Friday 29 April 2016

Fantastic Voyage - Submission Post and Art Of

Due to Maya/my computer issues I was unable to finish off my animation, and will not be presenting, however I do have the Art Of "Bacteria Basher" and partial animations that will hopefully show the direction I was going in. 




Once I managed to get Maya working properly again I put together these clips of some of my characters from my animation to show the limb/jaw animation on each of them, and how they move and some interact. I didn't include them all as they are repetitive and I also have other clips.





I also have this clip of the end of my animation, where you can see the later stage bacteria and superbug, the IV antibiotic and how it interacts with the brain environment. I added a basic sound track.




My Premiere file so far, I also couldnt do anything to this at home as every time I imported a file or image sequence the program would freeze, which I only found out after the Maya issues. 




Status Update

I spent approx 5 hours initially trying to work out how to get Maya to actually open before giving up all hope and trying to get on and sort my Art Of document. However I tried sorting it again and finally got maya to work! - I ended up doing a manual graphics card driver update, restarted a few times, and Maya opened!! 
Only problem now is, I have to reset all the projects, and all my textures on my image planes are missing from each scene, so I have to reload the colour image and the transparency image into every image plane for every character, for every scene, (at least 4 image planes per character, at least 6 characters per scene, 4 scenes) and then get on and actually do the finishing animations, playblast and load them into my Premiere document, and finish editing it all together. 





I'm happy I've finally got Maya working of course, but I know I wont be able to have everything done in time. Ill just put together what I can - any playblasted scenes I have and my Premiere file so far, so hopefully people can get an idea of where I was going with it all. 

Thursday 28 April 2016

@simon @alan @jordan PLEASE HELP - Maya STILL not working

I had maya isues at the weekend and ended up uninstalling everything as it was the last option available, Ive been doing maya work at uni all week and Ive got a few more bits to finish off tonight, I literally just completely reinstalled maya from the autodesk website and its STILL not working, I have literally no idea why and have no clue what to do now.
I cant finish my animation if I can get it working again. 

The output window says this

Actual maya window is stuck like this, the loading bar doesnt budge and if I put my cursor over it its jsut a loading circle, I cant click it or anything 

Wednesday 27 April 2016

Fantastic Voyage - Progress Update

All my characters have now had their individual animations sorted!
The legs and arms of all the antibiotics now partially rotate to show walking and slashing, and all bacteria jaws are now chomping, and legs walking, plus the arms of the super bug and last level bacteria are scratching.
Also I have now put into each scene a model of each of the antibiotic and bacteria needed in it. I used my concept art as a starting point for positioning, and how many I would need.
Now just to finish off animating the clips of them moving around the scene, render/playblast, and then slot it all together with the voiceover! I have my loading screen and level up screens done, all ready to be input in premiere.

Fantastic Voyage - Lit Environments








Fantastic Voyage - All Environments

All my environments are completely modeled, with textures, should have posted this a while ago but completely forgot to do an environment update post




Fantastic Voyage - Environment Lighting - Feedback please


Above is my original concept art for my throat environment, the environment is now completely modeled and textures applied, (below) however I spoke to Jordan this morning and he suggested adding some lighting to my scene to add a little more depth, however we weren't sure if it was needed as the environment is supposed to look very 2D, and in my concept art it was very matte, however, I do quite like the "dark cave" almost effect created by the lighting (bottom image) and that it highlights the area where the action will be taking place. Feedback on whether to including lighting or not would be much appreciated, thank you.




Fantastic Voyage - Antibiotic Modeling Complete


Fantastic Voyage - Antibiotic Modeling

Making progress!



Tuesday 26 April 2016

Life Drawing - 25/04/16

5x 5 minute poses, I was trying to be quite fluid and flowing with my drawings this week



10x 1-2 minute poses, instructed to work them as a composition on 1 page





Last pose, 25~ minutes, I really got into the detail of how the hair was laying, and the light reflecting off the skin


Fantastic Voyage - Antibiotic Character Progress

In my concept art for the antibiotics the Level 1 and 4 designs were drawn front on, which I had to change to partly side on in order to make them match with the rest of the designs and be able to make them move around the environments without it looking like a strange crab-shuffle. My script has also been finalised and there are now more different upgrades that the antibiotics go through on show in the animation, so I had to work out exactly what was needed and alter the antibiotics accordingly. Further I had to change the legs on all of the antibiotics so it makes sense when I animate them moving. When I was sorting all this out I also took into account the image planes I would be making/using, so separated up all the body parts so it is much easier for me to break them down and make the textures and transparencies for the image planes, which I will be putting together tonight.
This is my updated character sheet for all the antibiotic designs that will be featured in my animation.


Fantastic Voyage - Final Script Update

Monday 25 April 2016

Fantastic Voyage - Bacteria Update

All bacteria now modeled! 


