Diary:

January 22nd: our introduction to the group assignment

This module interested me hugely, testing our roles on what it would be like to work as a small studio already, with deadlines, teamwork, and planning. Not only this, but it allows me to hopefully spread my wings on the Maya side of things, not being limited to only one animated object or any number of preset rigs and being set the task of creating full scenes within Maya. I am very excited to start showcasing some modelling, lighting, and texturing skills. delving deeper into this topic may require certain added research, such as looking into hair dynamics and particle simulations. I also found it quite humorous that our scripts were written by AI.

My tasks this week set by our group:
- gather references and inspirational imagery to help with our visualization of our storyboard
- research camera angles that would be beneficial to our storyboard
- give feedback on what we each have produced by Wednesday to start working on the animatic

Pinterest. (n.d.). Pin op history. [online] Available at: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/84442561744006548/ [Accessed 26 Apr. 2024].

LIBRARY, C.C. & S.L.P. (n.d.). Mining safety research, 1970s - Stock Image - C025/0173. [online] Science Photo Library. Available at: https://www.sciencephoto.com/media/664008/view/mining-safety-research-1970s.

Wikipedia. (2024). Otto Folin. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Folin#/media/File:1905_Otto_Folin_in_biochemistry_lab_at_McLean_Hospital_byAHFolsom_Harvard.png [Accessed 26 Apr. 2024].

While developing camera angles for our group project, I thought of an interesting concept. The item in the script, called the device, has a shiny metal coating; why not have a reflection of the main character shown on the device in one of the scenes? It seemed like a unique and clever way to show a plot connection between the character and the device, and it was an exciting task for me. The team liked the idea. I just had to figure out how to get reflections to work in previs, or plan time to render this short camera shot.

February 5th: Group Storyboard Review time.

The response our tutor Alan gave was well received; one of the suggestions Alan gave was to think about character design and how backgrounds in characters in movies or animations play a large part in how they are perceived and related to. Consider what she might be doing there, whether she has family, where is the place she lives located, has she always lived there, was she married, etc, and try to understand how representing characters often involves taking into consideration how the audience might categorise, or label, or maybe even pre-judge or depict a person to act in a certain way based on how they are being displayed in the movie or animation, to help us realise this and create the type of response we want from the audience, whether feeling sorry for the character, having envy for them, or being worried for them, etc.
Another suggestion was to maybe find some way of having certain objects like a wall go in from of the main device in our story to help cover the portal from the cameras view, to possibly create a more mysterious transition for when the portal in our story collapses/opens, our group considered these changes, We felt that the closing and opening of the portal within maya may actually be easily feasible and possibly still fit the agenda and aesthetic well, but we have this as a helpful backup if we find we do not want the audience to witness the closing or opening of the portal.

Building onto the character emphasis point we were given, one of the activities in class today was to make assumptions about an image of a man we were shown, like who he is what he does is he married what does he work as etc.. the man, later turned out to be Neil Armstrong. Although it seemed the class had all heard of the Name, it seemed none of us had put a face to the name when we were discussing it.

Here are some assumptions our class made about the man before the reveal of his real identity:

Name: Derek John 

Lives in America, Kentucky
He is a Government Official
Going for political talks about the economy crisis
He is Married
He has 3 Kids
He Cheated on his wife with his secretary
He is Living with his wife unhappily
He's Not happy with his job
He wanted to marry a guy
Around the time of 1958
He Likes Poetry

Thinking about characters and backgrounds got me thinking about what we already know about the character so far. So, I spent some time listing everything we know about the character, Dr. Wells, and also everything we know about the location.
So we can build on from what we have, and know where we can expand on next with our creativity.

Here below is the info what I've gathered from the script already:

February 12th:

I tried this week to collectively organize and discuss the direction of our project with our teammates, sharing ideas on Padlet, Aula, and on Miro. I felt we were progressing toward a more established outcome, and the project still excites me, especially now that we have been diving into simple modelling during this lesson. I had already, in the previous weeks, started modeling certain aspects of the scene that are of possible use. Below are some modelling parts that I have roughed out based on what we already had in our storyboards/animatic, common objects such as lab racks, bottles, lamps, tubes, tables, shelves, bookshelves, etc are all useful additions to our story and most of which are specified in the script we were given by our tutor to follow.

