BSG: Week 1

After a long deserved break, our team decided to look at the idea for our short with fresh eyes. So far our consensus for the story is all the same with some tweaking here and there. When we came to discuss our vision for the look of the film we had various conflicting opinions in every step of the pipeline. We decided to refer back to the pitching materials and found that we didn't have enough inspiration and resources to work with and come to a consensus about the look of the film. Our goal for this week was to demonstrate each person's vision for the film through moodboards and create a vision that everyone would be happy with. This process, involved two meetings outside of our class. In each meeting we would present our mood board and get each other's opinion. Once everyone had presented their ideas we would discuss what similarities each board had and how we can incorporate said idea into the film. The first meeting was figuring out the look of the environments and some lighting ideas. We came to the consensus that the abduction would take place in the evening. We would use create an ominous setting with artificial sign lighting and possibly using volumetrics to create a spooky mist. On top of that, we would place everything in a wheat field. We were focusing on utilizing cool tones for the earth scenes. For the alien spaceship, we decided to use a chrome white interior with more rounded forms and contrasting the cool tones of earth with the warmer tones in the spaceship. Originally, we were going to create a comic book style but decided after doing a little look dev research that we all would like it to have a more realistic style for the environments. The next meeting we focused on developing the look for characters and props. During this meeting, we decided that the events in the short would take place in possibly the 80s. We each had a lot of reference from old 80s films and even modern day shows that use the 80s aesthetic. Our main inspiration came from Back to the Future and Stranger Things. Our character would also be in their mid twenties as we figured a mid-twenty year old would not have to explain why they were in the middle of nowhere late at night. We discussed about the aliens design which is still up in the air at this point but we did agree they should be dressed in little lab coats and vests to make the aliens look more serious than they actually are. Our next step, is to present to our professor's and see if they approve our ideas and vision, and once we get the greenlight start concept art on characters and settings as well as prove to them we can accomplish this.

BSG: Week 2

This week we were still working on our concept designs for characters, props, designs as well as refining our storyboards. We thought we had somewhat come to a consensus but discovered that we still did not know and understand our characters. First, we decided on a time period for when the story takes place and we discovered that focusing on the time period limited our creative freedom. Our scope of the 80s was smaller than we originally thought and we discovered that there were various styles that were popular. It all depends on the character’s personality. Is he a rich snob whose corvette broke down in the middle of nowhere? Is he a laid back dude that just goes where the wind takes him leaving fate to decide? Is he a truck driver who just needed to stop to fill up on gas and use the bathroom before continuing his monotonous journey? We had no answers to those questions so our next step is to flesh out our character and then design him according to his personality and background. We also jumped the gun on our alien designs as well. We were trying to go for a cute up close but threatening from a distance vibe. We thought we had something, however we forgot the most basic fundamentals of animation. The silhouette. Also, the power of using primitives and the information they can give the audience. One of our professor’s mentioned the movie UP and how each character is connected to a shape and the characteristics that come with that shape. We will be focusing on the silhouette and the shape of the beings before jumping to clothes design which is as we have learned a whole different animal on its own. Despite these setbacks we have figured out the look of our environments, specifically the spaceship and the earth. The spaceship is supposed to have this sterilized feeling with white paneling and pale yellow lighting. We also decided to include the arch in the interior of the spaceship. We also decided to focus on utilizing the concepts of triangles and circles within the design as well. Triangle to make things feel a bit unsettling and at times threatening while the circles with their roundness ease the tension. There are still some complicated matters surrounding the spaceship but we are slowly chipping away at them and figuring out cohesive ideas that will be pleasing to the human eye.

My job this week was to develop concept art for the earth location. In the original storyboards, we had a guy in the middle of nowhere waiting for a bathroom. We didn’t think that made much sense so I researched designs for rest stops as well as gas stations. I even went out and took pictures of places that could be used as architecture designs as well as examples for mood lighting. After sketching out some basic ideas I found that my drawing skill level could not capture the level of detail I needed to present my idea. So, I basically conjured up another mood board of references for gas stations and rest stops and came across a movie set. I presented this to my team and we all liked the aesthetic so we decided to go with the gas station. My next job is to develop blueprints that can potentially be used when we get to modeling.

BSG: Week 3

Once again my team and I are focusing on finalizing our concept designs and refining our storyboards for our first milestone in developing our short. We have finally figured out who our character is, what he is doing, why he is in the situation he finds himself in, when does everything takes place, and how he deals with everything. We also established the collective mentality of the aliens and what their goal is. By establishing all this background we finally came to a consensus about the designs of the characters and are now formulating the character sheets. We are adding final touches to the spaceship and the earth.

This week I worked on finalizing the concept art for the earth location. I looked at various photographs of the movie set gas station and converted them into 2D vector images to establish the layout of the gas station and get the basic color scheme of the gas station. Since our character is a truck driver I researched popular semi-trucks that were built in the 80s and came across an orange 1984 Peterbilt 359 Semi-truck. My team liked that so I used various images and conjured up a vector image of the basic shape and design of the truck. I was also tasked with demonstrating how worn down the gas station is; however, I was struggling depicting it properly without having to redo my designs. I made the decision to focus on those details later once we get to the texturing phase. I think I captured the basic look of the earth setting which was my end goal for this part of the process.

