Animation Relaxation
[Animation At Ulster University Second Year Blog]
By Matthew Kane
Portfolio: https://www.artstation.com/matthewkane
Showreel: https://vimeo.com/matthewkane
Research :
Mood Board :
I then went on to look at examples in games and films ranging from the cartoonist style of Sea of thieves to the more realistic models of Assassins creed and the special effects and 3d models and deigns of the ships and environments of Pirates of the Caribbean.
I also went on to discuss the project with some of the older students like Becca Blair and she helped me with some ideas and some sourcing that i wouldn't have thought of other wise. She referred me to some undergraduates show called "Victory" around a static scene which involved a ship with many row boats and people populating the scene but frozen in time it also had simulated water and was composed very well and the amount of detail was astonishing as it was like a miniature replica war scene but the whole shot is composed of 3d assets.
https://vimeopro.com/nccaanimation/undergraduatedegreeshow2017/video/225974959
Victory, by Richard Cope, is a short 3D fly-through animation based on the painting The Battle of Trafalgar, painted by J.M.W. Turner in 1805. The aim of the film is to pay homage to Turner’s painting by using computer animation technology to re imagine the historical events it depicts using modern media. The figures and ships in the film are shaded like marble statues to imitate monuments from the period Turner existed in.
Looking at some 3d models for online for help to give me ideas with building and topology as they are composed modularly and have a wire frame, This would also help us to create a list of assets we had yet to think off from, my earlier test scene and by having these in our scene it would complete the Mise-en-scène and the ambience:
Sources i found helpful to visualise and generate ideas and our layout for a scene :
I forwarded this to Jacob who decided he would make the ship so i send him blueprints and videos on how to make a pirate ship and once it was completed then we would break it up by dissecting different areas of the ship and having planks be broken and jagged along with several visible holes in the hull.
https://www.3dartistonline.com/news/2017/11/maya-tutorial-create-a-pirate-ship/
This helped us to plan our interior scene and what design it would be along with what size the room should be along with it's shape and how it should be populated with assets and decorated. From this piece of research i suggest that we go with interior candle lighting with windows that moonlight could also shine through into the room from the night scene:
https://polycount.com/discussion/151991/pirate-cabin-environment-school-project
Ion Lucin professions :Animation l Motion l Design l 3D l Typography l Illustration
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/yKGrO
I really liked the design and the way this artist presented his work as he made use of cell shading and then went in and used his illustration skills to make it look like a piece of line art but it was simple a 3d model positioned and edited to produce a very different but cool way to exhibit his work.
https://www.behance.net/gallery/60257767/3D-Modelling-Ship-(2016-ReWork-In-Progress)
https://www.behance.net/LynkaWolf
Similarly i liked this one based on the deigns and the profiles from all sides that can be seen that we looked at before creating our ship also the final outcome with textures looked very nostalgic which is what we wanted to also create as the colours are all old and warn but the scenes have some highlights on the metals and on the yellow hand rail which helps create a nice contrast that isn't to strong as it blends well together.
https://polycount.com/discussion/74110/mini-environment-tropical-island
This give me the idea of using sand shader on the ground to replicate the effect of a beach instead of just using an image. I also wanted to try and animate the water and have reflection along with depth and transparency creating different tones of colour in the water. If i had time i would go on to look at creating crashing waves and having the sand have different tones one for dry and wet etc. along with foam and spray that would move with the current. The sand shader required Redshift as i only learnt that Maya no longer supports mental ray so this was not going to work as we planned to render the entire scene in Arnold.
https://sketchfab.com/models/14750627a2cd4df58ed09b8be18a0b49
This help me realise that we would need trees and plants and some different variation of them along with some other models like the broken row boat that would tie the scene together.It also gave me the idea of using image plains for the
leaves as to save time and processing power this however didn't work.
https://sketchfab.com/models/263574e5ae734d9f9caa24db9acf5c3c?ref=related
This is where i thought about having more animated components in our scenes like having the sails blowing in the wind and some lose debris and cargo floating in the water bobbing up and down. Also in many of the models i looked at they all have tropical plants and trees like palm trees i thought about having actual coconut trees for our scenes as they look very similar.
https://sketchfab.com/models/9768af1fec5042208cac63c68644402b
I looked at scenes like this to help me plan out the environment and the staging of the scene and the best ways to show off our work along with looking at how scenes are composed and developed and the styles of texturing and how they are light up and displayed and methods on how to do this.
