Final 3D Animatic This Year

This is going to be a big update.  I have been very busy with this film, working on everything from modeling to basic animation to character rigging and more.  I plan to do more work to prepare for the final animation and lighting over the winter break, but this will be the last update to my animatic this year.  I would like to thank everyone involved so far in this film this quarter, including Michelle Ionescu, who has been helping me with the design, modeling, and sound; Raymond McCoy-Sanders, who helped with modeling so far; Dennis McCoy, who also helped with modeling; China Nadeau, who made my beautiful backgrounds; Nora Graven for helping with rigging my character; and my professor, Mathew Maloney, who has been giving me great feedback and ideas to make this a much stronger film.

There is still a LOT of work to do.  Next quarter I am going to focus on getting all the rigging finalized, getting the animation finished, getting as many of the backgrounds finished as I can, and finish as much texturing as I can, as well as starting preliminary lighting.  Over the break I am going to work on some minor fixes and tweaks and getting feedback.

I can't promise I will have another update to the blog this year, but I will make sure to keep any significant updates posted here.

Last Light 3D Animatic with sound from Last Light Film on Vimeo.

Forest update

Several quarters ago I built a MEL script (Maya scripting language) that I called "Populate".  The point of this code was to allow you to select as many geometry files as you wanted to and then populate an object (plane with terrain) with as many of them as you wanted and without any interpenetration of the objects while attaching them to the surface and allowing you to randomize the rotation and scale (uniformly, diameter and height, or all 3 axes) allowing you to determine the range for each of these.  It was not completely finished, and suffered from one or two bugs.  However, I managed to figure out the solution to these issues even though I didn't have the time to implement the changes.

The reason I built this script was so I could use it in my final project, to build a forest while keeping the width and depth of the trees the same while randomizing the scales and placement of the trees.  It worked pretty well, but in the end, one of the bugs I was running into was taking too much time to fix, so I explored some other tools in Maya, and found the Paint Geometry tool.  This is a really cool tool that does something very similar to my script, while also allowing you to go back and make changes to your objects live, adjusting the scales or removing objects on the fly.  While I still want to complete my script because it has a few advantages over this tool (mainly the ability to decide how many objects you want, avoid colliding geometry, and scaling x and z together), but for now I decided to try this tool out build my forest.

So far it seems to work well.  After looking at some pine forest reference images, I have decided to make my forest rather dense, which means a lot of geometry.  As such, even though each tree is a low polygon count, the scene bogs down my system drastically whenever the forest is visible.  I am planning to look into using a renderman rib archive to speed this up, if possible, but only if the computers can handle exporting the objects into a new file and then into a rib archive.

I also now have to go through this scene during the break and decide if I need to remove any interpenetrating trees or if it would be easier to fix my script and redo this.  I am pleased with the look right now, but if anyone knows a better way of creating a forest with my own geometry, I am open to suggestions.

Production 1, Mid-terms

Right now we are in the middle of Mid-Terms for the first half of production.  We have already finished 2 milestones, are are finishing up the 3rd, with 5 total milestones this quarter.  So far, I have completely reworked the timing, several key concepts, and the style.  I am very pleased with the direction this is going, and the real production begins today.

From here on out, I need to have my character rigged, models built, environments developed, and animation blocked in, for starters.  I have already started with building some of the assets, such as the various environments.  As for the style, I am going for an elongated and slightly skewed look, which I plan to place in the 1950's through the design of the objects.  I want to make this look something akin to stylized realism, using realistic lighting and rendering and textures on a highly stylized world.

So here are the new developments for the film, including style guide and a 3D Animatic.

3D animatic updates

I should be able to upload a new 3D animatic very soon.  I have been getting some very good feedback, and am actually making some large story changes, without having to completely redo all my work so far.  I must say this is getting very exciting, and I can't wait to get the animatic finished.  I am already getting some work done on my style guides and my modeling, with the help of Michell and Raymond.  I should have another update this weekend with the entire aniamtic finished, but first I have the Generate 24 hour competition to compete in this weekend.

Wish me luck!

New and improved

It's new!  It's improved!  It's 3D!!

