So I’ll be honest: This morning was completely hectic and I didn’t get to start lighting until 1100hrs, which is a full 2-3 hours later then I wanted!
So I’m very surprised that I managed to get the lighting done today as that was never on the plate to begin with, and I was convinced that I wouldn’t get it done tomorrow either...
In terms of the lighting itself - I’m happy on how it looks with the ambient light giving a nice gradient right-left of Twilight, with the rim lights giving some definition around the outer edges. Playing back the sequence shows that any imperfections in the placements are pretty much hidden... Again, not having to render out the shot to see the end results really cuts down the amount of time working on this shot... =)
Tomorrow I’ll fine tune some of the post-FX stuff like the Ambient Occlusion and render it out, with the short itself done by the middle of next week! So stay tuned for that! ;)
Hey everyone! Been a while since I specifically posted an update regarding the current animation project, but over the last few days I’ve been getting on with the refinement process for Unicorn Twilight’s animation!
I ended up deleting the block I did back in September and ended up using the “Straight Ahead” principle to animate the emotion I wanted, opposed to my preferred “Pose to Pose” style I animate in... And considering the way I animated this specific shot - I’m happy how appealing to the eye it ended up being! =)
Today I did the lipsync and facial expression animation which went ahead with little issue or anything to note; it’s pretty close to the reference footage I took for this shot. I also decided to animate the camera to give the shot some life, which has also came out very appealing to the eye - so that’s good! =)
Lighting is next, and that’ll take a few days in itself.
Performance wise, l I cannot get over how smooth Blender is compared to the old Hackintosh: The viewport feels more snappy and I can playback at the full 24FPS (compared to the 8-12FPS on the Hackintosh). Considering the specs is comparable to a contemporary HP Z4 workstation, I couldn’t be happier of New Octane! =)
Morning everyone! It’s that time again with a “Behind The Crystal” livestrean! Today I’ll be working on the lighting of shot 3, with any luck to completion... So as always, go catch it above! =)
So over the course of the last week I’ve been lighting shot 3, and to say progress is slow would be an understatement... The main problem being if the walk cycle has resulted the lights needs to be moved every 1-3 frames, which is a very time consuming task.
I’m however within days of finishing this show, with me being on frame 647 of 690, and hope to finish it by the end of the week. =)
Good morning everyone! I know today is April Fools, but this ain’t no joke - I’m currently streaming some work on Twilight Trouble over on YouTube... I aim to get some of the mane done today. =)
Hey everyone! It’s been a while since I had anything BTS-related to post here... and even longer since it was about Twilight Trouble!
They’re has been good reason for the lack of updates - I’ve been trying to take not grind so hard on my projects and always being on the cusp of burning myself as I’ve been practically for the last 2 years on and off (thanks mainly to the tight deadlines on the collabs, not helped by how long it takes to render these things out compared to SFM), that’s not to say I’ve not given myself more deadlines, I’ve just been more lenient then I have been.
TL;DR - I’ve been trying to work like I did in 2016 with less stress then I have been!
With this in mind, last week I spent last week lipsyncing both Twilights, which went pretty smoothly thanks to the fact a large portion of this shot they don’t speak, and when they did was pretty easy to get the phonemes I wanted by just dragging the bones to the right place and saying out the characters’ lines a syllable at a time! When they talk over each other towards the latter half of the shot, I decided to split the dialogue up into 2 separate audio files so I could understand what they both are saying - they don’t say exactly the same thing, so doing this way definitely helped and you can see watching the shot back the mouths of both characters move slightly different... So overall, I’m happy with that! =)
Moving onto this week I spent yesterday and Monday doing the facial expressions; which while I was a little slower then I would’ve liked, the results speaks for themselves (did a very similar thing as what I did for the lipsync), so I’m not going to dwell too much on this. And that moves us on swiftly onto today where I’ve started lighting the shot! I’ve done around 40% of the lighting for the shot - I started at a point both characters were standing and moved backwards to the beginning... It was basically rotoscoping again because instead of moving forwards from the beginning, I did go backwards which does have some extra worked involved. Overall, I’m happy with the results, though there is still some fine tuning needed on Unicorn Twi while she is laying down before I say that section is “done”.
I have done a test render to see how the final frame will more or less look like. =)
With any luck, I plan to finish the lighting tomorrow with the goal of starting the second longest shot of this short - which is shot 3! Shot 1 is longer then the entirety of Outside if we do not count the COPPA warning and end card sequence... ^^”
So here it is... the last productive-based stream of the year... Today we’re going to continue refining the filler short I’ve been working on for the last little while... Go catch it above! =)
So today I polished up the first shot for rendering... Luckily for me I only needed to add a single spot light to the scene and increase the radius and disable shadows and it was practically done thanks to the actual sun on the “map”! I like the look with the addition of the spotlight as it gives a nice gradient from end of the character to the other, which I feel makes it a tad more visually appealing.
I also did a test render of the entire shot to see how it would play out at full speed and the results seem pleasing enough where I greenlit the entire shot for rendering... ^^”
I also started refining the second shot in the series, and thanks to the fact this shot only plays for 15 frames, and that the animation is pretty simple anyways - I have done the refine pass on the body itself and added the ear animation; so tomorrow’s task is to animate the mane. I know the only reason I’m blasting through this shot so quickly is due to the short length, and the majority of the body is out of frame, meaning I don’t animate all of the usual elements! ^^”
It’s nice seeing some green again on a shot list after 5 months since finishing my last short... And for projects that full into the “short-term” category; that’s personally not a great place to be... ^^”
