Well I'm in the middle of blitzing the rest of my animation, and at the same time finally simulating the lava for the scenes that really need proper liquid lava. I'm saving a lot of time by using a simple lumpy plane in a few scenes with the lava texture, and then just moving that through a lattice to make it warp a bit.
I'm using Next Limit's RealFlow 5 to simulate the lava particles, and then generate a mesh from them. The money shot, the main scene that really needs a realistic simulation, is the lava-fall sequence, and this is what the simulation looks like so far:
The film is technically due on Monday, not sure if I'll have 100% animation for that hand-in, but I'll be pretty close. I'll put up the version I do hand-in afterwards, and after getting some sleep. After the hand-in I'll be finishing any animation left over, and rendering the final version for industry day at Sheridan. Hand-in for that is the 23rd, so I'll be linking the 'final' version of the film here on that day.
Well this is FOR this year's flipbook, but I'm late so it might not get in. So I figured I'd put it up somewhere so that at least someone would see it! :)
For those not in the know, I dropped of the planet for 3 weeks, because my Dad passed away. I wasn't able to work at all, and honestly for good reason, but regardless this has put me in a tough spot now. I'm doing all I can to get this done, I fully intend to finish this film, but it ain't gonna be easy.
This week I really neeed to jump on the animation, we'll see how that goes. I have one landscape that still needs painting, might enlist help for that. The future is uncertain except for one thing, it's gonna be BUSY. Here goes!
Very close to having the model for the Acheron city done, but today I decided to wrap up the textures for the lava-ship Charon:
There's a little bit of detail-modelling left for the Ecclesia, as well as it's textures. Once the Ecclesia and Acheron are out of the way I'll finally feel comfortable jumping into animation.
And more texturing to come! Thanks for the feedback on Avalon everyone! But for today I decided to get Caldera out of the way, I'll be tweaking Avalon probably tomorrow. For now, here is our favourite pompous and short-sighted dictator!
Might be adjusting the shiny-ness of his shoes and cuffs, but other than that this is probably how he's going to look in the end.
Jan 29 EDIT: Just gonna edit this post with the tweaks to these texures:
Nearly done the character's textures. Which I was hoping to have done much earlier, but I don't feel it's too bad of a set back, yet.
Anyways, I showed Mantel before, working on Caldera right now, but here's Avalon. After some mentor and peer feedback, I've decided to fiddle with her colors a bit, the first image is the original textures. It was suggested to maybe change her skin color entirely, so I gave that a whirl, a little undecided on this, but it's not hard to fiddle with. Let me know what you think!
A few updates, this version has the animated scene 2 cut in (still not done) as well as several key changes to the ending. I'm trying out this panning of the cannons rolling out instead of the big long shot of the ships floating in as the big finale shot. The old shot was too fast and too far away, ambiguous etc. I feel the shot works but I'm not sure if it works well enough as the very last shot, so let me hear your ideas!
Heartburn Animatic 18 01 2012 from Stephen Good on Vimeo.
Also, finally dove into mudbox and got with the sculpting of the landscapes, well one of them. I've also finalized Mantel's textures. So here's one shot of each of those, I'll take another landscape shot sometime when I've got the real lava effect in there, that should (fingers-crossed) look real nice.
PS: actually I made a change to Mantel's texture but forgot that I hadn't fixed it for this render. His clothes aren't gonna be that 'bumpy'
So we had a project for our 3D class where we needed to render out a scene with a rigged character, a prop, a background with some depth (for later compositing), and 100 frames of animation. Conveniently, my scene 2 for my film fits all those requirements, so I put together this rough version of the scene:
The finished scene will have dialogue/lip sync, some heat ripples (in addition to the current light rippling), and that run is a bit frantic, so I might slow it down.
In other news, felt like for some reason sharing the face-rig setup I have for Mantel, mostly cause, with the control-surfaces showing, he looks rather Mickey-esque :)
Well it's been a very busy couple of months! I put this animatic together 2 weeks ago:
There's a few changes to the shots that are needed, but for now I am rigging. Mantel's rig is done, and his textures are almost done as well. Everyone else is still sitting at geometry done, except the city Acheron, some details on the airship Ecclesia and the volcanic landscapes. Here's some renders:
I really need to catch up on the geometry and textures before Christmas break. I'll have the rigs done by Friday, so I'll be able to put up some vids of the characters moving around then. And no, I am not suffering from indigestion.
