Iterative Review Page:
Individual Iterative Review #18 (4/14/2023)
With the final weeks coming up, Team Crab has been working diligently to get our animation work done. Using the new sheet team crab has animation ready for almost all major sequences except the whale sequence. We also have added in our physics systems for creating dust during the barrel drops and for our main drag net dust scene.
We have also worked to remove the main drag net itself from camera while still showing it's effects. By showing the fisherman dropping the drag net instead.
For the whale sequence itself, team crab has worked to divide up the animation workload for the sequence and should have all animation done by April 28th.
Individual Iterative Review #17 (3/31/2023)
Team Crab now has an updated animation and shot system, with our first and final sequence at a good place, team crab is turning its animation efforts towards completing sequences 2,3 and 4. These are the main Carville shots, the whale scene, and a transition from Carville to the whale set.
We have divided up the animation tasks in these scenes but have not had animation work begin on sequence 4, our whale set yet.
Our physics particles and dust systems should be ready for animation use once they're done baking to image planes and all of our rigs are currently functioning as intended.
However our animation tasks are continuing to list to one side. I have been working to bring in and attach as many animations and fx as ready to the sequencer. This will be enough to make the film read like a videogame cinematic come finish time but will not have the refinement team crab is working to have with our animation end game.
It should still be possible to have team crab animation done and ready for the film on time, however if significant progress is not made by April 18th it will become non linearly difficult to have animation polished and prepped on time.
Camera work has also been updated to help address the wide angle "iphone camera" syndrome we have been having with team crab. I have been working with Bryce to tighten up shots and improve our camera work.
Individual Iterative Review #16 (3/10/2023)
Team crab has continued to work diligently in order to meat animation deadlines, however unfortunately our animation pipeline has begun to run behind. We now have functional rigs of Crabby, the Turtle, the Whale and the Fisherman. We have begun animation and Bryce and I have found a way to successfully trasfer animations between maya and Unreal.
However, unfortunately our animation pipeline is approximately 3-6 working days behind. While coming into the production pass 2 this week I believe 2 things will show true. 1. Team crab has made significant progress, 2. there are 1-2 shots where animation will not be at the planned level.
Overall I do not believe this will effect the DAC production line, however team crab would ideally run 2 weeks ahead of the DAC final timeline in order to get touchup edits completed. Diligent steps will need to be taken by team Crab as well in order to make up this 3 day gap. Such actions will include ensuring each member of the team is aware of the animation tasks at hand for both themselves and the group. As well as working to produce a better shot system for easier animatic development after renders are made.
Personally, I will be working to ensure that frame ranges and other useful tools are available to animators while working to bring completed animations into engine as fast as possible. If we can hold or correct this 3 day gap, I am confident team crab will complete our film on time.
Individual Iterative Review #15 (2/24/2023)
Team crab continues to work on our animation production. With all of our scenes divided amongst our members, progress should be steady.
The process we are currently following is this;
First, finish camera blocking and export these cameras for use in Maya. We only need to clean up the blocking for our new ending scene.
Second, begin animation work in maya. This will be done by loading references of both the actors, and the exported unreal scenes for location placement. So long as the movements are in scale for the scene, any model size mismatch or scale issues, even in the animation can be fixed in unreal. The animated actors from each person can then get exported, allowing us to simply snap all of our collective animations into place in unreal.
Third, gain notes and refine animation. Once team members become comfortable with tossing files between maya and unreal, taking our animation from posing to blocking and secondary animation should be easy. Once the files are in they can simply re import with the new animation, and no more fixing in unreal is needed.
Personally, I will be working to export cameras and instruct people in transferring files between Unreal and Maya. This is because Bryce and I have already gotten the fisherman hopping between the two with relative ease.
Ultimately, we should have a blocked movie by the next production pass on March 17th, we're about 2 days behind as a team which shouldn't be too hard to catch.
Individual Iterative Review #14 (2/17/2023)
Team crab continues to take measured, confident, strides towards our completed short film. With our cameras set to be finished with blocking by Tuesday, and our models rigged by Monday, we should be able to have character blocking done by Friday.
As for our main goal, Team crab is planning on having our fully animated pass ready by the next production pass on March 17th.
Our current pass v0004, can be found [here]
and a drobox file where I will be uploading all of the animatic iterations can be found [here]
Personally I will be working to continue refinement with cameras and begin implementing environmental FX as part of our acting. I will also be overseeing the development on the drag net and it's implementation in the film. Hoping to have deployed solutions by next Friday.
Overall team crab has been working well to hold it's momentum, thanks to Paulina's organization and shot sheet we have
managed to keep a tight schedule and should be ready to begin making strides in our animation.
Individual Iterative Review #13 (2/3/2023)
Team crab is continuing to make progress on the short film. With the focus shifting from mainly material production to 3d animation and production flow we have begun preparing to shift people towards animation. As such team crab has completed an updated animatic and will have a fully 3d animatic by next week. Team crab has fully made our shot list, and has divided the animation work amongst ourselves as to reduce snags once modeling and texturing is sufficiently completed.
