So today is the day, and we are finished, cutting it very close to the line but I am finished.

Here’s the render of the second piece going into my video, I said I was going to upload it yesterday but I lost track of time.

Unfortunately I encountered a few more problems with this one. When I was creating the models I had an idea of what I wanted them to do and how I wanted them to move, and with both I couldn’t get them exactly as planned. This showed a lot more with the second model though because the black circle and side piece are supposed to spin vertically while at the same time the sensor is supposed to spin horizontally, however when I tried to do this in Blender it didn’t happen at all. They are both locked to a Z axis, and I couldn’t match them up well enough to stick next to each other and both spin, so they just kept flying around losing connection. I tried to make it look the best I could, but one problem was that when creating the models before I started animating them, I hadn’t got the pieces directly centered, so they were rotating off the edge of grey base.

For the first model too I just moved the object a lot and the camera followed from the same position, but when moving this object it would obscure so I ended moving the camera. I laid out a path:

It’s safe to say I prefer moving the object. I still haven’t managed to get to grips with the keyframes in Blender yet, and I couldn’t even find them for the camera at one point because it was tracking the object and didn’t realise it hadn’t generated any. Camera’s are for when I have a bit more time I think.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Welcome to the Grand Finale!

Here’s the link to the finished video for BoxPlotter:

Overall I’m satisfied with the end piece. Something I really like is the 3D model of the hard drive piece, and how it’s animated, right up until the point where there’s a small jump (00:28) you would think if they’re in the same position with the same settings you would get the same view,  two cameras on exactly the same axis, at exactly the same focal length.  It worked in Blender during playback, it didn’t work during the render. Not happy. The rest of things are just little annoyances that I didn’t notice or couldn’t go back and fix because it was too late. At 00:54 the sensor model touches another piece of itself while spinning, I should’ve caught this early, not 3/4 of the way through editing in After Effects. It would’ve been a simple job of dropping the base a bit more on the Z axis while it’s spinning and the moving it back up to rejoin in the same place. Annoying. At 1:04 the mouse disappears. I didn’t realise this until I put it on YouTube, and didn’t have enough time to re-upload it. I hate time, more so just my time management. However I don’t know why this happened because I just copied the two layers of the mouse and the full stop and dragged them further down the timeline, same positions same playback length. Weird.

Apart from that I think it’s ok. The background is very plain, it’s meant to be like that, but had I known the products weren’t going to stick out that well unless they got all up in your face, I would’ve tried purple mountains with the white snow caps, blue skies, bottom front layer of trees etc like in cartoons. Finally there’s the audio. It would have been better if I had planned the script more to get it more inline with what was going on within the video, instead of just vaguely in line, and the music I think fits well, I got really lucky with the music, I started off looking for cool snowy style music what they use on promo edits, but they’re too quick for the pace of the video, so I just searched for product advertisement on YouTube and the first one fitted really well, and the creator mentions in the description use it anyway you like, royalty free. Jackpot. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqLsTR1SOkI)

It’s been great, until next semester, au revior!

It’s been 10 days since the last post, 6 of those days were spent completing a radio hand in. And if we’re being honest technically i’d count it as 9 days since last post as I haven’t been to sleep yet; but when you’re having some trouble rendering switching camera’s and spinning things sacrifices have to be made. It’s fair to say learning a new piece of software and then creating and animating two 3D models was ambitious, but do-able. I’ve just finished animating my first one:

I know it doesn’t look like much but this is the .avi file of the first, finished, matte textured object. The animation is 1801 frames and made my mac hot enough to fry an egg on when I rendered it. However I am happy to say this probably the thing i’m most proud of since coming to university. Learning a new piece of software and being able to use it competently, after spending about 2 days every week for the last 3 weeks practicing and creating my final pieces, I don’t think is too bad. Here’s a link to just the animation on YouTube as well:

