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Week 11 - Week 16
Qistina Nuralya Maria Binti Azly / 0354180
Advanced Animation / Bachelors of Design (Honours) in Creative Media / Taylor's University
PROJECT 3: POST-PRODUCTION
Table of contents (Jumplinks)
1. MODULE INFORMATION BOOKLET (MIB)
2. FUNDAMENTALS
2.1 Final Tweaks
2.2 Lighting & Rendering
2.3 Editing
3. FINAL ANIMATION
4. REFLECTION
1. MODULE INFORMATION BOOKLET (MIB)
There is no Module Information Booklet for this module; however, we have four separate Projects:
1. Fundamentals of Animation - Practicing and understanding 3D animation starting with the fundamentals.
2. Project 1: Pre-Production - Choosing an 15-30 second existing clip from a movie or any media and to plan out the animation via storyboards, animatic and block outs.
3. Project 2: Production - Continuing animation progress from Project 1. Ensuring the flow of animation is believable.
4. Project 3: Post-Production - Final refinements of animation. Compose and editing shots of finished animation with possible sound effects or voice overs to be an entertaining end result.
2.1 Final Tweaks
As I move to the final stage, I went and added some final tweaks to the animation like some needed follow throughs of things like the hair and tie.
Suddenly, as I was about to move to rendering, I found something odd happening to Heather's mesh. It was for some reason showing parts of the mesh that shouldn't be visible. It was only minor bug though so I didn't think of it much and went to rendering..
2.2 Lighting & Rendering
I went to Arnold to see how the lighting was and then I was jumpscared by the render view! Heather was made of shiny metal?! And where is her body?! From here I was completely bamboozled as to what happened and it took me a while to figure out that the mesh had actually just defaulted to Phong instead of the usual Lambert! I was so relieved to figure that out but...
I was still stumped as to why the Body Mesh was still just not rendering at all! After a couple of very frustrating hours, I decided to just take a break and come back because at that point, I just was just not in the best state of mind and I did not want this to fog my mind too much.
And so, after the break, I went to search up possible solutions and THANKFULLY some Maya users commented that sometimes for reason, rigs have their meshes' "Primary Visibility" unchecked in the Render Stats which leads to situations that I was in.
Finally, I could start to render!
But of course, what is another step of the journey without another bump accompany it ? Whilst rendering Shots 3 and so on, I came into another problem where Maya would just crash the moment I tried to render the shots. I thought it was due to me accidentally rendering it using my CPU instead of GPU, but even changing those settings led to crashing again and again..
At this point, I was at maximum "peeved"-ness, that I genuinely almost gave up but putting in the proper keywords for my problems to Google and YouTube, I FINALLY managed to find the solution to my problems; and that was unchecking the "Abort on Error" setting in the Diagnostic tab under Render settings. From there, things were smooth sailing and a weight was genuinely lifted off my back!
Whilst in the flow of rendering, I found that when I took a break and came back to the computer it looked like I was piloting a plane with how many windows and tabs were open for the rendering process.
2.3 Editing
After the grueling hours of rendering, I put together all the clips in to Premier Pro and timed it with the audio. Additionally, I added sound effects like from Project 2, but also some gasps and other effects to give the animation a bit more life.
Finally, I added some fun graphics to the animation. I say graphics but there were mainly text cut ins during the "booms" of the audio. It helped give some impact but also gave me leeway to have a bit more fun and add in some comedic elements.
3. FINAL ANIMATION
4. REFLECTION
A rollercoaster of emotions is how I'd describe this Project. It was going fine when I started adding the final tweaks of animation to the shots; but when it came to rendering everything with added lighting, things just went south. I spent days trying to figure out what went wrong with the rig that I almost thought I just had to give up and render the playblast instead. But just as I thought of that, I managed to fix everything up thanks to the many strangers online that encountered the problem!!
That stress though made me feel so demotivated but when everything was fine and render-able, I genuinely just jumped in glee. I don't think I've ever done that over animation before :'D.. Overall, this project was a genuine big learning for me as now I'm more attuned to rendering in Maya!
As for the general reflection on all the projects, I think I struck the balance of a bumpy yet insightful journey throughout the whole semester. I do believe that things felt rushed here and there when it came to the project goals; however, I acknowledge how it may just have been a personal experience and not an generalisation of the module as a whole (I hope that my classmates had a smoother journey than I did!) Though I wish I could have done things better, I believe that I did an alright job for my first 3D Animation project! Here's to more 3D animation experiences!
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