Pinxwheel Update: Panel 6 and 7

As for today., we have almost finished panel 6 shots 2 and 3... still needs some particle effects in there... shot 3 had a fog effect at the back which i forget.. oh.. btw it'll be just another pass 2m to render ... tumtanda na
Im really having a hard time due to my cpon ngaun lng 2 e... hay.. sna mwla na.. but hey., khit pa2no nka2usad p nmn.... buti n lng nand2 ang ating mga mabu2ting kaibigan... ^_^V

Jc, had also finished doing the underground scene so it really a matter of animating things out and rendering them.. KONTI NA LANG!!!!
^_^V



- jonathan

Pinxwheel Update!

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The team are now at panel 6.... we have finished panels 1 - 5 and it is really is great... now we're concentrating on Panel 6, a panel focused on Tbin.. character made by alvin... Today he's working for panel 6., while im workin on panel 7... and jc working on the underground passage where the adventure begins...We all have an overall 12 panels and an approximate of 45 shots., and with our teamwork i think we can make it... ^_^V

Panel 4 on the GO!

The hardest parts are now over!
Having the feel of the creating something like this makes you feel you can work much faster.

We now finish the panels 1 to 3, which is in my opinion the hardest part of them all. Cguro dahil din sa thought na kapag naguumpisa ka pa lang talagang mahirap dahil parang nangangapa ka pa rin e. Lalo na sa animation na gingawa namin ung workflow na gagamitin, ung mga do's and donts.. at ung mga pagloloko ng softwares na ginagamit, ung mga problems na madadaanan mo along the way...ung mga ganun baga.. pero nung mejo nagrasp na namin ung mga ganung bagay at alam nang solusyunan ung mga problems at errors na lumalabas.. mas bumibilis ung trabaho...

Ngaun nasa PANEL 4 na kami at nirerender na ung shot 1. Hopefully sana matapos na namin sya as soon as possible. Mejo naging busy this past few days kaya hindi na nakakapagblog.. hehe... ^_^V

-jonathan of pinxwheel

Crafting the World Of Coraline

grabe an tyaga nila...

Project Progress Update

PinXwheel Animation Production Inc. Progress Report

The team has now been busy doing the project this past few months. And doing some research in optimizing scenes and finding ways to speed up render times and render work flow. The team has modeled almost 85% of the teaser. Although modeling has reached 80%, we decided to do the first panel. The first panel, as you can see on the final animatics, was composed of many moving gearsinside the clock tower. This was called PANEL_1 and the animation took for about 26 seconds, that's 780 frames at 30 frames per seconds.

Also the gears and clockworks inside the clock tower are all moving , they are all manually animated and scripted to suit the gears movements similar to a realistic gear that can be seen in many films and series. The team had conducted a series of research and development to come up to a script that can be used to create the circling movement of each gears. Also the script is done through MEL(Maya Embedded Language) programming inside Maya UI interface. This is helpful because the gears consists of large numbers and having them setup one by one is a tedious tasks and more importantly would eat up a lot of time to setup each and every gears in the tower.

The script is also useful not just in gears, but it can also be used to almost anything that revolve continuously like that of a gear, one good example are wheels of a moving car. Though some of the vehicle in Gear Centra are equipped by hover panels, some of them uses wheels, and on that vehicles we can use the created script to rotate the wheels continuously when moving, creating a feel of a realistic moving car. Also we have modified the MEL script to have a shake controls so as to create a more realistic results in creating a moving wheel.

The team had also conducted a series of test in render time tests. This includes and concerns more on render time for every passes. The desired resolution were aiming at was at 1280 x 720 pixel resolution, that would mean an HD resolution. But the fact that achieving a high definition movie resolution done on most cinemas nowadays are a bit render time consuming on the machines we currently have. The series of tests reveal to us that HD is not the appropriate format for the teaser right now.

As the result of the tests, an hd resolution film format for the teaser would be a second choice for the team. We had decided to use a NTSC Wide screen format that range for about a 720 x 486 pixel resolution, cutting the render times to a more smaller number and adding different passes for different purposes is now more possible. Although the team must be careful in choosing the right passes for the right scene or shot.