It's my all new handy-dandy little-giant new and improved 3D Animatic!  (Yes, I said new twice, it's that new.)  Well it isn't done yet, but I am working on it now.  The original animatic is a great starting point for me, but I need to have a starting point for 3D, plus I've been getting a lot of good feedback from people, so I have ideas on what I can do to improve the story and flow.

But what is an animatic you ask?  In short, it's a rough idea of what the film will look like... but not actually look like.  More like an idea of the flow, timing, camera direction, staging, and so forth, as opposed to the look and style.  Still don't get it?  It's really just behind-the-scenes stuff, so don't worry about it.  Just know that this is a vital step, and the sooner I finish it the better.

My goal is to complete the all new animatic by Tuesday, but only with blocked in shapes.  That means it will only have a few basic shapes and colors, and most of it will not look anything like what it is supposed to look like.  It is just enough to get an idea, so I can get started with modeling the actual 3D assets.

Speaking of which, I have to make a whole new list of assets as well, but that will be for the next stage.  I need to make sure I have all the props, sets, background elements, characters, and even effects accounted for so I know where to go next.  I will also work on style frames so I will actually know what it has to look like.  But that is another goal for another week.  This is all really early production work right now, converting the original concept into 3D and making adjustments as needed.  Important, but not that impressive looking.  Yet.

Well I have a lot of work to do in order to get this ready.  Back to the grind...

Cha- Cha- Cha- Changes

While I have had my first rough animatic for a while, getting people to look at it and give me feedback without hearing the story first has really given me interesting result.  Some people understood my original intent, but most only got part of it or interpreted something completely different.

So on order to remedy this, I have ears advice and suggestions from a number of people, and I have worked with my friend Michelle to come up with a solution.  I am not sure I will be revising my 2D animatic to show this, but I may have to.  Either way, there are big changes to te timing and flow, and minor story changes as well.

Professor Maloney suggested I take the opposite approach and have the ray of light light up the city because the lighthouse broke and a ship was heading to town.  While I like that idea a lot, it is a different story.  Another friend say the light as the firs evening star, lighting up the town but getting frustrated at the human element getting in the way.

I've decided to take a different approach, where the light will first run into a cabin in the woods where it will see a candle in a cabin and try to light it up, but can't get trough the window and then gets visibly frustrated when someone else lights it.  I will then adjust the timing and acting of the scenes to really pick up the beat/flow until it gets hectic and culminates in getting zapped by the bug zapper.  I then will show the ray flickering on and off, almost out of juice as he finds a broken and well-worn lighthouse.  As he flies in to the lamp, he fizzles out to nothingness, and the I really plan to hold it like this for a long time, several seconds, before the lighthouse abruptly turns on.

So that will require more drawings, more timing, and a new animatic.  I'd love to do the new animatic in 3D, but I haven't decided if I will yet.  For now I have to fill out a production schedule and work on figuring out my milestones.  Then I can worry about the little details.

Blog Arrangement

This blog is arranged in a simple manner.  Following the buttons above, you can reach the regular blog posts at any time by pressing on the Home tab.  You can then look at the current state of the (completed) Pre-Production work, which consists of work from my Concept Development class, by selecting the Pre-Production tab.  Next to that, the Production tab will give you the current state of the production as done in the Senior I  and Senior II classes.  Finally, the Post-Production work from the final post-production class is next to that, and will be updated after production has finished.

If you would like to see my other blog, which will consist of all the projects I am currently working on, selected the Pixel of the Day Blog tab.

Thank you for your interest and support!

Welcome

Welcome all to the official blog for the short student film "Last Light".  This short animation is the senior project of SCAD student David Hixon.  The blog will chronicle the development of the 2013/2014 film, and show the various stages of the production.

Last Light is a film about the last ray of sunlight trying to find a place to stay for the night, where it can be of use to someone.  This film will be fully 3D, using a variety of software packages, including Autodesk Maya, SideFX Houdini, Foundry Nuke, Adobe CC suite, and more.

You can check out the pages linked to at the top of the blog to look at examples of the film's pre-production, production, and post-production stages when they are available.  You can also access my main blog, Pixel of the Day, from there as well.

Thank you for your interest, and remember to check back often for more updates!