Conclusion

This project has provided a lot of scope to learn new and build upon old subject areas. I have learnt a great deal about the rigging pipeline and have seen the practical situation in which it is faced and who I would be working with. I also was able to focus in on the technical nitty gritty that is fundamental in creating a usable rig.

After rigging came the special effects. I established a new method of creating realistic glass debris and simulated them with rigid body dynamics and fields.

Finally I increased my knowledge of particle attributes and developed interesting effects dependent on their life spans, influencing color, size and luminosity. I applied myself in all of the above tasks and managed to do them all to a decent level.

However, overall I would say that the most important lesson learnt from this project was the great team work that finished the project to the Original Deadline and have managed to do outstanding work together.

The Final Video...

Now with all the work animated, lit, rendered and composited, we have finally composited the final product of 10 weeks of project work.

Enjoy!!

 :-)

Canary Wharf Comet: Shatter Effect

After working with greg for the initial set up for the comet, we decided that we would be more efficient if he continued tweaking that effect whilst I moved on to working on the shatter effects of the building.

I decided to carry on experimenting with "shatter modeling" as I had previously did for the last shatters. By modeling and extracting parts of the building I managed to create a similar effect to the last shatter effects.

Here is the progression my Canary wharf shatter.






















This effect coupled with the work done by Greg could now be combined to show the final result in the final film.

Canary Wharf Comet: Particles

Now we have entered the last stage of the project. With the majority of the work done and now entering the final parts of rendering, the last major effect still remained although one of the first scenes to feature into the film. This shot comprises canary wharf being showered by meteors and eventually the tower being hit by a comet.

My and Greg teamed together to work on this scene.

Having done some research into mayas fluid examples, there turned out to be an import that could have been used as the final project. On discussing this with Greg, we eventually decided that it would be better for us to create our own custom made comet trail, but we still had a back up should that have failed.

We decided to begin working together on the comet trail. With much experimentation we managed to find and tweak the necessary attributes that made a smokey effect. We then needed to experiment with particle lifetime expressions.

We also began uncovering many attributes that are not readily available in the attribute editor. I made a set of experiments to find out how to manipulate certain attributes.

Here are the results of some of my experiments.

In the above examples I established that attributes such as "Life Colour". I managed to provide ideas on particle emmisions.

I also experimented with lifetime opacity and sphere size (for ember styled particles)

Atrium Entrance Shatter Effect Part 1

Finishing the last shot sucessfully gave me a certainty in my methodology. I was able to use identical technques that i had created and adopted from the previous shot to use it on the atrium smash shot.

Again I created the geometry by extruding a planar circle (originally a cylinder cap). I customized the shatter pattern using a similar method and continued on with the simulation by using rigid body dynamics with fields.

Here is the progression of the atrium scene.

Render Room Smash Effect Part 3

Now that i was pleased with the overall effect of the shattered glass, it was now an essential part of the pipeline to use the work that I had done and pass it on to the next person. By deleting all of the unnecessary objects in my scene, I was able to create a file that could concisely be imported into the the scene for someone else to work with it.

Here are a few playblasts of the shattering glass effects by themselves.








I also find that viewing this effect in the previous way is a good way to analyze the dynamic simulation. One is able to focus in on any anomalies, especially important when the effect appears to look strange.

Now the shot was ready to be lit, rendered and composited.

Render Room Smash Effect Part 2

The second half of the render room smash scene is that once the alien has knocked his head on the glass, he would eventually break through the wall.

As mentioned in the previous post I carried out a number of trials that led me on closer and closer to the desired effect.

Here are a sequence of videos that show the progression of my shatter tests.

Render Room Smash Effect Part 1

Now that the rig was working to a good standard and had been thoroughly tested and evaluated by the necessary departments, it was time for me to begin work on specific effects shots. The first one that I was asked to work on was the render room smash scene in which an alien bursts through a door shattering glass as it does.

Given the importance of the scene it was critical that I found the best way of creating this effect if this scene was to add to the final piece.

Having had some experience in the last project with shatter effects, I was confident that I would be able to approach this project in a similar way. I would go about making the geometry of a window pane, creating shatter effects inbuilt in to mayas functionality and then carry on using rigid body simulations and fields to create the broken glass effect.

However I soon ran in to problems creating the shatter effect. It seemed that the maya calculations were not capable of creating the detail of shatter that we needed. Although we could have continued down this route and eventually found a solution, I decided that it may be better to take a different approach that may save time and be less likely to crash maya.

