Shots of Jungle Environments

Second Jungle Environment Camera Test Shot
(35mm Widescreen, Focal Length - 28)

Jungle First Shot (Maya Default Render):
Jenny's textures starting to be added, the ground texture will be UVed and painted by myself.

Entire Jungle Set at present
(Wireframe Screen Shot)

Camera Test Shot
(35mm Widescreen, Focal Length - 35)

Camera Test Shot
(35mm Widescreen, Focal Length - 35)

A Week of Modelling!

Wel its been a productive week on the project, still recovering alittle from the dissi but now feelin better about the film project! I started by consulting the blockout Jungle scenes i modelled last term, reviewed the story with rob and i decided to build the first and second jungle shots from scratch to best fit the new story, as well as add some spontanoeus creativity.

This week i started with the first jungle shot where our main character will be waking up. Due to time constraints i didnt produce any pre-production designs and so i built the set by visualising it in my head. It took a long time to produce but is now looking really nice, jenny did a great job with modelling the trees and plants ready for me to produce layout designs and construct the set. She UVed the plants and trees and also kindly re-UVed some of the trees i re-modelled to suite the scene better. In my view the jungle still looks very much like a forest, i am planning to personally model a few extra plants and vines to give the envirnoment added character and believibility. Apart from the extra modelling needed, the environment is ready for texturing and animation. I also started to experiment with different camera angles motion paths. The camera used was a standard 35mm, but changed the focal length from 35 to 28. It seemed to capture wider areas of the set, this should add to the density and scale of the jungle.

Above, the first jungle shot nearly complete, the canopy will be alphed to hide the top areas of the trees, this might be a camera set up that could be intergrated into filming.

Dissertation Handed In!

Finally the dissertation was handed in! In the end i lost 4 whole weeks from the film project, which is not good, but my dissertation really didnt start off all that well, i actually had to re-start it half way through the term! not nice! in the end i couldnt think about the project untill it was finally handed in, i did however deligate some work to giles (rigging work), jenny (modelling/texturing) and dan (animation tests and modelling).

So this week... Monday - rob and myself decided to get up to speed with the schedule, we felt quite behind so needed to work out how much time was left and how much there is to do! The film is all re-scheduled and all team members now know what work they have to complete in the next couple of weeks.

THE STORY...

I was viewing the animatic alot and going over the story and i really wasnt happy with the flow and some of the main scenes in the film, to me it needs alot of work if it is to become as successful as we all hope, parts didn't need to be shown, the turtle didn't add to the story in any way, the scenes were way to choppy and overall it didnt make sense to the people who were watching it. So after alot of discussion between rob and i, as well as many comments made from people who had viewed the animatic, we decided that the story wasn't working. This week we will be working on the blockout and narrative, all the shots will be finalised, scenes and flow finalised and modelling to commence as soon as possible! We've already worked on the story partly, through breaks in our dissertation and discussions with tutors.

The camera work is to be largely based on the Indiana Jones Films by Steven Speilburg, similar cinematography and lighting is to be used also. I want the film to look and feel like a Hollywood film for cinema, therefore research is needed on different camera types and rendering techniques.

The group has been scheduled the work below for this week:

Jono (Director) - Story and camera work, finalise blockout and colour palette/texture techniques.

Rob (Producer) - Story and camera work, finalise blockout and colour palette/texture techniques.

Jenny (3D Artist) - Continue to UV Map and Texture Paint the jungle vegetation.

Giles (Technician/3D Artist) - Rig and weight snake character.

Dan (Lead Animator) - Animation.

Ben (Concept/3D Artist) - Modelling clutter for lounge, researching Visual Effects for film.

Up to date! The Finished Character Model!

