Semester Conclusion

It is the end of the semester, and I must type up a conclusion for the directed study courses that involved this project. One dealt with the style and look of the picture, while the other dealt with Stereoscopy.

Looking at this blog, I think it premature to arrive at a conclusion, as a lot still seems to be missing.

This is not exactly the case, however.

Two days ago I was very close to finishing this project, the files were all set to render over night. When I arrived at the lab the next morning, there were errors on every single computer that I set to render. This is normal and I was ready for such an event to happen. What I was not ready for, was a corruption of the files. It appears that the combination of Render Layers and References can cause serious problems to the Maya files (http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=316471). Thus most of my files have been corrupted and been rendered useless.

At first this did not seem like a major setback. I had older versions on a portable hard drive and it would take me about a day to setup the files again in a proper fashion without using render layers. As I turned to get my hard drive, its cable was caught in the wheel of my chair and dropped to the floor. This of course was its demise. I have backups of all the files on another computer, but as of now they are at least two weeks old. Thus I am unable at the moment to conclude this research with all of latest materials.

I will go ahead and write about some of the intentions and discoveries that I have made all the same, and how I think this will reflect in the continuation of this project (I am determined to finish it very soon) and my following project – my thesis.

On Learning Maya

At the beginning of the semester I had no knowledge of the Maya software package. I have worked with 3D Studio Max before, but opted to switch as many people around me were familiar with Maya, and so could help me if I ran into difficulties.
In the past six months I have learned to model, unwrap, texture, light use nParticles, Toon and PaintFX in Maya as well as a little MEL scripting.

I have also discovered that the working process in Maya is %20 creation and %80 percent problem solving. While I do not mind the challenge of an occasional problem, this ratio can get tedious under a tight deadline.

When working analog, every change one wants to make should be considered harshly, as it will usually cost a massive amount of time to execute. But in Maya, things are so easy to change and tweak that I tend to lose track of the big picture and misplace myself in detail.

This is something that I have to watch out for should I continue using this software. In my further projects, I will cut a new animatic once a week, so that I can always keep an eye on the entire process.

Working Pipeline

Since my entire rendering and compositing pipeline was based on Render Layers (which could be an incredible tool if properly implemented), and since they seem to be the cause of the file corruption. I have to find another way of setting up the project. The old school way of setting up a different file for each pass will probably do the trick. I will also import all references and cache all of the animation before render is to begin.

Perhaps this particular film was not the best for testing out a style. The Ocean itself was such an undertaking – creating the moving waves, textures, foam and splashes -- that it took up most of my time. I had less time then, to work on the character and how it will blend into the environment. In that sense, the crash could have been a blessing, as I can now take a few more weeks to focus on this aspect of the film.

Over the next few weeks I plan on rebuilding the corrupt scenes in a more organized fashion and hopefully come to a more positive conclusion before thesis work begins at the end of June.

Stereoscopy

The Stereo cameras in Maya 2009 are another one of the software’s blessings. They are easy to work with and allow the artist to focus on the shot more than on the technicality of achieving the stereo effect.

When I first began to learn about Stereoscopy at the start of the academic year, I was convinced that every film should be in stereo. I am less convinced of it now, as it adds another layer of work to an already challenging process. However, I do think that that extra layer can be used on some films, particularly animation to add another dimension or simulate a point of view which would be harder on a flat image.

Setting up Stereo cameras in Maya is quite easy, and once I have my files rebuilt, I will cut a new stereo-animatic for this film. I believe that the depth of the media can add to the feeling of separation that the character has with its environment.

Animatic - May 2nd, 2009

With all the hard work that went into rigging the waves, animating them still proved to be an "ant-work" process. Thus I decided to cut out the first shot of the film because of its length and complexity, and substitute it with several shorter shots.
This way, I could avoid animating the waves for a minute and a half straight.

During this time I added a couple of more shots to the film. Being a few weeks from the final deadline this was a risk, but it ended up making my job easier and making the film stronger.

