Abstract:
I entered this project originally as a modeler, but given the abundance of modelers in our group I ran out of work to do quickly. As a result I took on a task that we hadn't even thought about previously: sound design. Having sound in this animation brings the final product much closer to a completed, professional project. The addition of the sound makes the animation a little bit more lifelike, since it allows the audience to feel a bit more immersed in the environment. To achieve this, I used the software instruments in Logic Pro and sound samples from freesound.org.
Planning:
Prior to beginning any work on this, I spoke with Kevin about musical direction and he said jazz, to reflect the semi-imaginary setting our animation takes place in. Other than this, the entirety of the planning depended on the animation. I would have to match up sound samples to certain visual cues, and the mood of the music to the events taking place. This took some studying of the story itself to ensure that it meshed well together.
Production Log:
The bulk of the sound design can't be done until the final animation is rendered. This is needed to correctly sync up the timing of the audio and video events. Since I began the sound design well before the final animation was complete, I began by writing some music in Logic to use. As I wrote the music, I showed it to Kevin to get his feedback. This resulted in a lot of music that ended up being scrapped for the scene I was working on. This was helpful, however, because I ended up with a lot of music to choose from for the other scenes by the end. All the music was done with midi software instruments, which I programmed in the piano roll.
We found a way to get the movie without spending the time rendering it using the Powerblaster tool. This exports a video of what the camera view looks like before rendering. Using this I started to add sound effects for the events taking place. Since I started with the last scene, all I needed was some ambient city noises, party noises, and a kiss sound. The ambient sound was easy as I could simply drop in the file and loop it if necessary. The kiss sample was a bit more difficult. The only sample I could find was very short, and the kiss in the animation was a lot longer. To fix this I used the sample editor to extend the duration of one part of the sample to make it line up. I also changed the pitch of the sound because the original was too high and sounded a bit cartoonish.
The rest of the animation was done very similarly. I used the music that I had written earlier and just edited to fit the time. I used the same ambient noises, which were long enough to fill the entire time they were needed without looping. The other samples I added were for the can being kicked, the door being slammed shut, and the curtains being drawn. I edited these in the same ways as the kiss sample to get the sound to match the actions. The can sound consisted of two samples: a beer can being tossed into a recycling bin, and another can rolling on a floor. I lined them up so the can bounced then rolled, and edited the bounces so that they would line up.
Throughout the process I was editing the mix of the sounds, to ensure that volumes were appropriate and that no sounds clipped, which causes audio distortion. After this I adjusted the automation, which means adjusting volume and panning (left and right) in relation to time. This adds to the realism of the final product as it makes it seem as though the sounds are coming from a certain direction or from a distance. Finally, I exported it to a .wav file, which we would later bring into Final Cut Pro, and edit together with the final animation.
Conclusion:
The result is a combination of music and sound collage that - I think - adds a lot to the final animation. Everything with this was reasonably successful. I was able to find the samples and create the music I need, and get everything to line up and mesh together well.
Self Evaluation:
While I am very happy with the final results, I believe this could have been a bit better. The result I've gotten sounds very good, but I don't think its quite professional quality. I wish I could have spent more time working on the music, and I think that some of the edits could have been more exact. Also, since I was limited to free samples, the samples I got were all of various qualities coming from differing recording techniques. I'm sure professionally made sample packages would be much higher quality, or more suiting. In some places, I feel that the samples did not quite match the sound of what they were representing, but I had to use them because they were all that was available. In a perfect world, I'd have the time and resources to make my own samples to use, then I could avoid payment, copyright issues, and quality issues. Overall, I'm happy with my work, but there is still room for improvement.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Monday, December 19, 2011
Final - Texturing
I was responsible for all of the texturing besides the car, fountain, and the floor and walls of the interior. I also did a majority of the UVs and did a small amount of modeling and scene building.
My general process for texturing was as follows:
- Upon first receiving a model, I open up the UV Texture editor. If the model was already textured I'd skip ahead and export it to Photoshop if it had not been UVs or I deemed the UVs too wonky to texture, I would UV map it
- Assuming the model was not UV'd (like many)Generally, I'd first start off with an automatic mapping in order to get the UVs to vaguely resemble the object. Normally it looks like a bunch of cut up pieces and you use this as your starting point.
- The next thing I'd do is to turn border edges on so you can more easily see where the seams in the UV are.
- The next step is to stitch the edges together. Keep in mind that your goal when you stitches the edges of faces together, isn't to stitch together as many seams as possible, but to create seams that make the model easy to paint on.
- Another consideration is to make sure that there are not large discrepancies in face shape on the model versus the UV. If the faces are either too big or too small on the UV or model, it will make the texture appear wonky. The resolution of a texture does not change to fit the faces of UV's so you need to make sure that the size of faces in the UV's reflects the size on the actual model.
- The next thing you need to do is to export the UV map. You need to decide how detailed this object needs to be and therefore the resolution of the UV map. When you export it, make sure to also change the file type to whatever you want to import into Photoshop. Using .tif normally works well.
- Paint the UV in Photoshop. Don't forget to turn the UV map layer off before you save it. You don't want the lines to appear on your model.
- Click and drag the .tif file into Maya's hypershade. Assign it to the color of whatever material you need for the object and you're done.
Largely, I think the group did well in pulling together so many different necessary parts of this project and producing as close to a finished project as was possible in the time frame given to us.
In regards to my personal portion of it, I think that I did a decent job. A lot of the textures I couldn't devote as much time to as I would have liked but due to time constraints I did what I could. In future projects I think there needs to be more fusion between the modeling and UV'ing aspects. Going back and having to edit aspects of models and/or remap UVs wastes a lot of time. I feel like modelers need experience texturing, even if they're not good at it so they can take into consideration the UVs and the textures when they're building the models.
Some pictures of scenes with some stuff that I textured:
(Textures: Rags, Little Girl, floor, window, wall)
(Textures: squirrel, flower, trashcan, cans, boxes, walls, doors)
(Textures: Rags, windows, boxes, trash cans, cans, window, door, buildings, floor, lamp)
(Textures: generic men, floor, flower, fire hydrant, window, walls, doors)
(Textures: generic men, floor, lamps, steps, buildings, doors, windows)
*There were 13 different variations for the buildings and windows and 4 different variations of the generic man.
Here are some other props that I don't think were in the scenes above and were not in my midterm post.
My general process for texturing was as follows:
- Upon first receiving a model, I open up the UV Texture editor. If the model was already textured I'd skip ahead and export it to Photoshop if it had not been UVs or I deemed the UVs too wonky to texture, I would UV map it
- Assuming the model was not UV'd (like many)Generally, I'd first start off with an automatic mapping in order to get the UVs to vaguely resemble the object. Normally it looks like a bunch of cut up pieces and you use this as your starting point.
- The next thing I'd do is to turn border edges on so you can more easily see where the seams in the UV are.
- The next step is to stitch the edges together. Keep in mind that your goal when you stitches the edges of faces together, isn't to stitch together as many seams as possible, but to create seams that make the model easy to paint on.
- Another consideration is to make sure that there are not large discrepancies in face shape on the model versus the UV. If the faces are either too big or too small on the UV or model, it will make the texture appear wonky. The resolution of a texture does not change to fit the faces of UV's so you need to make sure that the size of faces in the UV's reflects the size on the actual model.
- The next thing you need to do is to export the UV map. You need to decide how detailed this object needs to be and therefore the resolution of the UV map. When you export it, make sure to also change the file type to whatever you want to import into Photoshop. Using .tif normally works well.
- Paint the UV in Photoshop. Don't forget to turn the UV map layer off before you save it. You don't want the lines to appear on your model.
- Click and drag the .tif file into Maya's hypershade. Assign it to the color of whatever material you need for the object and you're done.
Largely, I think the group did well in pulling together so many different necessary parts of this project and producing as close to a finished project as was possible in the time frame given to us.
In regards to my personal portion of it, I think that I did a decent job. A lot of the textures I couldn't devote as much time to as I would have liked but due to time constraints I did what I could. In future projects I think there needs to be more fusion between the modeling and UV'ing aspects. Going back and having to edit aspects of models and/or remap UVs wastes a lot of time. I feel like modelers need experience texturing, even if they're not good at it so they can take into consideration the UVs and the textures when they're building the models.
