Statues

Ok as I'm still pretty excited about the rig I decided to do one more thing with it before I call it a day. I really wanted to see how the statues look on the plynths at last. Basically I repositioned the rig into the statue position and duplicated the geometery, deleting any unnecissary parts of the rig to keep the scene clean. Then it was just a case of scaling it negatively to flip reverse the duplicate making for the nice mirror statue model.
I decided to use the same material that the pillars are textured in, because even though it's plain white the global illumination makes it look marbely. This is open to change if anyone has any good ideas, but one way or another I think the pillars and the statues are made from the same material. (Whatever that material be.)
I'm still inspired by the engraving Dan pulled off on his statue plaque, and I'm now wondering if these statues should have similar plaques made in stone. Looking at it the plynths look very very blank, and could perhaps use a plaque with "P.Fontana" engraved on it or something.
Comment any suggestions about this!
Or I could just talk to you both about it tomorrow. That's probably the best plan actually, considering I seriously doubt you'll be reading this before then.

Full complete rig

Ok I admit the title of this post is slightly misleading as there are no blendshapes yet, but I spent a lot of time today fine tuning. I sorted out the weights on the hands so they deform as they should. I also sorted out the afro with a jiggle deformer for automatic secondary animation, and also fixed the zip up with a controller. I also put a squash and stretch deformer on all of the geometery so Dan can give him some bounce when animating. This is controlled by the sphere with one attribute linked to the squash factor of the deformer. Min value -0.2, max value 0.2.

As for the problem of the face dissapearing when making the rig controls invisible, this was solved way easier than I thought last nite. It's a simple case of selecting the individual objects and turing off the visibility in the object display.

I had planned to get blendshapes done today, but made a fatal error by saving over the file I had been working on during the process, rather than making a seperate file to save the blendshape tests to. This mistake fully punished me when I found the rig had been de-skinned for some reason, and due to my frequent saves was unable to go back to when it was working. Luckily for me I had a seperate file from the beginning of the day, so all I had to do was repeat my whole days work to get it back to where it should be. This time I have 3 versions of the file saved, one to my memory stick, to ensure that this doesn't happen again.

So while I didn't quite get the rig fully ready to animate with today, it's still very nearly there, and I honestly think it's my best rig to date. I'm very pleased with myself on this one. Tomorrow I have to sacrifice the day so I can get my case report done and out the way, but over the weekend I plan to try and get the blendshapes done. I at least want to be able to give him to Dan and Phil by the end of monday, as all these rigging hiccups have set us back behind schedule slightly. Other than that, good days work!! I can sleep at last :-)

Yes another rigging problem

Ok so I was just trying to do a quick rig on the zip, connecting the rotations to an outside object. The good news is, this works perfectly. The bad news is that in fiddling around I have discovered a new problem. Having parented the non-bound eyes/mouth/zipper to the root joint, this in turn means it is parented to the pelvis control. This in turn means that if I want to make the rig control layer non-visible (which is essential, otherwise there will be objects floating in front of the character in the film), it also makes the facial geometery invisible.

I'm not going to try and solve this now, simply because I really want to go home.

Painted Weights

The main bulk of today was spent sorting out these problems with painting weights. Many tears were shed, and I nearly ended up owing the college money for a new computer, but with some moral encouragement from Dan and some very useful help from Alex Hulse I didn't have to resort to breaking anything!

The first issue that had been causing me problems was how I'd bound the skin to the character group rather than the individual geometery. This was probably confusing maya and causing the duplicate influences, but was easily solved simply by re-skinning.
The second issue was some keyframes on the mouth left over from Dans blendshape test. Again, easily solved by deleting those keyframes.
The third and most complex issue was my workflow. Alex suggested that I should focus on adding influence to joints that shouldn't be influenced by anything else so that nothing else can influence it. For example, completely flooding the afro geometery white so that no other joint can mess it up. After sorting out these main areas, it was just a case of fine tuning the other more delicate areas like the hands and feet. I still don't fully understand to be honest, but I definately have a much better idea of how to tackle painting weights now.