BSG: Week 4

Last week, we had our peers and professors critique our storyboards and concept art. The first thing that was mentioned was to make our concepts more cohesive and to not sweat the small details. Some of the revisions we made to the storyboard took away from the central gag of our comedy. According to our peers, they did not understand why our character was messing with all the buttons and dials on the control panels. So we were given various ideas to try and reinforce the gag. On that note, our characters still don’t feel quite fleshed out and we might need to redesign or reinvent the mannerisms of the characters in the storyboard. We were advised to make the aliens more goofy and to caricature their design. Our human character, who we decided was a trucker, doesn't still quite feel real: we still don’t know who our character is and what they would do in this situation. I think this is because we haven’t revised our storyboards to suit this type of character just yet.

This week, we were mainly discussing what our next steps for the next production pass milestone. We still feel like we have a lot of revisions to do to the concept art and make them more finalized and cohesive. Two of the members are collaborating on a style guide to make sure there’s cohesiveness between the designs as they progress forward. Since the beginning, we had one person working on storyboards and that put us in a pigeonhole on creative narrative choices so we opened up the job to anyone who had ideas for gimmicks and the story overall. Hopefully, this expands our story and allows the disagreements about aesthetics to settle down.

Similar to the last few weeks, I worked on developing 2D layout but instead of the earth scene I worked on the 2D layout for the space bathroom. I however didn’t feel like I was doing enough in the short and asked my team for help. One of our goals for the next production pass is whiteboxing. We all greenlit my earth design so now I’m going to transform the gas station from 2D to 3D and experiment and see what will work and what will not. I will also try to refine the 2D layout of the bathroom to fit my team’s style guide.

BSG: Week 5

This week, we’re still fixing our concept art but we have also progressed to the whiteboxing stage of production. Three of the team members worked on improving and adding on to the previous storyboard. We also have started figuring out the look of one of the main assets in the bathroom and are experimenting with it in 3D. We’re also finally starting to get a nice cohesive look for our spaceship. That being said, one of our professors mentioned looking at the work of Syd Mead, a well known futuristic concept artist, for inspiration. By looking at his art book my team seemed to get more excited about the concept art and design and even created a pinterest board for more examples.

My job this week was to whitebox the earth setting, the gas station. I took basic primitive shapes and figured out the dimensions of each object in the scene and made sure it’s as close to scale as possible. I discovered that finding the exact dimensions of certain objects was difficult, especially objects that were discontinued. It involved a lot of research and estimation but so far it looks good in camera. I showed it to my teammates for a small critique and made some modifications. I was also told to whitebox out the Semi-truck. That was probably the most difficult since we chose a truck that was built in 1984 and is no longer made. In order to overcome this issue, I went directly to the company’s website and utilized the new model's dimensions. I also looked at diagrams and blogs of owners who own or are trying to sell their trucks. There was also a lot of mechanic and trucker lingo that I had to translate. Overall, I feel that my research skills have improved through this process. Next week I plan to do the white boxing for the abduction bay.

BSG: Week 6

This week, we’re working on whiteboxing our environments, tweaking our animatic, and discussing a cohesive style. However, as of right now we’re putting texturing aesthetics on the back burner we are making sure that our environments look geometrically similar with the exact dimensions and scale. This involved a lot of discussing and experimenting. Once we came up with our characters scale it made it a bit easier to make an estimation for objects such as doorways, stairs, ect.

My job this week was to whitebox the abduction bay using our team’s illustrations, the dimensions we agreed on in our meetings, and outside research. At first, it was pretty simple just working with primitives and figuring out the scale for a big open room. However, the original illustration for the abduction bay forgot to account for a balcony and stairs. We didn’t really discuss anything about the design of stairs so I just looked up futuristic stairs that would fit in with our current aesthetics.I decided to make floating stairs since it’s hard to create rounded stairs that aren’t spiraled. Even spiral stairs were difficult with the shape and size of the room. As of right now, there are overlapping geometry and crevices that don’t serve any purpose. The stairs no matter how I scale them are too close to the hole in the center of the room where the abductee comes through.I tried to move it but it didn’t look right. After discussing with my group, we came to the conclusion that our dimensions are too small to fit everything in the room without making it feel too busy. We decided to have someone else work on the whiteboxing for this and see if we can replicate the 2D design into 3D without causing lots of problems. That being said, I am still welcome to experiment and work on it, but I now have the job of preparing a base mesh for our main character, the trucker.