From the 17th January onwards, i worked on the explorer character further, changing the areas stated in the previous posts. After having a week break from the film project to work solidly on my dissertation i found that there was alot to change and that the character body didnt look believable enough, i added the small satchel and machette knife to his right and left sides, as well as made the gloves look alot nicer! The head for the both characters was initially modelled by myself and rob, after a days work on both we decided that the best option was to work on one, and we chose his. Rob continued to model the head with discussion and direction from me, the head needed to look consistant for both character models. The head was then passed onto me where i re-modelled parts of the hair and the bandana, as well as model more hair detail. The mouth sack was modelled separatly by rob and was attached to my characters head by myself.

I then followed on to attach the head to the body of the explorer. This created a large problem! The scalf was to large and high, you could only see half of the head! i sorted this by reducing the scarlf size and depth... but something didnt feel right about the finished result. I decided to remove the scarlf completely and re-model the jacket to include a collar and t-shirt. As well as re-model the sleeves, front and back parts of the jacket so that it didnt look so molded to the character and incorporated definition.

Final Model Explorer Front 3/4 Shot
(Maya Default Lighting)

Final Model Explorer Back 3/4 Shot
(Maya Default Lighting)

17th January Work Continued:

The main modelling work undertaken by myself at this point, was the modelling of the explorer character. The idea was to model the characters in low poly and pass them onto the rigger, the high poly meshes will be wrap deformed so that the detailed and smooth character will be seen in the final render, the animator will animate the low poly models and the actions will effect their high poly mesh.

The low poly model without head, added belt and scarlf detail.

High Poly Smoothed Mesh - The gloves didnt come out aswel as i had hoped, need to change the style, jacket came out very well, really pleased with the progress so far!

Rendered Shot (Maya Default Lighting) Smoothed Explorer Front
Changes needed: Belt buckel detail, jacket looks too molded to body, ankle detail needs to be reduced, definatly change gloves!

Rendered Shot (Maya Default Lighting) Smoothed Explorer Side
Changes needed: Sort out curve of back, reduce scarlf bulkiness, add satchel and knife details, work on area where trousers and boots meet, more ruffeled!

17th January Work Continued:

This past term has been the toughest of the BA year, and its all down to the dissertation and it didnt go as smoothly as i hoped it would! The following work was produced by the 17/01/2008 but i have'nt had the chance to update my blog until now. By this date i had been working on the blockout with rob and modelling the explorer character.

Blockout Temple Enterance

Camera Angle Tests - Inside of the first corridoor, modelled by myself. Key to the success of this film will be to make tthe action and general look dynamic and intense, rob and i have been discussing and testing camera work to emphasise the action and danger in the script. (See above).

Blockout - Second Scene
(Character will run down this jungle path towards the camera, jump over the log and stop to see the temple in the distance).

Updated: 17th January 2008

Hey! well its been ages since i last updated my blog, which really isnt a good thing, but i have been doing lots of work and scheduling! Christmas went very quickly and i was ill for most of it, how fun, but a week before we came back i started to do some planning.... A NEW SCHEDULE! last term was really tiring and the schedule kinda got lost in the madness, but all the work i had planned for the group was completed and the pitch that i spoke about before went great. Due to being Director and Producer i found that i had hardly any time to think about my own work, so i decided to throw out the old and rather vague schedule and produce a new and incredibly detailed one, so that the team know their designated tasks and their relavent deadlines, as well as review dates along the way. I had a chat to rob and decided to make him Producer, this should hopefully make this term alittle easier to handle.

Also got a grade for my personal contributions to the film and got an -A. Really pleased with the grade and want to keep up and push the quality this term.

So the work ive been doing includes the blockout of the film in maya with rob, team meetings, the new schedule that rob and i completed and modelling the main explorer character. The modelling took a few days longer as the model sheets were'nt entirely accurate.

Some of the modelling work that i completed:

Blockout Work - First Jungle Shot
(Possibly following a snake weave through the dense undergrowth)

Blockout Work - Second Jungle Shot
(Slow camera track into jungle vegetation)

Blockout Work - Third Jungle Shot
(Camera stops as the main explorer character
moves between the shadows of the trees and bushes)