map with black but I reduced the amount of tint to 8% so that the original colour is still there. After, a quick preview, everything looked ok and ready to render final versions: one with no effects, one with the devil brightened up, and one with complementary colours. (See 4:01:06 - 4:08:46)
Finally, I converted all the MOVs into MP4s through Adobe Media Encoder. So that they would play smoothly and in every media player then deleted the unnecessary MOV because they are slow buffering. (See 4:09:52 - 4:13:12)
After colouring the devil, I went into After Effects to see if the rocks were under the trees so that I could put a mask over the tree trunks so that the bark of the trees would look like they were embedded behind the rocks placed in the environment (see 3:40:51 - 3:46:34).
Subsequently, placing all the assets in the correct places in After Effects, I had to render the lava river with the lava rocks imported inside the environment so that would render all 699 frames to create the moving river. I started the render on 16/05/20 at 11:11pm and then finally finished on 17/05/20 at 3:52pm so the render took 16hrs 41 mins to finish all 699 frames.
Finally, I went back into After Effects to delete the unnecessary layers that I don't need. Afterwards, I replaced the reference lava river environment with the render following an import into Premiere that I export the images as an MP4 (as the problem of the missing frames [See blog post]). [But I deleted the background images from the environment layers folder, then After Effects replace the missing footage with multi-coloured error image]. So previewed the animation and all looked right.
Later, I made an export of the newest development of the hell environment to show my progress. After I did this render it looked like it was finished but I thought the character needed to stand out so I put a brightness & contrast effect on the devil layer to brighten him up. Previously I got lecturer feedback saying "your background should be a complementary colour so the character can stand out".
So to complete his task given to me, I tinted the background assets with light blue to map with white and dark blue to map with black but I reduced the amount of tint to 8% so that the original colour is still there. After, a quick preview, everything looked ok and ready to render final versions: one with no effects, one with the devil brightened up, and one with complementary colours. (See 4:01:06 - 4:08:46)
Finally, I converted all the MOVs into MP4s through Adobe Media Encoder. So that they would play smoothly and in every media player then deleted the unnecessary MOV because they are slow buffering. (See 4:09:52 - 4:13:12)
