torsdag 15. april 2010

deadline

I worked out !

I just delivered two discs, an extra disc with ONLY the max files and textures, just in case the archives should be wrong on all computers and not only this one we tried them on

Last minute

The archives didn't work on one computer so I wonder if they are spoiled :(

I can just deliver what I have.

A little more before deadline

The Original Plan I had for poses:




There are also some things I need to say about the archives. It may seem like some textures aren't there, but they are there when you render.

I decided to not have the scarf as a part of the rest with the skin modifier because it got dislocated however i tried to place the envelopes
I decided to use morphe targets instead.

About the max files: The poses can be found on the timelines 10:(ski), 20:(bully) and 30(unsure)

Thursday deadline:

It's been a week since I updated my work journal now. I've been skinning , rendereing and done some post production since then.





So I made it in time, except for the fact that I didn't have the time to make the poses I had planned for in the beginning. Istead I posed her in two other poses thet fits her personality: Bully and Unsure. I also used the facial expression to underline /strenghten the poses.

I must admit that I had to make the two poses as easy as possible to skin, because I haven't calculated time right.




The last pose (skiing) was planned from the beginning. Well, she was supposed to hold a long stick in her hand, but I didn't have time to model that. I think it turned out rather well without it and it's my favourite pose




So the rig took less time than I had expected and the skinning was unbearable. I guess the skinning was really hard because I'm exhausted of working on this assignment. The two other assignments we've had this school year have only lasted for four weeks and I think that's enough for one assignment still. I risked becoming fed up with 3D in all.

I only have tree MAX archives on the DVD because One of the still renders where picked out form the image sequence of the turntable animation. I rendered another one of the skiing pose in the same format as the two other but the frame from the animation looked better and is aslo in high quality. The other imagie is in the «renders and screenshots» folder

These last days:

Texturing:

Mudbox didn't work on my computer in tha start, and when it finally worked I had already finished most of the textures in Phottoshop.
The plans I had with hair and fur just disappeared, with a good reason I already mentioned – render time
Inetsead I took the hat into mudbox and painted some bump on it.

Rigging:
The rigging wasn't very hard. I actually did that in the easter vacation we had, took half a day at the most.

Skinning:
skinning was mostly hell. One reason is; becaue I was very stressed, but I've also never tried skinning, and on top of this I was/is very exhausted by this assignment and couldnæt take much more.
I think my scene must've been too big for my computer since MAX kept crashing all the time. When I switced to a more powerful compurter, it worked out better
Naturally it also worked out better after a while, when I understood how it worked - how to weight the vertises

Rendering:
I've had a lot of problems during the whole assignment period with ugly mesh shadows, first on the hat, then later on the shoes. It looked like the low poly without smoothing groups. A lot of this disappeared when I activated final gather
I also had some pråblems with the «opacity feather» in the render before I used 1 bounce on the final gather settings. The problem was that I could see the plane around the feather shape just barely.

My goals :

My goals from the beginning of this project were pretty high and I have not reached them to the fullest. My high expectations have exhausted me and I'v tweaked on small details to get it perfect thoughout this whole project. I'm still not very good at calculating time, but I learn from my mistakes – next time, I'll set off more time to skinning.
I've made time schedules during (not only in the beginning) the project to see the changes in plans more clearly

The post production and result:

Editing the turntable animation in after effects didn't take as much time as expected – luckily. The stills didn't need so much editing tin Photoshop either as the lighting turned out fine and the mesh and textures looked good

A was afraid the result would look like plastic because of the hat – because I modeled it instead of using hair and fur, but it turned out better that I had expected. There were some black shadows on it first, but they disappeared with the final gather settings

torsdag 8. april 2010

Thursday 8:

I wonder if I should detach the scarf from the rest of the skinned mesh and morph it by itself.

Wednesday:

On to business!

Skinning
I’ll delay some of the texturing to start on the skinning. I don’t know how much time I’ll need on skinning so I won’t take any chances.

Skinning: Envelopes half done

tirsdag 6. april 2010

Tuesday

Layers
Rig

Texture fixing