BSG: Week 7

This week we just returned from spring break. During the beginning of the week, we had a meeting discussing what our next steps were and reflecting on our notes from our last production pass review. We were each assigned a task that was supposed to be done by the end of the week. My job as I mentioned in my last blog post was to prepare the base mesh for our main character the trucker. However, this did not go according to plan. I was supposed to use one of my previous projects and attach it to another teammate’s base. This was a difficult task because it took me a while to go through my storage to find the right version of the project. Another problem was that one of my teammates had a resource for me to use to accomplish combining the head to the body but I was sent the wrong one and was not able to reach them until our established due date was. Also, after reviewing all our work I found out that my model was insufficient to use for the project. So this week, I will also be preparing the human base mesh properly. I will either have to redo the whole head or find someone who has a better base to use for the head and attach it with the proper resources.

BSG: Week 8

This week I have overcome the setback of last week. I didn’t have to remodel the whole head and used someone else’s old man's head. Originally, I was told that there was a video that would show me how to attach a head to the rest of the body but turns out there wasn’t one. So I just moved the pivot point of the head to the bottom of the neck and connected it to the front of the body and observed the space and placement; seeing if there was any geometry where I could merge the vertices together and then add more geometry to get the edges to flow. I connected the vertices of the back to the head since we knew the head was proportionally correct. However, this caused a big lump to form at the base of the neck. In order, to fix this I had to edit the edge flow and go into soft mode to smooth it out. I honestly forgot how to do this and my teammates helped reteach me the buttons to push to accomplish this task. There’s still a small lump but it’s less noticeable and should be able to sculpt it out when it goes into Zbrush. I made sure the geometry was functional by having the master of modeling (Professor Paul) look at it. He said for its current purpose it is suitable. I will now hand this model off to our sculptors and move onto something new. My plan for next week is to design some concept art for a prop for the aliens and possibly start modeling the earth environment.

BSG: Week 9

As stated in the last blog post, I began to model the earth's environment. We have a few shots that take place up in the sky so I created a very rough layout of the landscape. I’m still not quite satisfied with it and I need to talk to my group members about it when the time arises. I mainly focused on the gas station building creating openings for the windows and doors and developing the style of the roof. We have been using a very specific source when developing the gas station and so far it has been easy to replicate and renovate. I will continue to work on that gas station next week.

In addition to this information, we had our third production pass review. The storyboards were strong and will be even stronger when we add sound effects to our short for the next pass. Despite this our film is still having an identity crisis. The characters, specifically the aliens, don't feel like they fit in the environment we have envisioned for them. So we need to go back to the drawing board for all the spaceship elements. It appears that no one had any quips about our human character. Which I think means we have him and the earth's environments pretty locked down except for a few details here and there.

Our goal as a team is to lock down the world of the aliens. We need to understand how the aliens behave and the mechanics of their world. We were given various references to look up and research on. We really need to pick one aesthetic and stick with it. This has been very challenging for our team as we struggle to compromise. The clock is ticking and we need to figure this out fast.

BSG: Week 10

In the previous blog, I talked about modeling the gas station for the earth environment. I added secondary details to make the model look more interesting. One of my group members manipulated the space around it to make it look more like a gas station by adding a sign and a parking lot. In addition to these modifications, I added the sidewalk surrounding the gas station building. It’s still a work in progress as I am really struggling to get the rounded corners without beveling the edges. Another group member brought up the silhouette from the sky view and how it looked boring with a flat back so I extruded the edge a small bit out. My group suggested that I extrude the top of the roof in a bit to create a lip for the edging so I did that as well. I plan to finish the sidewalk of the building and add details to the front doors and start designing the bathroom door. I might also begin sketching out the sign for the gas station but that also depends on how long it takes me to finish the other tasks.

Our goal for last week was to lock down our aesthetics of the alien spaceship. We had many discussions about this and brain stormed. We have come to the conclusion that our aliens are the C-team of their species. They do the bare minimum amount of work like the average teenage worker. Based on my understanding, their technology is like a tree where the power comes from the center and then branches out into various spaces on the ship. We decided to make the larger parts of the ship organic and curved but the small details and parts are angular and branching with some wiring. We used the idea of a camera where the lens is round but the aperture is angular and sharp. Since we are nearing final’s week, we were given a small break over the weekend to work on other things and we’ll meet and discuss our next steps for our project.

BSG: Week 11

Previously I was modeling the gas station but we as a group decided to progress and let someone else take a crack at the gas station over the summer break. As soon as we returned from break, we had our first production pass. Our storyboards were in good shape and allowed us to continue on constructing our environments. There were a few tweaks we could make for animation but we will focus on that later. Audio was a whole different issue. Two of our group members had an argument about the music at the end whether it should pause or be continuous. I honestly didn't understand what the big deal was but in order to settle the argument we showed both versions to the class. The majority of the class voted for the music to be continuous. So at least we have that disagreement settled. We were told that the audio needs to be fixed and it would be best if we collaborated with audio students. We will probably send out our most extroverted people on that which excludes me. Our modeling was getting too detailed and taking more time so we were told to not spend so much time on the detailing for at least the rough draft of the short. Among other things our professors discussed the idea of layout which we are still figuring out. We established that for the next production pass we would have the gas station in Unreal Engine and hopefully begin rigging our characters.

