JOBS

Depa

Director

modeling - futuristic church inside and outside, pews, candles, sconces, candle stands

lighting - futuristic church, torches and candles

animating - futuristic church, inside church - scenes 3,4 and 5

storyboard and concept

Nathan

Modeling - graves, door to old church, windows to old church, lectern, altar

Texturing and UV mapping - outside church

Compositing and post production

Helped with lights futuristic church

Guy

Modeling - inside of church, reredos, font and bench

Texturing and UV mapping - inside old church

Helped lighting inside old church

Compositing inside old church

Animating - inside old church

Post production

Steve

Modeled - old church inside and outside

Lighting and effects

Animating - outside 2 scenes

Josh - late arrival

Modeled - pods, organ, chandelier

Lighting - inside

This has been such a fantastic project but also the most frustrating.........and dissapointing. It has been a huge learning curve and development for myself and team.

The best thing about this project is the amount you can achieve and learn from each other. Considering we lost two weeks at the beginning of term it is amazing how much we have learnt and achieved as a team in the space of six weeks.

When I started this project I wanted to gain more modeling experience and lighting I feel I have achieved this along with a lot more other skills.

I have really enjoyed working with my team we have all really pulled together and tried to achieve project. We have delivered the content but suffered with the quality. This is something we seriously have to look at next time. Even though each person had allocated tasks we all helped each other.

Things I have learn

1. how to model
2. light (carry on)
3. rendering (never to leave to last minute and always do a test render.
4. size down image textures.
5. Save files correct format and projects working on other laptops
6. have same maya systems
7. allowing enough time for different processes. We spent far too long on the concept and modeling stages and each process seemed to take longer and longer. we need to allow more time for post production lighting and texturing.
8. animating

disappointment

1. final outcome of our animation. I feel we really rushed this week as we had so much to do and fell down on quality. the textures started messing up when rendering. especially inside the old church. If we had more time I would have liked to use bump maps to raise the texture so that it looked 3d.
2. not entirely happy with the lighting. I am pleased with the lighting in the futuristic church but still could be finessed. Not happy with the overall lighting effect in the inside of the old church as it looks flat and not enough ambient moody lighting to be had from the candles. Josh is new to lighting and found it difficult trying to achieve the effect we wanted and we had no time at all left so we had to just keep spot lights in. During rendering the textures totally messed up unfortunately we didn't have time to rectify as we ran out of time. Steve also had problems with his lighting as hi file was to big to render we had to simplify it. I really liked the cloud effect and the fog in Steve's outside church.
3. Final animation I would have liked to spend more time finessing the animation as it is not smooth enough I wanted to create a sweeping ghostly motion of a spirit and in places is very jerky. We ran out o time so didn't have time to finesse.
4. Outside church problems...problems...prrobles.... as we ran out of time as the scene was not rendered we had to submit a play bast version. I am so not happy with the overall finish as the animation needs finessing and in some scenes we have lost the lighting to the windows. In Steve's original clip he showed me he did have lighting. Unfortunately we rtan out of time and things were left to last minute. We will all learn from this and try to keep to the allocated time slots and to give more time to texturing, lighting and animating.
5. I feel as a group we have all worked really hard but unfortunately lost time with really important issues such as rendering.
6. It may have been easier each person doing a scene each rather then allocated jobs. as we we all were in the same boat. The only problem with that is continuity and consistency! scene 1 and 2 was the old church outside scene 3 and 4 inside church and scene 5 futurist. When we started none of us were really confident in any area. But know I would like to develop my knowledge of lighting as I really enjoy it and also modeling and animation.
7. Everyone in the group has been through a lot of pressure and stress trying to finish this animation I feel if we didn't have Industry Project we could have just focused on Digital and achieved a much better quality animation.

Last week - Reflection

Don't really know where to start with this.....we had so many many problems........

We had a lot to do this week I made clear to the rest of the team to be prepared to stay every day and expected to stay late as we have so much to do.

Things left to do.....

1. Lighting all scenes
2. Compositing
3. Animating
4. Test render
5. Post-Production

As we had so much left to do jobs were relocated........so everyone could focus and get on.