Another thing I picked up from Alex was not to bind anything that's going to be blendshaped or rigged further. I.e. the zip, as this will disable the ability to do anything with it. Instead I have parented them to the root controller (pelvis) so that they will still always stay with the model.

So here he is in all his arrogance! I'm very pleased with this rig. There's still 2 more things I want to do. One is to put a jiggle deformer on the Afro geometery, and the other is to sort the zip out so it can move. Both should be fairly straightforward processes and shouldn't take too long.

I havn't shown everything the rig is capable of in this playblast, mainly because it seems like a waste of time to go about keyframing all of that. Basically the full description of how it works is a couple of posts down.

Change of scene

Gotta give credit to Dan for this idea. Basically rather than having the mansion set in an open plane with hills surrounding, I've changed it so it perks right on top of a stupidly steep hill. This not only fits in more with the origonal idea of having the mansion atop a hill, but also eliminates growing concerns of how the image plane would work. With the last ground plane, you would still be able to tell it's just a flat plane even with an image plane in the background. With this one, all I will need is a plane showing more hills surrounding this one. This should ease any restrictions on camera movement I might have had. It also looks more cartoony and fun, and has reduced my poly count immensely, speeding render time to 2 minuits 30. Great idea Dan!

I will still work into the ground closer to the mansion with the soft-mod tool as before, just to add some depth to the closeup shots.

Rig notes

here's those notes I promised on blendshapes, painting weights, the zip and the fro. Also slightly off topic are the quick sketches I made to help visualize the remake of the door.

Cleaning up the scene

I decided it was time to reduce poly-count of the scene, as previously it was just not acceptable. My biggest mistake on this whole project was deleting history after smoothing and saving, making it impossible to carry on working with a light scene. I did this without thinking and all I can do is learn for future projects. As you can see though, I have taken away every face and tile that is not needed in the most revealing shot of the mansion. This has reduced my mental ray render time from 8 minuits 40 to 5 minuits 30. Big improvement. Rendering out in layers should also help reduce render time when it comes to the crunch.

I also breifly added some soft modifications closer to the door before the tool stopped working for me. I'll probably ask alex about this tomorrow as well.

Door frame texture

Today was one of those days where I worked loads and got very little done. Using Hyper Realistic Creature Creation, (Alias), I attempted dealing with the painting weights using various reccomended MEL scripts and tools such as hold weights. All of which resulted in failure. However, I managed to secure a meeting with Alex tomorrow and he assures me he will be able to help.

So once again I ended up working on the door. Tried out the textures I wanted to and suprisingly I think the gold texture works a lot better than the tile texture. I decided not to bother experimenting with the wacky planks, as it's not really necissary and I'd rather save myself the time. I also pulled out the steps a bit more. I think it looks better, but it's never to late to change it.

Door in the scene

Here's the new door in the scene. Looks pretty good with those colours to be honest. I still want to try applying the gold texture to the frame like Dan did with it in his scene, but I'm predicting it will stick out like a sore thumb. In case of that I'l try the roof tile colour, as this might link it up nicely. (The roof tiles, particularly on the porch look quite golden. Might be able to get away with it.) Otherwise The colour of the frame is quite nicely fitting with the mansion exterior already.

Also I really want to try stretching the tiny doorsteps out a bit more! They are far too flat compaired to the other steps. It looks weird

Open Sesame!!

Here we go, quick change of pivots and removal of non-keyable attributes, and we have a door that works!!

Front door remake

Ok, so today I spent at least an hour with Dan Dalli trying to work out exactly why painting weights refuses to work. All to no avail. So I ended up sending an email to Alex Hulse in the hope that he might be able to help out. (I will still post up some diagramatic notes For the weights and blendshapes in a minuit So you can see what the plan is.)

In the meantime I decided to get to work on the front door, as it's going to be one of the first things you see and at the moment it is very unimpressive.

The bottom one is the origonal remake- it looks far better than the origonal, but was still not quite right. Dan suggested I make it wider, and put the door knockers right down at the bottom to account for Pony's pathetic size. This looks so much better, as you can see in the middle image.
The top was an experiment to see if pulling planks out in a wacky fashion looked good. As you can see it really really does not. Far too busy, so the middle one is the model I will use

Bouncy

Been working pretty hard on the rig this weekend. It's not finished yet, but I just had to post this test playblast simply because it's one of the funniest things I've ever seen. I almost don't want to paint weights!! (I will of course.)