As a result of this group decision, I was moved from modeling to texturing. I designed the logo for our sign. I still need to texture it but the model is not ready yet. I also was texturing other earth assets. I’ve been really focused on texturing the phone booth that is seen in the foreground for one of our shots. Unfortunately my first attempt was a little post apocalyptic but honestly I was just using that to refresh my memory on how to use substance painter. I also relearned the importance of look development and using reference. Which helped me figure out base materials and how they should look. I’ve at least made the base materials and will be moving onto other earth assets. I will come back to it when I need to and also get the group’s approval.

BSG: Week 12

This week our group is still chugging along. Everyone is still working on the previous assets that they were working on last week. Anna is still working on the alien as we are trying to make it look more comedic and still be somewhat proportionate. Riley is working on building the UFO. Josh is working on the main character. Logan is investigating Terragen for our long space shot. Isaiah is assisting Logan. I am still working on texturing the earth environment. Specifically, the interior of the gas station.

I added a small bit of grunge. I need to reinvestigate how to use mask generators to make the grunge a bit more prominent but also picking certain areas where there needs to be more grunge. I also started texturing the vending machines that will be seen through the windows. As of right now, I feel that the model is not up to par with the reference and it’s making it difficult to texture it properly. I will talk with the modeler and hopefully get these details added. If not I offered to fix the model but we will see what will happen. I might make my own logos for the soda machines to avoid copyright but first I have to get that idea approved by the group. We also decided to replace the Coca-Cola machine with Pepsi to add more affinity to the cool tones on earth. In addition to this, I feel like we don’t have enough contrast within the earth environment but the group thinks we don’t need it. I guess I’ll have to see the environment come together and keep on texturing assets that are ready.

BSG: Week 13

This week, my group and I are still working on the same assets as last week and even the week before that. Our work is starting to plateau. I think this is because our group is too scared to white box without the official drawings of the environments. Our professor’s noticed this too and warned us about this happening with current and previous years and how it could impact our short in the long run. On that note, my group is still not satisfied with the vending machines and they didn’t really take my opinion about contrast into consideration either. I was kind of blown off, but I’ll let bygones be bygones and continue with my work and come back to revise it later. On the bright side, I’ve made a bit more progress with choosing base materials for the entire back counter of the gas station. Once again, some of the geometry made it more difficult to texture but at this point we don’t need perfect textures and models we just need some sets to work in. I still need to do the refrigerators and shelves but other than that the set is coming together and should be ready to export for Unreal Engine.

I think we will achieve our goal which was to get the base earth environment into Unreal and see how it looks. The exterior of our spaceship has been modeled and is ready for use. The alien just needs to be re-topologized and it should be ready for rigging by next week. The human sculpt is getting closer to completion but we’ve had a few hiccups about the proportions and stylization. The good thing is we have a rig for a stand in so we can use it for layout and possible blocking animation. Overall, I say we are in good shape for the milestone but I’m worried about problems that might occur over the next week.

BSG: Week 14

Last week we had our production pass reviews. We achieved our goal of bringing the base of the earth environment into Unreal. Sadly, we did not get everything textured but it didn’t really matter since most of our assets are in the modeling phase. The story seems to be still working with our peers. There were just a few shots that needed continuity but that can be fixed in 3D. We also really need to get in touch with some audio people because I think they could come up with some cool stuff that we didn’t even think about. Our peers and professors seemed to agree with that. We finally got the concept art for the alien spaceship and we got some good notes about our whiteboxing. Our characters have been designed and now all they need is to be retopologized for rigging. We were told to conduct some facial studies for our main character. There is still some disconnect between the two human designs, but for right now our character is good enough to start rigging. One of my teammates experimented with Houdini to get the HyperSpace effect for the introduction of our short. On that note, the earth shot is a pain in the neck. One of our professor’s suggested that we could script a camera from google earth and that we are getting over involved in this shot. He also told us to look at references if we really want to do it. Basically telling us, if we want to do this, do it right. After this we all came to the conclusion that we should focus on 3D layout and rigging for the next pass.

As a result of this decision, I have been moved from texturing the earth environment and have started doing the white boxing for the abduction bay. Through this process, I learned I’m getting a bit rusty in the modeling department. Dealing with non-manifold geometry has not been fun but I’m learning how to troubleshoot. Logan has been really helpful in that field. Watching him work has really helped me relearn how to model at the industry level. So I got the base shape of the abduction bay and am currently working on the details, like the hallways. I’m also taking the square pillars I extruded from the hemisphere and replacing them with cylindrical ones so it will match the reference better. I will probably finish whiteboxing by Wednesday and might get to move on to actually modeling some of the details but we will have to see what the rest of the team needs from me.

BSG: Week 15

This week our group is still working on the same assets for the most part. Our rigs are still a work in progress. Our team manager organized our 2D animatic into Nuke to make it easier to replace shots with the more updated version. Someone is working on developing the landscape of Nebraska. They captured the likeness of arid Nebraska grass. The spaceship is rigged and is currently being tested. I am still white boxing out the Abduction Bay.

