B.S.G. Semester III
Blog Post #16
4/17/2024
This week we cut the Operating room scene from our short after a battle with Unreal over the weekend. This is a bummer to the whole group, as there were a couple of funny bits that we all loved. But ultimately, I think it was not only for the best, I think this will help to make sure the rest of the short as good as it can be, come installation and the screening. It will save the asset team lots of time, and will save us a lot of rendering time. Definitely a bittersweet feeling.
Besides that we continue on with animation, now focusing on the main bathroom shots. This is a ton of fun, because these are the main shots. They are chaotic and a totally new experience to animate. But it is hard to not start feeling a bit burnt out. We've been animating for a good month now, and I'm also in Brett's animation class. So I've been doing a lot of animation. While I do love animation, it can be hard to continually find the motivation to keep at it. But I think I'm at the point Paul talked about. The deadline/finish line is so close, that I just want to push past it so that I can take a breather after. The sooner animations get done, the sooner renders can start going out.
B.S.G. Semester III
Blog Post #15
4/10/2024
This week I continue Character animation. Our goal is to have all of the non-bathroom shots done by this Friday, so we can start rendering those shots out and focus on the bathroom shots. I’m feeling fairly good about this goal. A lot of these shots are simple, and don’t require too much time. Kayla has also been a massive help. She’s gone ahead and started to block in facial animation, which we didn’t have before. This has let me and Riley focus on body performance, which for our short is slightly more important.
Things overall are going good, our team has been communicative despite the stress and crunch. I’m hoping this continues into the last few weeks. It has been really great to work with Riley and Kayla on animation. Riley made a bunch of really awesome reference footage that has made our jobs a lot easier.
B.S.G. Semester III
Blog Post #14
3/27/2024
We're back from Spring Break, and have jumped back into high gear. Our group decided to split into two groups, one for asset creation and the other for animation. Me, Riley, and Kayla have started on Character animation as that is the main thing we are behind on. While the asset team finishes up assets that will be important for the bathroom scenes, we will focus in on finsihing the animation for the smaller easier sections, like the Earth shots and Operating Room shots. These sections of the film have a lot simplier animation as well as less overall shots. Our hope is to get these shots to a point where we feel comfortable "finishing" (more like "Could Be Better") so we can spend lots of focus on the most important shots in the bathroom.
I think at this point the team is still optimistic, and we all understand the work needed to get done. There is definitly, at least in my own case, a bit of stress and anxiety espesially when you include other classes and making sure I'll be able to graduate come May. And of course the Job search and applications going out. Overall I think things will turn out fine, we just need to bear down now to make sure this last bit of the semester goes smoothly (fingers-crossed, knock-on-wood).
B.S.G. Semester III
Blog Post #13
3/6/2024
Me, and Riley, have at least brought up all the aliens and their animations to a better level, we are now focusing on shots to make sure the animation is close to done so we can focus in on the main character's animation. We are still waiting for that rig to be finalized. Anna has been pushing through a lot of issues and we owe her a lot for doing it, but I am starting to get worried about the time it is taking because that rig is now holding me and Riley back from getting most of the animation done. We were hoping to animate the Main Character 2-3 weeks ago, but we have been stuck polishing the much less important part (to the overall short). It has been really good to get into the swing of things animation-wise and work with Riley on this so we can sync up, which I'm hoping will make animating the Main character a lot faster. Anna has a planned meeting with Brett sometime this week, to hopefully iron out everything that is broken with the rig currently.
B.S.G. Semester III
Blog Post #12
2/21/2024
This week I’ve been going in and starting the final animation for the alien, while me and Riley wait for the Main Character’s rig to be finalized. We’re hoping that will be sometime before this weekend. I absolutely love animation so this has been great to get back into with better rigs. Obviously, there are a lot fewer shots with Alien animation so me and Riley are just trying to bring them all up in quality together. When we get the Main Character rig, we plan to hop into the bathroom shots and get those animated first. Depending on other people’s availability they will work on other scenes outside the bathroom, to try and divide and conquer. I’m very happy with the time and effort we put into Blocking our shots and animation last semester. It has made the whole process a lot faster and smoother. We have every camera ready and a really solid base for animation.