This week, I felt we made enough progress to start deliberating on task allocation within our Maya scene. Initially, our group aimed to divide larger tasks among members to ensure an even distribution of workload. However, for this Maya project, which appears to demand a significant amount of focus over an extended period, we've decided to collectively engage in the modeling process. I believe that adopting a collaborative design approach, incorporating various perspectives on how the room should look, will ultimately yield a more fitting outcome. This approach allows for a range of nuanced choices that I think resonate well with the interior as described in our script. Assigning the design aesthetics to a single member might lead to a more organized and universal appearance. Yet, considering our scene is envisioned as a "cavernous chamber of scientific inquiry," I feel it should feature a diverse array of devices and contraptions, eschewing a uniform aesthetic. Thus, a varied design input will enhance the authenticity and depth of our scene, aligning more closely with its intended eclectic and intricate nature.
Here is some simple modelling I have started experimenting with for our group project:

February 19th:
Today I've decided to continue modeling a lot more assets to add to the group project scene with the goal of creating at least some chairs and doors and tables, im making the assets from scratch based on reference images for the group project scene. Here are some of the assets I've made alongside the references.

Here are the links to the reference images I used:

LIBRARY, C.C. & S.L.P. (n.d.). Mining safety research, 1970s - Stock Image - C025/0173. [online] Science Photo Library. Available at: https://www.sciencephoto.com/media/664008/view/mining-safety-research-1970s [Accessed 25 Feb. 2024].

Adexa Direct. (n.d.). Black Height Adjustable Swivel Stool | Adexa WW115. [online] Available at: https://adexa.co.uk/Black-Height-Adjustable-Swivel-Stool-Adexa-WW115?language=en&currency=GBP&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiAxOauBhCaARIsAEbUSQSYiUHqzTDX1iBpWp7ytRpdVYtngVOc4fp-2ovEbKi1dvwReFCYpuoaAq32EALw_wcB [Accessed 25 Feb. 2024].

LIBRARY, R.J.G.P. (n.d.). BSL4 Pneumatic Seal Door, NIH - Stock Image - C050/4197. [online] Science Photo Library. Available at: https://wwwsciencephoto.com/media/1148963/view/bsl4-pneumatic-seal-door-nih [Accessed 25 Feb. 2024].

Yester Home. (n.d.). Ironbridge Aged Brass Shelf Brackets | 4.5/6/7/8/10". [online] Available at: https://www.yesterhome.com/products/ironbridge-aged-brass-shelf-brackets?variant=32784157737044&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiAoeGuBhCBARIsAGfKY7x1m_oY2hE_s9HtO70aGf9Z8y-OVXImN2MMNhCflDj5fPfMyCJiVpYaAkAJEALw_wcB [Accessed 25 Feb. 2024].

Here are some screenshots of the group project Maya scene ive put together so far:

On Wednesday this week (the 21st Feb), after our other lesson module, we filmed our live-action footage with the group; it was only Grace, Sasha, and me. We spent a bit of time before finding a room, planning for our live action, thinking about how we could represent items, objects, and lighting, and using our knowledge of camera angles. We created a rough representation of our "mystical device" used in our script, which we made out of paper and masking tape; we represented the streaking and flashing jolts of electricity that come out of the device with twirly red tape and flashing phone lights. 

I suggested for the live-action; we could use the same room that I initially found with Sasha when assisting on a previous project last term; this room allowed for the dimming of lights and had a table and a door, which were essentially the basis for our scene layout in our animatic. With a rearrangement of the tables and setting up our camera on a tripod for accurate and stable footage when shooting still camera footage, and utilizing a gimble for camera tracking shots for even stabler camera movements.
We each took turns arranging the scene and directing how each shot should look roughly. During filming, Sasha was nominated as an actor to keep the character height consistent, as if we changed actors a lot, the spacing, steps, etc., might change.
We took just under 2 hours to film our live action. We ended with 72 shots, which I sorted through and narrowed down to just 30, which left the usable shots and also some extra as we had a few shots we couldn't quite decide on so we thought it would be good to have some extra in cases to see which fits better later. I renamed them based on the different shots we had; then I uploaded them onto a Google link for our group members to access for the following editing to come.
As our group member India was absent for helping with the filming she offered to do the task of combining the footage with the animatic.