Basically what I still need to do is sort out the orientation of the wrist joints, as at the moment they do not correspond to the rotation of the hand controllers. You can still rotate the hands, but its not very user freindly.

http://www.johnson-mortimer.co.uk/SJT_Full_Tutorial_List/SetupTutorialPages/Steven%20J_%20Tubbrit%20-%20Character%20Rigging%20Page%20005.htm

I will be following this link for the continuation of the tutorial, mainly so I can understand how to get a low rez version of the model to animate with that can be turned into the high rez model when it comes to render time.

Other than that it's pretty much a finished rig. (Painting weights and full blend shapes aside.) I decided not to give him a flexible spine, as he is pretty much a walking head, and a bending spine within that would look weird. I also decided there was no point in placing locators for the eyes as he has no pupils.

I've locked off every attribute that will be useless to make animating and keeping the graph editor tidy easier. I also created new attributes to control the fingers/thumb/feet/elbow movements. Im pretty pleased with it so far, as there should be no need to ever go into the skeleton during animating.

Rigging tutorial

Tutorialized is an excellent resource for easy to follow tutorials in any programme, including maya. Here's a link to the tutorial thats helping me with the character rig.

http://www.tutorialized.com/view/tutorial/Character-Rigging-in-Maya-Part-1/24521

Camera movement

Heres a quick playblast of a rough camera movement. Obviously needs a lot of work, i.e. timing photography. From this playblast I can see I might need to work something out about the edge of the plane where you can tell the scenery suddenly ends. Background image planes will be useful so I can see exactly what I need to do to the actual model if anything.

Grass test

Ok, this has been way more stress than it's worth. I followed that tutorial and fitting grass into the scene is basically not going to happen. The plane is far too big, and fitting grass with a suitable density into it causes all sorts of problems. I.e. I would have to smooth off the whole plane creating unecissary polygons, I would have to have it on an entirely seperate render layer, and even then it would still cause the computer/render farm to crash. A small patch such as the above is do-able, though it can't really be rendered with mental ray, and placing patches all over it is quite a lot of unnecissary work.

So I've gone for the simple solution of ditching the whole fur/grass thing. The realistic grass it creates doesn't really fit the style anyway. Instead, Dan suggested I go to work in finer detail with the soft modification. I agree.

focal length and angle of view

With some simple experimentation in the perspective camera, adjusting the focal length and the angle of view, I am able to come up with some interesting photography.

grass texture

Quick link to a tutorial I plan to try, using fur to create grass.

http://cg-nation.com/articles/maya-grass-tutorial-needs-maya-fur/

mental ray tests

I used Phil and the tutorial posted previously to do some mental ray tests, specifically focusing on global illumination. Under the current settings it takes a looong time even just to test render, but the results are immaculate. check this out compared to previous renders. I also wacked a grainy texture onto the tiles and walls. The top image, being the latter, has a colour adjustment on the grass as I've had endless comments about the grass on the others being way too deep.

global illumination tutorial

http://tuuhia.freehostia.com/gi_tutorial.htm

heres the link to that mental ray tutorial guys.

full colour test

Soft modification and rearrainged trees

In response to Dans suggestions I re-arrainged the trees to be closer to the front of the building. I also applied his colour suggestions and I think it works quite nicely. Might still need some fine tuning and definately a grainy texture. I also used the soft modification tool to create some hills for the land surrounding the mansion. next step is to colour the ground.

early colour tests

so here are some early colour tests. No textures thus far, just trying to get the colour right. The first image is totally wrong, its screamingly loud and all I can see is orange tiles. The second image is simply way too purple, and is too rich in colour. The third is getting there, adding more red based the colours from Phils research into the villas. The fourth is more like what I was aiming for, adding a bit more orange to get that salmon colouring.

The balconies and gutters are still completely the wrong colour, they stick out way too much.