B.S.G. Semester III
Blog Post #11
1/3/2024
This week I’ve been working to re-topologize the Alien’s clothes and begin testing the export into Maya. Marvelous Designer has a really great topology tool that makes editing it very easy (ignoring some bugs). I was able to very quickly get a lab coat with okay topology set and exported into Maya. This is where some more experimentation may be needed. When importing the Garment into Maya, it is brought in as seperate pieces with no thickness or sew lines. As per Paul’s critique, the sew lines will hopefully be fixed by another pass at retopologizing and making sure the edge-flow makes sense around the sleeves and collar.
For the body suit we have abandoned trying to use Marvelous Designer as some of the problems were too much trouble. For this we decided on a copy and pasted model of the alien with its hands, feet, and head removed and thickness added. This will be a lot easier for the rigger and streamline painted weights. I’m hoping that the alien’s clothes will be done and ready for the rig by this weekend.
B.S.G. Semester III
Blog Post #10
1/24/2024
I’m super excited for this last semester. We hit the ground running divvying up the work we need to get done to make sure our characters are functioning and visually appealing. I was tasked with getting the Alien’s clothes created and ready to be added to the rig.
For this I’ll be using Marvelous Designer. It has been a bit rough to get used to it, especially because I’m using the Alien’s base mesh. It’s size and proportions have made the learning curve a bit harder. Having the “not quite human model” made it a lot more difficult to find relevant help/tutorials. But luckily after a bit of trial and error I’ve been able to get a good working lab coat and body suit. Now I need to figure out how to fix the topology of the clothes, since Marvelous Designer makes horrendous polygons.
B.S.G. Semester II
Blog Post #9
12/1/2023
It is definitely starting to feel like it is crunch time, coming out of Fall Break. We had a lot of really good momentum with layout and blocking, and our goal this week was to continue it forward while starting to make sure we are ready for the Preview Screening. We divvied up the remaining shots to three of the group members to start getting them laid out, lit, and blocked. The other three are polishing up the remaining sets before they go into Unreal. Our hope is that most of the currently unblocked shots are done by the end of next week so that Finals week can be used to refine/fix anything that is needed.
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I'm feeling really good about the short and our progress as of right now. I have had a lot of work for other classes that have made this past week a bit stressful, and I have even more coming up these next two weeks. Honestly, the biggest challenge for me these last two weeks will be managing all these tasks and projects. I'm hoping my other classes' work will be quick and easy, so I can set aside more time for making the lighting and blocking as good as possible.
B.S.G. Semester II
Blog Post #8
11/10/2023
This week we were fully in the layout and blocking phase for the bathroom set, aka most of the short. It has been a ton of fun to go in and actually set up cameras and try to figure stuff out. I'm very excited to see all the shots come together and, fingers crossed, still read just as well as the storyboard.
Today (Friday) was a bit rough with the bug we found in Unreal. It has been tough working with such new, for me, software and trying to get up to speed on it. Ultimately I think it is worth it and for the most part, it hasn't been too bad to get used to and figure stuff out with.
B.S.G. Semester II
Blog Post #7
11/3/2023
This week I worked on a couple of different things. Firstly, I did a few animation tests for the Alien rig to help Anna better budget her time and figure out what needed to be worked on. This was actually a ton of fun despite the general wonkiness of the animations. I think (and hope) that the tests were helpful and gave Anna the information she needed to make the rig better in a meaningful way.
Along with the animation tests, the entire team began the process of getting the Bathroom scenes blocked out. This week we looked through our storyboard and chose a few shots with distinct lighting and our goal was to get those shots lit and ready to go by Monday. This way when we go to put cameras and rigs into the set, the lighting will be set and we won't have to spend as much time on that and focus our efforts on the actual layout and blocking. With that in mind, our goal for this upcoming week is to start cranking out the shots and getting them rendered out of Unreal.
B.S.G. Semester II
Blog Post #6
10/20/2023
Last Friday, I caught Covid for the first time, so this week has been pretty rough. I missed a Midterm and all my classes this week which really sucks, and makes me feel like I'm way behind. Yesterday and today, I finally got my energy back and I was able to, for the most part, finish the Character retopology, something I wanted to have done by last Sunday. But now that it is finished I can move on to Layout and work with the rest of the team to start getting the entire short laid out. Since the Gas Station set was in Unreal and ready to go, on Wednesday we split the shots up between the team to get that entire first chunk of the short laid out. Hopefully next week we'll keep up the momentum and try to get as much of the short laid out as possible before the Production Pass a week from today.
B.S.G. Semester II
Blog Post #5
10/13/2023
This past week my work on the Character retopology has continued, now working on the body. It has been a ton of fun to work on this. Doing retopology is weirdly like solving a puzzle, and it is very engaging and a good change of pace from sculpting. My current plan is to have it finished by this coming weekend. This is now mostly a matter of connecting the head to the body and adding enough geometry so that it deforms correctly. Logan already has a preliminary rig ready to go for this mesh, so once I'm done with it we'll be able to start putting it into layout.
Speaking of layout, that is going to be my next goal (as well as the rest of my team). We want to get most of the short laid out so we can jump into blocking animation. This goal feels very attainable, and the whole short feels like we're on a good pace at the current moment.
B.S.G. Semester II
Blog Post #3
9/22/2023
This will hopefully be my last blog post talking about my work on the Main Character, at least major modeling work. But alas this week I continued to refine the character, as well as add preliminary clothing to help better define the character and his proportions. By the end of this week, I'm going to stop work in zBrush and probably begin work on retopology on the head so rigging can begin. After that, I will either help with 3D layout or move on to other important asset creation. I'm definitely getting a bit burnt out on the character modeling. I know I'm being a bit of a perfectionist but it is hard not to, when this is maybe the most important asset in the short. I think that is putting extra pressure to make sure it looks good (this is internal pressure, not at all from the group, they have been really supportive and give great constructive criticism). I think that may be a problem affecting the whole group. As you have probably noticed, we tend to go a bit too hard into the tasks we assign ourselves. I can definitely notice now that it is slowing the production down, not to the point of panic, but I think it is the main thing we need to work on going into the next Production Pass.
B.S.G. Semester II
Blog Post #2
9/15/2023
This week my work on the main character continued. My focus was on getting the head and face to a good place to start rigging. I had reference images that I used to get the proportions realistic first. From there we decided that we should stylize the character design a bit to fit better with the Alien design. So I used the realistic proportion model and began to shift stuff around to stylize the head a bit more. The current version of the model is the right image with hair. From here I want to resmooth out some of the edges to make him look a bit less super-hero-esque. From here the plan is to add some simple geometry for his clothing so that rigging can really get going. The head may go through some changes, but at this point getting something out to be rigged is the main goal. I think I'll get it to that point hopefully by next week, if not by the production pass.
I've been enjoying modeling a lot, but I would like to stop soon so I can help in other areas that need it. Mostly Layout and White-Boxing.
B.S.G. Semester II
Blog Post #1
9/8/2023
First Blog Post of the new semester WOOOO!!
We came in from Summer rested and ready to hit the ground running. We very quickly realized the most important things to get done so we can have a product to show at the Preview Screening in December. At the top of that list were the characters, both finalizing models and rigging. I was tasked to get the Main Character to a place where the rigging process can begin. I took the first week to get the body anatomy good, and I may have pushed it further than it needed, but I'm proud of the work I put in despite it probably being ultimately useless (but I mean c'mon, look at his abs!). This week I started work on the face of the character and have it at a pretty good point as of right now, but I will probably continue working on him for another week or so, so rigging can begin sooner rather than later. This picture of the face is not totally up-to-date but it was the only screenshot I had on hand. Really looking forward to the semester and seeing all the shorts!
B.S.G.
Blog Post #10
4/28/2023
Last Post of the Semester! It has been such a great experience to get to work on this project with my team. With every day and week that goes by I get more and more excited with the work we're all putting out. With that being said this week was a bit slower as we took a slight step back to try to make a cohesive design language for the spaceship so there is some sense of cohesion. With that in mind we ended up creating prototype hallways, seeing what we liked and didn't like from each person's design, then came in Friday ready to pin down the design, which thankfully we did. I think we all are relived to know that we can start pumping out assets now that we know things should be cohesive.
