Semester 2 - Week 6

Good lord, an animatic:


Yes, well......it goes for way too freaking long. For a one minute animation, it comes in to around two and a half minutes. Lot of chipping away to do yet. But at least most of my sound and shot are how I want them to be. For the most part, I intend to work up from here, tweaking all that is necessary and so on. What fun. At any rate, I'm just happy to see something moving at this point. Where I go from here is uncertain as there are many avenues to traverse. Chris and I have been playing around with different metal textures and bump mapping them so they look all weathered and old. For a robot that's been sitting motionless in the ice for centuries, he still looks a little over a year old, spending that year in the rain. Still, I like how he looks with the temporary textures now, so things can only get better from here, logically speaking that is. I'll hang in there.

Semester 2 - Week 5

Major strides, as I'm almost finished with my running comp. Would've been done sooner if it weren't for Maya 2008 deciding to crash while saving and spitting this out when opening the file again:


Why?

So now I cannot save files on my pc anymore. Curses. Utilising 2010 is an option, though I'm unsure how the compatibility works between the two versions. Marvellous situation. Though I'm not terribly concerned, as according to the week ten milestone, I'm actually on target. Miracles never cease.

I've textured the robot, a simple enough task considering I only need to uv map one object. The rest were objects with the texture applied to it. Crude, but it works for the robot anyway. Camera and set are locked off, just need to finish off lighting and I'm good to go, hopefully.

Oh, and for laughs I did a test render to see how it looks. Still no lighting and some place-holder textures here and there, but you get the idea:



EDIT
My issues with saving have been resolved, at least for the time being. Fingers crossed this does not plague me again.

Semester 2 - Week 4

I've had the pleasure of needing to restart my set, but this is likely a positive. The original set had a modelled mountain and curved plain for the sky which I'd already realised I did not need. So it'll likely be few flat plains, including one for the hill. Nothing to complain about there. Chris is currently polishing up the robot model and I have no doubt it'll look better than my first attempt; even my original design for it. Looking at my rough sound scape, I realise that my ten second wind loop may be a bit obvious after a short while, so I'll likely add a few atmospheric sounds such as ice cracking or a distant seal. I may have to record a number of sounds myself and since I'm recording the voice over for Steve's animation, I can possibly do both it one sitting. Not panicking just yet.

Semester 2 - Week 3

Upon my return from holiday I've been told I have to do in terms of animating, while at the same time a number of shortcuts have presented themselves. As I worked on my set in Maya, I realised I did not require a panoramic view of the sky or 3-D modeled background mountains as I only have a small number of still shots for the entirety of the animation and no camera movements. So now I have the option of either putting the sky and hills on a plain and multi pass rendering when that time comes or adding the entire background in After Effects. Hopefully I'll have my shots set up within the next week.