Another week, another drama.

Right just a short one today as I have so much to do and you will see why in a minute! As you may or may not know last weekend I went home to photograph a wedding as part of my professional practise module. It went really well and I've got lots of really good shots that I am pleased with. I also came away with another offer of a wedding to photograph in August so hopefully that follows through! Although strictly Professional Practise is supposed to be linked with animation, I was told my photography would count as I had also done some animation work for a 3rd year student.

Now to update you on the group film. I have finished Three on the Thursday before I left uni to do the wedding shoot (videos of Three will be below). I came in on Monday morning, after I got back from doing the wedding photography, to find Gemma and Ben, two members of my group, re-doing all the models I have spent the last 8-12 weeks creating. The explanation was that they feared I wasn't getting the work done in time. As a result I e-mailed one tutor and spoke to another in person about what that meant for me. After speaking to the second lecturer I've decided to carry on with my models and CG animation. Basically even though my work won't be used in the film I am still working as normal and then Gemma as the designated Director will send me their finished film and I will edit my CG animation into the necessary frames/scenes. I'll then submit it separately so it doesn't look like I've done nothing these past few months! Perfect solution with a lot of work! Don't think I'm going to be sleeping for a few days! Still deadline is in sight so not long to go!

Here is a wired mesh veiw of Three


And the final high subdivision version of Three




So short and sweet sorry guys but got far too much animation to do, now where did I put that huge stash of energy drink?!

ahhhhh missing of another week. OH NOES!

Yeah sorry guys if I got your hopes up thinking that I would have another post last week. two weeks ago when I was talking about moving in with Gemma and Vikki and how much fun it will be, well I was right about that but what I hadn't forseen was that I would hardly be on my comptuer much, I am either at the new Newport Universtiy - City Campus from like 10am till 6-7pm then I will get home (Gemma's place) and do work for my other project, the professioal practie. At the momenet I am currently working on my bussiness cards for that project. I have a wedding to attend soon as the photography which will go towards a part of that project too. BUT ENOUGH OF THAT! Lets talk about my models *YAY!!*

it is about been four weeks since our group went into production, we started production on the 13th of april and I have been working non stop since....WELLL I say no stop, the first week and half was half work half play, as it was the Easter break and I was back home in Liverpool for that. anyway like I said before since I got back from easter about 2 weeks ago I think I have been in and out of the Uni like a yo-yo as I have been working on Three just fixing him and getting him right, but I will come back to him later. Four is finshed and is ready to be animted with, I am planing to start on of the shot with him soon but I can not finsh that shot without three being completed. So yeah me gemma and ben looked through a nice collection of rust textures as four will be al rusty as he is old and broken for the time being. we went with rust - 003 but when we applied the texture it didnt show up very nice on four's mesh. So we went with rust - 002, which in the long run is much better I think as the colours a bit more darker but still retains a good high level of richness.

Here are a few is a videos of Four for you.

This is a low subdivision Version



And here is the high high subdivision version which will be the one you will see in the film.





So now to talk abotu Three, he has been giving me hell, I though last week I was on the home strech with him but I could get him to be more rounded off so I looked into it and what I found was not good. With Maya objects it is good to try and make sure everything has four sides and what I mean by that is four edge so all the faces on a model either square or recetangle. Old muggins here has lots of triangles and 5 sided edges so I sent most of this week sort that out and fleshing out the roundness still. I have carved out hole in three's mesh as I am planning to create a new Face and then using that to make the power stripes on three body/ his eye and that thing on his back. I will explain as somehow I think that last stentence didnt make sence, so what I am planning on doing is to cut out parts of the mesh such as creating gaps to later attach the dips and curves on threes body. I do this because I find it most eaiest way to make small attachment such as this, than arm or an leg that is differe I would use a cube well start off one of them to make something with lots of volume but flat things with little dents looks well.

I still need to watch WALL-E soon as gemma told me it would bhe good refences to animted to get the personalties down for three and four,I keep going into uni with it but then I forget it is in my bag untill I get back and take some stuff out, soon, soon I will watch you WALL-E. its one of my most loved Pixar film afer toy story 1 ane 3... OHHH how I would love to work for them one day.. if I get any good that is.

sorry I think I side tracked there. so yeah this week has been filled with issues int he modeling department, I am worried if I will get them done on time for then end of next week, if I can fix this issue with the four sides on three then I will be okie.

Update on the Models

Hey everyone, I have just spent the last week UV texturing four, it was so hard, I never cut a good seam which in Maya is when you go to texture something you will have to sort out the UVs as I discuss in another post on this site. Cutting a seam i slike getting a papercraf cube and open it flat, well....well.........to be frank I don't really know how to cut seams, all I know at this stage in the game is that if you cut a good seam in your model the better the UV's your model will have.

I will have to ask charile (one of the techincains)he will be able to tell me all... =D

So I have finally finished texturuing on four I still need to apply a rusty type of texture on him, as I will go though a list of different textures to pick the best one for the model. Most of the checks from the checker texture seem to be pretty sqaure, I say most though becuase I tried to get the checks in the nooks and cranies but when I moved the uv's around it was messing up and I have decided to call it a day leave it, as I still have three to finish and not alot of time, 4 or 3 weeks i think.

oh yeah another note, I have moved out of my flat at my uni to live with Gemma and Vikki for the rest of this project so we can help each other and show work quicker and get feed back too. so I am looking forward to it, I moved in at thiers just before the easter break when we were doing all the pre-production work, and I really enjoyed that, so moving in to do production should be hard but enjoyable.
I might have to start coming in everyday now....even weekends

and way moving on I have now finished 4 completely, unless Gemma or the rest of my group wants to change anything on him, I hope they do not complain about the texture issue I had.

