BSA225, BSA226, Audio, 11 and 12 July, 2016

Speed Dates dialogue to record (yes, the night before it's due!)  I've downloaded an app called "Voice Changer" on Ken's recommendation.  He used it in stop-motion to do our teddy bear knight's dialogue.  I am DESPERATE.  My audio plans are in shambles: I can't get pro tools to work, I can't get after effects to work, all of my timings have changed so I can't get storyboard pro to work!

Bartender: martian child twisted tongue
Welcome, WELCOME, Lonely Organisms!
Double Y chromosomes drink FREE!!!!
Watch out, Gentle Organisms!
This one's wanted in SIX systems!
Lots of familiar faces here tonight...
...And some new ones, too!
Hey!
We don't serve THAT kind here!
Also record (No Companion Organisms allowed!)

Ring means end of round!
Also record (Buzz means "NEXT!")
NO disintegrations.

bachelor 1 x old man bee
Too... tall.

bachelor 2 x hoarse duck
Too... short.

bachelor magenta x helium small robot
Too colorful

bachelor green bee drunk bee
Too single.

bachelor creepy devil
Smells like... soup.

bachelor collective big alien giant child
Oh, you'll do nicely!
Yes, we're looking for someone
to join our "collective".

Bartender:
Another happy dyad!
Pub quiz next moonrise!

Opening theme song: saved under finalthemechild
speed dates! angler fish got to speed date
cause if they don't Gramma will say date cousin Bob

meet mates! angler fish got to meet mates!
the fate of the species....   hangs on tonight!

ending credits song:
copy right, copyright infringement!
This animation is not meant to infringe on Disney!
money! shes not made of money! thats why shes going... to SIT!
SIT SIT SIT etc

I'll have to lengthen my credits sequence to get that song in.  Ha ha!

Peddler noises/words chorus woman

Greatly greeting great..
greatly greeting
GREATLY
Great.  Great.
gracious grub x
grandly gratified x
gross grifters x
grinning

grave
gravitate gregariously x

greathearted groundbreaker x
groovy grotto x

greasy
grimgrievedgroan x


Pet noises chipmunk

 whoo whoo!

sad whoo

whoooooo-uh

Lenar showed me how to get Premiere to work.  I was able to drop the opening and ending songs, bombastic cricket and the important dialogue in.  Two of the quick bell rings were too tight to get the alien voices in and I didn't have to time put in sound effects like the seal bark I used before.  I got lots of Pet chirping, but not many Peddler saying GR words.  I would have liked some more of those at the end.  And NO sound fx like the bell ringing.  Egad.  What a disaster.  I saved it to Y drive so I could export it during video games class only to find that the file structure broke and I couldn't get to the home computer until 5.  Rachel knows and says she won't be too upset that I got it in half an hour late.  Still.  Anti-climactic and unsatisfying.  I will keep adding sound to it  and maybe it can play on a screen in the lobby during the Flix.  It is what it is.

BSA225, BSA226, 3D, Final Scene!!!! 8 July, 2016

I've got a puppet due at the hairdressers at noon tomorrow, and still I dick around...

                S11P1 this shot preceeds the final shot, so I've got to get the lights to match up.

frame 1: I've animated the peddler light so it follows them out the door.  Is this the right call?  Seems to be working...

 frame 25: The floor still isn't getting lit and I've got it listed under at least two lights.  I will  readjust those lights to hit the floor and put an area light on the wall to lighten it up, like the back wall, and to help pop the aliens out of the darkness.

frame 50: This shot is bringing it all together... except for the floor.

frame 75: Must I render each shot individually to find problems?  I can see her rings going through his bubble.  I think that her left fingers are going through, too, but because they're about the same colour, it's not that noticeable.

I can see now that the lights are going that the camera angle is too low and the poles of the brew pots are visible.

S2P1 bartender and bar- lighting looks great

S11P2 lighting looks dull and foggy!  I give up.  I've fussed with it, I've compared the two shots side by side and gone through all the settings.  What a pain in the butt.  I'm going to re-render this scene because I can but I don't expect any significant change.  The pipes will match, but that's about it.  Bummer.  

