Lighting test for Shot 01

Comments? It is also in the network folder for Shot 01 under Shot_01_02_07Light.jpg.

Another way to create BlockMan

1) Create the base mesh for the blockman.

2) Select the blockman mesh. Go to Particles > Emit from Object in the Dynamics menu. Set the Emitter type to “Omni” at any rate.

3) Select the emitter. Go to attribute panel(on the right hand side of the windows). Right click on the Rate attribute, then select “Create Expression…” Type the following in the Expression Editor

rate = 1;

if(frame>30) rate = 0;

This code will tell the emitter to emit a particle for each vertex on the mesh. It will happen before frame 30. After that it won’t emit any more particle. (you can key the “Rate” to achieve the same effect but using expression is cleaner and easier to fix/change)

4) In Outliner, select the particle object, hold the COMMAND key, and then select the blockman mesh. Go to Particles > Goal. Set the Goal weight to 1. This will tell the particle to stay with the parent emitter and so the particle will always move with the mesh. Now we can animate the mesh (any time after frame 30) and the particles will always stick to the mesh.

The following steps are how to instance the particles.

1) In Outliner, select particle object. Click on particleShape tab in Attribute panel. Look for  Add Dynamics Attributes, click on General.  In the Long name field put anything you want, I will put “instanceId.” Make the Data Type the “Float” type. and check “Per particle (array)” and “Add Initial state attribute” for the Attribute Type.

2) Go to Per Particle (Array) Attributes, Right click on Instance Id and select “Runtime Before Dynamics Expression…” Type in the following code

seed(particleId);

instanceId = floor(rand(5));

It will assign a random instanceId to each particle.

3) In the attribute panel and particleShape tab again, go to Instancer (Geometry Replacement) attribute, and then go down to ObjectIndex. In the drop-down, pick “instanceId”.

4) Create the cubes to be used as instancers, say 5 cubes. Change the shapes, sizes, and color of these cubes as you like. In Outliner, select all the cubes you created, hold the COMMAND key and select the particle. Go to Particles > Instancer (Replacement).

You should have a model covered with blocks in random order. Now, we can start customizing it.

1) Go to particleShape tab. In Render Attributes, pick “Numeric” in drop-down menu for Particle Render Type.” Every particle will be labeled with a number (particleId). You can look at the block that you don’t like and you know the particleId.

2) Create the new cube that will replace the cube you don’t like. In Outliner, select the new cube, hold COMMAND, and select instancer. In the attribute panel, under instancer tab, go to Instancer. There should be a list of instancers (cubes) with the objectIndex in front. Click Add Selection to add the newly created cube to the list. The new cube will be assigned an index (5).

3) Go to particleShape tab, Per Particle (Array) Attributes.  Right click and select “Runtime Before Dynamics Expression…” Add the following code to the code we already have

if(particleId == 160) instanceId = 5;

The old cube has the particleId = 160. The new cube has objectIndex = 5 and we assign this number to instanceId. When we run the animation the new cube will replace the random cube we had before.

It’s a bit long. I can demonstrate it when we have time. Making the blockman this way we can tweak the base mesh and instancer to achiever the look matching the storyboard drawing and it’s very easy to animate (just animate the base mesh) with the rig we already have.

Particle Systems Tests

I’ve been tinkering with particles in order to facilitate a couple of effects coming up:

-The debris continually falling from the Blockman as he shifts.

-The smoke/debris blasted in waves from the ground as he implodes on his last shot.

These are both created by setting a curved, animated plane as an emitter surface, instancing the particles with a semi-transparent cube, then setting one of the particle options to “velocity” (it crashed before I could check which).  This is pretty much me planning ahead for next week’s big shot rehashes.

Yay or nay: shots 1-3 idea

What do y’all think? My opinion is that it is too much, too distracting. Now that I actually see it, it’s not as effective this way. But I thought i’d try it anyway, just to get a definitive answer.