Our group is currently at the stage now of producing the animatic and combined live-action footage to give us a good vision and plan to start work on our Maya animation.

February 26th:

Today was our formative review with our tutor, Alan. He looked at our live-action and our Padlet and Miro pages and gave us good feedback. He also encouraged us to think about consistency and the types of buildings we would use in our Maya scene.
We spent some more time as a group examining building styles and considering how we would plan our scene.

Another idea I thought of today was when the portal opens, maybe the papers on her desk could get blown around or sucked into the portal. giving more reason for her worry about approaching it.

March 4th:

In our initial storyboard, we hadn't really drawn or mapped out the walls of our scene from all around, so we had to figure out logically which direction our walls are and how the Dr would move in between shots, so I decided to create a much clearer layout for the team of how we could divide up our animations.
I took a bird' s-eye screenshot from our Maya scene, so we had a good map of the room from above. I then took this into photo editing software to annotate the path that the doctor could take, some movement information, and where the camera could possibly be placed to get our desired shot.

March 11th 

This week, we were to start our animation.
Although I was in charge of the Maya side of things, I wanted to give the team a choice on what shots they would prefer to animate, and I would address the shots that were left over.
The shots I ended up getting assigned to do after a group discussion were the shots where she is at her desk looking away from the device; she then gets up and turns around, picks up the device, and interacts with the device by moving it around in her palms and turning a switch on the device. She then sets the device down in a slightly different location on the table, to help keep it aligned with the following shots given by the others where she continues to pick up the device from this location in the following shots that the team would animate. This is to reduce continuity errors and helping the actions align between shots.
Hiding parts of the scene and the walls while animating helped me get a better view inside the scene. I also explained to the team on Aula how to hide parts they wanted to help animate within the scene and how to access the blend shapes for the characters' facial animations. I give thanks to Milo in my animation class, who helped me locate the facial controls.

March 18th 

I got most of my blocking out of the main poses during this week, and was confident in the scheduling I had for these tasks and that I would be able to complete the rest of the animation and facial animations in time.
The most fiddly bit I had to deal with and learn methods for were when the doctor picks up or places down items.
I knew from previous experiments in Maya that you can't typically animate the parenting aspect to individually turn on and off as it requires going to the constraint tab at the top, and this tab isn't keyable, without scripts, which aren't my forte yet.
I quickly learnt after querying with my tutor Alan that he recommends having duplicate objects and just hiding one at a time and conversely switching between the two mid-animation for a neat transfer of objects from one place to another.

March 25th 

This week was half-term, and I spent my time getting most of my cameras in place for my shots, making sure I had the camera angles and shots demonstrated from within our live-action, storyboard, and short film.

April 1st

Still being half-term; This week I made sure my lighting was set up in adequate places to ensure visibility.

April 8th

Today, I wanted to show my team what I had completed and animated so far and get feedback. I was hoping the rest of the team also had work they could show me so we could get an idea of how far along in the animation process we are and when we could start combining our animation and our modelling into one scene.
I was pleased to see most of Grace's and Sasha's animation on the way. They also had some assets they modelled in Maya, such as some science lab equipment and a notepad, which we could hopefully combine on Monday next week into one scene with all the different cameras and updated objects.

Towards the end of this week, I managed to get some more modelling done and tune the light levels in the room a bit better, and also finally managed to get hair simulation working for our scene where the doctor's hair stands on end.
Here is an image of another model I made in Maya based on some references that I thought looked perfect for our 1970s Laboratory.

