Breakdown sheet

Shot #	Shot Description (Char, Props, BGs, Action, FX)	List of Elements / Assets COMPLETED	List of Elements / Assets NEEDED	Other Notes (including additional things IF you have time)
1	Opening shot, forested mountains and sunset with rays of light and particles.	Modeling finished: forest, mountains, sun. Sky/BG painted. Staging finished. Blocked animation.	More rays of light. Particles and Lighting. Adjustments to bg. Texturing. Sound adjustments. More animation.	Repair any penetrating geometry in the forest. Environment Fog.
2	Character close up as Ray comes to life.	BG painted. Blocked animation. Staging done.	Character animation. Particles. Adjust BG painting. Adjust texture. Sound.	Add more elements in background. Consider camera shake.
3	Ray travels toward the city past a coastline and lighthouse.	Modeling character and lighthouse done. BG painting done. Staging done.	Character animation. Particles. Add more foliage to cliffs. Water and Water effects. Texturing. Lighting. Sound.	Adjust BG painting. Add more elements in background. Consider camera shake. Environment Fog.
4	Ray sees street lights as they get lit up by the other rays of light.	Models finished. Blocked Animation. Staging done.	Character animation. Particles. Lighting. Textures. Sound. Add more objects in BG. BG painting.	Add more geo to background. Consider camera shake. Fix Sidewalk.
5	Ray tries to light up the street lights himself but is beaten to the punch.	Modeling finished. Staging finished. Blocked Animation.	Character Animation. Particles. Lighting. Textures. Sound. Add more objects in BG. BG Painting.	Add more geo to background. Consider camera shake.
6	Ray tried one more time but the light turns on by itself.	Modeling finished. Staging done. Blocked Animation.	Character Animation. Particles. Lighting. Textures. Sound (electric light). Add more BG objects. BG painting.	Remember to make electric light green and add sound. Fix sidewalk. Consider camera shake.
7	Ray sees traffic light.	Modeling finished. Blocked Animation. Staging done.	Character Animation. Add BG painting. Lighting. Textures. Sound. Particles.	Consider adding geo in the BG. Consider camera shake.
8	Ray misses the green light.	Modeling done. Blocked Animation. Staging.	Character Animation. Lighting. Textures. Sound. Particles. BG painting.	Consider geo in background. Consider camera shake.
9	Street scene where Ray tries to light up a car headlight but is blasted by the light instead.	Modeling done. Background done. Staging. Blocked Animation.	Texturing. Lighting. Sound. Particles. Character Animation.	Make sure no BG matte painting is needed. Consider camera shake.
10	Church scene, where Ray is beaten to votive candles by his brethren.	Modeling done. Blocked Animation.	Staging adjustments. Character Animation. Lighting. Texturing. Sound. Particles.	Consider adding more candles in background for lighting. Consider camera shake.
11	Office Scene where Ray sees the desk lamp but it flickers on and he gets frustrated and throws it off the desk.	Modeling done. Blocked Animation.	Character Animation. Lighting. Textures. Sound. Particles. Staging.	Use particles as sparks to show frustration. Consider camera shake.
12	Diner Sign scene	Modeling Done. Blocked Animation.	Character Animation. Lighting. Textures. Sound. Particles. BG element.	Consider building of some kind in BG. Consider camera shake. Fewer particles now.
13	House scene, where Ray is trying to light a candle.	Modeling Done. Blocked Animation.	Staging. Character Animation. Lighting. Textures. Sound. Particles. BG Sky (darker)	Consider camera shake. Consider adding sparks as he hits the glass.
14	Theater Marquee scene.	Modeling done. Blocked animation.	Staging (add building) Character Animation. Lighting. Texturing. Sound. Particles. BG element.	Remember to animate lights. Consider camera shake. Fewer particles still. Darker sky/environment.
15	Ray runs into a guard in an alley with a flashlight.	Modeling done. Blocked Animation. Staging.	Character Animation. Guard Animation. Lighting. Textures. Sound. Particles. Posters.	Fix rig on guard if possible. Fewer to no particles. Darker still. Consider camera shake.
16	Bug Zapper gets Ray.	Modeling done. Staging done. Blocked Animation.	Sky BG (very dark) Lighting. Texturing. Character Animation. Sound. Sparks effect (zapper).	Keep Ray at the same point in the start of this scene as where he ended in the previous shot (transition). Consider camera shake. Darkest here. No particles from Ray here. Ray flickers.
17	Ray travels by the coast and sees the lighthouse.	Staging. Blocked Animation.	Sky BG. Lighting. Textures. Character Animation. Sound. Water Effects and Water.	Figure out the water here. Consider camera shake. No particles from Ray here. Ray is dim and flickers. Environment Fog.
18	Ray flies up the side of the lighthouse.	Staging. Blocked Animation. Modeling done.	Sky BG. Lighting. Textures. Character Animation. Sound.	No effects here. Consider camera shake. Ray is dim and flickers.
19	Ray looks around and cautiously goes inside the broken glass.	Staging. Blocked Animation.	Broken Glass needed. Lighting. Textures. Sound. Character Animation. BG Sky.	No effects. Consider camera shake. Figure out broken glass. Ray is dim and flickers.
20	Shot of the lighthouse as Ray’s light slowly dims down to nothing and the scene darkens drastically before a single flash of light emits from the lighthouse.	Staging. Modeling.	BG Sky. Lighting. Textures. Sound.	No effects. Consider camera shake.
21	Final shot as the lighthouse lights up and illuminated the dark cold environment with a bright warm light.	Staging. Modeling.	BG Sky Water and Water Effects. Lighting. Textures. Sound.	Environment Fog. Consider camera shake.

Last Light, Winter 2014

Set in the 1950's along an American coast line, the sun sets, and the last ray of sunlight flies out.  While competing against his fellow rays of light as well as electric bulbs, the last ray  must look for a place to stay and light up for the night.  This 3D animated short will be using complex shading and lighting in a stylized world while featuring a simple piano soundtrack with environment sound effects.

Greetings everyone!

Thanks for taking a look at my blog for my film.  This is the beginning of a new year, and a new quarter.  The goals for this quarter are to complete the rigging, animation, and texturing, and to start on lighting and continue with the sound and the matte paintings in the background.  I also plan to complete several style sheets to really nail down the final aesthetic of the film.  I have a few new objects to place into the various scenes to help populate the environment, which should be done this week.  I've also brought on some more people to help with the film, including Eric who will help me later on with the particle effects.

Another change on my blog you will notice is that the animatic will now have a password attached to it.  I apologize to anyone who wanted to see this, but my goal in the next few months is to start making my rounds in various film festivals.  So keep an eye open.  I will post more as the project progresses.

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.