Welcome back! Well I had a fantastic summer internship at Chuck Gammage Animation Studios (http://www.cganim.com/) where I learned lots more about modelling, texturing, lighting and rendering in Maya. I'd go into more detail, but I think for now, and the rest of the school year, this blog will be focusing on developing this little film here.
"Heartburn" started up in the summer 2 years ago. I knew I didn't want to be fumbling around too much with story when I got around to 4rth year, so I laid out the premise, environment, characters and action during that summer, along with some initial design work.
I also knew, that this film would be done entirely 3D animation, using Maya:
The city Acheron, with its massive armoured wall to protect it from eruptions.
Designs for the ship, Charon, anti-lava suits, and structures inside the city Acheron.
Old character lineup. At top, Mantel, a worker, Caldera, a soldier and another worker. Below the lineup are various ideas for Mantel, and Avalon (the stripey girl)
At the start, the story was about an engineer named Mantel who wanted to be free of the terrible conditions in the city, Acheron. Mantel builds a ship, the Charon, to cross the lava ocean to freedom. The oppressive General Caldera is angered by Mantel using resources and manpower on what Caldera thinks is a fruitless, suicidal effort, so Caldera banishes Mantel and forces him to leave before the Charon is ready. The ship breaks down out on the lava ocean, it floods with lava and everyone onboard but Mantel is killed. Mantel, clinging to the last bit of unmelted ship, then rides the ship down as it falls off an immense lava-fall at the edge of the lava ocean. Mantel wakes up on a piece of scrap metal floating in a water ocean, where the girl, Avalon, swims up and saves him.
From the start I knew the idea I had was much too 'epic' to present in a short film, so I thought of a few ways to show a snippet of the larger universe I envisioned. The design style also evolved, initially I imagined a fairly straightforward sci-fi style for costumes, props and buildings. Around August this year I realized I wanted a more identifiable style, so I had a simple thought, "everything is trains". I love trains. So I decided the costumes, props, sets and vehicles would all be designed around the world of late 1800's steam locomotives:
Avalon's swimsuit wasn't very 1800's like, so I started considering more era-appropriate dress.
Caldera's 'steamsuit' was steampunky enough, but too limiting for movement, and still too sci-fi compared to Mantel and Avalon.
His new suit took reference from the American civil war. He's got a cow-catcher for a collar, his cane has a little boiler on the end of it. Not seen here is his monocle.
The Charon's inital design is on the top right. Current design is the big one. The top left design is again, steampunky, but you can't see a train anywhere in it.
The airship Ecclesia, Avalon's vessel that she uses to rescue Mantel from the falling Charon. At the very beginning it was a sailing ship just seen in the background on the water ocean. As I fiddled with the plot, Avalon took on a much more active role. The current story has a great big beauty shot with the Ecclesia diving down past camera. Current design is on the right, though I'm adding a few more side propellers.
These last 2 months were dedicated to getting our stories as close to where we want them as possible. Changes can still be made until December, but not very big ones. Heartburn now consists of the action of Caldera trying to get rid of the rebel Mantel, who is being supported from the outside by Avalon. Mantel is nearly killed by Caldera, and in Mantel's failed escape he is rescued by Avalon with her massive airship. Avalon and Mantel return together to overthrow Caldera.
The film is 1 minute 44 seconds long, that's including the title and credits as they are. I don't expect it to get much shorter. The voices here are all done by me, with the assistance of some audio editing, I'm contacting a voice actor to see if I can get some professional voices for the final film. Here's the leica!
Everyone says this is an ambitious project, and I completely agree. My goal is to challenge myself this year. I plan to finish this film as I envision it. However, I have a backup plan, that I can animate at least 1 minute of the entire story and call it a demo.
This week (which is reading week) I am diving head first into modelling the characters; Mantel, Caldera and Avalon. Ahead of me is modelling the sets, props and the two ships. Then there's texturing, and then rigging. All of this is to be done before Christmas break.
Somewhere in modelling, rigging and texturing I also have to figure out exactly how I will generate the lava. I intend to use realflow, where needed, and I need to learn how to handle that.