Maya Tips: SELECT THAT JOINT!

Sometimes you would be faced a situation in rigging where you cannot locate the proper joint for the proper part due to unwanted and complex geometries or whatsoever that may be blocking your view to the joint, and would want to have a control that would literally select the joint. Of course you can do that by using selection handles but sometimes its not what you would want or by constraining it to the control. Another tricky way is to parent the control's shape node to the joint (provided that your control is not a joint). Since a joint doesn't have a shape node, you can parent it to a node that does have a shape node. Like for example i do have created a joint and a curve, the curve would serve as its control. Select the curve's shape node and shift select the joint, then type this in the script editor or in the command line:

parent -r -s;

-s flag is shape, it means that because joints do not have a shape node it now inherits the shape node of the curve. From then on when you select the curve, you will be selecting the joint itself and keying the curve will just key the joints. This is just a simple tip you can do if your just testing something that you don't want to meddle with complex rigs and so on. The same method can be followed with clusters, when you can't even see that letter C in the view port.

Hope that helps.. ^_^V

FIFTY-TWO QUICK ACTING NOTES FROM ED HOOKS

Just want to share some things here i found on the web, might be helpful in animation process.

FIFTY-TWO QUICK ACTING NOTES FROM ED HOOKS

1. Scenes begin in the middle, not the beginning.
2. A character should be "doing" something 100 percent of the time.
3. A character enters a scene for a reason, and he exits for a reason.
4. Thinking tends to lead to conclusions; emotion tends to lead to action.
5. A gesture need not be an illustration of the spoken word.
6. Audiences empathize with emotion. The key to good animation is in empathy.
7. Comedy is drama heightened, oxygenated.
8. An action pursues a longer term objective. (Smile at the girl because you want to date her.)
9. Short term memory causes eyes to glance upward.
10. Long term memory causes eyes to glance downward, into the soul.
11. The human sense of sight is many times more powerful than the sense of hearing.
12. Humans act to survive. Find the survival mechanism in your character.
13. Play an action until something happens to make you play a different one.
14. A scene is a negotiation.
15. "Actors are athletes of the heart" - Artonin Artaud
16. Anxiety is a high or heady power center; confidence is a low power center.
17. Emotions are automatic value responses.
18. Characters that make steady eye contact for more than a few seconds are either going to fight or make love.
19. The human smile says, "I won't hurt you."
20. Never underestimate the audience.
21. When you animate, you are saying to the audience, "Iunderstand this." When the audience applauds, laughs or cries, it is saying, "I see what you mean."
22. Actors lead; audiences follow.
23. Background characters can be defined with shadow movement - a jiggling knee, a charcter's mouth moving when he reads the paper, biting fingernails and so on.
24. "The Iron Giant" is an animation classic. Every animator should study it, like visiting Mecca.
25. We see things before we hear them; we hear things before we touch them; we touch things before we smell them; we smell things before we taste them.
26. A villain is a regular person that has a fatal flaw.
27. A hero is a regular person that has to rise to extreme heights to overcome an extraordinary obstacle.
28. The "beats" in a scene or script are better perceived as "beads" in a necklace. One bead leads to the next to the next and so on. Put the beads together, and you have a story.
29. The purpose of (character) movement is destination.
30. Acting has almost nothing to do with words.
31. Commercials convey almost zero actual information. They are about emotion.
32. Humans and other animals negotiate status continually.
33. To energize a scene, convert the character's "wants" to "needs."
34. Theatrical reality isn't the same thing as regular reality.
35. Acting is reacting.
36. Animators are not mimes. Mime is a specialized art.
37. A key ingredient of empathy is distance.
38. Old people stoop because their bodies ache.
39. A drunk character tries to counteract the effects of the alcohol.
40. To show that a character is hot, have him try to get cool.
41. To show that a character is cold, have him try to get warm.
42. An "adrenaline" moment is one the character will remember when he turns eighty and looks back on his life. The best movies include plenty of adrenaline moments. (Re-read #24)
43. A character analysis is like a character biography.
44. When a character is faced with a choice, be specific. Avoid ambivalence.
45. Allow your characters to be affected by the atmosphere in a location, the "feeling" it projects. (A car wreck has an atmosphere; a church has an atmosphere; a marriage bed has an atmosphere.)
46. Yelling is a weak acting choice.
47. We speak of memory in general terms, but it is referenced in specific mental images.
48. A character that is listening to another is actually preparing to speak.
49. The camera tends to follow the character's gaze.
50. A scene should have conflict, otherwise known as an obstacle.
51. Trick for suggesting villainy: tilt head forward; eyes peer upward, exposing whites in lower portion of eyeball.
52. Character "personality" is actually character "behavior."

