Month: February 2023

Basic idea of the Animation

Funny themes: Twist And Shout（sekko to kaeru）
The basic idea is that the paintings from the actual drawing room will be uploaded to the virtual world without permission by the sculptures and then evaluated, reflecting preferences through body language and bubbles, intending to show the preferences of different artists on the style of painting, expressing that there is not only one good style of painting. The art is diverse.
The general wish is to blend in the idea of metaverse(virtual space and identity) and a sense of belonging. So most of the stuff in the studio is alive, which represents the reality of the critics, which could be of different ages, different genders, different countries, etc. Being judged by the same standards is a nightmare that everyone shares. By doing this animation, we can show our embrace of the pain and the wish to overcome it with a sense of humor.

Animated Production Programme

Form of collaboration:
3D character animation and 2D character animation in two different 3D scenes
Time:
around 2 minutes
The main plot:
the paintings of the students in the actual studio are scanned into the virtual world and rated by the different sculptures for their preferences
Objective:
3D: to reflect the flexibility of character animation and the use of scene design and materials.
2D: design style and fluidity of animation in both worlds, fully reflecting the keywords “fantasy” and “sense of belonging.”

MY work

My main work: 3D Generalist of the art studio scene.

I was responsible for the full animation process of the first 40 seconds of the film’s 3D realistic art studio scenes
Including
Model (jieyi helped me build a clock and a fan)
Texture
Animation&part of storyboard
Lighting
Rendering
40 seconds of Special Effects (clio is responsible for adding 2d effects)
40 seconds of editing work

My secondary work: Designing the virtual classroom

Conceptualisation of the entire virtual set on a preliminary design sketch

Final animation (group)

Work-In-Progress (personal)

I didn’t put the whole modelling process into this video because the total modelling time took me about 280 hours, and the materials and animations and rendering part took me about 150 hours, so I had to try to keep this video to the length of a song, thanks for your patience!

3D part of previs （personal)

Collaboration Unit 3D Part (personal)

google document link-develop process

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VQ8Av_-l37XBU2dZvJ_jWcvJaWOnH13mrusaEW-5pyI/edit

Self-reflection on this group collaboration

Appreciation

Firstly, I am grateful that every group member is committed to our animation project. We are all under much pressure with other assignments in our respective disciplines. But we all tried to take time out of our day to participate in every group meeting, and we once had a six-hour online meeting in one day where we all got together to work on assignments and think of ideas. Luckily, we all did a great job of getting our projects done.

The early stages of the project

Secondly, at the beginning of the project, I was worried that the work for each of us was manageable. Especially for me personally, as I had to work on the whole process of an entire 3d high-quality scene in a month or so, which was a very challenging task for me indeed. And my work was a bit cut off from the 2D part of the group, so that I couldn’t see the progress of the 2D group, but my members were amiable, and we uploaded our work progress to a google document every week so that we could monitor each other. It’s a very effective way of communicating, and we can look at individual work progress each week and then give better advice on each section.

Google Document Link：https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VQ8Av_-l37XBU2dZvJ_jWcvJaWOnH13mrusaEW-5pyI/edit

In this document, each of our group members is posting their progress each week to facilitate comments. This link also contains a lot of our creative process and references

Communication and exchange of ideas-Problems found through group cooperation

Thirdly, Clio was responsible as the leader in the early stage of communication and design. She tried her best to motivate every group member to solve the difficulties of virtual scene design. But, for me my workload for the 3D scenes at the time was hefty. I needed to do all the modelling work alone in three weeks, so I was very reluctant when Clio first told me i need to do it. But I also understood that it would remained stalled my group if I couldn’t drive the design process. We also make a flowchart of each person’s design, which explores the most critical point of group collaboration: that we all work together to solve a problem and push our project to improve. I was happy to help my team members with the material, lighting and modelling challenges. I also received some feedback from them about the shots and the colour of the images. I like this efficient and healthy communication process.

Some thoughts on improving modelling efficiency

Personally, I am very good at doing technical work such as scene modelling and code and material rendering. As Clios said,more capable team members are responsible for more work. We all want to produce the best possible result in a short time. I’ve worked on many long-term projects before, but a situation like this, where I had to finish a film in two months, was really challenging for me. I discarded a lot of details when modelling, and I just focused on doing the corners that the camera could capture. This approach to production will significantly increase my efficiency.

Unity Assignment-Build a city

During the three-week unity course, I tried to build up a city. As I had learnt Python and unity before, this was easy for me, and I could do it during class.
I also liked the LOD mechanism for models in UE5 and unity, where the camera is very efficient at saving rendering resources when the object is far away. This way cannot be done in Maya and Arnold and Octane Render. I used the city building plug-in for this scene and adjusted the materials and layout of the city model via Python. It was beneficial for me as an animator to try out different software. I also really enjoyed the process.

Final Render test-storyboard-9 shots

During the week, I rendered the first frames of all my shots and discussed them with my members, who gave me good advice on adjusting the frames’ colours. But for rendering time reasons, I solved the problem using effects and Da Vinci colour grading. Because I needed about a week to render and submit the previs shots to the compositor for the sound, it was a tough week for me, and we were all pushing our limits.

shot intro:In these three shots, we wanted to create cinematic images with classical music to capture the viewer’s attention and demonstrate our basic modelling and rendering skills as 3D animation students. The collaborative part is essential as this project combines 2D and 3D animation. Still, we also needed to take advantage of 3D animation’s ability to create an atmosphere and work hard to capture the audience’s interest.

shot intro:

In the fourth shot, we focused the image on the blackboard, where our title appeared, along with the names of four students from our 3d group and two from our 2d group.

Next, I created animations of the fan and potted plant and b focusing the camera j on the q frog pencil, which would set the scene for the 2d to appear.

shot intro:These were the three most important shots in the film’s production, and we designed many versions of them. Choose three drawings discussed the choice of the main character many times, and David was the first to be chosen as our main character. Then we decided on a very famous Chinese poet, Lu Xun. When he was alive, he wrote many poems that attacked the darkness of society and advocated the pursuit of freedom and ideals. At the same time, reciting and understanding Lu Xun’s writings was a lingering nightmare for us from primary school to high school. So most students in China have drawn a portrait of Lu Xun in their textbooks, partly to add interest to a boring academic life and partly because they respect his courage in pursuing freedom and speaking the truth. But the fact that this drawing was marked with 49 marks means that the education system does not recognise the student’s ideas.

Reflections

I think the rendering of this image is too dull and needs to be recoloured. I realised that I needed to use DaVincih and ae to adjust the colours and add textures and filters. So I need to adjust the colours and effects before I send it to the compositor.

Previs test 1 link :

This week I mainly finished the animation parts of the clock, fan, paper, light and previs. In the scene I used the forest plugin to control the animation of the grass. I also created a previs shot to adjust the design of the screen and control the pace of the video.

Previs test 2 link

Getting Started with Unity

This week, Herman Ho gave us an overview of the video game industry and the Unity interface. But I already knew how to use unity before, so in the first two weeks of the course, I was able to import resources, use plugins, create a city

Generating model

This software is beneficial to me because, as a 3d generalist, I tend to spend a lot of time on the modelling and mapping part. If unimportant models can be achieved quickly by scanning, or if I only need to topologies into low surface count models, this method will significantly improve my efficiency

Group work

3D storyboard

This week we continued the group meeting. I made the first version of the Previs lens. In the design of the last two lenses, I and CLIO believed that if the paper was not allowed to move, let the camera slowly turn to the desktop and gradually pull it. Near the camera, it may be better. So I will adjust this secondary lens adjustment

Render Test 2