On that note, there hasn’t been a lot of changes since the last work blog. I did replace the square pillars with circular ones. Through this process I relearned about the bend deformer tool and got a better curve than relying on the hemisphere. If I show the geometry the pillars are more dense because of the amount of subdivisions. Also, I had to separate out the bays that were originally one piece into separate pieces. This was a step back as I had them separated out in the beginning. I guess we’re going to make a garage door system for the bay doors even though I’m pretty sure they aren’t shown opening up. I also did some rough blocking for the abduction device. Making them petal shaped to match the reference was challenging but I made the decision to make them look better in 3D because the scale is not the same in the reference. Going forward, I plan on making them a little less bulky. I will be adding the observation windows and maybe model the wires that are connected in the dome. One thing that I’m having difficulty with is creating the intricate patterns that are on the pillars. I tried quad drawing them but it’s not working out like I thought it would. I will research more about the quad draw or other tools that Maya has to offer that could help me accomplish this task. If all else fails I’ll ask my teammates and might let them get a chance to try it. I am hoping to have the abduction bay done by either next week or the next production pass at the very least.

BSG: Week 16

This week our group decided to switch gears and start blocking out the shots that take place on earth as the set for the gas station is close to completion. We were assigned shots on Wednesday and Friday we began to block them out. This was a bit of a process as it involved three different softwares so there was a learning curve to it. Thankfully, our team manager provided us with a tutorial to go through and learn the whole process.

For this week I assigned two shots A-020 and A-025. A-020 was a shot that consisted of a rapid pan down to an extreme wide shot of that gas station. I only had to animate the camera; there was no other rig that needed to be used. I copied the storyboard down to a T in 3D which later I would find was not the way to go as I forgot that the program syncsketch goes by 30 frames per second rather than the standard 24 frames per second. I didn’t find this out until much later and will be working on it this weekend. I learned how to transfer files out of Maya and put them into Unreal. This involved exporting the camera as an FBX with specific settings so it is compatible with Unreal. I learned how to navigate Unreal a bit as I have hardly any experience with this software. I was able to set up a camera in our master scene and render out of it. I rediscovered how much faster Unreal renders compared to Maya. Then, I went into NUKE where I basically just sequenced it together with extra information that we might need for our next production pass. It was during my comping in NUKE where I noticed my mistake and now I need to go back and do it all over again. In this blog post, I will post my sequence at the wrong frame rate but it will still give the basic idea of what I am trying to accomplish. I will be working on these shots and possibly more this weekend and next week as we are trying to get the whole section where the short takes place on earth. I believe we will accomplish this goal as our team manager established an efficient pipeline that is easy to follow.

BSG: Week 17

BSG: Week 19

This week we are focusing on shot production, specifically the shots that take place in the bathroom. We each took around 8 shots. I was assigned shots ,D_007,D_020, D_025,D-055,F_015,F_040, F_120, and F_155. I started layout using Maya. I focused on shots D_020 and D_025. Shot D_020 was a medium close-up of our character Jerimiah, pondering what to do to get the toilet lid open. In the animatic, our character is pondering but I added a turn towards the panel to signal what his next move will be. I found that the timing was quite quick for the turn and that we might need to add more frames for the next version but I made sure to stick within the frame range we established in the animatic. The next shot, was D_025 which transitions into a shot where Jerimiah approaches the panel scanning the panel anxiously and then focusing on one button. The twitching was easy to incorporate but getting the framing was a bit difficult. I had to cheat by extending our character’s arm further than it should really go. There is also an awkward popping in the arm. I might need one of my other teammates to look at it this weekend before putting it into Unreal.D_055 was probably my fastest shot to layout as it’s a still of the character fighting the suction tube and slamming his fist on another button in desperation. Once again, I had to stretch out our character past it’s original perimeters to attempt to match our animatic. The next shot I worked on was F_015, this shot was long and has over 134 frames. I’m still working on this shot as we speak. I still have to block out him pulling on the toilet lid in desperation and also incorporate the roomba or at least primitive geometry to represent it swiping to the left side of the screen. I did a quick layout of F_155. This was the shot with the alien opening up a panel to turn the key to open the lid while the Jermiah in the background watches in disbelief. I still have the other shots to work on. It will be accomplished by this weekend. I also plan putting my layouts and rendering them out in Unreal with lighting.