Ok so there’s two things that seriously kill me about this final render. I spent about an hour trying to match up and getting two camera’s to move in sync, spawning and finishing at the same location, and in the Blender playback they were perfect, however now I have just rendered it and one is a little further forward than the other, so it jumps and I think is very noticeable, however I don’t know how to fix this because both outlines of the camera’s are directly on top of each other. The second is the close up of the buttons and lights. When moving towards the right side you can tell the camera is on a tiny slant. I’ve messed about with the rotations and scale and positioning so much today that I can’t do it without changing/moving lots of other things, but right now i’m too far into the piece with keyframes etc, but after close inspection I think it’s down to having a wonky line when I did my path, I really would love to spend more time on these issues to get the render perfect, but I really need to start my second animation.

I also wanted both the product animations to be 40 seconds, and i’ve animated them at 60 fps, so 40 seconds is 2400 frames, but I ran out of way to interestingly manipulate a rectangle, as there’s nothing to show on the back, so I have left it at 30 seconds, (1800 frames) and will be aiming for the same time with the camera animation. This will bring my video to 1 minute, and then with the introduction and outro hopefully all together it should finish at around 1 minute 20 or 1 minute 30, which I was the target I said I wanted to hit when writing my R&D PDF.

Oh and on Monday during the workshop I found the easiest way to light my object was create 4 lamps above and 4 lamps below the surface layer, in the same spots, and animate the animation in the center of them. This might not work for future projects but for this it seems to have done the trick. More later on today when I finish my next render.

Yesterday I arrived back from snowboarding (it was amazing) so today i’m back at the work load. One the problems I was facing just before leaving was texturing my product. As it is a concept for a product that is yet to be developed, I didn’t intend on using any metallics etc, just matte colours to show it is a 3D rendered piece. Earlier today I asked Jon how to texture it, and it turns out I don’t need to texture it, just use the material option which is already applied to each shape and change the colour. I have now done this for both models:

For the camera model, I also needed to smooth the edges of the sphere to represent what the final product would look like. After looking on forums it turns out you can’t adjust the amount of segments and rings once you click to place the object, the only way to get around it is to add a Subdivision Surface Modifier. This multiplies the amount of faces on the object to create smooth edges, however it didn’t work at first due to using a Boolean Modifier to create the original cut out within the sphere, it was giving a really jagged edge which I wasn’t happy with. Jon tried few things to try and sort it out, however in the end it was just easier to duplicate the red sphere (in order to keep the center of the object the same as the outer camera) and scale it up to the correct size. Now I could use the Sub-surface mod to smooth the edges as it wasn’t missing any of the originals, Jon then said about rotating the sphere 90 degrees along the Y axis, so the center point wouldn’t be on the top, then group selecting faces (using C)  and extruding inwards, re-revealing the laser pointer. Problem Solved.

(P.S. No I can’t get the images to be the same size even though they are in the preview and yes it is killing me inside.)

Blogs, were also not written in a day, but better late than never right?

When writing the blog we got told to work on it little and often, which seems like good advice, and how any normal person would go about it. However when it comes to work (or logging what work you’ve done) unfortunately i’m the type of person that prefers to spend 7 hours in one day on something, as opposed to 1 hour on 7 different days, which means as this is the first post it’s going to be a long one.

Week 1:

This week we were introduced to the task, and it’s very full on, by week 3 we need to have a complete idea to fill out a project proposal, for what we want to do for our finished project due in week 13. To summarise the brief the way i’ve been explaining it to my friends was ‘make a thing to solve a thing’. This can be seen as a good and a bad brief, the creative minds are going to have a field day, and the less creative may seem to struggle. I soon found out I was the latter. We were told to make a Behance and Pintrest account to look for ideas, then create an account on Padlet to mind map what we come up with. I briefly skimmed over Pinterest when I first heard about it a while back, and decided I didn’t like it, it feels just like tumblr except I can see more posts at once, and using their 5 interests system to get me started (Animation, Pokemon, Snowboarding, Special Effects, Visual Effects) I didn’t really see a lot of useful things, so it wasn’t something I visited often throughout the project. I went back to look at my R&D presentation from last semester, but after researching further into my ideas, a lot of them have been further refined and I don’t really see myself being able to write a 24 page PDF on them coming up in week 8.