Also, I perhaps need to seperate the actual glass planes of the windows from the mesh and do something more 'windowlike' with them. (I.e. transparency? lights coming Through? Simple reflectivity? At least a different colouring.) Particularly with the windows on the side sections as they are completely lost in the colour having no window frames or anything.

updated window frames

so we all agreed that the windows looked too "churchy" and maybe it would help to put a frame round the outside of the crossbars. It definately made a difference, and now looks much better..

window bars

quick update here. some added window bars. They appear a little bright here. will sort that out soon enough though.

Old stuff

Its taken me long enough, but I finally got around to scanning some old images in. The quality is aweful, but its just possible to make out some of the early thumbnail sketches for the storyboard.

The chair was drawn from the Victorian house on the drawing trip. The item interested me, because it's swirly design fit our style guide perfectly. Since then we have of course decided to include no chairs, so never mind! here it is anyway.

Also up there is a sketch I made of Pony Fontana after Dan had already designed him, simply to give me a feel for his proportions.

Balconies

Yup went for the balconies and it looks good. Had a discussion about the window shapes as well; the thinking was that the bottom two windows needed to be the same shape as the top three, but I think I'll leave them as they are as it ties the whole of the bottom floor together. As a compromise though, I'll probably put balconies on the bottom two windows to link them to the top floor.

Windows/Gutters

So no problem with the booleans difference at college. Must be a problem exclusive to my laptop. The indented windows have meant that I now have to work on a smooth mesh, as trying to smooth the mesh of after using the booleans difference led to countless issues. It shouldn't matter anymore though, since I have no reason to work into the building any further.

I Added some guttering under the roof as well.

I'm not exactly sure right now whether or not to add window frames/balconies, or even how to go about doing it if I do. Will experiment and see what I can work out.

Pathway with trees

Ok so what do you guys think about this? On the plus side, the uniformed trees lead the eye into the mansion making for very nice photography. On the other hand, there is no boulivard in the world with trees that all look identical.

The path and ground is all one mesh, but I checked the uv map and its very obvious where the path is. Won't cause any texturing grief. I will prob use the soft modification tool on the grassy bit as well, make it look more natural.

Rounder edges

From the last render I decided I needed to make the edges more obviously rounded to fit the style guide a bit more. I also deleted the wall with the door from the porch model as it obviously stands out on the model. Instead I will create the door seperately. Here it is. I think it looks better.

Roof tiles

Heres the mansion exterior with the roof tiling. Had to do this the long way as I couldn't get the duplicate special to work well enough. The roofs on the side sections for example are sloped in an unusual way, requiring manual tweaking. I did have to adjust the roof shape slightly to get it to work. Duplicating entire lines of tiles however still sped the process up.

Dan, I know you reccomended texturing the tile first, but I grouped all the tiles together, so I can still apply one texture to all of them at once.

Re-re-modelling the mansion

After getting to grips with this simpler technique for modelling smoothly, I decided it was in everyones best interest for me to re-do the mansion. On previous models I had taken an organic approach to modelling as I have previously only modelled characters. This approach led to the model looking rough, and gave unpredictable results when smoothing the mesh. The new approach is very systemactic, and is far more controlled.

Already this mansion is looking much more pleasing to the eye than the last attempt.

making the porch smoother

Heres the smoothed off version of the porch, using dans pillars. I was introduced to a technique the guys figured out that uses edge loops to define the corners before smoothing. This means we can keep the origonal mesh as simple as possible and still end up with nice rounded corners.

Mansion remake

I re-modelled the mansion as the last one was modelled in cm. Also the previous one being made from subdivisions had a very difficult mesh to work any windows into. Let me know what you think of the shape. I saved it before deformation so it will be easy to go back and change it.

I havnt yet built the roof in case I do end up changing the main building shape, and I havn't built the porch as I'm going to use the one I already modelled.

Dan, if I could grab the pillar you made, I'll replace the pillars I made on the porch with them as yours is so much better.

palm tree

I spent some time making a palm tree here. I saved the leaves and the trunk as seperate non-deformed objects to make reproduction and texturing easier and more versatile.

I experimented with colour and lighting, thought im not sure about the results.

Also, the soft modification tool is a useful one to take note of, making the surface of the sand an easy task.