BSG: Week 20

Two weeks ago, we had our last production pass review before the preview screening. We managed to get all of our bathroom shots into 3D blocking and even rendered it through the pipeline with basic lighting. We had accomplished our goal. One of my teammates came up with various designs for the logo at the end of the film. We asked our peers about it and took a vote and now we have that design being revised and cleaned up. For our animatic, some of our shots felt visually cluttered and we were told for this next pass to consider not shooting inside the space and create a visual dreamscape. They gave us the tip of creating removable walls and sets to help with this part. As well as experimenting with the camera specifically the focal length to get our desired result. Our lighting was probably the most critiqued as our character did not stick out against the foreground, middle-ground, and background like it was supposed to. We were also told that we should make it more dynamic and create a sort of tone or mood with it. The lighting ring that we had towards the top of the dome was too distracting and needs to be removed. That was about it for critique. For our preview screening, we are being pushed to get everything into 3D. This means buildings the assets that contribute to the story and audio. We were also told to include basic window dressing: captions, credits, and audio if we have time.

As a result, three of us were assigned environment building while the rest continued to block out shots. I was assigned to complete the abduction bay. As of the writing of this blog, I don’t have much progress to show for it in images as I was experimenting with how to model the organic windows at the top of our dome. I also had to refresh my memory on how to prepare the geometry for live Booleans in Zbrush. I started out small with a little dome piece where all the columns merge and wiring will attach. The majority of the modeling in the abduction bay involves Booleans in Zbrush and then quadrawing in Maya. This will all be complete by December 6th. Then, I will go back to blocking shots and just preparing whatever needs to be done for the animatic.

BSG: Week 21

As stated last week, I finished up modeling the abduction bay, I say modeling but I should really call it blocking as it's very simple. I didn’t implement the boolean strategy from Zbrush as quad drawing the environment would take too much time and at this point we just need an environment to animate in. As a result, there are no windows at the top of the dome as the original design. This will be added after the preview screening. There is also no doorway as the shots in the abduction bay did not require them. What I did do was build the control panels for where the aliens are located as they observe from the second floor of the abduction bay that is in a couple of our shots. I also added chairs to help locate where the aliens are sitting. I also created temporary doors for the garage bays on the first floor. The audience will no longer peer into the nothingness that is the garage bays. I’m still not even sure what they will be used for as we have not discussed it and the concept art doesn’t give any clues. I prepared it for publish by going through and getting rid of references, freezing transforms, and deleting history in

preparation for its transfer into Unreal.

Once the abduction bay was published I moved onto blocking a couple of the shots that take place in the abduction bay. The first shot I worked on was B_010 this shot is a medium shot of our character Jerimiah sitting up and observing his surroundings. Then, I moved onto shot B_020 a shot that focuses on Jerimiah becoming uncomfortable with his surroundings and situation. I found that it was hard to depict someone without a face as uncomfortable. I consulted my teammates and found that having his shoulders scrunch up and his head rolls forward would be the best option to depict this. The only problem is it's hard to rotate the neck forward to make it look like he’s scrunching up on himself. Also, the rotation of the clavicles and shoulders was weird. Despite these setbacks I have something. Oh another thing to note with these two shots, is my teammates made a hat rig so now the hat will be available in every shot from here on out. We plan to go back and reference it into the previous shots and re-render them out. I started on this process, when one of teammates needed my help on a complicated shot. This shot we thought could be done by compositing but we found out that this was not possible. After much discussion, we came to the conclusion that my shot B_010 the one that came after it, would supplement the rest of the shot, thus I had to go back and revise my work for B_010. At the time this work blog is posted I will not have this shot finished as I need to add more frames and poses and will work on it this weekend.

BSG: Week 22

This week was about getting back into the swing of things after a month-long break. The first thing was having a meeting to review our short from the preview screening and deciding where to go from there. After watching our short, we as a team came to the conclusion that we need our main character done and rigged. This meant having him fully sculpt enough to create some sort of rig so we can start animating properly. That job was handed off to our sculptors. Three people started working on the clothes in Marvelous Designer. This left me and one other person to research how to do hair simulation as we didn’t want to just create a static hair sculpt. This developed into a deep dive into Xgen. We read and tried to follow tutorials but then we came across an error when trying to create a density mask. Turns out we didn’t have the UVS for our base sculpt and thus we couldn’t paint the mask on properly. Once that was fixed, we ran into another problem with the computers as it lagged for a long time (5-10 minutes per paint stroke). This was frustrating and thus we went back to the drawing board. Our professor provided us with a resource that could potentially help us get it to work. I’m going to experiment and see if my family’s gaming computer could help with this process. This will be attempted sometime next week. While waiting for the hair simulation to load, I decided to help model some of the props in our shots and help fill out space. I started working on modeling a clipboard. I used this as a time to relearn 3D modeling and try out some new techniques I learned while browsing the internet. Also, my teammates taught me some new tricks and I wanted to try them out. The board is complete but the clip is a bit more complicated and thus is taking longer. My goal for next week is to continue my study of hair sim and see if I can at least get it work properly before exporting it into Unreal in addition to modeling the extra props that we need.