Personally I will be working on flowing new cameras in accordance to our new shot sheet and animatic. As well as working on set design for the environments we have. With the remaining trash getting completed I should be able to easily paint the remaining assets and color into our scenes.
Individual Iterative Review #12 (1/27/2023)
Entering into this new semester team crab has hit the ground running! The DAC server seems to be running happily again and we have begun to quickly bring in and finish up assets. Creating textures for the geometry we have, hopefully we’ll be fully colorized and running a full animation and rendering production come mid February.
Video scene renders (test footage)
Latest animatic
This film shows the progress we have made at team crab thus far. These videos were made right before break. This week, we have made some additional progress. Team crab has brought in geometry and has added textures to multiple object. We’re working to complete these by having people snag random objects weekly to texture.
More specifically, Paulina and I will be working on the render side. I am completely comfortable with importing, rendering and to an extent animating in unreal. While Paulina has been working on the technical shot side comparing scene layouts and studying camera language.
We’re hoping to have a full mock-up 3d film by the end of semester which will be crafted using drawn reference for definition. I believe this goal is achievable. Granted we work diligently and no catastrophes occur.
Individual Iterative Review #11 (12/9/2022)
Team crab has been able to recover all assets from the corrupted project. We have also been able to source geometry for the remaining scenes. Physics effects for the drag net have also been reworked. We have a dust cloud that should look fantastic in scene. Over break the new sets will be imported and cameras will be drafted for them.
Individual Iterative Review #10 (12/2/2022)
Team crab, having arrived to find the Unreal Project updated and having our project files corrupted by the update due to the DAC computers having outdated graphics cards, has spent time repairing and rolling back our project in order to have functional scenes. Multiple assets and items were lost but, our core sets appear to be mostly in tact. It will take a few days to repair the file structure and lost doodads unfortunately.
Prior to break, our foliage and brush testing has been conclusive, the tool is extremely useful for populating a scene. It allowed us to finish much of the blocking and some polishing of the team crab cola drop. We also now have cameras and blocking out for the above water scene at the beginning of the film.
That animatic can be viewed here
I also scanned in parts of an area where I bike that look good for under water sets. They are going to act as the sea cliff sets for saving the whale from a ghost net and meeting up with the large school of fish. These models were in scene but unfortunately got lost in the rollback. But you should see them in the next coming animatic on December 12th.
Both lidar-photogrammetry scans in the linked images were taken by me.
Learn more about another photo scan project I'm working on here!
Individual Iterative Review #9 (10/28/2022)
Team crab has been working on textures and assets, we have finished modeling multiple shell houses, as well as different hero and background fish characters. We are in full production swing and are currently on target for making good animation time. We also have rigs under production so that our characters are ready at around the same time our scenes are.
Here is an updated pass, around October 21st
^This video shows many assets that have been added and updated. I have been importing a lot of geometry from our old maya assets as well as newer geometry. I have been testing the foliage brush system, testing how well the painting works and spacing for objects and geometry. As well as seeing how specific items are removed and added in the foliage system.
Individual Iterative Review #8 (10/14/2022)
Team crab has successfully dropped it's first 3d scene for our animatic! We have made the can float scene occur where crabby first interacts with the human waste and passes through the gate into our story of trash and nets. The scene has been fully rendered in unreal as well as animated in unreal. Lighting and all visual effects are captured on a stock camera and filmed using the stock underwater film effect. We hope to be able to add more to the scene as well as additional scenes throughout the month. Focusing primarily on generating and finding assets for our scenes thanks to their reusable nature.
Here is the first full pass of our can falling scene
^This scene is attempting to mimic the camera movements from our 2d animatic. It incorporates both megascans and custom assets blocked in maya.
Here is the second full pass of our can falling scene
^This pass has updated lighting from Paulina as well as an in progress model that has been imported. Showing how quickly we can update scenes and geometry as we wish.
das.
Individual Iterative Review #7 (9/23/2022)
Team crab is fully up and running again, we have successfully moved our scene and render environment from using Maya's Arnold render engine to Epic Game's Unreal Engine. We have found many of the new features to be use full, particularly the capable water and Niagara physics system. Our team has also made good use of the multi user system and have found it to be an interesting tool. Thus far we have been able to successfully use to tool to allow Nhu to work on physics for a scene, while I do the lighting and assembly.
Thus far we have made the outside set for the boat, relying on a fun and dead simple water effect plugin Nhu found. Even if the physics won't work this water effect with the ripple effect he's been working on should be able to be animated. And we should be able to update the model reference without re writing the physics which is nice.
We have also been working on making refinements to our story, while the animatic and our story flow is solid, certain scenes like the octopus one are getting reduced. Instead of multiple octopi, team crab will be moving ahead with just one.