Week 2:

I’d started to come up blank with strong enough ideas for this project, things I had written down on my padlet had mostly been done or was just something I personally faced as a problem like bad posture or keeping track of money. I remembered once seeing a GIF on imgur of a skier jumping off a kicker and doing a double barrel roll (http://imgur.com/gallery/wN4QUMf) however the footage was stabilised, and I thought this make for great viewing pleasure. I watch a good amount of ski and snowboard videos, and often a lot of them are filmed on Go Pro’s or other action camera’s, so when they go into mid air and do a backflip or trick of that nature, it can be difficult to follow what they are doing and where the take off is in comparison to the landing and distance travelled etc, and it’s often shaky due to high speeds. This is where my original idea came in of an action camera attachment, containing a gyroscope, to get that better shot. Proposal Time.

Week 3 & 4:

These were two very short weeks. I went to hospital because I was really ill, and then had to go home, so I didn’t get to attend either of these sessions, but I did email Jon my proposal so I could get some feedback and start my research into the product.

Week 5:

Pre-emptively towards the end of week 4 I started doing a lot of reading into gyroscopes, the size, weight, how they work and how they’ve gone from being fairly big things to being in our smart phones. And then there it was, possibly one of the most heartbreaking things you could see after you’re just starting to recover and getting ready to catch up on work, the SteadyRide motorcycle Go Pro mount. Looking into it further I found out the SteadyRide had been cancelled and transformed into a new and improved version, the Wenpod X1. This was still designed originally for motorcyclists to eliminate the sway as they lean to turn around corners, meaning it contains 50% of a gyroscope, which is 50% of my idea. Back to the drawing board and back to uni. This week I told Jon in the session about it and how I needed to come up with a new idea quick, and he said I needed to get a new proposal form drawn up asap along with it. I really didn’t know what to do, I still liked the idea of using snow sports in my product, and then my friend Dan turned around and asked if i’d ever heard of LiDar. LiDar (short for light detection and ranging) is a 3D laser mapping system used for large area analysis and surveillance. I started to think of a way I could use it within a product and thought about making the most of the mountain, if you don’t know where you’re going you won’t have the best time and could come into danger, and it could also show areas at risk of avalanche etc. The strength and storage capabilities of the laser determine the size and weight. To create something strong enough to scan the entire mountain I would need a high strength laser, normally used within an airborne vehicle or mounted to a ground vehicle. They are also normally plugged into a power source on the vehicle and don’t run on batteries, which is something I would need. To make this adaptable to what I would like to create, I began looking at theoretical laws that I had vaguely heard of before. Moore’s Law was the first one I looked at, as it was the only one I remembered, and continued to look at others from there. Moore’s Law used to state that every two years technology would decrease in size by 50%, however in the early 2000’s this theory became untrue, so it was changed to the number of transistors fitted on a circuit, doubling every 2 years. I’ve asked Jon in the session if this is ok for my project, and he has said yes so within the next few days, certainly by next week I will have my proposal finished and research started.

Week 6:

This week I had sent my project proposal to Jon and got it approved, saying how I was going to apply the appropriate technological theories to create the product, as it’s hypothetical tech, he said it was good, but to look at more research materials for the theories. I continued with my research into LiDar, and I can say it’s a world to get lost in. You can get so many types of laser, in different sizes, with different equipment inside to make it airborne or ground based. I know what I want my product to look like and how I want it to function, so I can start storyboarding my video, and then focus more on the research, and start to look at the backdrop for it which I am going to create, using a technique we were shown in the week 4 lecture called Silhouetting or something along those lines. I have also downloaded Blender, and began watching some videos on learning the basics

Week 7:

This week I have started my PDF, I have written up the first few pages and added my project proposal into it, and decided on the research I will be putting into it. I have the 2D design of my models but I haven’t had enough practice with Blender to create the 3D versions. And finally I have made one background, to see how it contrasts, however I’m going have to do a lot more next week as it’s the deadline for the PDF.

