bloody photobucket!

it seems some of the image has been cut off. if you click the image it should link you to the full image...sorry

time management....

...wasnt told i needed to put this up after i did it...makes sense that i should have though.
i thought i should include it even though i experienced all the problems...this was my original plan. unfortunately things didnt really go the way id planned.

but anyway heres a screenshot of my time planner for this project








so this concludes my blog for this project, when i finally get round to fully doing what i have in mind for this scene im sure i will be posting it up here. so watch this space!

its done!

finally ive completed im. i was very lucky with the tracking in the end, turns out i didnt really need to track the scene for my character to actually feel likes it part of the seen. i think this is due to its constant movement along with the constant moving of the camera shot in the scene.

ive tried to upload it onto youtube but when i did the video turned out like this...



so i imported my maya image sequence into after effects and arranged it where i wanted it in my frame. i then went on to setting out where i was going to need to mask out so that the dragon would fit into the scene.




i masked out 3 main areas in my scene
1- when the dragon first appears following the car from behind the building in the foreground.
2- the telegraph pole which passes infront about halfway through the scene.
3- the building that the car passes behind at the end of my chosen scene.

i used the mask tool, and then animated it each frame so that when the area that needed to be masked moved and changed size due to proportion etc the masking points would still work.



to create the shadow i duplicated the dragon layer, turned into a 3d layer so i could control it on x y and z axis. changed the levels and experimented with the level of blur and opacity to get the shadow looking the way i wanted it to.

i used the shadows and certain colours in the scene to change the shadow on my actual character, just to give it the feel that its part of the environment, due to its metalic texture i thought this quite a good idea seeing as metallic objects usually change colour etc when in depending on the environment they are in.

then by blurring the dragon layer very very slightly to match that of the car my dragon started to blend in quite well.

my piece was almost complete. i then toyed with the idea of adding flames to the creatures mouth which i think would be quite a cool thing to add if i had more time. i got to this stage on the second to last day and still needed to do work on my other project so decided to call it a day on industry exercises 2

here is a still of it seeing as the youtube video does not want to work....



i think i could have done better overall, but i am still happy with my piece considering how i had to change my idea and then completed it within a few days when others had 9 weeks. i am dissapointed that i couldnt make my first idea work but at the same time i am quite pleased because i think this piece has ultimately come out cooler. if i had decided on this idea at the beginning instead of the IKEA idea then i think i could have done such a better job and had a more complete, more varied piece at the end when comes to level of animating and level of interaction with the environment in the scene. But really considering the amount of time i had left to complete the piece i am very happy with the way it has come out.

animating

so ive started animating the dragon rig i showed in my last blog.
due to my tight time schedule i didnt want to spend to much on it though i did have a number of ideas that maybe at a later date i would like to implement. e.g. fly away from the camera and back towards, a more varied flapping pattern and maybe even a glide.

heres a quick playblast of some of the animation



after i did the animation i imported an image plane of the scene im using. i did this to get scale and angle right not so much the placing, i will work on that later on in after effects.



next i shall be rendering the animation out and importing it into after effects.

a lot of thinking..

...has been happening and i have decided to totally rethink what im going for in this clip.
this is due to my major problems with maya live and not being able to solve them...literally


so i have settled on another idea i sort of set aside earlier on in the project. the idea coming from the film wild wild west starring none other than my main man Will Smith





this whole idea of a very mechanically advanced western setting i thought was quite cool...shame the film wasnt amazing though.

i have found a rig that i would like to use, its this weird mechanical bird/dragon creature. too keep it within this theme i will most probably give it a simple metalic texture.

heres the rig



the rig itself isnt bad, and i think will work easily well enough for this project.

because of the simple nature of the shot im using and the fact that i want this machine to follow the car i doubt the tracking of this scene is very necesary so im going to try it first without the tracking first.