April 15th

Today, I asked the team if they could start sending me their animations so I could combine them with all the new assets we had, such as cooling units, glass bottles, tables, containers, notebooks, pictures, and my hair and portal setups.
this was a struggle as many of the animations had cleanup work to do- not within the animation, as I didn't want to interfere with their own animated work, but when aligning between the animations.
At this point, I had the group work to send back to the group and realised I had to do this fast, for the whole team is waiting for the combination and the playblasts.
my plan is to have everything in place by the weekend  so that any final neccasery changes can be made by anyone, by me Archiving the scene and sending it to an individual if they still need to do any last minute fixes to areas.
I also offered to do any changes myself if any individual wanted me to try to improve areas, but only once I have already playblasted out the animations, so we can see the unaltered, combined result of all of our animations, and then we can all see the progress and changes we made after.
I felt okay with helping in some areas, as other parts of the sections of the project were heavily handled by individuals, such as Grace, who drew a large proportion of the storyboard based on the whole group's input and ideas.
Also, although I laid out a bird's-eye plan layout for the animations for our group, it did not follow some member's plans exactly. This, so far, has not caused serious errors like I thought it might, such as continuity errors. I discussed with the group about how the animation actually being misplaced- but now, closer to the door, helps this detailed camera shot part (to which I added the animated hair) to actually be more visible, helping to understand the shot better. Grace agreed with this idea, so we have kept it as it is for now.
I also suggested that if it doesn't align properly, we could do some sort of a fade to black and back to use it as a transition shot—as if time had passed; it might help to blend the cut.

I did a few playblast tests and sent them to the team, getting any feedback they suggested- along with asking what we would do for the entrance shot. Grace suggested we could easily make some sort of simple terrain; I felt this was a good idea.
I also suggested that some of the group make some more posters to stick on the interior walls as science diagrams; Sasha had already made a good one.
One idea I suggested to the group is maybe a periodic table-like thing with some of the elements crossed off, and in the story, she could be trying to find out which element the device is made from. Grace set out to work on some illustrations this week.

Here below I have spent some time thinking technically different ways of how I would go about creating a representable portal for pre-vis within Maya.
Here are a bunch of different ideas I had:

• Smoke simulations that follows geometry and morphs its shape from a cube (the device) to a circular smoke ring (portal).

• Using spherical geometry and transparency with light to create an emitting orb that shoots out lights between the emitting gaps in its transparency. My tutor Alan, showed me this technique, and I was greatly supprised by its simplicity after watching it in the viewport.

• Using MASH nodes within Maya to morph any one shape, into another shape, using references and expressions.

After experimenting and testing numerous different variants, I thought I would go with a blend between the latter two, as the simplistic nature of transparent objects and efficiency of working with MASH networks, this felt like a good balance, letting me give good directions and representations of the movements the portal would take, by using the MASH network- but also using simple texturing methods along with transparency and light to give a greatly immersive and emitting experience which I can envision beyond the pre-vis setting.
I used an image i created from Midjouney using my usual approach of repetative altering of text input promps after many attempts to get the right portal texture. The prompt I used was "purple, void, portal, whirlpool, swirl, ripple, simple, vortex, black, hole, vibrant, universe"
Using this specific prompt resulted in an amazing colorful portal texture that i could slap with transparency onto a portal shaped disk and animate the UV map rotation attribute to spin this texture around the oval shaped portal.
I find using bits of AI for small aspects such as these in the pre-vis setting are suitable and time efficient. Often AI generations are still in the uncanney valley area, but for previs settings, the slightly rough images are great placeholders, for what would be perfected in the final render.

Grace and Sasha also expressed corrections to the lighting, such as making the blue nighttime light coming from outside the windows darker, as it originally seemed too bright. I agreed that this was a needed change. Grace and Sasha also offered to help in other areas; Sasha went sound hunting and found 33 unique and useful sounds to help increase the ambience as well as the narrative within our animation. And Grace set out to make a poster to stick on the wall; she asked if anybody had any suggestions, and I thought a valid idea would be to have the Doctor in our scene, be trying to figure out what material this mysterious device is made from, so she has been crossing off elements from some sort of periodic table. Grace thought this was a great idea, so we each had our plan and goal set this week, gearing towards a more complete pre-vis.

