Lighting Key Progress

• I'd like light coming from behind screen-right to avoid casting shadows across both of my characters.
• I increased the intensity and saturation of some of the colors and added shifted the hue from green to more yellow (I always think things are more green than they are). 
• The dog silhouette is getting lost a bit, but I think that's just my poor painting skills.
• More of the fence may need to be put into shadow.
• The sidewalk in front should probably be a lot brighter
• I'm not so sure that my current trees really match the reference trees I used when modeling them. I may need to go back and see how their leaves handle light

Current paintover progress for lighting key. 

Paintover layer with the basic 7-point lighting rig, flat shaders, and transparent sky for color blocking

Animation Reference

 

Eadweard Muybridge, Animal Locomotion Print no. 707, 1887

Eadweard Muybridge, Animal Locomotoion, Print no. 709, 1887. 

Muybridge Mutt on Flickr

 
Muybridge Locomotion, Dog Running, 1881

Shot Breakdown

 

Storyboard, for reference...

Shot 01: 

shot01.ma

Medium to close focal length, glancing downward

Dog enters screen right and runs around tree

Assets:

• Dog
• Dog's tree
• fence
• grass
• ground

Shot 02

shot02.ma
Close focal length
Dog's perspective of cat sitting perched on tree, low-angle

Assets

• Cat
• Cat's tree

Shot 03

shot03.ma
Wide shot, establishing

Assets

• Cat
• Dog
• Cat's tree
• Dog's tree
• ground
• fence
• sidewalk
• grass
• extended ground plane?
• street?
• matte painting backdrop

Shot 04

shot04.ma (set from shot01.ma)

Medium to close focal length, glancing downward 

Dog stares blankly, maybe looks back at audience and then back to cat, tail starts wagging, and exits screen left.

Assets

• Dog
• Dog's tree
• fence
• grass
• ground

Rigging Day with Krista Notes

Notes

Connection Types

Direct 

Indirect Connections

Direct (Node) Connections

Conditional Connections

Joint Orientation

You want joints to orient along the joint chain so that the axes all flow with the chain

Swineburne Rigging Videos

http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design/tutorials/P-maya/T-Maya-Rigging-Rigging-a-biped-character-for-animation/ID-125/

Form: Turntables Submission

Dog Model | Barking up the Wrong Tree from Justin Sheehy on Vimeo.


Cat Model | Barking up the Wrong Tree from Justin Sheehy on Vimeo.


Cat's Tree Model | Barking up the Wrong Tree from Justin Sheehy on Vimeo.


Dog's Tree Model | Barking up the Wrong Tree from Justin Sheehy on Vimeo.


frontYard.mov from Justin Sheehy on Vimeo.

Modeling Review Day: Notes

Tips

• Model characters in multiple poses instead of one with a rig
• Try not to optimize your model too much ahead of time, but do think about how it appears in your scenes as you go.
• When you use a mirror modifier, make two extra edge loops surrounding the center merge line; you'll have to do it later anyway, and it will clean up your topology considerably
• Maya has an extra tool for splitting faces via the hotbox (not the menus) that does not snap to edges at predetermined intervals
• Use V-Ramp materials on eyeballs to preview your character more accurately
• Model without Smooth Mesh on at least until you get a strong silhouette
• If your character doesn't move too much, model them in their static pose instead of trying to pose them into it later
• Use the Sculpt Geometry tool (like Blender's Sculp Mode) and the Relax tool to massage out kinks in meshes
• If a span curves in unexpectedly in Smooth Mesh Preview, check that the face is connected all the way around and does not have any dupli-verts.
• When you want to undo an extrude, make sure you undo both any movements and then the actual extrude command (look in the help bar for confirmation of the correct undo movement)
• Watch out for inner faces when box modeling in mirror mode. A good indication is when your mesh turns inward slightly along the merge line.
• Christine is AWESOME, especially at fast retopology

Lookup

• Does changing Maya's units change the way that cameras measure?
• Are there any side-effects to loading Student Version files in Maya?

Remember

Models are due on September 20th

Update from Model Review Day 2 | 09/18/2013:

TODO: Add notes from sketchbook

Modeling Progress

TODO: Get progress images from vitaly for upload