All ready now

Hi folks,
I'm in a very good mood at the moment because I have just finished gathering all of the information for me to burn to disc to hand in tomorrow.
I feel extremely relieved and saddened at the same time, because it's the end of an era, one that I have particularly enjoyed, and thoroughly wish I could do again.

I have also finished the degree show pictures so here they are,

What do you guys think?
cx

DONE!

Hi everyone,
Here it is, the Final video that I will be handing in. I have fixed the problems that I spoke of earlier, and here is what I now have,

Now I need to finish the document and the renders for the degree show so I will speak to you all later,
What do you think?
cx

Almost there

Hi guys,
I think I am almost there with the video, and here is what I have so far;

What do you think? Do you think  the voice needs to be a little quieter?
I'm now going to look into the splashes and see what I come up with,
cx

Getting closer by the hour

Hi everyone,
Today I have been working on getting the video as close to finished as I can.
Here is what I have so far;

Tomorrow I plan on adding the voice over and adding splashes to the rain. I may also try to fix the seam on the specularity map on Frank's hand's in te POV shot, although this is only a short shot so I doubt it would really be noticed unless I told you.
I also need to make the schoolgirl part start a little earlier, so that Frank has less face time, and that the scene will flow a little better.

What do you guys think?,
cx

Almost there

Hi guys,
I have re tweaked the images that I had previously uploaded for the degree show and here they are,

I have also just rendered out the first part of the Frank shots, and composited it with the previous video and here are the results

 I am excited to see everything finally starting to come together. Just a few short days and this will be done.
Let me know what you guys think please, if I need to make changes, then it need to be now rather than later,
cx

pictures

Hi all,
I told you that I would be back soon with some pictures, and I think that these 3 may be finalists.

What do you guys think?

By the way, I will have 2 a1 posters of work up at the end of year degree show, at St helens college on the 17th May id anyone wants to come and see my work.  I would appreciate any support that could be given.
thte layout of my posters is as follows:

What do you think folks?
cx

very quick update

Hi guys,
I'm sorry I didn't update yesterday, it must have slipped my mind.
I had planned to get my animation done yesterday, but it all went to pot and started to drive me crackers. I originally planned to use the footsteps function in 3ds max to create the walk cycle, then edit it to make it unique. However, when I tried it it went very wrong, so I decided to key frame the animation instead. The results of this were not very good, but workable, and then my tutor, Stas pointed out to me that he knows how to use footsteps correctly, so he showed me how its done, and I can now use it. Even though I had a lot of problems with it yesterday, I feel that I am now in control of the animation and I am not too far off finishing it. I haven't started on the layer above the basic walk cycle yet, but I plan to tomorrow. Tonight however, I need to get renders done for the end of year show. Unfortunately, these images need to be done by Friday, so that is a little awkward when it comes to timing since our hand in is on Tuesday. Oh well, I will get it done. I have 7 images to render and I will show you what they are when I decide on what ones will be the final ones.

I will try my best to keep you guys updated, but I can't have the Internet open whilst I am working at the moment, because 3ds max is being very RAM hungry.
I'll catch you all later,
cx

P.S. My sexy new graphics card arrived ^_^ goodbye ATI Radeon HD 4670, Helooooooo ATI FirePro V4800!!

quick update

Hi guys,
Just a quick one here at the moment,
I just thought I'd show you that I have now made Frank and the book look wet via specular. I used the same effect as the buildings so that it wouldn't look out of place, but I have done it slightly differently so that it looks more realistic.

As you can see, I have also added the stubble to Frank's head and I have altered the normal maps on his hands so that they don't look so freaky anymore.
I am now going to start animating Frank, and I will be attempting to use the footsteps biped tool in 3ds max to create the initial walk cycle. This should save me a lot of work, so long as it works.
Let me know what you guys think please,
Cx

hey all

Hi guys,
I have resoled some of the issues from yesterday. Thanks to my own stupidity I had to re render a whole bunch of frames but oh well, it's done now. I have rendered those frames out and I have also discovered a way of using the shadow from an object when it isn't there, so the lighting problem on Frank is now a thing of the past.
I now need to work really quickly in what I am doing so that is what I have been doing.
I have done a very quick test of the rain in after effects and I am fairly happy with the results so far. The render times are also fairly good. Took about 7 minutes for 45 seconds of footage, which isn't too bad considering the way I wanted to do it would take about 10 hours for 3 seconds of footage.
Here is a video of what I have so far

I now need to go and edit Frank's texture map so that he has stubble on his head, and I also need to give him a wet specular map, and re-normal his hands. I also need to get him animated ASAP, which I am a bit worried about, but I'm sure I can pull it off.

Let me know what you guys think please,
cx

again with the GAH!

I'm currently having a hellish time.
apparently the frames that I have rendered so far are useless because I stupidly had a layer hidden that contained a lot of assets that should have been in view.
Also the camera was wrong, so I am now having to re render everything. This isn't too bad however when I try to render Frank now, for some reason his hair doesn't show up. I didn't like the hair anyway so I have decided that it is going. Instead I will paint stubble on the texture. I think this is fine since the character has thinning hair in the book, so I imagine that he would shave it every now and again.

Whilst I was trying to animate before, I was getting a lot of weird things happening, but I think I may have Finally fixed them.
I am really worried about the amount of time that I have for animation etc, but I must do it.

