converting the warehouse into a hexagon

Instead of staying with 8-sided octagon shape for warehouse, I am seriously considering changing it to a six-sided hexagon.  This makes sense as there are six imaginary friends with their own areas plus Girl.  She visits each of them as she decides the fair, sustainable, and workable solution to her problem.  There is no real narrative need for a "garden" or "art gallery" other than to fill in the octagon.  

How hard will it be to move everything around, though?

The back walls can stay the same while the "sides" and their shelving units can be angled to reach the points of the slices sooner.  I will do some consultations and tests.

Export from Maya as USD

 5/11/24   I'm conducting research into USD in order to simplify the size of the Imagination Warehouse prior to bringing it into Unreal Engine.

Pixar developed USD (Universal Scene Description) as a way of creating hugely complex scenes without making them so data heavy.  Coco's arena scene is used as an example of this.

Artist's Primer on USD by Maya Learning Channel

Exporting and Referencing USD files in Maya how to create layers so each artist can add their "opinion", or layout design, of USD prims in a scene.

Shading USD with LookdevX (Maya 2024 New Feature!)

Maya Supported image file formats: The image reader for MayaUSD is facilitated through OpenImageIO (an open source library for image reading). MayaUSD should be able to open any image supported by OpenImageIO. MayaUSD also supports OpenEXR textures, 8, 16 and 32 bits, single channel, RGB and RGBA. Texture support is also Open EXR textures 8, 16, and 32 bits.

Maya's USD export options require that mayaUsdPlugin.mll must be loaded in the Plug-in Manager (Windows > Settings/Preferences > Plug-in Manager) for USD Export to appear in the Files of type drop-down menu.  See settings below:

Intro to Import USD to Unreal Engine

Integrating USD assets into Unreal

45 minutes long and quite detailed.

lip sync set up in storyboard pro for GIW, 30 November, 2021

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0pSB5hd_Fo

Storyboard Pro- not very interesting.  Not sure if I want to lip sync this early in the pipeline and then lip sync AGAIN with the final assets.

GIW work 28 October, 2021

Bethany is texturing Goldie's Kitchen and has done a great job.  I'm going to set her onto Flash's Library next.  

I found this resource after googling "how many children's shows have male leads"

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/male-characters-on-childrens-tv-shows-use-stem-skills-female-characters-use-magic-2019-05-01      

Only 38% of children's tv character leads are female.  Male leads use STEM to solve problems and females are twice as likely to use "magic".  

http://sacraparental.com/2016/10/12/13-fabulous-kids-tv-shows-that-pass-the-maisy-test-and-wont-drive-you-crazy/

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234143610_Gender_in_children's_television_worldwide_Results_from_a_media_analysis_in_24_countries

Lip Sync research, Adobe Character Animator, 22 August, 2021

Adobe Character Animator lets you rig a 2D puppet and have it do lip syncing in real time.  

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD9-zrGxrs4

How does this work?  Can it "listen" to a song and then work with the puppet to match the voice to the lips?

It looks like the program identifies the performer's mouth (see red lines in live view box at upper right of screen)

This tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ka6ikizX0pY

Shows how you lip sync JUST THE MOUTHS in CA and then export them to After Effects or Mojo.  The software will analyse outside audio and match the lips.

Setting up the head puppet in CA tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GKCw4f1UrI

Incredible!!!  Do this with GIW "Today's the Day!"

Test Anna or Kath singing

Holy moly, exciting stuff.

GIW mind map WIP 28 July, 2020