BSA225, BSA226, animation research, 3 July, 2016

3-Legged dog animation

BSA225, BSA226, 3D, rendering work, 25 June to 2 July 2016

S3P10

                                                                            S4P1-3

                                                                       S5P1

                                                                      S6P1

                                                               S8P5

S7P1

S7P2

S10P6

scenes done rendering:  S2P1, S2P6, S2P7, S2P8, S3P1, S3P2, S3P5, S3P6, S3P7, S3P8, S3P10, S4P1-3, S4P6, S5P1, S6P1, S6P3, S7P1, S7P2, S7P3,S8P1, S8P5, S8P3,  S9P4, S10P1, S10P6, S9P1,  S9P5, S10P2, S10P3,




Scenes to be done: S11P1, S11P2,

                                               S10P3 pre-lighting and movement work

                                                                S10P2

                                                    S9P5

                                                     S9P1

BSA225, BSA226, 3D animating Peddler, 23 June, 2016

S3P5  First scene with a fully articulated and blended Peddler.  And Pet, too!  But there's always something.  Have I been rendering these shots with the wrong aspect ratio?  This is the first one that has made me worry that I have.  If the film gate goes over it, I lose her face and Pet's lower half when he lands on the lower stair. For some reason, Peddler's skeleton locked and I couldn't do anymore animating.  So her right hand is wonky and "inside" her skirt.  Got to move on.  Many, many more scenes to work on.

There is this massive glow on Peddler and Pet's eyes.  I would like to figure out what's causing it before they sit down at the table.  I might just have to live with it, though.  I mean, come on: time to move on and get it done.  It can't be perfect, after all.

BSA225, BSA226, animating Pet, 21 20 June, 2016

I've got a nifty Rendering note.  Not threatening AT ALL, and I will hand sign it and say thanks, too.

I've put the Pet blend up against a backdrop added lighting and animated 3 close-up reaction shots.  Huzzah!  The quickie renders take 14 seconds and should render up quick smart.  I hope that the Peddler close ups go as quickly.  I just need to get her control rig fixed.  Every time I loaded it, it changed the position of the bones and warped the deformations.  Vexing.  

BSA225, BSA226, Peddler is ready? Maybe? 18 June, 2016

I finished the blend shapes today.  I didn't need blends on the cape or top comb, but they're nice to have ready.  I imported the body into the walkready file with the finished skeleton.  I unskinned the body, put in the blend shaped body and clothes, made sure everything was correctly labeled and reattached the skeleton.  Much excitement!  I now have a Peddler that I can start animating!

After I fix the weighting issues.  I had forgotten about that part.  I found the Maya tutorial for delta mush.  I'm going to experiment with that. I've been rendering all day and I have not been able to concentrate on animating.  I may need to rethink my rendering strategy.

Big problems with that version, so I knuckled down and watched the tutorial.  Putting in a new skeleton was much easier.  Can't figure out the control rig, though...

BSA225, BSA226, Render farming results, 18 June, 2016

Thanks to Morgan's facebook post and some coaching from Reuben, I was able to set up renders on four computers last night.  I put my simplified folder into the Y drive "Render Farm" folder as an experiment.  Doing that means I can fix up one folder instead of loading up a new folder on D drive of every computer I use.  I started the process of setting up the renders at 9.30 but there were some problems.  First problem, every machine needed to be restarted.  This turned out to be a smart move because I didn't restart mine and it decided it was going to do it for me at 10.30 whether I liked it or not.  I only lost 7 frames but that was over an hour of rendering.  I restarted it early and should have started again from frame 8 but decided to render straight from D drive instead.  Second problem, any computer NOT attached to a Cintiq wouldn't let me open a scene on Maya.  It was slow beyond belief!  I will call tech support today and ask them to suss this out.  It will make things worse for all of us if only the most popular stations can be used for rendering.  I'm glad that I've started now.  I remembered this morning that I will be keeping normal working hours during break because the girls don't leave for their holiday until AFTER we come back from ours.  So, I can't be here at 9pm to start the rendering process during the week.  If I get going sooner, I will be out of people's way when they start rushing in, panicked, at the end of the holiday.  

And here's what I harvested this morning!

111 files/frames from rendering S2P7 over two computers and S2P6 on one computer.  I will go through now looking for redundancies from false starts.  V. Exciting.  I don't know what to do with them now that I have them, though.  I will copy them off Y drive so they don't get accidentally lost. I got here at 9.45 and nobody was here yet.  It's now 10.27 and still, nobody here.  I'm going to experiment with rendering in  10 frame or one hour chunks.  That way, if somebody comes in, it won't be a massive inconvenience to either of us for me to move to another machine.  And the rendering doesn't have to start from the beginning, just from the frame that is partially rendered.
An hour later, I've got four computers working on another 80 frames of S2P1.  It's a very complex scene.  If the people who use those machines don't come in until 5, ha ha, I may get the whole 80 frames rendered.  This will be an exercise in organisation.

