Doing Some Environment Test Renders

 

I'm currently in the process of modelling and texturing the environment that I plan to use in the short film for my assignment. While not everything is complete yet, I felt it was important to get some test renders done to make sure everything fit together nicely and the textures I had done so far are working properly. As you can probably notice in these renders, it looks somewhat different to the concept sketches from a few weeks ago. This is because I found that some of the models I originally planned to use either didn't work, or would take too long to texture so were swapped out in the interest of time management. Perhaps the biggest change so far is the wall texture. I had originally planned on putting in stars but when I was working on the texture in Krita, I realised it would take so much time drawing and perfecting all different size stars that I made a switch to clouds and was able to complete that much faster.

Another noticeable change from the concept art is that the middle drawer on this dresser is closed, but in the concept art, it's open. This is because I couldn't find a way that it would look when modelled that I would be completely happy with so I have put that idea on hold for now but if I have time before I need to begin rendering, then I will go back and try again. If however, I do not have time, I will still be able to follow the original storyboards with the ball falling down and knocking over the blocks as this minor change will not affect the over all narrative of the piece.

As I mentioned in previous posts, my main inspiration for the environment - and story as a whole is Toy Story and right now, there are a lot of very obvious nods to that on display including posters and even the duvet on the bed all of which I found through a Google Images search. I am hoping to change at least one of the posters on the wall to a piece of concept art I drew for one of the characters so that it ties in better as well as the duvet because in my mind having a Buzz Lightyear one when his character model isn't anywhere in the scene, doesn't make any sense to me - but they will do for now for placeholder images

Something else that I'm still trying to get right is the lighting. Right now all I have in there is some skydome lights and a spotlight under the bed to illuminate the character model that currently resides there. These lighting choices are far from final but were helpful in pointing out problem areas that I can focus on when I'm working on the final lighting let up.

This is also the first time I've brought all of the character models I made into the same scene. Up until now, they had been worked on in isolation in their own Maya files so seeing them all brought into the same scene is a huge step towards getting the project completed. In saying that though, I still have some textures to work on and some models to finish so I better get going on that!

Cozmo-E's Concept Art

It's been a long couple of weeks since I last updated my animation diary but in that time I have been busy working on the concept art for my end of term project. The first piece of concept art I completed was for Cozmo-E - the very first character that I had begun modeling a few weeks back.

In this concept art, I have depicted Cozmo-E in the exact pose that I intend to display him in once I put together the film. As for the final look tha

t I will attempt to go for is a mostly silver body with a slight blue hue with some additional blue, black and possibly white accent pieces. It is important to state though, that my intended colour scheme may change during the texturing process or when he's placed in the scene to ensure it fits in appropriately.

With this piece completed, my next task was to do the concept art for the second robot I created after realising that rigging Cozmo-E was not going to be possible. 

Bringing My New Character to Life!

 

It wasn't easy but I was able to model, rig and aminate a brand new, as yet unnamed, character. As with everything I've done so far, it wasn't without it's problems along the way but new problems just mean finding new solutions!

The problem this time wasn't the modelling part, the unexpected software crashes (that I've become very accustomed to) or even putting in the skeleton - it was actually painting in the skin weights. I encountered an issue where every time I would finish painting a skin weight and move onto the next, the one I had just finished would reset itself and disappear. Now, I didn't notice this issue straight away - I didn't actually notice it until after I was almost finished painting the model - or at least thought I was almost finished. Confused, I went to see if maybe I had hit undo by accident - because sometimes the fastest path to a solution is the path of least resistance. What I should have known is that noting is ever that simple in Maya, at least not in my experience with using the software up to this point.

I spent all hours trying to figure out the issue - painting and repainting the skin weights only to watch them reset themselves over and over and over again. If I wasn't so stubborn I would've given up for the night but I just couldn't stop until I knew what the problem was. This was the last major hurdle between doing the animation and starting a render to see if it worked. It took much longer than I would have liked but I eventually found my issue. I discovered that the max influence when binding the skin was set too high and as a result, was causing the reset issue I was experiencing. My max was initially set to five so I lowered it bit by bit until I got a number that didn't cause a reset - that number, was two.

Where did I have to go to make this change? It was as straightforward as you'd expect. I had to do the following;

Select the object > go to the Attribute Editor > switch to the "skinCluster" tab > set "Max Influences" to a number that worked for this model.

With that problem now solved and the headache now behind me - it was time to do the fun part - an animation! Now, given the issues I had up to this point I didn't want to go too crazy on the animation just in case something else went wrong. With that in mind I did a simple enough animation set out over 100 frames and started the render process.

This took another few hours to complete because I'm not using the best of computers to run Maya but when it finally finished I was able to take all the PNG files I had rendered, compile and convert them into a gif and see the end result. A result, I couldn't have been happier with given all the hurdles I had to deal with on the way. I managed to bring my new character to life!

 

Working on a Character Sheet

The most important part of preparing to make something for this week's challenge was to first choose a character sheet. We were given the option of getting a character sheet from the Internet or creating one for our own original character idea.

I went back and forth on this for a little while but in the end I chose to go with an original character for a few reasons - the main one being that I could kill two birds with one stone and I could use the work I do now in the film I need to make for the end of the year. This would allow me to work on the model for the film longer than if I was to create a character from the Internet, as well as fix any issues or make changes as needed without being under too much pressure.

The assignment for later in the year is to make a Pixar parody so I decided to take my inspiration from Pixar films when working on my character. One of my favourite Pixar films is Wall-E so I knew I wanted a robot, but I didn't want it to move like Wall-E. I want it to articulate more so I have more options available to me later when I'm working on how this character will interact with whatever I else I make for the film.

With that decided I got to drawing and before long, I had a concrete vision of what I wanted him to look like. I put all the pieces I had dreamed up in my head together and created the character I hope to use in my film.

Meet Cozmo-E.

Now, all I have to do is draw him from a few different angles and then I could start working on bringing him to life!