www.actingforanimators.com

Going Open Source?

"Going Open Source?"

This was my first question in my mind when i think about the drawbacks of using commercial softwares such as Maya, adobe photoshop, after effects etc. that are currently installed in my computer.

Our school has also insights ever since on using free open source softwares that made me think, why not use open source software out there. Ive found out that there are almost open source alternatives to expensive softwares that we can't afford to buy here in the philippines, that render us to buy pirated cds of the said commercial softwares.

But as it goes, ive found my windows being infected by a virus just a week ago that made me reformat my hard disk, Ive come to think on using open source softwares available on the net. Just want to share some cool open source software ive found out that can be alternatives for commercial softwares out there:

Modeling

BLENDER - Blender is modeling, texturing, lighting, animation and video post-processing 3d software package in one. (alternate for Maya, 3dsmax, other 3d commercial software)

Wings 3D is a subdivision modeler inspired by Nendo and Mirai from Izware.

SharpConstruct is a 3D modeling program that paint depths on to polygon models in real-time. Unlike traditional modeling programs, SharpConstruct makes it easy to model organic shapes. (alternate for Zbrush)

Make Human is a free open source 3d tool for 3d models character modelling and animation.

Texturing and 2D

The GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) is a free software raster graphics editor. The GIMP product vision sees GIMP as a high-end program for the editing and creation of original images, icons, graphical elements of web pages and art for user interface elements.

Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

Sound and Lip Sync

Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems.

JLipSync is a program for creating timesheets/x-sheets/exposure sheets to sync animation to a pre-recorded audio track. The X-sheet can be exported in various formats, among them .csv and pdf-format.JLipSync is similar to the commercial program Magpie, which unfortunately no longer is available. The software has been substituted by Magpie Pro.

Video Editors and Compositing Softwares

Wax 2.0 is a high performance and flexible video composition and special effects software. The idea for Wax is to be very general purpose and flexible in video composition and effects, so that you can compose your dream video sequence with ease every time. Wax can create 2D & 3D special effects and can work in two modes - as a standalone application and as a "plug-in" to video editors/NLEs.

VirtualDub is a video capture/processing utility for 32-bit Windows platforms (95/98/ME/NT4/2000/XP), licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It lacks the editing power of a general-purpose editor such as Adobe Premiere, but is streamlined for fast linear operations over video. It has batch-processing capabilities for processing large numbers of files and can be extended with third-party video filters. VirtualDub is mainly geared toward processing AVI files, although it can read (not write) MPEG-1 and also handle sets of BMP images.

Video Playback

VLC Media Player is a highly portable multimedia player and multimedia framework capable of reading most audio and video formats (MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264, DivX, MPEG-1, mp3, ogg, aac ...) as well as DVDs, Audio CDs VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a media converter or a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on networks.

Media Player Classic is an extremely light-weight open source media player for Windows. It looks just like the good-old Media Player v6.4, but has lots of nice extra features.

Collaboration

COLLADA COLLAborative Design Activity for establishing an open standard digital asset schema for interactive 3D applications. It involves designers, developers, and interested parties from within Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) as well as key third-party companies in the 3-D industry. It defines an XML database schema that enables 3-D authoring applications to freely exchange digital assets without loss of information, enabling multiple software packages to be combined into extremely powerful tool chains.