BSG: Week 23

Our group worked together on Monday. After doing some research and talking with some of the professors the skepticism for using hair simulation grew with me. I expressed this to my team and as a result I was removed from the hair simulation process. I think it was also because only one person could work on the file at a time. I set up a test project for my teammate when the hair is ready to put into Unreal so we can figure out if it’s possible to animate in Unreal without utilizing the physics like they do in games. So far the research I have done has proven that this is not a possibility but our group is trying to prove it wrong. So as a result, I have been moved to work on assets. I started working on them but then noticed that we still do not have a consistent style within the spaceship. So then I was told to make concept art as well. I am not a good illustrator so I just found some references and sent them to my team to get their opinion. I am still waiting to get responses from the whole team and thus the asset creation has gone slower than I would like. As a result, I have modeled a clipboard which doesn’t need any concept design work done to it. I UVed it and put into substance painter and put some basic textures on it. I still need to export out the textures and put them into Unreal but I will wait until my team has figured out some of the bugs that have been happening in our projects. I will continue to work on the extra assets that we need for our short and at least get some basic textures on them. I will also be available as extra support for the group for when and if they need me to do anything.

BSG: Week 24

Last week, my goals were to work on the assets on our short and put on basic textures. However, all of the work I have done is modeling. I have not had the chance to put textures on them as I am working on getting as many models done as I can. The first asset I worked on was a paddle ball toy. I picked a reference and used a plane to create the basic shape of the paddle and then added extra geometry where I needed it. I also took a cylinder and tried to round out the top. I tried to figure out how long the string was and how to potentially do it. I learned that the string in a paddle ball game can be up to 4 ft long. In addition, there is no simple way to create a string as I asked our top modeler in our group how to approach it. They said it possibly could be a sim or something that can be added in post production. As a result, I was told it was good enough and to move on. The other asset I worked on was the alien’s beating stick. I found some references of four different designs and asked the team what they thought. We still couldn’t come to an agreement so I modeled them in 3D in maya as the process was just taking a cylinder and extruding it multiple times. On Monday, I showed them the models and we all came to an agreement on the first design as the silhouette was more distinct than the others. I continued on improving the model by adding booleans and bevels. I finished the beating stick today. Both of these assets still need to be UVed and ready for Unreal. I will have that done sometime this week. I will continue to model more assets and prepare them for texturing and Unreal.

On a more personal note, I have implemented the time sheet method Jeremy taught us a while back. I have noticed that I take a lot more time on these models than I probably should as I only finished two simple models in two days. I’m going to try and set a time limit for how much I work on a model, as my perfectionism is a real hindrance. I literally zoomed into the reference until every pixel lined up perfectly. I also am thinking about setting soft deadlines for myself as I noticed we are still not even a quarter done with our short and only have about three months to complete it. I am hoping that once the rigs are done we get really hit the ground running with animation, get that done and then fill in everything else. I have offered my assistance to my teammates but they seem to have a handle on everything so as stated in the previous paragraph I will focus on building assets and be there to support any of my group members with whatever they need.

BSG: Week 25

We had our first production pass of the semester a week ago. The film didn’t change very much as our group was troubleshooting and working on stuff behind the scenes. As a result, we were told for the next production pass we are only showing our film, not individual parts of the film such as assets, rigs, textures, and simulations. Everything needs to be rendered and in the film in order for our professors to properly critique our work. We were also told to stop spending so much time on everything, which has been a difficult challenge for our team. Since our film didn’t change much they did not have a lot of notes for us. Once we finished our critique we divided everyone into what they specialize in. I was assigned texturing assets. I was given a whole environment to texture so it’s been a slow process.

For the past two weeks I was working on texturing the exterior and interior of the gas station. There was a slight setback as I strained my hamstring over the weekend and as a result could not sit at my desk to work on anything for production and school for that matter. However after a few days of rest I adapted to my situation and created a workspace where I could work from my bed and not put too much stress on my leg. I started texturing the exterior but ran across problems with the UVs that one of my teammates did. I took a long time texturing as I had to paint textures face by face instead of by UV shells. As a result, I only have part of the roof of the gas station done and the median done. I will continue working on texturing the gas station both the interior and exterior.

BSG: Week 26

This week, there is not a lot to update on. My leg has been setting back quite a bit. Even with my new set up I have found that I can not work for long periods of time by sitting up in my bed as the pressure from the act of sitting is still painful. As a result, I am still working on texturing the gas station. I will focus more on getting the exterior texturing of the gas station done as it has more screen time than the interior. My goal is to at least have the basic textures of the exterior done in Substance Painter and maybe export them into Unreal and see if they look the way we want them to and take the time to also learn the texturing process in Unreal. If all goes well I will go back into Substance Painter and touch up on the textures and make them more detailed with things like rust, grunge, dirt, damage, ect.

BSG: Week 27

Everything did not go according to plan as stated in last week’s blog. First of all, I did get some base materials down for the gas station but now I am working on creating detail for the bathroom door. First I looked through the smart materials to see if I could get it to match the reference. It produced a okay dirt effect but the grunge wasn’t working. I asked my teammates and they told me to make the paint look like it’s peeling off the door and to add some rust. This is where the problems began. No matter what type of texture or mask I put onto the door it just came out looking like an abstract art piece. I thought it was the resolution issue and rebaked all my textures at a higher resolution but nothing changed. I met with the other texturer of our group and he discovered that the UVs were too small for the level of detail I was going for. After making this discovery we went back into the maya file and fixed the UVs and reexported the FBX files. Substance Painter does not recognize the new files as a result, I will have to start over from scratch. I will finish the exterior of the gas station by the next production pass.

