"My Bear in Shining Armour" Finished!

My Contribution to the Project

From the beginning.

When we first started the project, originally the two girls Rebecca and Suaad wanted to do a piece about a princess and a frog. After brainstorming we realised that it wasn't strong enough as a piece and we really wanted the audience to feel, therefore I raised up the idea of doing a timeline of a man's life who had been through different devastating things that are very similar to events that have occurred in my own personal life. I believe that the best ideas come from realism and actual life events, it shows passion and drive. 

Moving on, i did some of the original storyboarding and the backgrounds that Suaad had designed, the original rough copy's came from me and then forwarded onto Suaad where she would perfect them. The original 3D animatic's were done by me and the story boards with all the different characters for experimentation also. I also did the concept imagery for the project. Also certain parts of the story have had little tweaks which i was involved in. 

For the Animation i animated the intro, the exit and the 3D ending. 

Regarding modelling i have modelled the environment, even though you cannot see the whole room that i modelled never the less the other models like the sofa are there. Because Rebecca tried to rig the character we had she had modelled and tried her best but couldn't manage to do it we had to use a Morpheus rig, therefore we used the standard Morpheus rig to animate the scene for the sound designer in terms of timing and we was told we could copy and paste the key frames over to the new reformed Morpheus rig from the one I just animated with, once I had finished re modelling it. Unfortunately that did not work and I had to re animate the entire scene. Also, regarding modelling I created the bear and i also experimented with fur textures on him but he look better without, after that I re formed the Morpheus rig and finished clothing him.

Also, I would like to state that I lost all of my files from my computer meaning that when I textured and UV mapped the entire scene I had to do that all again, so two sets of modelling and texturing. The original lighting was done by me and then Rebecca too over the lighting but I think I originally liked mine better. Looked less real and more sinister but I guess she didn't want that. Its tough when your sticking within the guidelines of someone else, even though I am co-director Rebecca was Director. 

Final Rendered Examples

So, here a few shots from the last scene with the new character in their, clothed and with scene being perfect the only two shots missing are the zoom into the bears eye and the exit from the tv showing the character. Reason is you will see them in the film and there are also some playblast previously showing movement.

Rendered images of each different camera shot

The only shots missing are shot 2 and 8 as they have been shown previously 

Other rendered shots of old character and update on new rendered shots with new character

The other rendered shots of the old character are basically what is on the play blast shown previously and soon i am to upload the rendered sequences of the final draft. After many rendered attempts we had found problems such as bottles animating on their own for purposes of copying scenes and importing the new character. Also, we found the characters face was also incorrect in certain shots as we could not see in the normal view play back in Maya. So after many rendered attempts we finally have a finished version of the scene. Unfortunately you don't get to see all of the scene that i had modelled but never the less it still there.

Character clothing

After i modelled the character, we needed to cloth him and as Rebecca designed some clothes for the character i helped attach the clothes to the character and fix any problems that arose such as the after we wrapped the clothes to the mesh the arms would not be visible in render so i fixed that and other problems that arose with the rigs controls that i also fixed.

Here is a rendered shot of scene 2 which shows the character fully clothed in pose.

Shot 4 rendered with old character.

shot 4 of the hand opening the animation in the final will be slightly different 

Shot 3 rendered with old character

This is shot 3 of the characters eye waking up its not the finished shot

Shot 1 rendered with old character = progression

This is a practice rendered shot of the introduction shot to the scene, the only difference is the timing the new shot is 320 frames where as this shot is 239.

Character Change

So by using the Morpheus rig we needed to change the character so it could look more like ours therefore we have changed the character which unfortunately means i will have to re animate the scene again! This will mean I can change the animation to make it better.

I will be posting some clips of the scene rendered with the correct animation and timing but with the normal rig that I haven't changed.

I will then go onto re animating and re rendering the scene and i will then put up the videos of that.

Animation tweaking

Working on the same sequence and tweaking more towards the advice that Hillary and Charlotte have given me. Which was to change the way the bottle was grabbed and change the shoulder positioning and the neck also to change the direction of which way the eye will be seen waking up but that will be on a later play-blast

Animation progress

Changing the camera movement and also tweaking the animation a little.

Animation development

So after researching many different ways of getting up I settled on this way.

Animation development

So after trying different ways of animating him getting up i tweaked a little body movement and changed the animation a little 

Animation Development

I started trying to make him sit up this way and it just didn't work so i tried a different approach.

Movie Textures in maya

For the static that's going to be played on the TV I would need to apply a movie file to the selected faces I needed so that it looks authentic enough therefore I used this tutorial for research and development of this as i had no idea how it was done. Here is the Link: How to apply movie textures in Maya

Camera movement 2

Here is the camera movement that follows exiting the 2d part of the film.

Camera Movement

Here is a play-blast of the first camera movement we are having to introduce the film. I will be posting up one more play-blast of camera movement for the next shot but i wont be able to add any more in until i have the animation complete, which should be by the end of this week, providing that Rebecca has managed to finish lighting the scene. 

practicing with the face

I was trying to give the impression of a drunks face, .

Playblast of animation testing

Playing with the rig and making the character give a hand shake.

Playblast of eye opening

I'm just practising with the rig and seeing how it works, so here is a play-blast of the first movement in the scene. 

Morpheus Rig

So unfortunately we have not been been able to use our own character and we are going to move ahead and use a Morpheus Rig, meaning that I can go ahead and start animating straight away and we can edit the Model afterwards so it looks more like our own character which i believe Rebecca wants to do. Rebecca is also going to be finishing off lighting the scene and then tomorrow, hopefully ill be able to start animating the scene. Here is Rebecca's blog to check out   http://finalyearwork.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/scene1.html

Finished fog

Okay so this is the best fog i can get inside the room which gives the incline of smoke.

we will be adding in some more blues, to add the tone of moonlight coming through the window and prehaps a lamp shinning on the wall.

Editing the fog

Changing the settings around and managed to change the way the smokey room would look.

Fog

I wanted fog in the room and i think i over shot it a

little here. I have used a volumetric cube and added a fog shader to it, i found this gave a better smoky look.

Lighting adds everything

Practising with raytrace shadows and depth map shadows i found that raytracing shadows were a lot better, at this point i've added a lighter purple just over the main set of drawers.

More lighting

I started to add in some colour, and as we want it to look like its night time I started to change the colours.

Lighting

As i wasn't supposed to be doing lighting, but my other team mates was otherwise occupied I stepped up and decided to attempt it, I wasn't very experienced with it, but after watching some tutorials I started to get an idea about what I'm doing.

More teddy bear textures

As you can see i have experimented with lots of different styles of fur and nothing seems to be working. I will require sultans help on this as i have tried to research how to fix and i cant find any solutions.

Teddy Bear Textures

After playing around with lots of different styles of fur and different colours I came to a conclusion of using duckling fur with specific colours to make the bear look more like a bear. I'm just having difficulties at the moment with the baldness of the bear.

Carpet change of mind

I thought the carpet looked too red and decided that a change of pattern was in order.

Wall textures

Here are some of the textures I drew up for the wall. I will revise these at a later point.

Experimentation

I also wanted see what an image I found on the internet would look like behind the scene but as you don't really see it, its not a matter of great importance.

Coming to the end of texturing

The room is now coming together brilliantly and once lit and added shadows are in and smoke fills the room I believe this scene will look beautiful.

Delving further into textures

As I progressed onwards i could see the room starting to get some character I would however like to stress that the wall textures are experimentation. The textures for the walls i have drawn up my self and will exemplify this at a later point.

The start of texturing

I found that when I started to texture the room I could see how I wanted it to look and the textures i wanted to use.