Verse is a network protocol that lets multiple applications act together as one large application by sharing data over a network. If one application makes a change to shared data, the change is distributed instantly to all the other interested clients. The protocol and associated data format are both heavily optimized for sharing data suitable for 3D graphics.

Other Miscelleneous Tools

OpenOffice is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. (an alternative for MS Office)

InfraRecorder is a free CD/DVD burning solution for Microsoft Windows. It offers a wide range of powerful features; all through an easy to use application interface and Windows Explorer integration. (an alternative for Nero)

Ubuntu is a community developed operating system that is perfect for laptops, desktops and servers. Whether you use it at home, at school or at work Ubuntu contains all the applications you'll ever need, from word processing and email applications, to web server software and programming tools. (an alternative for windows)

The Spine by Chris Landreth - The Makings

this is really great, i found this one at the National Film Board of Canada, and the way they create the story is kinda unique(IMO). Chris created a different type of visual storytelling for the short. ^_^V

THE SPINE 'Making of: Story Genesis'

THE SPINE 'Making of: Walkabout'

THE SPINE 'Making of : New Generation Animations'

THE SPINE 'Making of: the Studio'

http://www3.nfb.ca/webextension/the-spine/

The Spine An animated short film by Chris Landreth

For The Spine, director and scriptwriter Chris Landreth joins forces again with producers Steve Hoban (Copperheart Animation), Mark Smith (Copperheart Animation) and Marcy Page (National Film Board of Canada), who had collaborated with him to make Ryan (2004) – Oscar winner for best animated short. Entirely computer animated, The Spine is a bold film whose dazzling artistic style pushes the limits of animated film. The Spine uses uniquely bizarre but strangely believable imagery, to tell the story of an ordinary married couple whose lives are in turn tragic, absurd and beautiful. The Spine was produced by the National Film Board of Canada in association with Copperheart Animation and C.O.R.E. Digital Pictures, with the creative participation of Autodesk Canada CO. and Seneca College School of Communication Arts.

Gear Centra Updates

We have finished modeling and texturing the following:

- The main characters, Kibo, T-binary, and Sawtooth.
-The secondary characters, the Merchant, Matilda, the Wurm.
-The extras are also created for filling the scenes, these are the extra characters, both female and male, the extra vehicles, both hovering and non-hovering vehicles, and the extra robots.

These characters and vehicles are all modeled, textured and rigged ready to be animated. Although on some point we have encountered a problem on those robots and vehicles we modeled, we’ve manage to got a solution even if it will take to break the rig (a rig in 3d animation is just like bones in human body, it allows the animator to control the modeled characters and animate them with ease. And breaking it would just means reconstructing the rig so that it fits to what you need).


We have also modeled part of the milieu. Although the milieu are big, we are determined to finish it whatever it would take, and hoping that the school would support us on this. The milieu includes the whole city of Gear Centra. Although we don’t have a shot that would exposed every detail of the city, we are carefully planning every shot that it would not become faked when it comes to the big screen.

The team has modeled the commercial area, the fill houses needed on the scene was also modeled. And with fill houses made and already textured, we can use them in different scenes and areas that needed fill houses on the background.



During the production processes, we are also anticipating the other phases of production. This includes the rendering and the overall look of the film. We have conducted some post processes and research and development on how to put up the overall look of the teaser. All passes generated was all composited in one to get a different kind of effect. Though there are some minor adjustments to color tones and shadows. The results are nice.

For now, we are finishing the other parts of the milieu. Last days we've (Jonathan, Alvin, Roovete and Argee) spent the whole night and almost a whole day in Korphil creating a demo reel that can be used on the upcoming events. The overnight was fun, although we ran on many problems on softwares., much of them in maya and most especially on the compositing software were using. But though problems arises, we still come up for an answer that render us to work friday afternoon., we started at 12:00 pm thursday and ended it almost about 4 pm friday. I just cant imagine the look of our faces after that, when im trying to remember, i just cant stop smiling about it., Hehehehe.... (see....) But Although everyone is tired and puyat, none of us leave until the work is done, and i think that is what i admire to them on that day. And i think the overnyt is worth it and we've learned a lot of lesson. ^_^V