BSG: Week 28

I did get all the texturing for the exterior of the gas station done by the production pass as that was my goal. However, there was an issue with Unreal and none of my work made it into the film. The issue I have with this is I was not notified until after the production pass was over and done with. That being said I was a bit disappointed that none of my work was shown. In addition to this our production pass review did not go very well. At least to me it appears that we are behind all the other production groups. The first note we were given was that our assets needed to be finalized and done a while ago. The professors were surprised that they had to say this to our group as in the past years all students focused on was assets. Due to this set back our second note was that the animation might have to go down in quality in order to get the film done by the deadline. We also found that our gag about the character needing to go to the bathroom is lost. So in other words our story does not land with the current vision we have. The timing of some of our shots needs to be reworked as well. All in all the production pass review in my opinion did not go well.

The week after the production pass review as well as spring break it was decided that we were going to split into two teams, one for assets and the other for animation. I was put on the animation team. My job was to improve the layout of shots and create more poses so that the animation can transition fairly well from the steps to a more fluid motion. This was the job for Monday and I worked on improving shot D-007. Then on Wednesday we had to reevaluate my job as there were not a lot of shots that needed layout to be improved as the more experienced animators in my team found a groove between them and already had a solid foundation for their vision. I basically was in the way. I still need to improve shot D-007 but I was also assigned D-010. In addition to this I will be blocking out the facial expressions of the character. We will see what will happen next week.

BSG: Week 29

We have officially hit crunch time. We only have two weeks until our last production pass and only four more weeks until a version of our film is shown to the public. Our production has been going slower than expected. We’ve experienced many setbacks. Some of these include issues with the software, mainly Unreal Engine. Our character becomes invisible in some of our shots and we’re still trying to figure that out. Now that finals are around the corner many people are having conflicts with their schedule and can not dedicate as much time as they would like to production. Life is messy. I’m a bit worried that we won’t have a full film complete by the deadline.

Despite these setbacks, I have been trying my best to get my work done and help the others whenever I can. It was stated in the previous post that I would be working on shots D-007 and D-010 along with facial animation. Due to crunch time, it was decided that I would do the facial blocking animation of the whole film. When I first started out, I found this very difficult. I kept running into issues with the rig. The first issue was that I could not see the eyebrows of the character as they were done in Unreal and could not be imported into Maya. It was very difficult to tell if the expression was changing or not. I also found that compared to the rigs in animation class this rig is very basic; all the controls have limits and thus I can’t create exaggeration expressions without breaking the rig. In addition to this, I could not get any help or feedback from teammates. It sometimes took days for them to respond and made it more frustrating. Once I got a hold of the team I explained to them about the issues with the rig. They told me we are locked down into this version of the rig until production is over and just make do with what I have. However, the eyebrow issue was resolved as someone created a texture where the eyebrows were located so I could see what they were doing and get the basics of expressions done. Once this was resolved I went back into animating the face for shots. My work time for the first shot I did was almost an hour. After discussing with my teammates, they told me to set a 15 minute timer and work on a shot within that time frame. So I did that and soon the facial blocking became easier. As a result, I got over 24 shots with facial blocking animation completed. For the rest of the week, I plan to continue blocking out the facial animation for the rest of the film and hopefully have it complete by Sunday.

BSG: Week 30

This week I am proud to say that I have finished all the facial blocking animation for the entire film. However, there were some setbacks and I did not achieve my goal by having it all complete by Sunday as stated in the previous work blog. First, I had to take some time and go through our film to narrow down on the shots that needed facial animation and ones that could be done later by the other animators. I made a list of the shots I thought I should do and then talked with one of the animators to make sure I didn’t forget anything or figure out where I could possibly cut corners for this iteration of the film. I also had them critique the work I was doing for shots in the A block that I wasn’t sure of. I got some good feedback and we figured out what my goal was for our next meeting. I was supposed to have all A,B, and C shots done by Friday. I did achieve that goal and even got started on D block. Over the weekend, I ran into some trouble. One issue was a personal matter. The other was I ran out of reference that the animators wanted me to use for certain shots. This wasn’t too much of an issue as I reviewed the storyboards and got a good idea of what expressions I could make and then meet up with the animators on Monday and got their input as well as asked for reference on the shots I couldn’t quite figure out myself. The last problem was the mouse I had been using broke and it’s hard to work in Maya with a touchpad. So I ordered a new mouse on Monday and was able to get it by Tuesday evening. This gave me time to work and I powered through all of D and F shots and finished it by today. My next step to help our production is to go through every shot and fix the hat on our character as it has had many issues in our renders. I will also be around and will provide any assistance that our team needs so we can get a complete film done by the due date.