BSA225, BSA226, setting up to render, 17 June, 2016

So frustrating, again, the lighting thing.  I looks like I need a spotlight on every featured alien across the front?  really???  What a pain.  Still tinkering to get them higlighted from the waist up.
Reuben is the only animator I've seen tonight.  We'll divide up the computers in the lab tonight for render farming unless other people show up.

S2P1, S2P6, S2P7, S2P8, S3P2 and S3P6 are cleaned up (all extraneous objects have been cleaned out of the scene) and properly lit, I hope, and are ready to render.  I will set up a mini render farm tonight and come back in the morning to see how it went.

BSA225, BSA226, STUFF!!!, 16 June, 2016

 Lighting Peddler for her big entry into the cantina.  I finished her blends yesterday (though now I realize that a cape blend would be helpful, too.  Or is it time to give it up?

And oh, boy!  Here is a really terrible ring that will unfortunately be featured in two scenes.  Gotta get on with it, though.

critique:
some jerky movements.  slow down chattering spiky haired woman and bug alien
start rendering Friday:
short shot with people talking
get rid of all characters in background, extra bar stuff in background to cut down on scene size, render on 50 %.  we just want to check ambience and what we can see going on in the shadows.
checking to see if animation needs to slow down
get it for Rachel to see on Monday, put it into a folder  on y drive and email her where it can be found

BSA225, BSA226, rendering options, 14 June, 2016

Rendering in EXR is recommended.
under render options,
Render during the break, but start ASAP to work the bugs out.
No Render Farm!!!!!
Log into up to ten computers.   Get copy of master folder and put it onto D drive of new computer (tell the computer in Maya where to find this folder!) and then render that shot.
Leave a note on the computer telling people what you're doing.

I need to create a clean folder system for rendering.  I've made a folder called SDmaster and the cantina, aliens, Peddler and Pet will all be inside.  When I start up the folder on new computers, it SHOULD link everything back together.  I'll have to play with it on Friday.

S3P7  The bartender is looking ahead at the doorway.  No lighting in there yet.  Peddler and Pet will be in there.  I will try to take the lessons I've learned about lighting and efficiently and cleanly light that area.  My Peddler character isn't ready yet.  I've found an early copy without a skeleton and I will finish making blend shapes for it.  Then putting in a new skeleton.  Then weighting it all.  Lots to do.

BSA225, BSA226, animating scenes, 13 June, 2016

S3P2  I need to change the camera angle.  This should be from Peddler's point of view,  but too much of the shot focuses on the floor.

S3P6 Why has my bartender gone white?  This is weird.

This should be fixed.  I used S2P1 as a base to do this scene.  when I was trying, and failing, to erase the key frames on the bartender, I accidentally erased the lighting instructions on the bartender.  I found the problem when I looked in the light linking editor.  The other lights were unaffected, so I think that's how it happened.

the camera on the bartender is set on translate .420, 4.194, 6.617
rotate -10.468, 1.2, 0

S4P6  This is another bartender shot.  Now that I've done this many shots from the same angle, should I consider doing a shot from the side instead?  I will move the camera and playblast versions of that option next time.

BSA225, BSA226, setting up cameras, 12 June, 2016

S2P1  I've moved the sign from behind the bartender to the wall in the entryway.  I think that will make a better reveal when he tells Peddler "No Pets".

S2P5  Two scenes animated!  I kept fiddling with the patrons until I remembered how dark the bar is.  So I stopped to have a render.  Looking good.  I spent all that time counting frames for the dope sheet this weekend, only to find that my count was off.  Very annoying.  So my new strategy is to set the frames, playblast it before I animate anything, and test it out in Adobe After Effects.  Once it's layered over the original scene, I can see if the frame length is correct or needs adjustment.  Only S2P5 was way off.  I lengthened it and adjusted some of the movements of the bar patrons.  On my second sweep, I'll add some more movements to the bartender to make it work.

 S2P6 Bachelor #1

S2P7 Bachelor #2

S2P8 Bachelor #3 and friend

I will need to go back and properly light the figures so they can be seen in the final render.  This is sufficient for now.  The playblast is clear and will be readable in the critique on Friday.

BSA226, Dope sheet, 12 June,2016

I went though and plotted out frame length and basic movements and when they happend on the 3D animatic.  It's procrastination or trying to get organized before animating.