Update on my Progress Part 2

So I was speaking to some of my friends about how their blogs were going and some had not started yet but most had and we talked about what we are and sdhould be putting into them. And so it seems I have been doing this rather wrong. rather than writing everything I have been doing in detail. I should be just breifly go over what I did for the week, and then talk about my fails and how I over came them (if I ever did that is.)

so yeah this 2nd half of a big update will be a bit different from the last one.


Well for the past few weeks I have been not only working on my model Four (the character repersents time - 4D) for my group film but, also Three (repersents 3D.) Unlike Four Three's mesh is a bit more complex as shperes go at least. With the aid of concept designs I can upload the designs to each plane in Maya (front,side[left &right],top, back, and bottom) using the concepts as refences in creating Three this made my life alot easier as. Also unlike Four, Three had to be started off as a polygon cube rather than a sphere. It sounds weried I know to make a sphere out of a cube rather than a polygon sphere, but nore complex creations in Maya start off as polygon cubes as they have less egdes, verts and faces. so the less is more appoch is taken here.

The goal for Three is to build him with as few polygons as possible but still retaining a believeable figure. Modeling 3 so far hasn't been a chore but I can only dread when something goes wrong. Maya is being too kind to me at the moment....I am worried about that Maya is never kind to anyone.

really for me now to do is finish three off, if I get the time to texture him I will but I think I may not be able too. I am sure there will be anyone easier way to add some form of colour/texture onto Three, only time will tell....well and research for now here are some screenshot for you to google over.

P.S oh before I go I think I might have a video of four and three rotating for you to see what they look like in a 3D space.

Update on my progress

So yeah my daily update plan failed horribly, so then I said to myself "I KNOW I WILL DO IT EVERY OTHER DAY! That is a great idea" .... well that great idea turned out as great flop. so this will be either a two part update or one massive blog entry.

From my last post I had finished creating 4 and showed it to my fellow co-workers, I got feed back from them and the mesh like feature we were going for was too smooth and they wanted a tighter look on it. So I booted up Maya and only had to change the sub divisions down from 3 to 1. This lead me to the UV Mapping. UV mapping is a feature in Maya which allows you to move UV's (they look just like Vertices) around, I was unsure how to do UV Mapping I looked for help from online sources such as Digital-Tutors and Youtube videos from Sebastiank94 (part 1, 2, 3) which went through the entire process of how to UV Map. After watching his video I started to unfold my my model in the UV editor which would not change the look of my actual model but it would look unfolded (similar to a unfolded paper cube) in the UV editor mode. Unfolding a model requires you to normally cut into the mesh down the side so when it unfolds it is even on both sides, another way you can unfold something in Maya is if you have something pretty basic like a cube or a sphere you could use the auto unwrap tool in Maya which will do it for you. As my model as a relatively a simple sphere I use the auto unwrap tool.

I applied a checker texture onto the model but as the video told me the pattern of the texture became all mushed and did not look like checkers so it would be my job now to make the mushed checkered pattern to have the squared checks to be roughly even. I am unsure why the texture always messes up once you apply one a model I just know how to solve the issue and it is done by moving the UV's around in the UV editor this allows me to move the selected area's texture pattern around to gain the look that I want. I am still in the process of this as it is taking so long to get it just the way I want it but I am almost finished and once I have I can apply the rusted metal texture which should look fantastic once done.

Part 2 will come in a day or two and I will talk about the progrees off 3 and where I am up to with him and then I will talk about what I have to do after the modeling and hopefully some other bits and bobs. If I find anything of interest such as interpretation I will bring that up too, I need to be watching Pixar's Wall-E soon to analysis and understand the relationship between Wall-E and Eve-A (or is it EVE), more on that later.

Day 2.

After getting a helpful video in response to the difficult time I was having with 4 from Ben (a member of our group for this project) The video was on how to make a basket ball which involved how to make the seams. Though the program was not Maya it gave me a brain wave for what I could do.

The plan was to make a Poly Sphere then use the spilt edge tool to make a new line of edges either side each original edge (both vertical and horizontal.) This led to some errors like multiple unwanted edges begin created so I had to delete all of the unwanted ones along with their verts because when you delete an edge the verts will stay so you have to make sure to delete unneeded verts also. Once all that was taken care of (which took longer than you would think)then I highlighted all of the original edges of the sphere and with the scale tool I slightly moved them inwards to create a mesh like look, while retaining the look of original sphere.

I set up a lighting space colours that where complete opistie of each other to show off the design I had made.

Here is my slide show of my work, hopefully if my other team member like what I have done so all need to do is just UV map a texture onto the model and nothing needs to be changed I can then just tick one part of my work off as done.

Let the Filming began: Day 1

To day was the day that me and my fellow crew members left our pre-production statues into production. I am going to be creating and animating our characters 3 and 4, in our film these characters will not have names but 3 represents 3D (portrayed in CGI) and 4 represents 4D (Time.)

4 Concept Design

I started today off by modelling 4 as I feel we need 4 sooner than 3 to start animating with. I thought 4 was going to be incredibly easy to model as I would only need to select a Polygon Sphere scale it up and make it look like it had its wire mesh frame on it. This proved to be harder than I thought it would be, I did not know how to make a wire frame styled look for 4, so I looked all over the internet having no luck at all, so I moved on to start modelling 3 instead.

To model 3 I needed to take the front and back images from my concept design and separate both of the images so when I import them onto Maya as planes to work off as references. using my references i found modelling 3 a lot more easier and I got his basic outline done. I still need to crave more out of him till he is done though.

Tomorrow I will most likely go back to 4 and research more to find a way to get his wired frame mesh look.

In my next blog i will upload a slide show of images to show my progress