1. Steve to light first scene (outside the building)
2. Depa to light and animate the futuristic church
3. Guy and Depa to animate scene 3 inside of the building
4. Josh to light the inside of the old church.
5. Nath and Steve Post production

Monday - Everyone was in

Everyone ready to get on - Quickly briefed everyone......

Sorting out texturing and transferring files disorder.

The biggest problem we had was trying to transfer the files over to everyone computer so that we all could get on with the tasks. Nath and Guy spent all morning really trying to resolve this. There weren't any tutors around to ask so eventually one of the guys rushed out and bumped into Dan Dali (tutor) Dan suggested to set a new project and transfer all the files. (Nice one Dan it worked)......It was nearly 4/5 pm when Guy and Nath finally managed to get this sorted.

1. Josh couldn't start lighting the Old church as the compositing wasn't done!
2. Nath hadn't finished texturing new Church so I was unable to start the lighting on this.
3. Josh unable to start lighting the old church inside as props needed to be composited and Guy was still texturing.

Problems

1. Transferring files so that it doesn't corrupt when given group members put on their laptops.
2. not reading textures
3. textures to be put in correct folder
4. Files not working on my or Steve's computer computer
5. Can't start next stage without the churches complete.

Solution

1. Everyone to install Maya 10
2. Guy and Nath finishing texturing
3. Steve start lighting outside church

Steve was able to take the textured Church and start lighting the outside.

........We really needed all this sorted prior the deadline week but because we were running behind.....we were just getting more and more behind.

Tuesday - Everyone was in apart from Steve

Really need the textured futuristic church to start animating and lighting.......cool Nath had done basic textures for futuristic church. So at least I can do the animating and the Lighting.

Steve and Guy - compositing church (Steve did not come in) so Guy composited Church. We needed plan of Steve's Church so we could place everything. Phoned Steve to put plan on group blog.

I asked Steve to come in as we really needed him part of the team but said it wasn't an option.

As its the deadline week we just don't have time to here all the excuses we need to get on........

So Steve said He's going to render at home as we couldn't do it at college. I started animating scene 3/4 with Guy.

Wednesday I need to concentrate on Steve's Project - Industry Project

Thursday - Everyone in

Positive day today, Everyone just getting on with jobs. Jared mentioned about problems with rendering and to practice rendering and change texture sizes etc... This was so important. Nath did a practice render.....

• I've animated and Lit the futuristic building. There was a couple of things to sort out with lighting so I asked Nath just to sort this out so I could get on with Guy and animate the inside of the old church.
• Josh was practicing lighting the old church
• As I wasn't going to have time to animate outside of church I asked Steve to do this as He had the files and He was still lighting. We needed to practice render as Jared mentioned to reduce texture sizes. We could practice render on the futuristic church as this was completed.
• 
  

Problems

1. Transferring of files
2. lighting effects
3. practice render
4. Not starting rendering
5. scenes not ready to render
6. Computer Lag
7. Some textures appear and some not.
8. We need to resize textures
9. Delete History

Solution

1. Textures needed to relocate path to correct folder
2. process of modeling and texturing showing problems with overall look of surfaces when transfering the file to me. Needed to remodel floor as the tiles were modeled individually as the textures were playing up.
3. As the floor was visible in the beginning of the animation and was ok with Guys computer we and we were drastically running out of time we decided for Guy to render frames 1 to 1180 so His floor texture comes out and for me render 1180 to the end tonight. Steve to render Outside church and Nath to render futuristic church. Steve to phone Josh if he has problem with rendering.
4. Transfer files to External hard drive to free up space on laptops before rendering
5. Delete history on all objects before rendering. I asked everyone to do this on Thursday.

