Originally rigged in 2 hours, yesterday I decided to try it again and screencast it for you all.
2nd time about 45mins (-time for script UI and boneshapes)!
I suppose it doesn’t hurt to know what you’re doing the 2nd time round :P
Model: Kjartan Tysdal
Rig: Jeremy Davidson
Animation is starting to slow down a little for me in the last days (if animation is cranked this close to the end then you’ve got problems).
So other than a tweak or two here and there, there isn’t much for an animator to do. So yesterday Kjartan made me this little guy.
With a quick rig and flap cycle, I’m spending the last hours pigeon’ing any scene I can. Sticking him perched in a tower somewhere in the background, or flying past in the distance just to add a little touch of movement and, eh-hem… life.
Last week Thomas Dinges of blender-podcast.org, came to visit and interview the team.
Along with our own Campbell, they asked us about our thoughts on the project and how we feel about it with only a few weeks to go.
Because this is a vfx film, the animation workload is a little less stressful than it would be if everything was animated. Which lets me get in with a fine tooth comb and really polish the c**p outa these shots.
Other things it lets me do it to add in little bits that’d make it look a lot more awesome (because we love that word here at Mango!)
So here’s a very brief tutorial on how to break things.
Yesterday I spent the afternoon seeing if i could get some facegrabbing done (as seen in the screengrab from yesterday).
It involved my first try at tracking for the hand which gave me a placement for the robohand and my first try at masking with parenting mask point to tracking markers (very useful for when he talks). Then with a nice backplate and alot of scrubbing, i hand animated the hand and fingers to match the hand and fingers of our lovely actress.
I let it render overnight but it didnt bring the background with it, so i set it to go locally this morning (with v.low samples so it would be quick) to get something to show.
Looking like i’ll need to animate the back finger, but overall its looking promising**!
**I did nothing for lights and comp work (save layering), its all about the movement!
At some point we’re going to be switching between the live footage and some holographic representations of the scene.
So nice and quickly, using the footage as a background, I animated our old holo blockheads to match the acting as well as needed. As the actors didn’t really move from the spot and and the camera was (mostly) static, it was nice and easy, and I didn’t need any help from the tracking software.
(this isn’t the camera angle we will be using, this was just to get the acting matched up)
And again without the backplate
A little later Andy will work his magic and make the characters look awesome and holographicy.
Who needs mo-cap :)
Been a while since I’ve posted stuff for you all. So here’s the robot arm as it is at the moment. Made a few changes since last time, notably the arm attachment and the new chain saw. Also filled in a few gaps where there was empty space. There’s even the first bit of weight painting I’ve done on this project :P
Last day of filming. On location at the bridge, moved a couple of times from inside cars to under tarp shade thingys. Playing back at 3fps this time to show it off a little more (plus we were sillier with it because it was in our faces!)
Last one with the green. I’ll try and work something out for shooting a time lapse tomorrow at the bridge, but I need to plug into power to go for longer than 2-3 hours so it may not happen :(
Day two!!!!
