please Sean can i have the tickets?

So i got an email back from Jack explaining how to create an AO in Maya. this is a shadow layer over the objects in the room. So that is all good and done.

The alpha problem i was having has also been fixed. The solution was that the alpha had to be fixed in After Effects. Today Darren helped me with the door and added in a light glow for the edges of the door. It did come out a bit bright but i have it there to play around with.

I fixed up the door opening scene and that is now done and i continued on with the shots after that. After Effects started to go super slow and I lost time with the program taking forever just to scrub arcoss the time line. I stopped with that because i was getting really frustrated.

My textures for some reason in the study room have become silver. When i do a render it becomes black. its annoying.. i really dont know what is going on.  

Page Turn Texture.

Jack helped me with fixing the page turn and also being able to have two different textures on both sides of the single page.
It was a little confussing on how he did it. But it had something to do with adding in a Condition and i think a Sampler Info using HYPERSHADE!!!
I made an extra page texture and added it to the other side of the page. It was weird because when you added two different textures to each of the side it came up blurry and the same texture but Jack found out that if you render the page it comes up with two different ones.

I finished off the last of the textures for the books and also made Edgar's writing book and added the textures. I then placed the both into the scene. 

Next I worked on Sc4,Sh1abc. this is when Edgar opens the door to the outside city. I realised that I was using a bad quality play blast from Maya and decided to render out a production quality one. Jack showed me the settings that i needed to use and told me to do it at home (because we had to leave in 15mins) So I did and it took around 40mins for it to finish. It looks good but for some reason the Alpha channel didn't work and so the background when the door opens is still black. I searched for ages trying to find what i did wrong but i could't find anything. 

I did email Jack about it hoping he can give me instructions. 

I am also really worried about my animating... my character doesnt work and Im seriously thinking that i should just start animating in 2D. I have already done animating test. I am freaking out and i hope i hear from Jack soon. If it comes down to me needing to 2D animate i need to render out my scenes fast!!

I got really fustrated yesterday and i found it so hard to work, so i made my credits.. yayyy. 

I just don't know what to do. 

cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry cry. 

ZENNYBANE BABY YAAEY YAAEY!!!

I got really tired last night and went straight to bed when i finished the blog. I could hardly keep my eyes open. Today in Neale and Rosalie's class I worked on the last of my textures which is the pages. Yesterday i was freaking out because i had completed one out of the six but today i completed all of them! Yaaey yaaey!

I really like the way they have turned out. By the way for all the writing that is on the pages I used Edgar Allan Poe's 'Raven' poem. Love it!

Just got a picture of the page half way so you can see both of the pages.

This is the handwriting font that i found. I like it and this page is in Edgar's writing book. 

That is the completion of the last textures.... yaaey yaaey! Tomorrow I will talk with Master Lord Jack about the animating and also the shadow effect and rendering. 

It works.

Okay just a quick blog about my weekend so you know what i am up too and blahhh.
So Thursday to Sunday have been completely all over the place for me as i have had so much stuff on and it lead to changing my days/hours at work. IN OTHER WORDS...... I haven't done much work. Which sucks big monkey balls!

I planned to have a lot of work done by Monday, which is tomorrow!!!! And right now i have been up for 16 hours... ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

In my last blog i said i had some problems with the page texture looking really bad, well it was because there just wasn't enough polygons and so i think i just wasn't thinking at the time when i had no idea what to do. Anyway I got some help from Tai with his magical two blade hair.

oKAY SO WITH THE PAGE i realised that a few of the UV's were not together so i merged and sewed and now they are fully sick.

I found a nice 'hand writing' looking font on Friday and so i am using that for the pages and I also found a texture that i like and i have just been adding extra age to it in Photoshop. So now ONE page out of SIX is finished... ha ha ha.

Working on Book.

Went into Uni early this morning with Seanmundy and did work on the Book that Jack made for me yesterday. I was trying to add in some Edge Loops so that when the page is smoothed it didn't go all flat and spazzzzz. I was doing it wrongggg and Sean helped me out. There were a lot of edges that didn't line up to another so Sean showed me the Split Polygon Tool to connect them together and the use the Edge Loop tool after.

I taught Sean what the letter Y does in Maya.

It took a while to get it done but without Sean's help i would of been crying about it... i wouldn't of known what to do.

When i got home i worked on the UVs and and tried to organise a layer for the page in the book were the Tree is going to be. I was having a lot of problems with this and the UVs and textures are coming out really ugly and i have tried a few times to fix it.

