*Introductory lighting test for the short's creation.*
Approach:
This week included creating a few different assets for the final short regarding the intro and some small embellishments to the Maya scene before I sent it off to render. My approach for the most part was making sure that everything fit together, my renders came out correctly (wow, I HATE rendering) and that my introduction fit into the scope of the project enough that it would transition smoothly. Above you can see the introduction; although it's about 25 sec. long, I'll end up cutting it about halfway through to make sure it doesn't drag on. Choices Made: I made my own choice, and mistake, to not give my rendered frames a prefix. UGH. So, as it would turn out my incremental saving was my partial downfall in the first round of renders. I had my scene names "EnviroLayout_4", BUT because I didn't put a set prefix, having the 4 at the end meant that every frame had a '4' in it's frame order, and all of them were incorrectly labeled and the animation sequence is basically unusable. Thankfully, the rendered frames look great and I was able to at least be happy with how they turned out. Now back to another 4 hours of rendering! Oh joy. Something to note: I found out that there is a similar command to consolidate files in After Effects; in Maya, going to File > Archive Scene will grab every file/texture/asset that's being used in the scene and put it all into one folder. EXTREMELY handy if you need to pass of your project to other people, I can't believe that I didn't know about this earlier.
*Don't make the same mistakes I did! Make sure to set your project, name your files, pick your cameras, and PUT A PREFIX!*
I also ended up going through and adding in some paint-effects in Maya for the grass on the side of the road. I wanted to have a little foliage for realism, and to cover up/fill any seams or "openings" that appear to be inadequately saturated with visuals. In addition to the foliage, I made the decision to also include birds on the power lines to give a little more discontinuity in the repetitive motion of the power lines.
*Time-lapse of the street creation. As well as small fixes to textures, and additional props for realism.*
For the sake of time as well in rendering, I decided that including the window in the frame and having to deal with transparency would make the render times shoot up. I'll include it in post later, since (thankfully) I decided to put the camera shake in post as well. I can create a mask in After Effects that will encompass the window, and play around with some transparency of a scratched/smudged window. While simultaneously using this mask as a template, I'm considering also adding in my own light leaks and playing with the grading of the grey-scale for the interior of the car, as there are a few areas that I'd like to be darker than they appear currently. I enjoy the blown-out look of the sun though, as it makes it feel more genuine in my opinion (since, generally, glancing at the sun tends to look over-exposed in any situation).
*A basic still from the short that I'll be compiling. No edits have been made to it yet.*
Inspirational Sources:
A trailer that inspired me (though I would love to see the film) is from a movie called "Roma". My professor initially suggested it to me and I hadn't gotten around to seeing it until this week. I really enjoy the wide panning shots that the director uses in the trailer, as well as the tracking shots and an intimate moment where it appears the main character is smiling at the camera. What's also very enjoyable in my opinion is that there isn't ANY narration in the trailer. I find it very effective the amount of wide shot's that are also incorporated, it gives a scope of the story at hand rather than arbitrary close-ups of faces and interactions.
*Netflix trailer for "Roma".*
Questions Raised & Needs:
Next steps: This coming week will including compiling my shots together (once the render finishes again), and doing some post work for making it look even more appealing than I already find it. I will also have to determine how I want the melody of sounds to work in the piece, as the Max/MSP patch that I created isn't capable of outputting a sound file that is read-able. I'm excited to see how it all works out in the end as I feel like I've made good use of my time, and pushed the scope of the project up towards the edge of what I can handle. In the end, this makes me realize how my productivity should be about finding more solutions that make me "work smarter, not harder". -Taylor Olsen Comments are closed.
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May 2020
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