Now that we have that out of the way we need to go back and change a lot of the things we had in our original white boxed environments. So for this week my job is to redo the Abduction bay and give it a new identity. With the stress of finals coming around the corner, I think the whole team was looking to slow things down for these last few weeks and get us in proper shape to really pick things up next semester.
B.S.G.
Blog Post #9
4/21/2023
I am very happy I ended up being able to go to this production pass. I always love getting feedback from the class to further our ideas, but even more so I love seeing the other shorts and their progress. Sometimes I think it is easy to believe the issues we're having are solely our own, but seeing the issues the other projects are having, as weird as it sounds, is reassuring. It is nice to know we are also going in the right direction not just spiraling down our own rabbit hole. I think it also creates a burst of creativity and motivation.
With all that being said we are going to be really focusing this week on creating the spaceship's internal design language. It is something that has jumped around a lot, but now as asset creation is starting it is obvious that it needs to be put in stone. Even after the production pass, we went back and forth trying to figure stuff out, but we just couldn't come to a consensus. So we decided for our meeting Monday, we will be each designing a section of the hallway. I think this will be a great way for us to each put down what we have in our heads and come to a consensus on the elements we like. I'm getting really excited. I think we are at a great place, and once we get a visual language built we will really be off to the races.
B.S.G.
Blog Post #8
4/7/2023
This week felt especially tough to me. I had more schoolwork than usual plus some personal issues really affected my time and motivation. Luckily, I really love working on the short, and getting into asset creation just felt great. This week I spent the time I did have on creating the blocking for the Spaceship. It was so much fun to jump into modeling after the whole semester's worth of art direction. I'm happy we did and are continuing it, but it just feels like more of an advancement moving verts (even though it probably isn't).
At the beginning of the week, we started divvying up assets on our spreadsheet plan. Riley truly outdid himself with it. It is going to be such a great tool for the group to help better communicate when we the humans get mixed up and turned around. One thing we said when we started choosing assets to start blocking is that no one is stuck working on anything if they don't feel like they want to or can continue. This was a great precedent to set early as it will hopefully prevent too much burnout. I'm really excited to continue on asset creation. That is my main goal for this week, but I will also try to fiddle with the camera and room size that I wasn't able to get to this week.
I also sadly won't be attending the Production Pass next week due to the personal issues mentioned earlier. I'm bummed out a lot. It's so great to see the other projects and interject that much-needed creativity in all the projects.
B.S.G.
Blog Post #7
3/31/2023
It was pretty tough to get back into the swing of things after Spring Break. We met Monday which kind of helped to get me back in the thought process of school and the project. I think we're all itching to jump into asset creation. The plan this week is to break up all of our assets and start laying the groundwork (planning-wise) to get started on their creation. I think dividing up this kind of work will be a good motivator to really jump back on the project after the break.
That all being said this week wasn't too intensive. I began furthering the control panel designs and started to figure out ways of rigging it. It is something that I think will be very useful come to the animating stage, but I also don't want to over-engineer the rig and make it a time-sink. I was also working to do some camera work in the bathroom to make sure the sizing felt right. Logan brought up the idea of putting it in Unreal with a first-person game character to see how it feels on that level. I really want to do this but didn't have time this week, so I just went into Maya and played with a camera to see how things felt.
B.S.G.
Blog Post #6
3/10/2023
I worked on the whitebox for the bathroom environment this week. Again, it was really great to get back into Maya. With the control panels already done, it wasn't that difficult to get things put in and situated. The main problem I had with it was figuring out sizing. We didn't want the room to feel too large, but on the other side, the room can't be tiny. For this I created cubes as size references for the aliens and Jeremiah. Having character size reference was very useful for this, as per Jeremy's advice.
For this week as we move into the production pass, I think the plan is to prepare material for that pass, and begin work on doing a more detailed look at the control panels, and bathroom, if time permits. I think after this production pass, the plan is to start getting more involved in the asset creation process, which I'm very excited for.