Click to Play Quicktime

Smudged Edges

Several posts ago, I wrote about the smudged edges that I wanted to have on top of the geometry. I was partially successful in applying this theory to practice.

These smudges were created by assigning a toon outline to a surface shaded object and then attaching a paintFX brush to the toonline. The brush is then set to SMEAR or BLUR, depending on the desired effect.

It all works well until things are set in motion:

Click to Play Quicktime

As you can see, the toon line and paint brush causes everything to jitter when the elements are in motion.

Click to Play Quicktime

With minimal movement, things look better. Unfortunately the character will be riding the waves and moving frantically up and down. Due to lack of time, this technique will have to be dropped and the smudging will be done in post.

Foam

Water foam has been a tricky issue in this project and in my opinion hasn’t been solved yet.
I did a few tests after studying Maya2009’s nParticles. They are quite amazing in their collision capabilities, but the ultimately they are too slow and impractical to work with, considering the machines that I have available to me.

Below is a test of my result:

Click to play Quicktime

If time permits, I will try to spend a few days with Maya fluids to see if I can discover a more efficient way to create foam. All of these elements will be composited together to look more natural of course.

Building the Water

About six years ago, I wanted to animate an ocean for my film – More Human than Human. I have never attempted such a task and my instructor –-Raz Oved- - advised me that I should change my idea. Never the less I insisted, and Raz suggested that I would try making it in 3D. His exact words, if I remember correctly were: “There will be a lot of blood and tears in this process, but perhaps an ocean will come out of that”.
Indeed he was right, and after that experience I vowed not to make a film with an ocean ever again. I broke that vow a year later with In the Silence, and I am a breaking it once again with The End of Things.

Hatchiman will forever be linked to the ocean

This concept image represents the geometric look that I wanted for the waves.There are two types of waves here, the breaking waves are the ones that curl, and the surface waves are the ones that act as the water surface.

Theoretically, I would create a polygon box with many subdivisions, stretch it and then create some sort of rig to control the wave’s movement.

The Breaking Wave Rig

I experimented with several different rigs, before I found one that was efficient to animate with and gave me the results that I desired. The first rig consisted of an IK spline that controlled the back end of the wave. I could pull its segments up and down with the help of the clusters. The front curl was controlled with forward IKs. By selecting all the purple joints in sequence, I could curl them by rotating the Y Axis.

Click to play Quicktime

Next I tried to simplify and built a simple line of joints. The idea was to quickly animate the wave and not rely on too much automation. It was a simple rig, but gave stiff animation results.

Click to play Quicktime

Here is a similar rig to the last, with a polygon box smooth-binded to it. Not quite there yet…

Click to play Quicktime

These three attempts brought me to the conclusion that a spline IK would be useful for controlling the back of the wave as it results in a smooth motion. Forward IKs would be useful to control the curl. There was still an issue of the geometry curling into itself though.

To solve this, I created two separate rigs -- one for the back and one for the front. The back was controlled with a spline IK, and the front was simple joints. I wrote an expression where each joint in the chain automatically rotates and scales down an increment in relation to the joint preceding it. I created two attributes out of the expressions: WAVE controls the curling, while CURL controls the scaling.

Once the two rigs were complete, I connected them to each other via another joint and then smooth binded additional joints on top of the spline IK. I attached locators to each of these joints for quicker control and I assigned the WAVE and CURL attribute to the front locator. Allowing fast access to the curling attributes.


Later, I quintupled the wave and parented it to a nurb curve that allows me to control all five at once. Below is the first successful test animation.

Click to play Quicktime


The Surface Wave Rig

After creating the breaking waves, the surface waves proved to be an easy task. I simply created an identical rig to the back rig of the breaking wave, only with more joints.
I placed numbers as the controls for each joint so that I would be able to track the high points and low points of the wave.

Below is a test of the surface waves and the breaking waves together:

Click to play Quicktime

I would like to thank my good friend Thomas Huang for all the time and knowledge that he has given me with rigging these waves. Without his help, I would probably still be rigging today.