Haydn Spencer - Personal Showcase

Behind the scenes/university progression blog for "Flynn and Rockland in Leap of Faith"

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Thumbnails

Designing the thumbnails, I wanted to use the most iconic (and consistent) shot of the piece and use the titling and logos I did in the videos.

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CONTINUED DEVELOPMENT - NEARING COMPLETION

Intro sequence animated.

Titles added, eases into adventure

Sound effects, working from the previous project file and adding new sound work from university’s sound library

Added enhancements on the vocals, echos and that sort of thing

Re rendered Shot 5

Added a blurred zoom

Different ending punchline, might change this, as it’s a bit on the nose

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CURRENT RENDER

The footage got back from the render farm looking really nice.

- Intro sequence improved

- Camera angles changed

- Credits set up for when they’re needed

- Change the compression of the video file, as there is a lot of flicker through this compression.

- Shot 5 pointing down to lava is missing, incorrectly rendered? Will re-render this shot wholesale to get better result.

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Render Dilemma

Overall, the renders came back from the render farm in a good way, but Shots 6 to 9 came out with a few glitches to them. Flynn’s body textures were appearing as a textureless black in the renders, and a hitherto unnoticed Arnold light got in the mix and caused a black box to appear where it was. These are straightforward enough to fix by just running them through the render farm.

After help from the render technician, we found an earlier version of the skin texture was still somehow active on the Flynn model, which we replaced with the lambert that was used on the rest of the body.

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SHOT LIST

As of 24th May, working out what needs rendering and how long in duration it goes. The overall animation will run in at around 1350 frames.

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TIMING SHUFFLE

Reworking a few parts of the timing so that scenes hold longer and the cuts aren’t as sharp as previously done. This will help the musician make the music for the short.

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Render Wrangling

Sorting out the files for rendering. This was a very time consuming procedure as, to optimise, I had to separate the scene into different chunks with each respective model referenced in.

Gone are the days of sitting down and waiting for all of it to render on the uni computers, introducing the new Render Farm! I had previously used the Render Farm and Vray to render a Collaborative project, and I am sold from the finish you can get through Vray.

This means changing the lighting and materials again, but in the long run this will be worth it.

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FINAL DEADLINE DAY FOR MAIN PROJECTS

18TH MAY

Will continue working on and sorting out the animation to its completion now.

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Render Quality Test

Through Arnold, still has a lot of noise, duration the render takes is too long for the quality that comes out of it.

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Renders and Animation Progression

Completing animation in latter half of short, just getting some nice vanitys out of it.

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ANIMATION CURRENT

Latter half of animation almost completed, still a few bits of animation needed here and there. Placeholder panels in use for sequences and shots that still need to be completed.

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Platform Flynn Animation

Further animation development

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Current Animation Progress

With slates covering for scenes yet to be finished or animated

Things that still need to be done

Last few shots - their set up is there, as can be seen on previous rough renders from last deadline

Shot 3: Oooh Shiny! - Rockland moves needlessly

Shot 5: Pan down to lava needs to be tweaked

Shot 9: Nailed it! lip sync needs to be animated

Titles, credits, music, sounds.

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Logic

Considering the time I have left at uni and on this project, I feel as if, once again, I’m going to need to make some cuts to the planned development of this sequence.

- Cut the intro with the two characters discussing

- Cut the extended action sequence of Flynn getting back over

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TIMING REJIG AND ANIMATION DEVELOPMENT

OVERALL CHANGES MADE

- The whole animation has been retimed to match 25fps, so as a result, some shots go faster than there previously did.

- Animation now has voice elements to it

- Flynn now runs into scene in SHOT 2

- Flynn’s arm arc has been redone. The keyframing meant the arms spiralled around, now this won’t happen.

- Rockland’s poses hold for longer than they previously had done

- Flynn’s jump launch now has a different move, planting both feet down before jumping

- Rockland’s reaction to Flynn jumping is changed to have him try to reach for her but then not being quick enough and THEN panicking. The order has changed

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Fully Retimed to 25fps