B.S.G.
Blog Post #5
3/3/2023
This was another pretty calm week, while we all continued our work from before. This week I was working on making a simple 3D rough draft of the control panel. It felt great to be back in Maya modelling. The control panel was actually really fun to build. It is a good mix of hard edge and organic. It took a while to figure out how to put all the buttons on so it felt chaotic for the story but still organized.
My plan is to continue building it out and figuring out a more detailed plan for it. I will also be doing the layout and white box for the bathroom itself. I got the basic sizing ready and will be adding more detail as I go. I'm excited to see all of the white boxes once they are done. I think it will really help us to visualize the narrative and make it all feel more concrete.
B.S.G.
Blog Post #4
2/24/2023
This week was a pretty calm one. My team and I met Monday to begin figuring out our next steps after the production pass as well as figure out how to take the feedback we got and use it. We talked a lot about trying to synchronize style and aesthetic choices so the short feels coherent.
With that being said, my job this week was to give the bathroom control panel a redesign and try to hone in on something we like. The design here on the left was the one we went with, with a few slight changes to make it feel more organic.
I wish we could have started making assets this week, but my team decided it would be good if we spent a little more time really making sure our art direction is ready to go. Hopefully, we'll get it all squared away sooner rather than later.
B.S.G.
Blog Post #3
2/10/2023
Another great week, with lots of progress. We met on Monday and began to flesh out the character a bit more, as well as the aliens. We settled on a trucker that's a bit irritable. We also found an awesome reference image that the design is based on. I think we're all pretty happy with the design. We also settled on an idea for the alien crew. We are going to be making them an experienced but tired crew, that really just wants to be done with work and go home. These discussions have been very useful to me. They both helped me flesh out a better design as well as churn the creativity for new ideas, now that we have a more established character.
With the new idea in mind I was able to jump straight into the new design of Jeremiah. I wasn't struggling at all now that there was a bit more of a concrete idea to who he is and why he is there. This is making me excited for actual asset creation, which I'm hoping we'll be able to start soon. This week I'm going to polish up the character sheet and add some info for the Pass. If I have time, I'll also try to get a layout for the spaceship's bathroom done, so we have a better idea about size. The team is planning on meeting this week to consolidate our work and make sure we are ready to go for next Friday.
B.S.G.
Blog Post #2
2/3/2023
This week felt like we made a lot more progress which felt great. We had a meeting on Wednesday where we did a check up on all our work to answer questions and make sure we had things ready for Friday. One good and bad thing I've noticed about me and my team, is that we can get lost in the weeds really quickly. We will start discussing a topic then go very in depth on that one thing for awhile. This is great when we come up with new ideas and it feels like we're making lots of progress, but usually it just ends up being a 15-30 minute detour to the important topic of discussion that isn't really important right now. I'm honestly kind of happy that this is the only problem I can think of.
The main thing I worked on this week was the concept art for the main character. It was honestly very hard to generate a good design for him. One thing Paul said, that we're going to focus on this week, is to figure out who this guy is beyond the short film, to help better design and characterize him in the film. I think this will be super useful to making a rememberable design that actually bolsters the story. Being not great at figure drawing really felt like a limiting factor to me. I wish I could iterate more on the design to come up with something really good, but I don't feel like my drawing skills are good enough to quickly and effectively come up with new designs. I'm hoping with the discussion my team and I have this week that I'll be able to come up with something that works really well and enhances the story and humor.
B.S.G.
Blog Post #1
1/27/2023
This week was a really great start to this year and a half long project. The team has come in with so much enthusiasm, we just can't wait to start creation, but of course we need a plan and a direction before that. This week has given us a really strong idea of where we're going.
We spent most of the week on Art Direction, and making sure the ideas in our heads was expressed and compiled to the vision for the short felt unified. Luckily, due to Riley's awesome storyboard, our ideas were very unified from the start. Now with lots of reference and creative juices we will start to draw the characters and assets. My job is to create the character sheet for the main character, which honestly is a bit nerve wracking but also very exciting. I'm stoked to get going.