Hook Line & Stinker Meeting

Hook, Line & Stinker Progress Meeting Minutes

Date: Tuesday 25th June 2013

Time: 10:00am - 11:30am

In Attendance:

Omari McCarthy

Sebastian Braende

Agenda:

Water Simulation

Modelling

Texturing

Rigging

Animating

Lighting/ Color Scripts

Rendering

Compositing

Action Items:

Production:

• get availability working hours of individuals/ teams
• negotiate deadline with individuals/ teams

Water Simulation:

• Adopt realistic lighting (http://omaritheanimator.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/water-simulation-in-cgi-animated-films.html)
• use Josh Bainbridge’s Houdini/ Maya solution
• Water simulation test renders (Seb)
• Seb to retrieve file off Omari
• Compositors Toolkit water splashes (Omari)
• Water deformation waves, maya ocean shader (Teddy)
• Water Team: Josh, Connor, Teddy

Modelling:

• All modelling complete
• Remove flag complete from boat model.

Texturing:

• specular maps for characters/ anisotropic shader? (Omari)
• batch clothes textures. pull down exposure (Omari)
• texture inner mouths of all three characters (Phoebe)
• save down all textures on per-shot bases
  
  

Animation:

• Freddy & Luke as lead animators
• what shots are complete?
• what shots need re-animating?
• simplified animation style for murman

Backgrounds:

• sky background to be painted. How many? (Phoebe)
• Nuke 3D Card workflow test (documentation for compositors)
  
  

Lighting:

• No lighting until color script complete
• detailed color script of entire film  (Phoebe Herring)
• create small lighting team; Omari, Nick, Jake, Freddie, Teddy
  
  

Rendering:

• render bible/ documentation (omari)
• 13 shots rendered out 61 (3 omitted from edit because of quality/ mistakes)

Compositing:

• send seb old render/ compositing bible (Omari)
• composite bible/ documentation, details for eyes (Seb)
• create small comp team; Seb, Omari,

Shot Tracking:

what needs to be re-rendered for each shot?

Edit:
shot count added to animatic (Ben Wardle)

Water Simulation in CGI Animated Films

Earlier in the year we did not have a solid vision for how the water should look in the film. We still don't despite having various art styles worked up. During production the core team had a big debate/ argument as to how the water should look because of the rendered image of water below. At one point everyone wanted to go with the look of this water mostly because it looks so good/ real.

The water was made by 2nd year Josh Bainbridge using Houdini using a plugin for Maya. I would soon learn it was never intended to have photorealistic water but this is this is how it looks strait ouf of the render. It would need to be post processed in the Nuke composite to look stylised. The problems with Josh's water is that we can't have any collisions with the boat and water as it is from

Once I showed the team the render pretty much everyone except me felt we should go with it. I thought they were all captivated by how good it it looked not weather it would fit in visually with the rest of the film. At this time we were still trying to nail the look of the film so a lot was up in the air.

As a test I though I would examine animated movies that feature water to see how they look. The movies I took screenshots from were; Tangled, Kung Fu Panda 2, How To Train Your Dragon and Brave. What I found was that the look of the water is pretty much realistic where they pull away from realism in in terms of lighting and how they are coloured to sit in the scene. In some  KungFu Panda 2 there is little to no collision with the boat and the water causing foam or spray. Its funny you don't really notice unless you look for it. So do we really need this?

As a result of this I think we should adopt realistic water for Hook, Line & Stinker. The reason being is that the water itself needs to look "texturally" accurate much like the rest of the objects in the film. The catch is there is virtually no specularity on any of the objects in Hook, Line & Stinker. All of the shaders are lambert with the look for the film achieved in the textures painted by Phoebe Herring. The only specularity is on the Murman and this was a mix of painted texture with anistropic shader specularity on top.

Tangled:

Realistic looking water with stylised specularity (post production)

Kung Fu Panda 2:

Post Hand-In

I have not updated this blog in a while. For Hook, Line & Stinker we were only able to hand in 15 full rendered shots out of 60+ shots in total. It should have been about 20 rendered but a few were messed up last minute for various reasons. Obviously I am really disappointed about this but I am proud of the team despite everything.

For Infinitus Artificium we handed in a finished film but we know one or two shots need to be completely re-done. This needs the least amount of work, its more about working on it until we're happy with it.

I will have a meeting with my teams this week and next to make an action plan for what to do next. Its will have to be a massive effort, especially for Hook, Line & Stinker. A part of me is dreading it but it has to be done. There is nothing worse than an unfinished student film.

I could say more but i'm not a fan of poring out my heart on a blog so i'll leave you with this...