For our character animation exercise I filmed myself sneaking backwards and into a wall to convey "fear".

I won't be posting that video as it looks terrible and I'm not up for internet humiliation so instead I will just talk about my animation.

I had about a week to do a 5 second animation of what I acted out during which I was able to step out the whole animation which looked quite good. After presenting it to the class and receiving feedback I went back in and fixed those issues before moving forward and finishing it. 

I actually didn't have any real issues with the animation of it. The only issues I had were animating issues not technical issues which was a nice change.

Here is what I presented to the class:



Here is what I had after I finished stepping out the animation:



This is what I have as of today:


I was unable to completely finish the animation to what I wanted but I am pleased the it's progress and I will go on too finish it completely an render it out properly.

I was very disappointed with how my packshot turned out.

After 27 hours of rendering I found out that the animation on the grass had broken and it didn't move at all. I didn't have enough time to put my particle effects in and the lighting was mediocre at best. My motion graphics were the only thing I was happy with. I also had a problem with my exr files not separating into their different layers in After Effects.

So I went back and I looked at what happened to my grass and I then remapped my Hair and Fur systems and fixed the node that had broken in regards to the animation.

I fixed the textures on the Dunny using Mudbox and exported new normal and displacement maps. I then re-imported the Dunny into the scene and fixed the lighting.

I went back and did research on open exr files and looked at what I had done wrong in the rendering process that would explain why they weren't working properly. I was unable to test whether this worked or not as I have no time to render this project left.

For the model of the Dunny I did for my packshot I experimented with modelling it in Mudbox but I found modelling the Dunny easier in Maya so I stuck with Maya for that project and was able to model a decent Dunny using pictures of toilets I gathered online as inspiration.

For the texturing I tried painting the model in mudbox but found that incredibly difficult so instead I sculpted the details on and exported them as AO maps and Normal and Displacement maps which gave me a much better outcome.

To make the field I just used the sculpt geometry tool on a flat plane in Maya to create rolling hills. I then applied a stock image of grass to the plane and tiled the image so that when I applied the grass effect on top it wouldn't look strange with a flat colour underneath.

To create the grass look I used the Fur effect in Maya and changed the settings to create the right looking grass. To animate it I created a Hair system that the Fur system would follow when I attached it.

Here is the Tutorial I used to create this effect:


Here is what the grass looks like on a rendered still frame. For time reasons I was unable to render our the whole video showing the movement. Obviously lighting needed to be fixed but this is the image I got after finishing with the grass effects.

Mary was in charge of implementing sound into our Unreal world a process that I doubt was the easiest thing in the project.

She added sounds for running and jumping to the main character:

She also created animation notifications, attenuation and sound fall-off for our windmill and sound looping, sound cues and surface detection:

Mary used these tutorials to help her do all this awesome work:

We used the Google Drive to share and store our files. It was a very effective way to transfer data as everyone in the group had access to it simultaneously.

The only issue with the Google Drive and on-line drives like it is that they are unable to hold large files like the Unreal files we were using. This created significant problems when members were unable to attend meetings and delayed work a bit but not enough to create problems in our workflow.

Screenshots of our work were posted to the rest of the group along with a post informing other members that the work had been uploaded to the drive.

1. Research

Research is a crucial part of the production process. It allows us to gather references to create a clearer vision of what we wish to achieve. This process also allows us to find ways to complete processes we haven't done before and how to use programs we haven't in the past (Unreal Engine 4). It allowed us to compile tutorials and knowledge that would carry us to the end of this project. 

2. Pre-production

This time was spent communicating with each other on what the project would become. This time was spend creating sketches and giving feedback to each other. The constant communication between team members allowed us to create our parts of the project whilst still keeping within our artistic style and scope.

3. Production

During this process we brought our concepts to life. We kept in constant communication to keep other team members updated about our progress with the models and whatever it was we were doing. We assisted each other when it was needed and got everything ready to be put into Unreal to create the final product. 

4. Post-production

Once everything was put together in Unreal all we had to do was polish everything up, apply feedback from peers and the play around with Unreal's features to make the scene look as good as possible before bundling it all up into a package and testing its functionality again before submission.

Our production process went along very smoothly due mostly in part to out constant communication as a team. We constantly contacted each other about problems and I feel the process we used worked very effectively.

There were however problems with individuals sticking to the Gantt Charts and my own issues with data. To improve in the future I would have to make sure save more incrementally and make sure I keep track of data and take all the preventative measures I can take to prevent corrupted files like the ones a kept getting whilst trying to create the particle effects for Unreal. Another thing I need to work on is my UV unwrapping when it comes to unusually shaped objects like the tower and the statue I created. I need to thing more critically and carefully about how I go about the unwrapping process so I don't give myself a headache.