Final Major Project 13-06-12

This is only going to be a short post because I did not do much in the way of work. However I did realise that when I played my project video file on the Macs at college it was very dark. This is not a problem for the animated text parts but for the Maya scene it made it hard to see what was going on. So when I got home I opened the After Effects file and simply made the video brighter where it needed to be, then rendered the altered version. So tomorrow I can open the new version and see if it helps. I also found today that the high quality PNG renders work smoothly on the Macs which is good news because it means I can submit the high quality render instead of the low quality one.

Final Major Project 11-06-12

Today I managed to finish my project. I put a few finishing touches in After Effects. This included adding a clock to the HUD and creating the end title page. Which contains the movie title and copyright information etc. I also added some more sounds to go with the animating text. Overall I am pleased with how the project has gone. If it was a perfect world I would of had a better PC so that I could of rendered the Maya work in full high definition. This would of included bump maps and higher quality textures which would of made the scene look a lot better. 

It took me a couple tries to find a good render setting. In the end I had to look it up online and settled on rendering as a Quicktime Movie with PNG encoding. It kept the image quality and kept the file size low. Unfortunately the first render has a couple areas where the video freezes for a couple seconds but the sound continues, then the video catches up. So this ends up skipping bits of the video. Now I need to redo the render to hopefully get a clean play through. 

Final Major Project 08-06-12

Today was very productive without anything going wrong, which makes up for the previous disappointments. I focused on two different areas of After Effects work today. The first can be seen above. I used a tutorial found at www.videocopilot.net for a text effect. When I saw the one above I thought it fit well with theme of the trailer. It was slightly complex but the tutorial showed the steps clearly so I was able to make it without any trouble. What happens in this particular effect is the smoke seen on the right hand side of the above picture, goes across the screen, revealing the text as it moves.  

When I was happy with the text effect and after applying it to the composition I moved on to the HUD. The second image shows the progress I have made so far. It is not yet 100% complete, there are still some details missing, such as a clock. But overall I am happy with how it looks so far. There is a lot of movement on the HUD to help bring it to life. The target in the center rotates, the map/radar on the bottom right moves in correspondence with the footage and text types on in the status report box on the bottom left. I went with the green look because I think it gives it a militaristic feel, which fits with the story of the movie that this trailer is for.

Final Major Project 07-06-12

Today I got the sound finished and added to the video playblast. I found and edited sounds for footsteps, heavy breathing, a man screaming and a bottle rolling on a hard surface. Overall I am pretty happy with the sound. The footsteps and breathing don't completely match, but for this project I think they will do just fine. I didn't want to spend too much time on the sound because I really need to get started on the HUD.

I have a couple of tutorials to help me create the HUD and I have created one before, so it shouldn't take me more than a few hours spread over a couple of days. Depending on how smooth it goes and how complex I want the HUD to be.

Final Major Project 06-06-12

As I forgot to post something on my blog yesterday I will be doing two today. But to avoid too much confusion I have dated the title of this blog with yesterdays date.

There was a lot of ups and downs yesterday. I came across a major problem with my project and that is the resources I have available (PC's and Macs) are not powerful enough to handle my Maya project file in high quality. So I had a lot of trial and error yesterday trying to get a decent looking playblast that I could use, as rendering was completely out of the question. But it turned out that I couldn't even get a high quality playblast. I first tried on the Macs at college, however the textures and various things in the scene kept breaking. So I eventually gave up and went home to try on my home computer. There I ran into different issues. First of all, the computer was running incredibly slow, due to the high demand of the project file. Second was the playblasts themselves. For some unknown reason, when I playblasted in the .avi format, the playblasts came out black and white and the camera angle was broken. I think, after a bit of online research, that this is due to the encoding. So I decided to switch from playblasting in a video format, to playblasting JPEGs instead. This worked better in terms of they came out in colour and the camera was correctly positioned. I then put all the images into Windows Movie Maker, to convert them into a video file which I could then open in After Effects. I originally tried opening the JPEGs in After Effects, which worked but the images were loaded in the wrong order and it would of been a lot more work to reorganise them as oppose to putting them in Movie Maker.

So on the plus side, I now have a working video that I can hand in and put some After Effects work on. But on the down side, it's low quality and looks no where near as good as it should.

Final Major Project 04-06-12

Today I added bump maps to the brick textures on all of the buildings, the path and the road. It helps the bring some realism into the scene. The downside is that my computer could not handle the extra data. So this means I am going to have to go into college on Wednesday to see if the Macs there can cope. If they can't then I will have a serious problem, which will involve me either not finishing the project or have to finish it in low quality, which is something I really do not want to do.

If everything goes to plan on Wednesday, I will finish the 3D work, import everything into one scene, create and animate the camera and then playblast the entire scene in high quality. That would mean that all that's left to do is the After Effects work. Adding the HUD and the text and generally making the video look like a trailer.

Final Major Project 01-06-12

Today I finished off the last building for the scene. I added and textured the glass for the windows and doors. I also added some details to help make it look a bit more believable. These included things like blinds for the windows and a sign for the reception.