Monday 12 March 2012

Re-cut edit

Here is the re-cut edit to fit the regulations of the competition. To fit the 20 seconds and the 'ARTS' reveal at 8 seconds left.

Like I said previously I prefer the full version because I timed the shots to the music of the full length track which can be seen a few posts below. 


Update


So I went in today and showed Jane and Gavin my Sky Arts, they seemed reasonably impressed.

They said to make a few changes. However thats a bit of a problem considering its due in on Friday. They mainly said that because of the 'regulations' of the competition that the word ARTS must come in no later than 8 seconds left of the film. Even tho I show the words 'sky arts' throughout my video they didnt seem to accept this because I had to think of 'them as a company'. They also wanted me to make the background so that It is just plain white and has no floor. Which would mean re rendering all the 15 cameras again. And even tho my new computer can handle it. I just cant afford the time.

Anyways I went home and tried to re do 1 shot but for some reason when I rendered the lighting was funny and the images seemed like the were flickering. I checked all the settings and everything was fine. I checked the frame rate and it was all fine. And there wasnt a light source problem I could see. So instead of wasting time trying to figure this out I have decided to try and re edit what I have into the 20 second regulation and the 8 second mark regulation. (considering one of the tracks they gave us that I am using is 25 seconds)

So I went back to re edit and had to make faster cuts and take out a few shots. And of course cut the music. 

I prefer the original video because I purposely timed it to the music and worked out my shots. But the new 'regulation' video still works.

When I submit I will submit both the full length and the regulation video.

Alternative shot

As discussed in class today we thought about ending it differently. The video could finish when it hits the top of the guitar.

This was discussed because the ending of the drums is too 'cliche' but personally I prefer it which is why ultimately I have gone with it, but here is a possible ending shot:

Tuesday 6 March 2012

Final Video

Hi, so here is the final render of my animation. I used my animatic as a base so that I could drop my finished rendered videos on top without having to re-figure the timings. I have kept it dynamic and free flowing to keep it interesting. Enjoy!

Monday 27 February 2012

Animatic

I put this together so I could get a feel of the timing and how it looks. I used playblasts because they take a second to render and its so easy to use and I can see the camera moves. I have done this before I begin rendering properly. In total there are 15 cameras:

Saturday 25 February 2012

Instruments modelled and textured

Here are a selection of stills of some of the instruments in the animation:




Tuesday 21 February 2012

New idea

Having worked quickly on my previous idea meant that I was able to change and come up with a new idea for this assignment.

Having thought long and hard about what to create for this sting I found myself thinking too hard for a new idea and that every idea that I came up with I discarded for several reasons.

Kind of out of the blue, my new idea came to me whilst watching Sky Arts 1. I was watching a Phil Collins concert in New York which was a tribute to old Motown records. Whilst watching the concert I thought of the idea of musical instruments playing along as the music plays.

The idea is for the musical instruments to play along themselves. I will use lots of close ups and lots of cuts to make this interesting and dynamic.

For this idea, I would model, rig, texture and animate everything in Maya. This means that I have to dedicate valuable time to create these models so that they look realistic. The music that I have chosen for this idea is the 'Pacific High' sound track. I chose this track because it is the only track with drums and it sounds like it has a variety of instruments.

Monday 20 February 2012

Sky Arts

We had the privilege of a Sky Arts representative come into university to give a short presentation about what they were looking for and what the procedure was for this assignment.

The representative discussed the possibility of being able to have your sting shown on television and have the opportunity to go and work with some people at sky as well as being invited to a few events. We were also shown entries from the past year and it was inspiring watching what other people had created.

The outcome of this presentation was that I had realised that this was a great opportunity to create a great piece of work for a big corporate company and this had to be taken seriously. I felt that my idea up to now was amateur and I needed to aim bigger and better.

Friday 17 February 2012

Final Video

Here is the final video with all of the added effects. Enjoy!