April 22nd

Today i got feedback from our tutor Alan, he gave me feedback on parts of the playblast which I started addressing during the lesson.
The feedback was to do with the intro shot, and the camera moves in general.
apparently, I didn't really need to create a detailed or even have a full scene to go with for the exterior slow zoom-in intro shot. Often, if it's previs, the exteriors are already planned and the previs isn't about environment detail it's about understanding where things would go for the final render later. I made the intro shot less zoomed-out at the start so that its a bit closer to the window, and experimented with transparency on the glass to see if i could get the inside room looking okay from the outside.
Also, our camera moves needed improvement. It seemed that a few of us were using the camera to display our animations rather than follow the exact plot we had planned from our storyboard and live-action.
To address this, I notified the team what needed to be done and started levelling out the camera movements in place, keeping pretty much all the same keyframes and timings on the cameras that my team created, and just creating a lot less curvy lines in the graph editors for the cameras; leading them to be much more steady when moving, or in some cases making them completely static by removing bends or curves in areas between two keyframes that are already on the same value level. Often, the bezier tangent handles were angled and just needed flattening.
I made another addition that my team liked today. One of the technical panels that I made for the laboratory apparatus had a small dial on it, which looked like a pressure gauge. I thought of having a closeup shot of this panel with its sensor rising rapidly to help build the tension during the part when the portal opens. I also created a slight bumpy movement and camera shake by animating small changes in the camera's translations, which really added that tension and dramatic impact aspect, making the viewer wonder more about what will happen next.

On Tuesday sasha sent me the sounds toedit with, and on Wednesday, Grace set out to make one final drawing for the notepad the Doctor writes on.

January 22nd: our introduction to vehicle animation

Starting out this module, we were encouraged to research the topic of vehicle movement in: "Reality vs Fantasy."

Some ideas that came to mind when I was briefed were movie scenes such as those that were shown in the animated movie Cars, all the way to action films such as Fast and Furious, and sci-fi movies such as Transformers. I decided today to research further into vehicle physics in movies on my research page.

January 29th:

An individual task set today was to complete a series of camera tasks given in the form of Maya projects for us to complete and then export the frames and combine them into an MP4 with Adobe Media Encoder for homework by next week.
I managed to complete all these tasks on Tuesday. Shown on my final work page.
I found the tasks fairly easy, and I found the tutorials gave a thorough explanation and walkthrough of camera angles, all the way down to the spinning and warping feel of the Contra Zoom shot.

February 5th:

We weren't actually given any individual work this week from our tutor Alan, but I did end up expanding on my vehicle research on my research tab by around 30%

I decided that after listening in class, I would test myself with what I had listened to and learned from our tutor's demonstration in class. I would try to do the task without watching the tutorial given on Aula. Apart from one issue where I had to redo the roofing, it was a very smooth sailing task, and I completed it all within the lesson session without needing to look at the video tutorial. I felt I had demonstrated efficient and precise modelling.
I really enjoyed this task. It was more of a refresher for me as I have taught myself basic modelling in Maya in my spare time. I also understand basic modelling from my experience with Blender, which carries over many similar concepts, such as keeping organized and neat UVs and using quads and triangles for each mesh face.
After completing my model, I wanted to go beyond the tutorial by including smoke in the chimney, which goes above and beyond the brief.
One improvement would be that I feel I could have colored the smoke or background better as the smoke does not stand out much.

One thing my classmate Deon brought my attention to was the logic behind this object. In the state given in the video tutorial, the toaster's handle seems to be down, which means the toast should be down in the toaster if the toaster is pressed on, but it's not. So I decided I would make it better by complying more with the standard toaster controls in reality.

February 26th:

Today we were given a task to complete during the formative reviews, it was to complete modelling a candle in Maya, i completed the task during the lesson, it was another enjoyable and simple creative task.

March 4th:

Outdoor Night time and Day time:

March 11th:

This week's independent work was to research and come to a more concrete decision on what vehicles we would animate.
After initially looking at our tutor's (Alan) website earlier in the term, I found a couple that spiked my interest. Ones such as the forklift, the sedan cars, and the helicopter. After experimenting with these models during the week. I decided on choosing just a sedan car and a helicopter. I wanted to hopefully fulfil the brief and go a step beyond by creating a car animation alongside a helicopter animation, a two-in-one, fast-paced action previs scene. Understanding how the physics and the objective movements these vehicles follow interact with the rest of the scene is critical at visioning a well planned previs sequence.
I decided to watch Fast and Furious—Shaw and Hobbes on Tuesday to keep an eye out for how the cameras track vehicles in movies. From inspection, what I can see is that there is still a large amount of time the camera is on the character inside the vehicles. This may be a limitation when approaching my vehicle animation, as I am unsure if it will still seem as engaging if the camera is only on the vehicles.
My plan is to use many cameras around the scene, as I have noticed that it changed shots pretty often in action sequences. So I have used some cameras parented onto the vehicle to give more of a perspective from the driver, and placed some cameras on the corners of streets which are tracking the car to show when it skids round to corner to highlight this motion, and I have used some still cameras to capture the speed as the vehicles seemingly race past the cameras.
I have already practiced how tracking a fast paced car would look through the lense of a maya camera, by animating small bumps in the rotation and position of the camera that is parented into the car, making it look more realistic through the camera lense and makes the viewer experience and feel as if their more emmersed with the movement of the car.

