Inspiration Artefact and Forefront: Week 30 "Substance Painter"

Substance Painter isa very good tool to texturize and make shaders for objects and create a very detail and rich effect finishes. It gives the artist the option to choose from a big variety of brushes and materials to paint the texture in real time cerating maps until 4K of resolution. This quality make this tool to be in the forefront of interactive 3D painting. Further more, the artist can use particles to paint with physics, making possible to create rain effect in the surface. Substance Painter is used for texture and draw shaders especially for video games, has the functionality to create normal, especulars, beauty. It has very interesting tools for dirt, rust, scratches and create asymmetric textures. It also can be used for film productions but its strength is video games, due its capacity of saving file information and weight in maps, which is very much valuable in video games production. However, I haven't use this tool I think it gives high quality textures using new technology and tools to improve 3D artists works. 

References:

Allegorithmic (2014) Substance Painter 3D World CG Awards 2014 [Online] Availabel at: https://www.allegorithmic.com/products/substance-painter [Accessed 2nd of August of 2015]

Evaluation and Reflection: Week 30

This week we started the animation process, my partner and I split some files to start working. We realized that the scene objects were very small compared with the characters mainly because they were made by two different people, so we needed some organization, however it was adjusted and fixed to all the components to be well proportioned. We began with simple things to animate like walked sequences, easy expressions to get practical skills and then start more difficult movements. So in this way approaching the animation in fist little steps helped us to approach the process in a way more manageable and suitable way according to our skills. My reflexion for this stage is that at first I didn't know how to do many things, like the walking cycle and the best way to learn is guiding the process with references. Richard Williams author of "The Animator's Survival Kit", he has many walguide and tool to create my own walking sequences. Williams has examples of timing and body positions that help me and enrich my learning process. The evaluation of this week was good we sorted out difficult issues and advanced in the animation process. 

Creative and technical process: Week 30. Alembic Cache

Some problems found in the first stages of animation was that I needed to create a scene with six characters interacting, however I couldn't get more than three characters in a single file. I spent two weeks trying to solve this problem, because it lead to an error in the rendering process. At first I tried to make different files, liek layers, a file had two characters and one that had other two, expecting that in that way I could joing all together to the complete scene. It worked for us in the beginning, but our tutor taught us that this was not a usefull way to make a composion. In orther to address it correctly we learned to use Alembic catche. A tool that helps animator to transfer assets. It exports the animated mesh of the animated object (our characters) without having any Rigg that was the error Maya shown for rendering; in that way, the character came to the scene animated and ready. However, this is a very usefull tool that also can be used to transfer assets in a work team, some of the short comings is taht the objects come without textures and you have to assign it all again.

Evaluation and Reflection: Week 29

This week I finished the process of facial expressions through the Blend Shapes technique. However the process didn't take a long of time it required a maximum attention to details and try to imagine all the possible movements a character should do in the animation process. It was very interesting to see how the facial expressions make a big part of character personality and emotions; how important it's to create expressions that despite they are not realistic because it’s a cartoon style character still can show the human feelings and connect with the audience. I had to make all the expressions first myself with my face and friends to have an idea to make it the most natural as possible. Therefore, I think animation should always have a natural approach to connect with audience feelings. However, this process it's not always easy, replicate very natural expressions that we think are spontaneous requires a very detail approach from the artist in its process of capture reality and convert it in cartoon style without losing its instinctive look. 

Inspiration Artefact and Forefront: Week 29 "Wall and Chain"

One trend which is clearly influencing 3D animation is the rising of NPR, non-photorealistic rendering where 3D artistes instead of creating a realistic aesthetic are creating more visual and aesthetic animations linked with impressionist and hand-drawn finishes. The inspiration film that evidences this trend is Wall and Chains from the company AirBnB, which despites having a clear commercial purpose it evokes a very artistic and classical painting in art.  The story of the short recreates a man who was attached to a wall which represented its feelings from a Berlin divided form east to western. The story tells how through AirBnB he can overcome its own feelings and bring down his owns barriers. The characters are pictured like pastel drawings and have the same movements and smoothness as it were painted with a brush; however we know is 3D art it’s very interesting how 3D can takes so many faces and finishes making the possibilities limitless.  

References:

Creative Bloq (2014) 5 new animation trends for 2015 that will change everything, Creative Bloq. Available at:  http://www.creativebloq.com/3d/animation-trends-2015-111413522. [Accesed 25th August 2015]

Creative and technical process: Week 29. Blend Shapes Maya

This week I made the process of creation and animation of the facial expressions of the characters. I used a very useful tool in the 3D artist's background, BlendShapes. This technique is used to deforme an object in a determine way from the original model. In this way, I first copied the face in its original state and the from the copy I modified it to create another facial expression, like moving the mouth. The BlendShape tool creates a shape transition between this two models, making the animation of the facial expression natural and fluid. The deformations of the objects are controlled by a controller for each specific area. I made an special effort for create a user interface to manage easily the movements of the face like eyebrows, eyes, etc. making the animation process easy. In this way, when the animator has to modified the mouth for example he doesn't has to go inside each component to modify it, instead he can do it from the user interface of controllers I made; also making possible make differentes movements like eyes and mouth at the same time.

Evaluation and Reflection: Week 28

The rigging process of the two main characters was successfully finished. Some of the interesting applications of animation concepts into this stage was the use of strength and squash principle. It was used to make the Thief character more cartoon in its movements in a stylized way. In the other hand, the Kid character didn't used this principles because we wanted it to look more realistic. The skin took a long time, so I have to improve and make it more effective to my work. Some of the challenges in the rigging process was the difference of anatomy of the two characters, the Kid is a human so it was easy to know its anatomy function to make the movements. However, the Thief is a cartoon abstraction of humans not the same, it hasn't hips, so it was a challenge to make the rigging. furthermore, I would take in account in the future the invented character anatomy to start working.

Creative and technical process: Week 28. Maya Expressions

The Expression editor of Maya has been a very useful tool to give exact motion to particular objects that need a cyclic or specific movement. Also it's a very good way to add behaviors and attributes to objects besides the actual rigging. In that way you can have a character arm moving in X settled by rigging, but at the same time it's escalated through expressions. In that way it works to open the possibilities of actions. However, some technical problems I faced is that the programming language is complex and required a high learning curve. In consequence the expressions I could create are basic like rotating or escalating the objects. I used it to scale the arms and legs of the characters which at the same time do their walking or jumping movements. In that way, I accomplish the cartoon effect in the movement that the project desired.

Inspiration Artefact and Forefront: Week 28 "Chamelot"

Camelot Animated Short is a great example in how to be in the forefront of animation techniques and aesthetic. The history which takes as reference a mythic and historical place as Camelot reinvent itself with a new scene of characters, the cats and the Camelot cat world is a very interesting concept that feeds in an actual love for these funny animals. The technique that it used for movements animation, it's very interesting and applicable for projects like ours, "The Ideas Thief" which has short time and staff to develop. The movements are short and cut, they go straight forward from its start point to its end point. It generates a look and feel of cartoon animation and however it's not fluid it looks well finished and in coherence with the full animation. In that way, the history makes a good integration with the animation style and esthethic of the short film.

Evaluation and Reflection: Week 27

This week has been very important for the project. We basically finished the rigging process of the first main character, The Thief. It showed us that the rigging took much longer time that we expected. Basically, because we have to learn extra techniques and knowledge we didn't expect to require. In that way, applying the strength and squash required the learning of the expressions tool of Maya. However, It's difficult to keep on time the project, it's important to have in mind as core principle of the animation the quality of the product and all that it takes as its highest learning curve. Despite the time constraints, this new knowledge in the first main character helped to improve in the remaining characters, making the next riggings easier than the first one and with quality improved results.

In conclusion, animation it's not a straight way path, it requires continuous and constant improvement to have quality results. The time which takes to learn and improve will have great benefits in the future processes for an animation film and also for the personal professional development of the animation professional. 

Creative and technical process: Week 27. Constraints in Maya

One of the key points of the process has been the use of Constraints in Maya as a vital tool for rigging. This tool helps you to set the position, scale or the orientation fo an object in relation to other, however the interesting thing about constraint is that you can settle specific parameters that made automatic animation easier. You can use the Point constraint to make the linked relation to the position of and object. You can use the aim constraint to follow an objective which can be an object, a light, anything without matter the position. You can use orient and scale constraints to match other object's properties simultaneously. You can use the parent constraint to link one object position to follow a target parent object.

As is shown in the image, the project used for this case a point constraint. The advantage of use constraint against other techniques as Parent them, It's that Constraint allows freedom of behaviour for the linked object, so as an example you can have object 1 move right and object 2 move left. With Parent option you can't do this beacause the objects linked will always move as its parent.

Inspiration Artefact and Forefront: Week 27 Pinksword of the Bibu

The animation short Pinkword of the Bibu by BIBU team helped us as inspiration in the texturing and lighting process of our short. The aesthetic has a strong use of cartoonish gestures that express and communicate the story without words only managing environmental sounds. This helped us as reference of a good practice applicable in our story. At the same time, the lighting and colors were bright and changed to communicate characters movements or events; we applied it in our film The Ideas Thief creating lighting environments darker or lighter depending of the story development, with strong contrasting colors that stand out and givie it an unique style.