Meeting Minutes 11/07/2008

The next meeting will be on Tuesday, November 11 at 7PM in the DPA lab.

For that meeting, we’ve assigned the following task based on feedback from today’s meeting:

Kevin will refine the city scene and add/remove the shots that were discussed. He has the details of this in his notes.

Shirley will work on designing shots 1-3, as well as animating the camera and adding the narrator. She may will also create additional city shots.

Micah will continue rough animation on the block man, replace the shots of his arrival, and work on the model.

Pisut will produce a rough animation of the cubes exploding. For this test, the cubes should be 1X1.

The latest reel has been placed on the network under projects > 2008_cubes > reels for reference.

Again, the next meeting will be on Tuesday, November 11 at 7PM in the DPA lab.

Alternative City Layout

State of the Cubes Address

Greetings all. Despite the debacle that was today’s critique, I think we are in a good place.

I’m happy with the work you’ve all done–with the exception with the work done on the cortex shot. It is mandatory that it NOT be in storyboard form by next week. Pisut, if you think you can’t have a rough animation by Tuesday at the latest, let me know now so I can have other people work on it. I am going to speak to Stephen regardless to see if he can help.

After looking over the notes I took today and re-watching the reel, most of the complaints today were from either A) my editing of the new shots of the city, B) Micah working on something that he was told to work on (both by myself and by the Powers that Be) in lieu of the “climatic” Block Man, or C) general ambiguous complaints relating to disagreements of the direction of the project on a “very base level.”

In regards to (A), I’ve re-watched the reel and talked with Micah. I’m confident that the “confusion” my new shots causes can be fixed with a few simple changes (I will discuss these at tomorrow’s meeting).

In regards to (B), now that the model of the narrator is in a form we can use, Micah will now be working exclusively on the “Block Man” sequence. He will be focusing animation, layout, and modeling of this sequence. We will discuss the specifics of this at tomorrow’s meeting.

In regards to (C), well, not much we can do about that. We’ve worked diligently throughout this process to appease all parties involved, but ultimately, some decisions will have to be made that everyone may not agree with. Remember, the poem is about a woman living in the city of Buenos Aires in the early 20th century, and we will continue to develop the project using the original artist’s statement from the beginning of the semester:

Ultimately, the goal is to communicate the hopeless inevitability of conformity and indifference that Storni shows in her work, to show how this inevitability is still relevant in today’s world, and to do this in a visually compelling way.

The key to remember is that the animation is and never was based on the poem, rather it is inspired by it.

Here are some notes I took to that will hopefully get us motivated to blow this thing out of the water here in the final stretch:

“Too many different elements”

“Scattered”

“Not coming together”

“Not cohesive”

“Losing some of its mojo”

“Right now, this isn’t working”

“Too abstract”

We’ll be making changes to our work schedule for the rest of the semester in order to address these issues. These include:

–Two weekly meetings  (Friday and Tuesday) for each week.

–Work for the week will be due at Tuesday’s meetings instead of via e-mail late Wednesday night. There are several reasons for this. One, it will encourage us to work a little bit each day instead of waiting until the last minute. Two, it will give me more time to incorporate new elements into the reel. Three, (and most importantly) it will give us an opportunity to critique each other privately and revise our work before we present it to everyone on Thursday.

Please note that these changes aren’t directly a result of our critique today. Even before Donar gave his spiel at the beginning of class about this being crunch time, I had planned on asking everyone (including myself) to up the ante in these final weeks of the semester. Donar was right, this is the time when we can make or break the project. My goal is to get to a place before Christmas so that we can come back and have fun tweaking things and using lighting and texturing to really make this an incredible project. But in order to do this, we’ll have to be more dedicated and organized together.

I take a lot of the blame for not getting us in gear earlier. BUT that being said, I honestly do thing that we are in a good place right now. No reason to get mad or panic. Let’s just stick to our guns and knock this thing out of the park.

Narrator model first pass

Lacking finished contour embellishments, legs and face look off.

Light pass, Test 1

Building models