Thursday 16 February 2012

Adding extra effects

I wanted to add some extra effects. I duplicated an individual paint splatter and made it a 3D layer. I then moved this forward in the X axis so that it was nearer to the camera. I then had to animate when it came in. The video had a preset of about 3 seconds and it would disappear. Other than it just suddenly disappearing off the screen I wanted to make it more realistic. I therefore added a slight blur effect to the paint and then added a smear effect. I had to adjust the to and from points of the smear effect and animate it until it was off screen. This effect makes it look like the paint is sliding down the front of the camera.

I also added some paint drips. I used a plug-in called Trapcode particular and Trapcode focus to create this desired effect.

Masking continued

The last thing I had to mask out was the surrounding parts that would still be there after the stencil has fallen off. To do this I:

Took the bottom layer:


Then put a mask around the letters:


I then inverted the mask and I was left with the outer paint marks:




Masking

I had to mask out some parts in my compositions. The main parts that need masking is when the stencil and the surrounding paint. When the stencil falls off the canvas it needs to take with all the paint that was on it apart from the word ARTS and any surrounding paint.

In order to do this I took the still from paint splatter:


I then started masking out the areas that would not be affected by the stencil falling off:


I just adjusted the masks to subtract and the outside paint splats disappeared. 


I was now left with my stencil that was ready to have the CC page turn applied to it and then it had to be animated so that it came in at the correct time in the composition


Fixing the problem

After some work on this and some help from my friend Gergo. I simply duplicated the paint video, clicked on the last frame of the video and went to time and freeze frame. This froze the last frame of the film which meant that all I had to do was extend it to the length of my film and move the layer just after the paint splat video finished. This fixed the problem and the film looked fluent without any stagger or overlapping. I was able to leave this layer run constantly throughout the film instead of cutting to different layers.

I then went back into my other compositions and just used that 'freeze frame' still to adjust the bottom and the top layers.

Problems

What I originally done was saved a still image from the last frame of the paint splatter. I done this because the paint movie only lasted about 4 seconds. I put the still image immediately after the paint splat movie had finished so that it would continue for the duration of the film.

However I found a few things wrong. When I played back the film you could see that it stuttered or overlapped and you could see this happening when you watched it. As I have highlighted in the videos below:



You can see that the image below is clearly visible when it appears in the film. It doesnt look very professional,


As you can see in this video, when the second layer of the paint comes into the composition there is a clear difference.

Word ART and alpha matte

I had done some research on alpha matte. Alpha matte is when you want one layer to show through holes defined by another layer set up for a track matte. This is perfect for creating a stencil.

It works on the principle that the underlying layer gets it transparency values from the values of certain channels in the track matte layer. Either its alpha channel or the luminance of its pixels. A track matte only applies to the layer directly beneath it.

I used this technique as a valuable part of my project. I used alpha matte to create the bottom layer of my animation to create the effect that the paint had gone through the stencil to leave just the word "ARTS" covered in paint and the left over surrounding paint that didnt get taken off with the stencil.


I created this by using the alpha matte inverted function by selecting the stencil that was directly above paint layer. The result was that the stencil became transparent leaving behind the underneath part with the paint on it. I used this same technique to create the stencil itself

Early Test

Here is an early test I put together:

Wednesday 15 February 2012

Falling stencil

The next part was to make the stencil fall off the canvas. I decided to use CC page turn for this effect and simply adjusted the to and from points of the effect to make it fall in the direction I wanted:

Paint Continued

Using the paint clips I managed to get the paint to cover the stencil. Here is a still image of the paint:


Paint!

I managed to get a plug-in pack called Riot Gear FX.

In this package consisted of some splatter movies, which I incorporated into the composition. I also created some still ink splatters by using CC particle world on a solid layer. Then by adjusting attributes such as the particle type, gravity birth and death size I was able to create a convincing still splatter image which I also used.

Examples of some paint splatter stills:
       


Tuesday 14 February 2012

Canvas camera shots

I have finished modelling and texturing the easel. I put a couple of simple cameras in the scene and a couple of simple lights. The video will start with the easel and the camera moving in towards the canvas until the paint splatters on it.

Here I simply parented the camera to a curve:


Here is a simple animated camera: