Scene 03

Scene 03 is finally completely finished. I was looking forward to this scene for so long cause I just new it's gonna be amazing!

Competition

 I finally got around to the stair-competition-scene. I had to come up with a whole new climbing movement for the spider-like walking umbrella Umb because I wanted his movement to be a bit different while climbing. I suppose a real spider would just not care and walk up the stair rail but it might have been awkward and it gives his long neck something to do. For the jumping umbrella Ella I simply reused the jump-cycle and animated the gloable control in order to move her forward. I animated the her eyebrows a bit stiffer with less follow through because in this scene she’s very tensed in order to beat Umb.

NCLoth has been awkward as usual but considering Umb’s climbing THROUGH the stair rail it was actually alright. It helps a lot that I've got my preset down now and know exactly how to connect the canopy through the legs. I think I might actually get the hang of it… I feel like a nerd!

 

Sneak Peak

I'd like to show you a wee sneak peak of how the final look of the project is coming together. Our workflow isn't as smooth as we would like it to be, but we are growing together as a group now. Personally I'm also quit pleased with the style cause it's it quit similar to my original concept work even though it's 3D with more or less realistic textures.

Animation update

Just a collection of recently finished up animation, including a nice weight exercise with Hannah and the first animation for Ella. The squash and stretch rig from Adam is really good fun and it is exiting being able to animate her as well, finally. :)

Good dream

I worked on a wee very basic test for the good dream scene to make the life of my 2D animator easier and communicate my idea better. The 3D animation in this shot isn't finished and I really need to tweak the camera movement since the angle is quit unfortunate from time to time, but I still thought it's worth a post.

Picture-Book Illustrations

A very talented illustrator Aimèe McCulloch who's currently undertaking the undergraduate course in Illustration at our university has provided us with a few illustrations for the picture book that Hannah is reading in the beginning. I hope you like them as much as I do.

nCloth and other worries

I’m sorry for being so silent within the last couple of days, but I’ve really been struggling to finish up a scene for my 4th year project Sandmen. It is the awakening of Umb (the nightmare bringing umbrella) and therefore a key scene of the whole movie.
First I had problems to get his jump out of the cloak rack right, because his neck is rigged like a spine from the bottom upwards. While animating a proper swing I needed so many key frames for the bottom control to make his head stay where it was supposed to be. That cursed the whole animation to be bumping up and down. Parenting the head to the cloak rack did not work. I could have done a different rig, key visibility and replace the model in between, but I was worried that this could be problematic for the nclothed canopy that had to be attached later. As a compromise I decided to go for the animation as you can see it above. I’m still happy with it and I think it gets the point accross.
nCloth for the canopy was a second huge problem. I am not that experienced yet and therefore ran into a few problems and mistakes. I think that this scene is a quit difficult one, simply because the nclothed mesh has to stretch from very little (closed canopy) to very large (stretched out spider walk). My first try turned out having too less geometry for this purpose and looked like a too small skirt. More geometry made the canopy look huge in the closed position, but it gave me a better performance for the walk which is why I decided to go for it. I scaled the right jacket up to make it look less awkward. The jackets are directly animated and have blendshapes btw.
The nCloth is still a bit clumsy but time isn’t really our friend and I have other scenes where the canopy is going to be a lot easier. Umb will already be in his normal walking pose which allowes me to model another canopy that matches this shape perfectly.

In a whole I call it a day with this scene, even though it’s compromised and move on. Fingers crossed that the finished render with textures is gonna be fine!! :)

Umbs awakening

Is animated :) Jackets and nclothed canopy still to be sorted...

New animatic

Since the new semester is approaching and time's getting less, we decided to cut a few difficult scenes out of the movie that are not particularly important for the story-line. That way we hope to achieve more quality rather than quantity.