However, we have encountered a bug with the multi user system. If a user forgets to delete the online session they have created. Not only will it launch whenever the server is started, but the orphan session is impossible to delete by anyone other than the original creator in the GUI. However, it is possible to clear out all of these orphaned servers using command line.
I was able to turn this command into a button, which has been used to remedy computers with this issue.
Team Crab should be fully able to run our rendering and fx in Unreal. I have now finished a full production output run on the engine for another project, you can see the most up to date version here.
Individual Iterative Review #6 (9/9/2022)
Welcome Back! Team crab, coming back from summer break is up and ready to go again. We hit the ground running this semester fully aware of what we need to do and how efficiently we'd have to work to get it done. As before were running a 3d and 2d production in parallel in order to fully complete a 2d animatic with full camera beats and pacing. This provides us with the advantage of being able to flush out camera positions and timing at a much quicker rate. As well as giving more modeling and 3d driven members of the team sufficient time to flush out our environments.
Personally, I have been working to aid the 3d team and researched how to import models from Maya into Unreal as well as simple camerawork and animation. So far Unreal has proven to be a fantastic tool that is incredibly robust. During testing Unreal was able to successfully import a file over 3gb in size filled with polygon chaos without crashing. (Although it did take 3 hours) As such I feel this proves it's ability to handle anything team crab can throw at it.
With basic blocking for our intro town brought in from Maya I found it was incredibly simple to create basic reference footage and the Quixel bridge plugin has been incredibly useful in filling our scenes with rocks, and foliage.
Thus far our production appears to be running on time to be done by mid to late November. With the passing of this iterative review our teams art production will be shifting focus from producing a 2d animatic to creating textures and sets for our characters. As such some members from the team including myself will be learning how to use substance designer. The goal is going to be establishing color schemes in our character sheets in order to design a small range of modifiable high quality smart materials. The goal is to have as little reliance on UV tiles as possible so that we can make large or small changes to characters and other 3d objects without having to do a full re texture workflow.
By the next iterative review it should be fully possible to have a 3d animatic with simple/mid detail 3d characters and textures.
Individual Iterative Review #5 (4/3/2022)
This week team crab had it's first major story shift. With the decision to 86 the mermaid aspect of the story, members of team crab are both happy about the simplified story aspect and saddened that some of the fun of designing mermaids along with their aesthetic are gone. Luckily, since most item's have been block in people haven't lost a lot of work.
I am proud of our groups ability to take these story changes in stride thus far and our groups eagerness to peruse new ideas and tackle the challenges associated with story changes. As such asset production and concept art is changing gears to produce basic animatic objects for a more natural ocean and sea life. Our current balance between story and production seems to be fair thus far. Where while some members are dedicated to story large changes must be assessed by the larger group.
Individual Iterative Review #4 (3/13/2022)
After completing Animatic Pass review #2 team crab has been looking into the notes given.
We were also quite interested in the new tool introduced on Friday. The ability to have motion capture at this level could be huge for blocking in the 3d animatic.
Individual Iterative Review #3 (2/27/2022)
Team crab, having taken ideas and notes from our last instructor feedback. Has decided to pump the breaks a little and do a comb over of our story and create a good lens to focus our production energy through. As such we are going to be holding two meetings before our next class time in order to ensure that we have a properly robust framework. As well as re defining our steps of being done, in order to bring items to a 30, 50, 70 percent standard. To ensure that our team does not have uneven production.
Overall moral has still managed to be nice and high although the more reserved nature of our team should be noted. While classes are busy, finding the time to do fun activities together would be greatly beneficial to all parts of production. However, this can wait until warmer weather.
Other notes include working to reduce bus factors over the course of the next meetings. While our more specialized members of the team have been fantastic, introducing more general knowledge to our total team would be fantastic for later on production. And prevent any bus vacuums if key members are unable to make it to class.
Individual Iterative Review #2 (2/18/2022)
Team crab is moving at a good pace thus far, having done well with our first animatic review, team crabs main focus is continuing to produce low detail assets in order to create an entirely 3d animatic. Thus the plan until march 4th is to continue to produce basic environments, characters, and objects while a smaller team of group members takes these assets into the 3d environments required for an animatic.
This way the slight tweaks that have been incorporated into our story can be used without bogging down our main pipeline
Individual Iterative Review #1 (1/29/2022)
Having completed all of the leadership courses assigned so far in Online workshops one and two, I feel that I am more then well prepared to contribute meaningfully to my team. Jeremy is aware that Team Crab has had due diligence over break and as such has begun putting together a shot/asset list and calendar. This combined with our beginning meeting planning I believe will give us a very good foundation to build on during our groups forming process and help keep our storming to safe levels whenever a disagreement happens.
The plan for the next two weeks is to nail down an art style and general design scheme while reviewing our animatic and making revisions. After/While cleaning up the tail end of our team guidebook