#cuf200

This week my team and I presented our final project pitch, all of our work wasn’t completely ready, but all of us worked as hard as possible to get the most ready and presentable. During this presentation I didn't stumble over my words as much as lasts week’s presentation, although we did have some trouble with the slides and the playback of the videos was very dark. James spent a almost 10 hours rendering out the flythrough and it turns out that some of his materials and lights were broken so the final render was almost pitch black which was disappointing as the team was looking forward to showing off the city. After the presentation Brett solved the lighting and material problems and pointed out that final gather should be turned down and that we should use a skylight instead to fill in the bounce lights, I actually had the same thought, if he had of done that then he could cut down his render time and potentially he could have identified and fixed the problem with the lighting. This was a useful lesson when it comes to long render times.

In CUF200 I worked on my individual Performance Review, it was though talking about my weak Key Performance Indicators as sometimes the strategy is obvious but it is hard to put down onto paper.I have learnt many important lessons from my team project and I believe it will make me a better 3d artist because of it

Question WEEK 13

Describe and show visual examples of a creative showreel/s and 2 things you can emulate and why.

Daniehl Kho 2014 Demo Reel

A showreel is of an animators best tools to gain recognition and to gain job offers. A showreel should be made with a specific target in mind, there shouldn't be any content that isn't relevant to the  job one is trying to obtain. I have selected  this sculpting and modelling showreel as it is the field I am most interested in at the moment, also this is the showreel of the student who won cg student of the year run by Autodesk. 

First I would emulate the way he breaks down the structure of the images, first the finished product, the concept art, the mesh,  and finally the original sculpt. I would emulate this because it clearly outlines his process and it also the viewer to appreciate the quality of each of the elements.

This week I began to worry about the amount of work that still needed to be done for DAN 230, I still had the two character rigs to be done as well as most of their texturing. The team worked really hard this week with of us coming in almost every day including Saturday. In class we talked about getting a job after the diploma and the importance of networking and preparing a show reel, I identified a internship in Halfbrick studios as a potential first step in my career. Brett also shared a few tricks and many useful job searching websites, I actually signed up to one of them and I have received several emails with job opportunities. As I was finishing the rig for the Par character I learnt that the bones should be drawn as straight as possible from the front view. especially any hierarchy that involves any kind of IK setup. The problem was that when I assigned a controller to the swivel it actually changed the pivot and position of the knee or elbow bone. This week we had to present in CUF200 and maybe it was because I was really tired or nervous, but I completely stumble along though the presentation forgetting my points and taking big pauses, I think I will have to prepare more next time especially when entering the degree.

Question WEEK 12

Identify and Discuss two local companies/studios and the skills they are looking for when hiring new artists. 

Gameloft

http://www.gameloft.com/corporate/jobs/job-apply-details/13/?group=86&job=4280&loc=125&applyby=categ&mode=job&iis=Job+Board&iisn=Indeed.com

Gameloft is a mobile game developer, for the job i have the most interest in, they are looking for someone with more than 5 years experience for other 3D related jobs they were only looking for 2 years experience with some kinfolk of 3D software. They are interested in the applicants interests including a passion for games, which does make sense for a job hat involves developing games, this passion would be especially important with a medium to small sized team.

Halfbrick

http://halfbrick.com/careers/#game-artist

This week most of the assets were made for the flythrough. We didn’t have a meeting this week but instead helped each other refine the assets and textures for the fly through. We decided to let James do the lighting as he has the most experience with lighting and he was excited to do it. Tommy finished unwrapping the tower and the bridge and made some high quality hand painted textures. I was worried that when we placed Tommy’s assets in the fly through scene they would contrast with Tas’ photo based textures, but that are actually far enough from the camera that the contrast isn’t noticeable. I wasn’t to happy with the placement of the signs, as in my vision it all be more clustered, but I will probably make my own adjustments with scene before rendering and handing it in. I started rigging the par model, it is a fun process and I’ve learnt more than I expected about the process, especially how make a foot roll and how to make custom parameters.

Question WEEK 11

Describe and show visual examples of Lighting and Rendering in a 3D Production pipeline.

Lighting in a 3D production pipeline is the process of setting up various lights with different properties to fully achieve the potential of a 3D scene. A lighting artist must understand the vision that the director wants for each shot. They have a large amount of control over the mood, colour scheme and overall atmosphere. They must indicate how each light interacts with specific material and textures to achieve the best results possible. It goes hand in hand with rendering as for a lighting artist to fully understand how the lights interact they must render certain elements of the scene.

Pre-rendered frame from Halo 2 cinematic

Capture from Halo 2 gameplay

This week my team and I continued to discuss the flythrough, I drew out a simple storyboard to demonstrate the camera movement and give them team some direction and goal to work towards, this actually helped and I’m surprised that I didn’t try it out earlier. With the new direction of the storyboard we started developing assets for the environment, such as signs, windows, balconies and railings. Tas did most of the models, we discussed how we should make the signs, one option was to paint the sign as a texture on a plane, but we opted to make them with the spline tool so then we could apply a glow effect on the mesh in After Effects. A couple of days later I discovered that there was actually an option to create text and make it solid but it was already to late. In class we redid the animation principles and looked and some examples of walk cycles, this made think about I should animate the characters to give them a personality and to reflect their description in the treatment and the bios. Tas also helped with retyping one of the assessments we failed, he is really pulling his weight. He then started to make textures, but he was using photographs, something I didn’t have planed and I was worried that it wouldn’t look good but when I saw the finished result I was quite happy and although the resolution of the texture was low it was far enough from the camera it didn’t matter.

Question WEEK 10

Describe and show visual examples of biped and quadruped animations from animator showreels.

Quadruped and Biped exampe - Showreel by Liam Reynolds

Quadruped example - Showreel by Daniel Fotheringham

Biped animation refers to animating a human or any other humanoid creature. This is the most common type of animation that an animator will encounter, reference is useful for animating humans but a lot of the subtleties are filled in by the animators intuition as they have their own movement as reference.