On a lighter note, I have done an extremely quick test on whether or not the layering would work in after effects, and it does, so here are the results for that

I'm not entirely sure what to do about the light on the side of his face, but I shall worry about that tomorrow. I am too wound up at the moment to be thinking of that.

If anyone has any sort of tips or anything for this, then they would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Cx

power cut update

just checked the render, all is good. The power cut 111 frames before the end, so they are now rendering. Whew.
cx

slow but steady

Hi all,
Just thought I would let you know what's going on at the moment.
I am still doing the background render but I have doubled the frames so that they are slower. I am excited about how it is coming together, however it is frustrating that I can't really use my pc whilst it is rendering because the renders take up all of the ram. So I have borrowed my muum's laptop so that whilst i am rendering on my PC, I can look into tutorials for adding the rain in after effects, which I have decided to do since I am having so many problems in 3ds max. I know that this is sort of a cop out, but it is more of a contingency plan than anything else. I have found a few tutorials, but there is one that I really like, however this may take a while to render so I have also found a slightly easier one, that would be less resource heavy.

I am also working on the required documentation for the course whilst the renders are going on, so I am trying to adapt my production document, and dissertation whilst I'm waiting. I hate feeling non-productive so I am trying my best to keep doing work instead of just waiting for renders to finish.

I will upload whatever footage I have later on, and I am also planning on doing a quick test of Frank for a few frames, so that I can see how the layering worked.

..... GAHH!!! as we speak, we have just had a power cut, so my renders stopped!! nooo! I'llk keep you posted later
xc

little ray of light at the end of the tunnel

Hi folks.
After a stressful day, I think I have managed to kind of solve my problem.
I have figured out how to render in separate layers so that I can render Frank in his own file, by importing the same cameras from the scene file, thus having the same animation and key frames. and then try to match Frank's movements with the timing of the shot.
I have been doing some tests of the background render so that I can see the timing etc and here is what I have so far.
Please be aware that there will be a voice over and rain on this video, but I will be adding them later, so the parts that are still for a while are either dialogue, or Frank is doing something, but since he's not in there yet you wont see that.

I am aware of problems with the video at the moment, but this is why its a test file. I am figuring out the shot in 3ds max, then rendering out that shot, then taking it into after effects, then going back and adding the next shot in max, but this makes the previous shot smoother, so I will have to go back and re render it all at the same time, but for now I have this test file to work with.
Let me know what you think please,
cx

gah!

Hi everyone,
To put it bluntly, things are currently going awfully. I can't even render a single frame when I have Frank and the scene in the same file, so I am going to have to find a way of rendering Frank out separately and then composite him on top of the renders o f the scene. I will have to do this so that they sync up obviously, so I will have to use place markers in the Frank file, so I can animate him from point a to point b. This is going to be very hard indeed as most of it will be guess work, but I have to try my damned hardest to get it to work.
I think that what I am planning will work, but only time will tell.
Anyway, I have to go and stress out some more now, so I will post later with an update (if my PC survives that long)
cx

quick update

Hi guys. I did plan to get some animating done today but that didn't happen. I ended up finishing the skinning, and then organising the scene so that everything was in the correct layers and naming sets so that there would be no confusion at a later date, and also in case I could render in layers.
I may have discovered a way to render my rain without it crashing. It involves rendering the rain without the objects, but still having the rain collide with them. I found a way to do this and here is a very quick video showing the test result.

I also realised that I hadn't modeled the book that Frank is meant to be holding so I did that today as well.

What do you guys think?
cx

lights and skin

Hi all,
I'm sorry I didn't post yesterday.
I spent yesterday finishing off my lighting of my scene, and attempting to add my rain. The latter deemed difficult. I have added some but I am testing to see what works best, as I keep getting crashes etc.
Here is the comparison of the lighting in my scene in 3 stages.

Before any lighting

After my spot lighting

After fill lighting

I also attempted to add rain  by using the rain that I had already created in previous test, but this appeared to be too processor heavy, so I looked around and discovered that there was another way of doing rain, called spray. So I tried that and here are the results of some tests

Since I am having to many problems with this, I may have to look at alternative ways of doing it, e.g. adding it in post production via adobe after effects, but this may results in complications so I'm not sure yet. I also may be faced with the problem of not being able to render the trailer out, in which case I think that I will render still images, but still animate them by panning over them whilst the voice over is playing. This will be a cool effect, but it is a last resort should everything else fail on me.

Now that I am home, I appear to be having problems rendering any kind of rain in my scene, so I carried on skinning Frank, because this needed doing so that I could animate him, so that is what I have been doing today.

I have also rendered a short video to show the effect of the skinning

Now I need to create a quick pre-viz animation to try and figure out all of the timing etc for the scene, so that is the next job.
Let me know what you guys think please.

P.S. sorry for this kind of lengthy post

LET THERE BE LIGHTS!!

Hi all,
I have almost finishing lighting my scene already!
I still need to add some lighting to flood the scene with moonlight etc, but here are a plethora of images of what I have so far.

Before any lights

After the lighting I have added so far

What do you guys think so far?
I plan to finish the lighting tomorrow, and then start the animation,
cx

Hello all

Hi guys,
Just a quick update on today's progress so far.
I have got my small assets in the scene now and they are scattered around. I have also fixed some uv errors that I had, and have fixed some of the specularity layouts that I had in place.

I have also started lighting my scene from scratch and I am fairly happy with the results so far.

I am looking forward to lighting the rest of this scene as I really could do with getting my animation done so that I have time to render it all.
What do you guys think?
cx