Friday

• Everyone managed to render scenes apart from Steve. Format rendering was on college email as Jared sent these we all followed these.
• Steve had problems with rendering but did not contact Josh as he was supposed to if it didn't work so Josh could try. This was a problem as the textures needed to be resized and he hadn't deleted the history as asked.
• Clym helped with trying to get the file outside scene sorted. Clym redid the lighting and resized some of the textures as it was lagging the computer and managed to shorten animation to 500 frames. We really needed the rendering to commence at 2 as it was expected to take about 5 hours. But it just seemed that Steve was to busy with why his bits that he did were or weren't in the scene. In the end Steve and Clym had to take out fire emitters clouds and other effects that was slowing the rendering. When we got back from lunch rendering was still not done as Steve was having problems. We had to ask Jared if we could submit later so we could wait for rendering. In the end we had to play blast scene and composite into clip as the scene was not rendered.
• Steve managed to get scenes 1 and 2 done with the help of Steve Crocker after submitting the animation.

Animating Inside the old church

Stayed till 9 on Tuesday with Guy blocking out animation for the inside of the old church. This scene as discussed in concept stages we wanted to animate as if you are looking through the eyes of the spirit every movement is as if the camera is the spirit we wanted to create anticipation as the spirit hovers in one place then moves on.

The final animation is nowhere near to the finish I would like due to lack of time We couldn't finish or smooth out the animation. In parts in-particular as the spirit passes over the pews the pace and the animation I am quite please with, as well as in the beginning when the camera pans the door and the door opens. I am really not pleased with the quality of texturing and the animation as it is a bit jerky.

Didn't like the lighting as we wanted a moody shot it was to illuminated. Textures of the wall should have been bump mapped to give a more 3d feel.

I really like the candle at the end of scene 3. Clym let us have this as Josh was having problems with the lighting of the church. However Josh did try and model and create the light himself.

During rendering the textures on the wall were jumping. this is probably because the UV maps needed to be resized. And the modelling. We had to leave this as we ran out of time and realised right at the end. The moral of this story is never never leave rendering to last minute! Live and learn............

Josh was left to the task of Lighting the old church inside. He was getting really frustrated with it as it wasn't to the effect that we wanted. In the end we just kept lighting for the candles so the glow would create shadow. The lighting in scene 3 - inside the building is not how we wanted it. But this is because we ran out of time and Josh didn't now how to do it or rather his computer was not allowing him to turn off default lighting off so he can see the effect when rendering. some of the effects he practiced were really good but we just had problems with files not working and had to keep the file on Guys computer.

Problems with transfering file over to another computer

We never allowed for the time we would loose with problems we had transferring files over. It was a nightmare after setting a new project and transferring files over we still had problems with the textures. We had to go through textures individually and re locate path so computer could allocate correct texture. We had problems with transferring the textures over for the floor as It as each tile was modeled separately. This takes up memory and polygons and is advised not to model this way. The way I would have done it was in one plane and extruded faces then add the texture. I would have also added bump map to get a 3d effect with the texture. However Nath and Guy did not apply these as they didn't have enough time.

Tuesday lighting and animating futuristic church.

Really good fun lighting this church Just followed a tutorial on line and used the book - Advanced maya texturing and lighting as well as playing around with lighting menu options. Selected camera and changed it to blue background in the hypershade. Then placed point light scaled it out and placed it so it went through the window at the back then placed a spotlight outside the building to the right changed sunlight intensity to 4.5 and cone angle to 25. I used depth map shadows in the depth map attribute editor. A volume light was created and color changed to soft blue moved to the edge of the building. The spotlight representing sun light was opened I selected fog light in the light effects the spot light through the window increased in length till it penetrated through the floor. I used a tutorial on line I also used Occlusions and mental-ray shaders. I especially like the reflections on the pods giving a shiny polished futuristic feel.

The two pillars were illuminate-by increasing the Incandescence and changing colour to slightly blue white I also increased the glow. I didn't have time to finish the lights the next day as I needed to start animating with guy. So I asked Nath to just change the glow so it wasn't glowing so strong as the pillar on the left. However, the lights changed a bit so the reflection appeared on the ground. I liked this effect and thought it was really strong but lost the depth in the pods.

animating futuristic church

Using MIB_AMB_OCCLUSION and animating scene smoothing animation using the graph editor.