Cannon:
https://sketchfab.com/models/965bd40914af48858f5bf8355dfb0e78
I forwarded this to Jacob as he had said he was going to do the design of the ship along with the cannons and i sent him this to help him with his reference designs for the cannons as this was very stylised but very low poly with just some extures onp of it it was more to have an example of what we didn't want we he was creating the scene.
Chests: I forwarded these onto the group as Jacob did the reference sketches but Ronan was the one modelling and designing the chest.
https://sketchfab.com/james/collections/treasure-chests?cursor=24
This was a pintrest page i found that had the tropical atmosphere we where going with along with some pirated themed images.
https://www.pinterest.co.uk/stephenricker/ref-tropical-island-pirate-jungle/?lp=true
This was a link that Jacob forwarded to the group:
http://www.brianlemay.com/Pages/animationschool/animation/breakassignments/layout.html
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Concept Art:
Introduction to Gerard Dunleavy
http://www.gerarddunleavy.com/concept-art/
In class perspective we looked at how to create concept art and develop it to higher standards along with the use of line and composition of a shot and how focal points along with depth and focus is used to make a eye line that you subconsciously follow and are drawn to when looking at a scene. This is done by using layers or by creating twists and turns like s shaped curves in a scene or by having the line converge or flow leading the eye to follow it like a mountain range for example. how by looking at his work and the process to produce work has altered my perception and i am not as narrow minded in the work i would want to do as the work was inspiring as to what you can do with some time and practice.
http://framefilter.blogspot.com/
We looked Conceptualising an idea and perspective along with colour and examples in the form of thumbnails and examined some of Gerard's personal work and the stages to get to the next stage of producing production quality work and the time and effort involved along with the techniques and time spent to meet client's deadlines:
My Concept art:
In Class we discussed about size relation and height and how big a scene should be and how it should have a person or to a character for proportion and size relation in relevance to the objects that compose the scene. Also we looked at how to compose and stage a scene very quickly by reusing assets, to save time but by just manipulating them slightly like changing the height, size, orientation or rotation makes them look different and stops the scene from looking boring and the objects just being reused over and over again it makes it visually different. We also looked at how best to create thumbnails and have them as negatives and how to create a interesting scene with lighting and shadows and how to refine the piece so that it can be made to production value standards with the many stages of refinements.
My Thumbnails:
My Group's concept art and reference designs:
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Modeling a box exercise with Gerard:
Friday we did a quick modelling project where we started production on the 3d files had the design for the concept of boxes / crates while thinking about UV's and how we could reuse assets by simply deforming them or manipulating them to create variations or completely different looking models from the original objects mesh:
Help from Gianni Francesco on alternative lighting and shadows for a for a scene using hdr images :
http://www.hdrlabs.com/sibl/archive.html
Folder with image ditch river and file :
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1_cwUbMNQy7szliKrtxC-R2A9EkRFPMsb?usp=sharing
Problem solving and looking at alternative solutions early on:
Adding water and lighting to test scene:
Problem and solution : Early on arnold renders water as black:
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/maya-shading-lighting-and/arnold-renders-ocean-shader-as-black-plane/td-p/6656158
After this the water then went pink in the Arnold render.
This lead me to look at alternative ways to create water like this:
https://docs.arnoldrenderer.com/display/A5AFMUG/Rendering+an+Ocean+with+Displacement
http://www.grinning-tiger.com/posts/2015/5/16/creating-an-ocean-with-vray-water
Alot of these methods of creating water seemed very complex and time consuming with alot of technical know how which i am still only starting to grasp the basics and i felt it would be foolish to try and attempt something like it as it would only waste time that could be spend doing something better.
To look at different ways to create Sand i also stumbled on this:
https://www.ronenbekerman.com/procedural-vray-sand-material-how-to-use-it-video/
This seemed very complex and with the deadline drawing nearer i felt like we wouldn't be able to complete it.
Working on refining and adding to the test scene :
Playblast Videos:
Adding Water and trying different variations of lighting and other Special effects all images are here:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/19BoSHea-Y_SotUIWv-YL3FC4g-KTyFSi?usp=sharing
Trying different renderer's and adding effects like fog:
Wire-frame view:
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Water Test Playblasts:
Creating the Water from Dreamwork's How To Train Your Dragon
My Attempt :
Looking at the attribute editor for bi frosts ocean shader:
The pink or black water outcome was due to the Arnold renderer not supporting the ocean shader from bifrost it changed from the black to pink when i updated Arnold and Maya to the latest versions. I then looked for alternative ways to add water and waves to the scene that would work in Arnold as that was what we where rendering all the scenes with so i looked at other examples like Redshift and V-ray as mental ray is no longer available:
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