Reflective Report

With the completion of our final project I believe that there were many successful points to be made about our short animation and special effects sequence, the reason being is that we explored a difficult genre to put across and for it to work with the level of knowledge we have with the different processes and software. We decided that using a fully 3D landscape would also work more efficiently with our project idea, which was a fighting game in the style of Tekken and Mortal Kombat.

The idea came about from our past and present encounter with these games as we all enjoyed playing them therefore we were all in agreement of how the sequence should look, this heavily benefitted us as there wasn't an overwhelming dispute of how it should be put together which allowed to us to get through the early stages of work fluently. We at points like all teams came to slight disagreements but these were very minor, for example which way we should present the blast from the 3D character but this was ridiculed almost instantly. As a team I think we had quite a professional approach to how we should come about with the construction of the sequence and build up to creating the product, this is because we had planned what we wanted to agree but they were loose enough to allow to explore different ways in which we could effectively use different software, an example being the motion capture, although this hindered us for many weeks we know that to get the best possible result we could get it would be highly stupid of us to of given up due to how many times the files corrupted, this also gave us more confidence and pride of work when the sequence came together. Yet there are still many improvements that we could have done for the sequence to really come in to it's own, but this is a learning course for all of us and will allow me to understand on a more professional level of how we can create the product most efficiently and how I can make it the best it can be. The knowledge and understanding I have gained from the beginning of the year to now has been extremely vast without me truly noticing it. Moving from the simple stop motion paper animations that got us into the early stages of animation, which still is being used to this day, to then creating out own ideas probs scenes and characters all from scratch creating information on them and showing how they would work. Finally we put all this together to create a whole package of paper concepts to digital illustrations and then creating the model and the scene to present the story, it's quite surreal. With this knowledge I can safely say I have more idea and appreciation for the industry than I ever realised before, as to work myself up there now, still I do not 100% know which section I would be best suited to work but that will come with the further insight and more professional sequences and explorations. For now I am familiarising myself with the industry programs such as 3Ds Max and Adobe packages for the reason I know I need to be able to use these professionally and effectly for both my university life and hopefully my future career.

 So far this year I believe I have worked well as an individual as well as in a team with being able to put my ideas out and show understanding of what I think may and may not work, which is a necessity to have on this business, I believe I have also come quite far with my knowledge of 3Ds Max but a weakness that I do have is modelling, although this is not the career I would want to persue I know I need to get my skills up to a professional standard.anter strength which I posses is being able delegate tasks and if there happens to be a job no one wants I wouldn't be afraid to take it on even if it isn't one of my core strengths I will give it my all and research what I need to improve in those areas, with the motivation that u have I know that by the end of my university life I will be well equipped with not just the skills of animation but with more professional social skills to be able to present myself in a way employers will want to have me on there team knowing I can do the work and excell at it as well as bringing motivation to a team, and to have the pride in my own work. The process in which we created our final animation was to get ye idea and the ball rolling, with the idea firmly in our heads we were then able to do the relevant research we needed for the characters possible props, mannerisms and location. After we had all gained the research we believed we needed to make a start on we drew up a couple of rough story boards to get a idea of how the sequence will play out and how we could improve it before even touching the cameras and program's, which turned out to be a smart move on our part. After we designed what appeared to be our final storyboard we began to look at the type of character we were going to create, for us we wanted a male of large stature to show off his powerfull presence which we achieved and modelled in sculptris. During this time we also began to get the blue screen footage we needed and the development ideas of the 3D location we needed. I began to edit and try different effects with the footage we had, for example I was experimenting with blasts and blue screen removal, as well as creating landscapes in 3ds Max that we could potentially use. When we had finalised the 3D location we began rigging the model and using the motion capture data we had created and exported to give our 3D character his own manner, we the had to texture him and in ally edit the sequence together using different sounds that we needed for the piece to really come in to it's own. With achieving what we have I have learnt now many ways to improve what we did and how we went about doing things so next time I will be able to approach this in an even more professional and efficient way, as the main problem we encountered was the connection between the real life character and the 3D character this wasn't convincing to us which was quite upsetting as we spent many weeks trying to get the best we could put from this came a positive which was to analyse in depth how certain parts will affect what you will need to do further down the line.

Weekly Journal - Week 15 - 23rd May

This week we had basically finished the editing, I helped record the sounds we needed for the final piece with a dictaphone, then I concentrated on uploading all the work I had done as well as other members individual work to the shared blog we have, as well as finish my Reflective Report.

This week we all just aimed to get all the sequence edited with the sounds and health bars in, then we had a few days to be able to concentrate on the blog and get that up to a standard we would be happy with.

The overall critique of myself would of been that even though I have looked at every part of the sequence, e.g. the video audio concepts, 3D graphics and graphics and design, I struggled to evenly share the work load as the majority of the work I did was based on the video and audio concepts, but saying this I did overall have a go at everything which I am pleased about. I have learnt more in the ways of motion capture and how you actually use the data from that and but it onto a biped and then fit that in your model, before I didn't know that. With this project I also believe I have become much better at box modeling as I was able to create quite a nice room in 3Ds Max which could have been a potential environment we could use. I also experimented with the different modifiers in 3Ds Max as I was creating a another environment that was like a wasteland where I had to create my own height map, which was in use with the displace modifier. All in all I believe to evenly share the work over the three main areas the project would have to be much larger to fully get yourself engrossed in every part of it, but I am more than happy with what I have learnt and achieved.

Weekly Journal - Week 14 - 19th May

This week myself and the other two members began concentrating on getting the 3D model ready and rendered out with the different movements on him, as well as being fully textured. For the most part the other two members got the motion files ready for me with textures, but when I received the file I then had to texture the 3D model again because the previous textures had become void.

During the latter end of the week I was able to put together an almost final edit, with only sounds and a portal and the health bars missing. What I had done was link the real life footage with the 3D mode as well as the subway. I then added shadows and the blasts to the characters and tracked them so the movement fit, after this I rendered out the sequence and it turned out to look like this.

This week we really pulled together to get to where we are now, as with the endless problems we had with the motion capture files and adding them to the rig. We are now on the final push to get everything edited cleanly and swiftly and be ready for the presentation.

I also had to texture the 3D model again as when the file was sent to me the character would render out invisible, this led me to seperating the the ID's of the character allowing me to use a multi subobject to but all the textures on at once.

Weekly Journal - Week 13 - 11th May

This week I looked at bringing the footage of myself in to our 3D environment and seeing how well this would work/look for the final piece. To do this I again used the program Adobe After Effects which allowed me to remove the bluescreen from the original footage, which I had done the previous weeks. After I had brought both the pieces of footage in I then had to use colour correction and the contrast effects so the two clips looked as if they had a same lighting. I then had to match both the views from the 3D camera and the camera we filmed the footage with so that it looked as if the real life character was stood in the 3D Subway.

After reviewing this footage although I was happy with how it looked (the fact it did look like I matched up with the 3D floor) it still appeared that I was just placed there. I then had a discussion with the rest of the group in what should be done to improve this, we decided a shadow was needed. Therefore I went back to After Effects and created a shadow by duplicating the layer and then adding a basic 3D effect to it which allowed me to tilt and rotate the footage in the 3rd dimension which allowed meto have the shadow. The problem I have with this is that even when the shadow is being tracked with the original footage it won't always match up with both feet, so sometimes one foot will match up when the other doesn't as it's not a real shadow.