McG's Honours Project

FINAL ANIMATION!!!!!!!....part 1...heh!

2009-05-27T00:09:00.000-07:00

Roof top scene

2009-04-29T03:02:00.000-07:00

Ive got to the stage in my animation where the character is on the roof.as ive been building my sets as i need them its time to get this one fin. Its the more important of the scenes as it will feature more often and will prob consist of more actual 3d modeling and textureing than the other scenes.

Here is a test from maya of the complete 3d models and textures. I still have to add sky and smoke from chimneys and all that other jazz.

It looks better if you hit the HQ tab the bottom of the youtube player!!

First part of my animation

2009-04-29T02:52:00.000-07:00

this is the first part of my animation...still have lots to do. its not fully edited and i think ill speed up the animation a wee bit in some parts.

The pigeon that attacked my patience with a brick!

2009-03-29T06:55:00.000-07:00

As you can tell from the title of this post the creating , rigging and animating of the pigeon has taken 3 days of work(original time scale was one day) and was a feckn nightmare.

IF YOU EVER GET ASKED TO CREATE A BIRD......SAY NO AND RUN VERY FAR AWAY SCREAMING "RAPE" AS YOU GO!!!

Anyway...here he is.....animation is a bit crap....to be honest all my animations are crap but this is not what my project focus is on so if i can get away with it looking slightly ok then that will be fine.

2009-03-24T03:44:00.000-07:00

Only got a month left!!! I still have to build some models and do a wee bit of rigging but not as complicated as the main character. I have started completing scenes and compositing them. each section will prob take 2 days, which puts me on good track for the run up to the hand in.....i hope!

The image is my workflow for creating and compositing my animation. The first 2 pics are rendered in seperate layers in maya and put together in photoshop( as it is a still background). Then the photoshoped image is put into after effects with the main character composited over the top and then the shadow layer from maya. Im very pleased with the outcome.....now for all the rest.....SHIT! :)

2009-03-19T09:05:00.000-07:00

This is my first ever complete scene for my animation. It is only 8 seconds long ( 5.52 mins to go!) but it has taken me a whole day to complete with all the compositing in aftereffects. I wanted to start with this scene as I'm researching symbolism and cinematography for my dissertation. Although the symbolism in this scene is fairly straight forward. The scene is the main characters hallway. He is an elderly man who lives on his own after the death of his wife. I wont go into the story at the moment but the main theme is about letting go and moving on. In this particullar composition i wanted to show some of these story points.

1: he lives on his own. The hallway is unkept with the walls peeling paint and generally dirty. I imagined that his wife would have cleaned the house and so on( poss a bit sexist but they are an older generation). Although the wife is no longer present i wanted to place elements of her in the scene. The lampshade and carpets I thought might be somthing an old lady would furnish her house with. You may not be able to see in this small video but you can see dust particles in the light coming down from the selling reinforcing the unclean factor.

2: he doesnt like to throw things away(the letting go part of the theme). The piles of newspapers and the objects in plastic bags hopefully represent this while adding somthing else vissually to the scene.

Any feedback would be appreciated.

2009-03-09T20:38:00.000-07:00

Have been getting on with the written part of 4th year as it has been mentioned of its great importance to the overall grade......at my crit last week Paul Harris told me of his great joy of not having to do a dissertation at the time he gained his degree!!

Some of the latest art work for my animation....its getting near animating time...i can nearly smell it on the air.

2009-03-01T12:38:00.000-08:00

Had a go at animating the shadows to create a timelapse effect. the angle is odd because I only rendered out the main buildings and not all of them......that would have taken all day!! The sky is a mixture of BBC stock footage and filters in After Effects. I think it might run to quickly but then if i slow it down it looks jerky....oh well ....I better model the rest of the scene and start on the others scenes!!!!!

2009-03-01T05:36:00.000-08:00

At this point in time I'm just trying to build all my scenes and light them accordingly. I have done a couple of compositing tests that i thought would help with work load but to be honest its not really helping. I have more control over the scene but it takes just as long to render it all in separate layers as it does to just render one image( that kinda makes sense i suppose)

2009-02-26T07:07:00.000-08:00

I was having a look at a handfull of productions that have rooftop scenes in them. The one that stood out most was Pixars Ratatouille. The thing that got me most about the compositions was the lighting. As its set in Paris and Paris is meant to be the most romantic city the lighting refelcts this. Many scenes on the roof top are at night or sunset, giving it a romantic feel....well i think. So ive renderd my test scene with the same sort of lighting. It is called for in the animation.

2009-02-24T18:12:00.000-08:00

Got bored with my project tonight so watched a film and did some sketches that ended up being a full blown concept that took 5/6hours....didnt really mean it to happen....but its done now!

This is the result.

Now back to the real work dang it.

composition benchmark

2009-02-24T08:19:00.000-08:00

This is a static composition in photoshop using many of the elements that will be in the finished animation. I would love for my animation to be as sharp as this composition but we shall see what happens!

2009-02-24T06:43:00.000-08:00

Starting to build my scenery from 2d concepts. I feel that it might look to realistic compared to the character but i also dont want it to be bland. The textures were created in photoshop and then applied to the geometry in Maya, the final renders are composited in photoshop also but when it comes time to animate i will composite in after effects.

2009-02-20T08:46:00.000-08:00

Motion graphics for end of year show(just a test at the moment)

2009-02-19T19:04:00.000-08:00

More tests!!

2009-02-15T18:36:00.000-08:00

Spent most of this weekend pushing polys around and finaly fin my main character! The modeling was straight forward enough as the character( Ive started calling him Alf) is just a ball with legs and arms!"your legs are quite funny, they're like hosepipes propping up a bean bag" as Vince said to Howard.

The texturing on the other hand was the time intensive part. I want to texture my characters and some scenery as if it had been renderd in mentalray to give it a nice high contrast finish. As mental ray takes hours to render out 3 secs worth of footage i am aplying these effects straight to the texture file in photoshop. Above are the results....im very happy with them...but now im scared for the time i have left!

2009-02-08T14:12:00.000-08:00

Main character head model with blend shapes. Have yet to build the body but shouldnt take to long.

2009-02-08T07:15:00.000-08:00

This was just a test to see what the final composite looked like. The backdrop was created in Maya then rendered out in layers (shadows, occlusion and ambient), the same was applied to the character and then combined in After effects. To be honest this process took nearly the same time as rendering it all out from Maya but I had more control over the final product in After Effects.

I will hopefully gain a faster workflow as this was the first time i have ever done this on this scale.

2009-02-08T07:04:00.000-08:00

As I would like to create the animation on my own ( ive been told that its a crazy notion),
I am going to cut some production corners. The main time taken in the production of animations is usually rendering out the scenes, so I intend to pre render still images and composite them along with the animated character in After Effects. Above is a matte painting created in Photoshop then exported in layers to after effects. The depth of feild is a wee bit off but it was just a test.

2009-02-08T06:57:00.000-08:00

Some character concepts.

2009-02-08T06:48:00.000-08:00

Here are some concepts for the animations set pieces. I will post a script for the animation later so the artwork will have something to relate to.

2009-02-08T06:38:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my honours project diary blog.

My name is Martin McGregor and I am in the middle of my 4th year honours project at the University of Abertay Dundee, on the Computer Arts course. I am still undecided on my choosen topic but i do know that it will be in the area of matte painting, background art and visual effects for film and television. My intention is to create a short 4/5 min animation including all of these elements.

As I will be using this as a sort of diary I will continue to post artwork from my project and hopefully by the end i will also be sure of the topic area.