Week 8:

This week everyone, myself included has just been completing the PDF. In the library the night before the deadline I walked across the first floor and saw 9 people I knew from the module. For the Planning stage of the PDF I didn’t struggle for length, and Audience went ok, however Budget I felt went horribly. Due to the current difference in prize and size and not really discovering a correlation between the two, I didn’t know how to create an estimation for the price of the product, so I just did one for how much it should cost for the labour and tools. Development went just as average. Apart from creating the product and how I got there, I couldn’t think of what to do, so I just laid out what is left to do for the project, and create the video, a little like a kickstarter before it goes into production.

Week 9 & 10:

For the last two weeks I’ve been practicing Blender, I’ve watched a lot of YouTube videos, I’ve created one of my models (the storage part) and will be doing the other one next week and texturing it.

Week11:

Gone home for Easter, made my second model, with a few minor adjustments to improve it. I’ve really been struggling to texture the models because for some reason I don’t know, it won’t work. I’ve watched the tutorials on The Curios Engine, and think there might be some setting I need to discover, but I think I may just have to ask Jon when we get back to uni in the last week.

Week 12:

I’m in France this week, i’m taking my laptop but the amount of work I do will vary on the weather. In the last week I only have 3 things left to do: Create the final background, texture the two models, make the video. Wishing myself luck.

This is annoying. I just wrote this full post and it didn’t save. Commence extremely fast rage typing.

For the first task we had to create some 3D text to put on a box and add a shadow to give it depth. As we were using 3D tracking as opposed to 2D like last week, we could use a different feature called Track Camera, which finds all your tracking points in the shot for you. We then selected all the points we wanted to use by clicking and drawing around them to create an area shape, right clicked to set ground plane and origin, then selected add text and camera. This gives you a text box to work with along 3 axis, x,y and z. Z is the new one that we don’t normally have, giving us the power to make the object have depth. We adjust the text to desired position, and then right clicked again to add shadow catcher and light. There were a a fair amount of adjustments to this as it needed repositioning, the drop off needed adjusting to match the rest of the shadows from the original footage, and the position of the artificial light needed moving so it matched the direction of all the other lights in the room. We also did a very swift magazine cover replacement, (to which I used an encyclopaedia) which was added by creating solid in the shape of tracking markers on the magazine, and combined with JPEG by holding alt and dragging the two together on the timeline. Scale/adjust/distort as appropriate.

Task 2: Make a crater in the ground.

Again we used the Track Camera feature to save us a lot of time on placing our own markers, scaled the marker size up as they were fairly difficult to see off in the distance, drew around the markers to get our preferred size shape we wanted to work with, add new solid & camera, alt drag with crater JPEG, effect, generate, grid, transform to match perspective of footage, remove grid effect; Voila! one hole in the ground. However we now need to give it depth, so we duplicate the layer, make the lower one invisible, use the pen to create a mask around the bit we want to remove from the image, change the mask effect to subtract instead of add, and make the second layer reappear. Now we need to scale the second layer up and move it along the Z axis so it’s physically below the ring cut out, duplicate the cut out, and tell the bigger, below layer to use it as a mask so we don’t have all the extra debris around the edges what we cut/feathered out earlier. Nearly done. Final job is adding smoke, back onto the 3D tracking layer, add new solid, alt drag smoke to combine layer, rotate along X axis so the smoke is rising and isn’t drifting along the ground, change anchor point to match starting point of hole, scale as needed, change colour/opacity if you like, multiply to get rid of black background, job’s a good ‘un. Possibly the most jam packed workshop yet.

I think this weeks workshop was really useful, and do plan on using it in my final piece, at which point I will go into a lot more detail about it, for now that’s the end of workshops, but keep an eye out as I will be updating the blog again, eventually. Probably.