So as you can see in the picture the writing texture is upside down and backwards. Also if you see in the Texture Editor were the UVs are highlighted green and were they are green in the model are really odd and it is making the texture stretch.

Texture has also become really bad in the bulk pages for the book.
I'm not too sure what i need to do to fix this but tomorrow at Uni i will ask Sean and Tai if they know why this is happening and what i need to do to fix this. If i can't fix this problem it isn't a big deal as i can still continue to work on my textures for this book by doing them on A4 size paper in Photoshop.

meow meowwwww

Lots of Work Tuesday.

Today has been a really good day! I have completed a series of background shots that are for scene 4.
This morning Jack showed me a few ideas for when the tree grows. It is coming a lot nicely!

I completed the background for sh2abc. This is when Edgar walks out of his house and walks towards the camera with the seed in  hand.

I then worked on sh4, this is when Edgar places the seed on the ground.

When Jack was free i asked him if he could help me with creating a book that has a page turn. The bulk pages that i had made were not so good and so Jack showed me a different way to make them. He used the Create Polygon Tool, it looks a lot nicer now! He added some funky shapes to the ends so they look like piled paper.
Jack also helped me with the page turn. I was a bit worried about the texture going onto it but Jack had said that it will be fine and that the same texture will go on both sides. This is fine be me.

We had a few problems with the page turn as the one that Sean found was too flat and the book that i have has a rounded beginning. So Jack showed me how to make a different type of page turn by using a top and bottom row of Joints.

After I got home I decided to make the textures for the cover of the book. I also then duplicated the book so that i have one with a page turn and the other as Edgar's work book.

I added both of my new backgrounds into my running comp so now they are up to date. 

I was looking through my storyboards and I have decided to cut out the shot of when Edgar closes the book and the title is "when we still had trees" The only reason i had that shot in was so that the audience will understand that there are no more trees BUT this shot was for when I didn't have scene one organised. So now the shot will be:

Edgar turns the page and sees the picture of a beautiful tree. He smooths his hand over the picture and says "Beautiful". A slow zoom in and then fade to black. 

I think it is a lot better this way. 

By the way I made this other list a few days a go... yeahhhh i make a lot of lists

and I planned out every single detail that i had left to do. So I planned it out by scenes.

THE LIST

Scene One - 

Scene Two- 

• Model writing book

                      *Textures - 

                                      1. Book cover

                                      2. Circle & question mark (sc2,sh2)

• Model note book

                        * Page Turn

                        * Textures -

                                         1. Book cover

                                         2. Open page left

                                         3. Open page right

                                         4. Turn page left

                                         5. Turn page right

- Sc2,Sh4d ends with Fade to Black.- Transition 

Scene Three-

• Writing Book Texture - 3. Hourglass test #6 (sc3,sh2)

- Sc3,Sh11b ends with Fade to Black- Transition 

Scene Four -

• Sc4,Sh1a - Dark/shadow when door is closed.
• Sc4,Sh2abc- House behind with ground.
• Sc4,Sh3- Side shot of outside city.
• Sc4,Sh4abcde- Ground piece for seed.
• Sc4,Sh5,6,7,8,9ab-Blurred front shot of city in background.

-Sc4,Sh9b ends with Fade to Black- Transition 

The work that I need from Jack are:

1. Mechanical Seed
2. Hourglass

3. Mechanical Tree

4. One Mechanical Flower that opens (sc4,sh9ab)

And I will need to talk to Jack about:

1. Animating Edgar

2. Adding a shadow layer to the 3D set (background)

3. Rendering

Week 10!!

It is now the beginning of week 10! how cray cray!!

So today in class i worked on my essay, so i didn't do anything for my animation. When i got home i organised a day by day excel sheet from today's date till the end of week 14. This is so i can write down what I have done and also what i need to do within the days.

Next i finished off my new running comp!! YAY!! however a few shots at the end are missing. This is the seed opening and when the tree is making. I don't have anything of that yet but i will be talking to Jack tomorrow about it. Also a few backgrounds are white, this is because I need to create a ground with a texture on it. (based all in 3D)

Tomorrow in Jack's class I really would like his help with making a book that can close and help with adding the page turn and adding a texture to the page turn.

a few things are coming up Milhouse :)

oh yeah and I will put this updated running comp into the "running comp" tab up the top of the blog.