My logic was as follows. Did a window pane geometry need to be considered a solid geometry with complex 3D shatter? My answer to this is no- it is not. a window pane is so thin that from the front, you would notice the shatter across the face of the geometry, where as from the side the shatter effect would be negligible.

Hence do we need 3D shatter? No.

instead I though of a sequence of things that, with modeling help from Greg and Ollie, I would be able to achieve a hand made shatter with relative ease. I decided that it may be easier to start off with a plane. that plane could be resized to fit the window pane. Now from here I could start splitting the geometry to create the shatter pattern. i would extract all the faces, extrude them to give depth and the window shatter would be done. This method has many advantagess over the maya shatter.

1. It is not intense on ones computer- less crashing
2. It would save time on processing data
3. A uniform shatter would not seem that it had been broken from a source- it s uniform and random
4. One can make custom shatter effects and have complete control on the visual effect.

From this, I could continue using fields and rigid body simulations to create the final effect.

The following demonstrates the glass cracking, i.e. no rigid body simulations of fields, we simply key frame visibility on two types of glass- one which is solid, and replace that with shattered version. The transition is so fast that one could not notice its replacement.

Rigging Part 7: Finalizing and Testing

Now that the rig had evolved to its final stages, it was time to test the rig. This also was a crucial part of the pipeline as it determines whether the rig has the full capabilities necessary to go on in the animation.

Mesh Deformations with the rig 

Transferring the painted weight information

Creating the Blendshapes and controls

New Mesh

Final Rig

Rig Test

Rigging Part 6: further progress and Development

Now having submitted my initial rig to the animators and to the director, its value was up for scrutiny. The first version was a start however it was clear that the rig had issues that needed to be resolved. The major ones involved amending the leg and feet controls for them to move in the appropriate way. There was also a request by the animators for certain neck and jaw controls.

Due to the level of these issues, it was better for me to start the rig controls from scratch. Fortunately, Due to my systematic versioning, I had the rig development over many stages. I was able to go back to the stage where I built the skeleton but not begun building the control handles. Since this was the stage that needed to be amended, I was able to restart from here with all the faults in mind.

Here are some screen shots to indicate the rig at a stage where I picked up and then restarted.

Joint Orientation Check

Binding the Mesh to the Rig

Extreme Poses, in particular, for the feet controls

Testing and painting weights with the old mesh

Introducing the new mesh

Transferring the painted weights information to the new mesh

Testing and checking poses

Conclusion:

From this period of the pipeline my work was validated by the animators and eventually the director. At this point I had to meet the requirements for the project to go ahead. With good intra-team communication I managed to make a rig that met the specifications in order to have a fully functioning creature in our short film!

Rigging Part 5: Adapting the Rig and Pipelining

By working in a dynamic group, we did our best to organize pipelining in such a way that all members of the group were working and developing at all given moments in time. For example, whist I was working on the Rig, the animators were attempting to get walk cycles with a standard quadruped.

In particular I was working in close collaboration with the modeling department. As I was building the rig, Ollie Kane was continuously amending the mesh. in order to overcome and avoid duplicating work- I had to learn methods of transferring the progress I made at each stage up until the point where I would receive the final version.

Here are some images that show the progress of my rigging at different stages

Beginning to consider footroll issues

Here is the version of my first completed rig. However, when I gave this on to the animators to test, it proved to be inadequate. In this way I had to work with the animators and Director constantly. In this way I could ascertain the limits of the rig. In my next postings, notice the removal of the head/neck control to show when I re-rigged the character from scratch. 

The problems with this rig included improper movements on the legs and neck at the cost of very detailed foot controls! This had to be addressed in the next draft.

Rigging Part 4: Implementation and Development

Now with a firmer idea of how to set up the rig, I felt prepared to begin with creating the rig.

Initially I knew that the most important part was to create the bones or joints for the mesh. Basing my rig from the ideas of the quadruped I began sketching out in orthographic views, the position of the bones. I also knew that it would be crucial to adjust the rotation pivots of each joint. 

I also had it in mind to create the requested footroll controls that the nico rig supposedly lacked.

Here are some sketches of my initial bone placements.

Mesh, no bones

Tracing out the Spine

...followed by the rest of the body

At this stage I am in a position to bind my rig and begin testing whether the deformations are true to the skeletal kinematics of a normal quadruped. I find that this is the best time to paint weights as one can control each joint individually and therefore affect its influences here.