March 18th:

This week, we were briefed again on the instructions and the direction we should take for our vehicle animation. As I was already keen at starting this task, and I had already experimented in the previous week within Maya, so this week I set out the task to reinforce my statement on why I'm choosing these vehicles.
I managed to create models for my building using the useful tool called Luma, from lumalabs.ai
This tool is very efficient at creating quick 3D meshes based on prompts, which I find particularly useful for pre-vis, seeing that pre-vis is like an efficient layout for final animations. Asking for items such as 'New York skyscraper' or 'Tall Parallel Street Building' were great prompts that yielded great placeholders for more detailed structures.
From my experience, mentions of phrases like 'parallel' helped the algorithm and yielded much more straight-edged, realistic buildings. I'm convinced that with further prompt engineering or software updates, even greater results can be achieved.

Luma AI. (n.d.). Luma AI. [online] Available at: https://lumalabs.ai/.

March 25th:

This week was our first week of half term.
Over half term, I set myself the goals of getting my vehicle animation complete and, if possible, the structures around my scene. Some of the details I wanted to construct in the short narrative within my animation are the visuals of explosions and smoke coming from the vehicles, whether from crashing or the exhaust of the cars, but I felt this part of the process would come later on in the project if I had time, keeping in mind they will be simplistic simulations to help convey the time-efficient nature of pre-visualisation alongside its needed clear direction without having unnecessary high-quality visuals.

I managed to complete the animation this week and complete most of the modelling, and even add a bunch of static and animated character rigs to help set the atmosphere and scene for conveying in my vehicle animation by using assets from our tutor's assets page alongside a couple of models from TurboSquid.com

https://digitalmcguffintut.wixsite.com/digitalmcguffin/previs-rigs
https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/eric-rigged-001-1422553
https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/claudia-rigged-002-1422551

April 1st:

This is our second week of half term. I was mostly finished with the animation for the vehicle at this point. I had pretty much all the cameras and animations in place; I was just adding special effects, such as some smoke. I ran into an issue where in my vehicle animation using the Maya default 3D fluid container seemed to have limits that I could not change in the attribute editor. after hours of trying to get my smoke container to continue expanding without limits, which was the issue. I have 'expand box' enabled, but when my car drove far enough away, the container followed for a set amount of distance and then stopped expanding, and yet I have all the limits turned off. After this hurdle, I spoke to my tutor Alan and he had some very useful 'Sprites' or simple previs smoke and fire setup using lots of little image planes that I could use and attach to my vehicles for a much more efficient method. This helped tremendously and required next to no research on YouTube or other platforms, unlike my experience with N-particles or MASH, which required countless tutorials.

April 8th:

I was mostly finished with the vehicle animation by this point. I had pretty much all the cameras and motions in place; I am now in the process of playblasting everything from each camera angle and combining it in After Effects to choose which camera angle will be filming for what shot so I can cut up the playblasted clips and arrange as desired. Possibly also adding transitions in After Effects if the narrative or direction of the scene calls for it.
I also searched online to find sounds I could use for tyres skidding, people shouting/screaming, helicopter sounds, engine revving sounds, explosion sounds, etc.

April 8th:

Today, I finished most of the simulations I wanted for my Vehicle animation. I worked with nparticles to simulate destruction on a building as the helicopter crashes, emphasising the close escape by the car.

April 15th:

As i was handed main management over the maya side of things in the group project and had to combine our animations i spent most of this week focussing on this.