Fantastic Voyage - Bacteria Modeling

It took me a little while to get the system worked out and down, but I'm now pretty confident with how to create the textures for each of the image planes I am using to create my characters with in Maya. 
I went with image planes as I feel this style will fit a lot better with the platformer video game feel, and the animation I can apply to these will also work well, with repetitive movements. 
Each bacteria is made up of at least 4 image planes, body, jaw, and 2 legs, then for the later mutations there is also an arm. The jaw will rotate up and down to look as if the bacteria is chomping, and the legs will move up and down to look like steps as it moves around the environments. The arm will also rotate on the later models. 

I made the textures in Photoshop from my concept art designs, chopping them up into the sections needed for each moving body part, and then also creating a transparency layer so Maya would show just the image and not the entire plane.


There are a *lot* of different files, which is a little confusing but  it has a definite logic to it that if I stick to then I'm fine. 

These are what I have so far, in each one the legs and jaw are parented to the body. 


However an annoying little glitch is Maya also does not seem to like me going in and reloading a texture once I have already applied it, say if I had to go back into the Photoshop file and slightly alter it (which I've had to do a few times). It messes around and applies the colour layer or the transparency layer file, whichever I most recently uploaded, to both colour and transparency, and I either have to just apply a new texture over the top with the new updated file, or delete the model and start again.

But, I have a system worked out now, and although it's repetitive and can be frustrating I'm definitely making progress. Now just to finish image planing the other 2 bacteria, and then do the same all over again with the antibiotics, but with more limbs and also weapons. 

Onwards! 

Sunday 24 April 2016

@Simon - Maya not opening my scene?!

Im trying to open the image planes bacteria scene I was working on with you on friday to put together the other bacterias, but every time I try to open the scene maya doesnt open, and the output window says this.

If I close it all and try again the same thing happens, Ive tried lots of times now. I have tried leaving it and waiting to see if anything happens, left it about 20 minutes, nothing. I dont know why its doing this/whats going wrong, any help would be great thank you! 

UPDATE: Just tried to open a different maya file, the heart environment, same thing happened. Why cant I open any files?! Please tell me Im just being dumb

UPDATE 2: Ive tried looking around to see what is going wrong, cant seem to find any answers or how to fix it. Ive updated my PC with any outstanding updates, tried restarting, tried "repair" on the autodesk change/uninstall, etc. Nothing. Ive now created a new system restore point, rebacked-up all my files to an external hard drive, and Im going to try uninstalling and reinstalling maya completely, its the only option I can think of now. If this doesnt work then I guess Ill have to do all my maya work at uni this week, that is if I can even get a computer.

Monday 11 April 2016

Fantastic Voyage - Heart Modeled

Heart Concept Art



Making a start, background veins/arteries first 

Creating the background veins /arteries 

Veins/arteries wireframe

Veins/arteries done

Making a start on the heart itself, extruded along a curve, then linked together, lots and lots of vertex editing

Outer edges done, connecting up faces/areas between using bridging and extruding

Using bridging to connect areas

More bridging

About half way dark areas wireframe

About half way dark areas modeled, smoothed

Finished dark areas wireframe


Darker areas finished, smoothed

Modeling the lighter areas, they are slightly set back from the dark


Saturday 9 April 2016

Fantastic Voyage - Maya Environment Modelling

This week I've been trying to focus on getting all four of my environments modelled. I started with this on Monday, and beginning with the brain environment as this is by far the most complicated one I have. 
After a lot of headache on how to actually put it together and help with this, plus hours of individual vertex moving, finally I have my brain pretty much finished. 
Now I just need to add the green infection patches to the back plane and play around with colours a little. I don't need any specific texture as I designed it very flat, though may put a slight shine on some of it, and there are no different camera angles, its just going to be viewed from the front as its a level for a platformer game. 
I've also been working on the throat and heart levels through the week, between the contextual studies essay, film reviews and maya tutorials, and they should both be finished tomorrow, and I'm planning to get the lungs done too. Then I'll start work on modelling my characters on Sunday.

Concept Art

Finished Model (unfinished texture)



Making Process
Blocking out background plane over concept art image plane

 Blocking out outer with curve tool, then extruding out faces to create the passages

Further face extrudes, front view

Perspective View

Nearly all passages blocked out

Smoothed, with background 

All passages blocked out, wireframe mode, with all vertexes aligned to concept art 

Object mode, perspective view

Smoothed, with back plane

Duplicated and then edited vertexes to create the lighter pink passage sections

 Just lighter pink passages, smoothed

 Adding in the individual breakable passage blocks

Duplicating, then rotating and scaling for each one

All finished mesh layers

All layers completed, polygons

Finished "unlocked" level, smoothed

Finished model of level