Animation#27

update of recently done animatons:
cloud

boy

grass pop up

Animation#26

cloud to rain morph
rain will morph to grass
not perfect :(

Animation#25

grass
good!

Blockout_version3

most updated blockout

Animation#24

pig anticipation

Animation#23+Director Update

Moaning:
Especially at this time, everyone's work gets more tensive, i feel i can't get many things done as i expected, coz there are a hundred other things need to be kept an eye on and another hundred problems need to be solved.
I m working extremely long hours right now, but still feeling that nothing has been improved.
I guess this is part of the end-of-year stroke. All i need to do is to stay calm and keep working. coz everyone is stressed, we all go moaning alot, which i just learnt wont do any good. So i guess i have to stay positive and supportive.

Finally scanned in the mum walk whole sequence. long process!
hope it will worth it!


Start Compositing today.
Had huge problem with the images!
Illustrator mass up the sizes of them, they are all in different sizes!
luckly we didnt get alot wrong ones. Fixed them.
Also figure out what went wrong with Illustrator. we had a real panicing moment. hate the stupid thing!

Need to start to build my folders!

Animation#22+Director update

Animation:
since Sunday, spent many hours on the flower and vein sequence. coz it's on top of the mum animation and mum is looping, so took a lot of energy to put them into right time and place, not to mention that i have to be interrupted by other directing stuff to do.


also the mum walks backwards


Maya:
when we move the maya cow around, the legs and tails go funny. fix it today with Alex's help.

group the leg joints and parent to Master. the extra level on hypergraph gives the legs joints and ik freedom.

the tail follows the same rule. but coz it s a spin Ik with a curve, have to create a deforming lacator (Animate mode, Deform/):
group joints,
group clusters,
create a top curve point (insert, lmb drug along the curve)
Deform/point to curve
parent new groups to Master

Directing:

1, Lui had a good suggestion that whether we could do the flying bg with less drawings.
watched Blu snowman ad, figure out a top secret! when u cant include the bg within one go or being too lazy to animate the bg, tile up to the sky then come back! So we ll create a big master bg then seperate into 3 pieces: profile mountains; sky; topview mountains. they will link to each other geographically. So i dont need to animate the whole bg all along!


2, adjusted Michelle's hand+cow eye sequence. alot shorter. and added a few holding and inbetweens.


3, gave Louise colouring pattern to work on

4, coz the size of the milk machine is hard to work with, i decided to use a duplicated and enlarged machine body with smaller pipes. I m really happy with the pipes animation Lui did.

tomorrow, start compositing. To finish the flying.

Animation#21

Finally move on to the flying scene! Scary!
mum morphing into boy


boy walking. i did the clothes. but hate it very much!

To do

2 major Animation:
Flying !!!
Milk Machine scene !!!

Compositing

Final Submissions stuff

Morphing

visualise 2 morphings (shape/colour):
vein --> cloud --> grass

mountain+grass --> mud

Maya+Animation+Render

It's been a long day, but i got alot done!
Haven't use Maya for about a year, unbelievable. But it's great to see that i pick it up generally.
Here are the results from today. Basically everything for the 3d cow character.

Rigging
coz we had problem of animating the cow body seperately with the old rig, i rigged it again following the simple-rules idea from Lui.
Added my favourite controllers just for making the animating job easier.

Spin IK on the tail, another my favourite tool.

Animating
Had a few goes on the walk cycle, focusing on the rigid mindless movements.
Played around with different versions.
The idea was combining the animation channels of different body parts from different maya files into one final version. So Trax Editor is the ideal tool!
By the assistant of Maya Help, here is the learning notes:

• select the object
• open windows/Animation Editors/Trax Editor
• in Trax, Create/Character Set from the selected object(s) or part(s)
• Create/Clips, List/Load Clips to view and unlinear edit
• in Trax, File/Export Clips, save
• Open the combination file
• select and create Charater Set in Trax Editor
• Trax/File/import Clips to Character
  

Benefit of Trax:
transfer whole set of animation of objects among files.
unlinear Editing
Done point of my way:
can only access Graph Editor of the set object via Trax Editor.
inconvinient to change the timing once clips are imported.
encounter problem when trying to infinity loop the animation.

Two versions of legs

Render (Thanks Matt Beale and Lui for helps)
I want to get a hand drawn look. so tried Maya Vector render, with different colour settings. But i need to work with high poly mesh to get the outline. So tried Toon Shade. much quicker render.
Also changed the basic Lambert setting to get the flat shade.
Changed render background to white for future colouring.

Colouring
samples of some touches in Painter

Update on Resolution!!

Resolutions gave me alot of trouble and used alot of time within last a few days.
this is an update. 3 major changes:
if all the frames are on 2s, i prefer to scan them as holding only 1 and use 12 fps rate. by this way, it ll be quicker in colouring. But if the animation is mixed with 1s, 2s and 3s frame rate, i ll not recommend;
by exporting psd file from Illustrator, we ll save the process in PS before painting;
instead of saving jpg files with blue screen, we ll use psd files with alpha channel for compositing.

Also to note:
When exporting psd file from Illustrator, make sure to select "Flat Image". this will give less unwanted layers.

I m still concerning about the image size, coz the image sizes seem variously done by different people. also the coloured psds are quite big. So to find out!

Resolution#2
A. Scan - Flipbook

800*800
B&W (adjust threshold/contrast)
A3
If all on 2s, import as 12fps, hold 1.
If having mix of 1s, 2s, 3s, import as 24fps, hold 2.

B. Still Export - Flipbook
Use Default: 768*576, .bmp format
Save in SceneName_bmp_stills Folder.

C. Line Tracing - Illustrator

a.Set Actions:
Object/Line Trace/Detailed Illustration, mode:B&W, Threshold:160, Blur:0.1, amend settings on the righthand side. make sure Strokes is ticked!
b.Batch Actions:
Export as .psd stills. When save, select the "high 300" pixels options.
Save SceneName_lines Folder.

D. colouring - Corel Painter
When open in Painter,will be a few transparent layers.
paint on new layers underneath the lines
erase any un-needed lines
save as .psd, in SceneName_coloured Folder.

E. Alpha Channel - Photoshop
Open in photoshop, delete the canvas layer
merge all the transparent layers
save as .psd in SceneName_ready Folder