Some pictures of scenes with some stuff that I textured:
(Textures: Rags, Little Girl, floor, window, wall)
(Textures: squirrel, flower, trashcan, cans, boxes, walls, doors)
(Textures: Rags, windows, boxes, trash cans, cans, window, door, buildings, floor, lamp)
(Textures: generic men, floor, flower, fire hydrant, window, walls, doors)
(Textures: generic men, floor, lamps, steps, buildings, doors, windows)
*There were 13 different variations for the buildings and windows and 4 different variations of the generic man.
Here are some other props that I don't think were in the scenes above and were not in my midterm post.
Final: Setting up the Setting
One of my tasks was to prop the scene. It involved importing buildings and other scenery objects and creating the city streets. It went through a lot of iterations and I cannot find all of them due to folders on the SOAC occasionally being wiped, but here is one of the earlier experiments.
Clearly there were problems with what would happen when the cameras looked down any street and it ended in nothingness. The current version fixes that issue by putting another street in front of the street.
Because the group worked on things jointly, someone took the street set-up I had and made it better. The street pictured above and the crisscrossing walls (to get rid of gaps, presumably) are not mine. I circled things I recall doing below: placing stoplights, plants, benches, and fire hydrants. The fountain is also mine.
Final: Modeling the Building, updated
Recap: for reference/inspiration, I used this picture of a 1920s-ish city street:
I sketched some quick boxes and settled on a 3 story building where the first floor would appear as a shop front with one large decorative and the second and third are apartments, with smaller plain windows.
I started with some generic shape as the base.
From the initial look, it changed to a building (dubbed "the restaurant") with awnings over the window and door:
Some features of the restaurant came and went. At some point we were planning on having a scene inside. For this I made a box inside the first floor and textured carpet and wallpaper on. Then I had to work on making the window transparent. This particular way of making the interior scene was scrapped in favor of some easier method where we could just use a PNG of the exterior to give the illusion of outdoors.
I sketched some quick boxes and settled on a 3 story building where the first floor would appear as a shop front with one large decorative and the second and third are apartments, with smaller plain windows.
I started with some generic shape as the base.
When it was finally time to import the building into the scene, it had to be scaled, rendering my original textures useless. But that's okay, because Greg's are better anyway. Some of the unnecessary faces were deleted to save on render time. The final street scene looks like this:
Final: Animation
The animation of Rags, was completed by Kevin and myself. We divided the tasks for each of the five scenes, on occasion helping each other.
Scene 1
Animator: Seth Konoza
Responsibilities: scene setup, Generic Men animation, Lady Red animation, Curtain animation
Scene 2
Animator: Kevin Monaghan
Responsibilities: scene setup, Rags animation
Animator: Seth Konoza
Responsibilities: Squirrel animation, Generic Men animation
Scene 3
Animator: Kevin Monaghan
Responsibilities: scene setup, Rags animation, flower animation, Car animation
Animator: Seth Konoza
Responsibilities: Generic Men animation, Car animations
Kevin and I both worked on the car animations and we both tweaked each others animations in this scene. We both believe the chase scene was the most grueling and demanding out of all the scenes.
Scene 4
Animator: Kevin Monaghan
Responsibilities: scene setup, Rags animation, Generic Men animation, Lady Red animation
Scene 5
Animator: Kevin Monaghan
Responsibilities: scene setup, Rags animation, Lil' Girl animation
Animator: Seth Konoza
Responsibilities: Generic Men animation
Pictures from animation process:
Scene 2
Scene 3
Scene 5
Scene 1
Animator: Seth Konoza
Responsibilities: scene setup, Generic Men animation, Lady Red animation, Curtain animation
Scene 2
Animator: Kevin Monaghan
Responsibilities: scene setup, Rags animation
Animator: Seth Konoza
Responsibilities: Squirrel animation, Generic Men animation
Scene 3
Animator: Kevin Monaghan
Responsibilities: scene setup, Rags animation, flower animation, Car animation
Animator: Seth Konoza
Responsibilities: Generic Men animation, Car animations
Kevin and I both worked on the car animations and we both tweaked each others animations in this scene. We both believe the chase scene was the most grueling and demanding out of all the scenes.
Scene 4
Animator: Kevin Monaghan
Responsibilities: scene setup, Rags animation, Generic Men animation, Lady Red animation
Scene 5
Animator: Kevin Monaghan
Responsibilities: scene setup, Rags animation, Lil' Girl animation
Animator: Seth Konoza
Responsibilities: Generic Men animation
Pictures from animation process:
Scene 2
Scene 3
Scene 5
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