Faster Rendering in Command Line

Using command line rendering is a faster alternative to rendering within maya. The result will be up to about 50% faster. The reason for this is you are rendering without maya open which frees up the computers resources that can be used for rendering calculations. I have used this while helping to render out the scenes. In a production of a larger scale a renderfarm will be the best alternative.

Child Solider Animating Test

While I was animating the child solider I could not make the child hold the gun with his two hands without doing unusual deformations. However I decide that he should hold the gun with one arm and the other to balance himself.



The child is walking slowly sidewards shooting randomly. Plus it is in a cycle so he can go on for longer than 3 seconds if you wanted. If there was rotation in the shoulders and hips the animation can be improved.

Walking in the Market

I have taken into account the market scene needed to be busy with people walking around which seems to be like a ghost town at the moment. So I told Moe I was going to make a simple slow walk cycle that he can speed up and down with the timings. With these variations you can multiply the cycle to other characters without having a complete duplicate which the viewers will notice.

Heres what I have done. Same rig as before no rotations of hip and shoulders

Heat wave effects

What I have done here is added a heatwave effect to the scenes to show how arid the place is without water. I did a test on a single frame for faster test results to see what it will look like. I followed this tutorial http://creativemac.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=34773-2 to create the heatwave but changed it to suit the films look. It gives additional movement to the scene which will look appealing to the viewer.

I have tried uploading a video on the blog but the video seems to be too small to notice any difference.

Cover run playbast

Animated a run covering his head. This will show that he is trying to avoid the danger behind him. Again the shoulders and hips can not be animated as the rig limits this.

Clothes to Model

More shots to digitise

This shot is pain stakingly to do as I had to rub out all the construction lines that were scanned in with the final lines. It is the best I can do quickly without going through drawing everyframe with the pen tool myself.

Animation playblasts

First try of animation which is not my strength. The person is shot from the front and falls backwards onto the ground. I figured out that the animation is less than 1sec and a little over 0.5sec based on the references. It is very quick and snappy.





This is edited further on improving the secondary animation to make falling backwards flow better



I did a quick run cycle with the same rig used previously. It looks ok however there were some limitations such as making rotations of the hips and shoulders which the rig does not have which will make the animation more fluid.


The previous video was running pretty slow. So I have redone the playblast. basically the cycle is hlaf the time as the previous

I then incorporated a gun shot in the back while running.

More Digitizing!

More shots im doing. In this one I didnt really know how to do properly as some frames were missing the Professors and Morts body. Also the I did not know what colour the cup was. I have finished all the long and hard part and given this to Simon to finish off as he is in charge of it all.

Two extra shots!

After I have done digitising the two shots that I had. Simon gave me two more shots to do and here is the finished product. Same process as the first but these have more unclean lines as all the blue drawn lines were grey scaled and line trace were picking them up. I have mentioned this to Darryl who scans them in to not grey scale them.

Taking out midtones for better result.

When using the livetrace in illustrator I realised that the live trace picks up everything on the frames. This makes the lines more fuzzy and unclean which has to be tidied up in flash. However before starting the livetrace in illustrator the frames should be taken to photoshop. You can take away the midtones using the level adjustments and bring up the darkness which are causing the defects. Then you continue the process through illustrator and flash. The result is that you will have cleaner lines.

Since there are lots of frames I created an action that will automatically go through all the frame removing the midtones. If you want a copy of the action file give me a message

Improvements to the Backgrounds

Darryl sent me an email last night that the set walls needed to be extended upwards and some sort of girders above the set to hold the 'floating lights'. The problem with the girders are its unwanted shadows. Their shadows will be casted onto the set causing problems. BUT this can be ruled out as in render options you can turn off its shadows.

Here's the results.

Digitize progress

So fars its going quite well. I did have teething problems at first when things wasnt working the way I wanted to. Its a process that took longer than expected indiviually working on every single frame.

Flash settings

These are the settings that should be used when digitising the frames in flash. it is the PAL size and frame rate.

Frames, Frames, Frames... Frames

Apparently Simon who is digitalising all of darryls hand drawn frames has alot off work to do individually converting them in illustrator, moving it in flash, adjusting them and colouring every single frame. He needed help and asked me to help him in the process. I am then assigned to two shots. They are the Fascinating and Starting shots.

Finalised truck

This is the final look of the truck. I have added a simple dark red vynal along the sides and textured the wheels. Moe has rigged the car wheels as you can see the non renderble lines. The reason for the dark red colour chosen is that the colour represents anger, leadership and wrath. Which works for the terrorists in the film.

Onto Texturing the Truck

With the changes made. These are the first look of the truck being textured. I have done the underside of the car incase of the truck being turned over. I hand painted everything based on the pictures of the car.




To give the truck the stylist look the film is going to be I tried filters like cutout onto the textures I made. It removed quite alot of detail so I changed it.



The changes were changing the filter to dry brush and manually adjusting the setting to the style I want.

Halt! Changes needed!

Moe has informed me that windows and doors should be modelled on the truck. It is pretty frustrating as it is not the first time changes has happened. However its good practise as I can expect this will happen in the industry. From now I need to go back a few steps model in the doors and windows. Then alter the UV maps again.

UV Mapping the Truck

To Uv the terrorist truck I prefer to use UVLayout. How I this is I export the truck from Maya as an .obj format and then load the file into UVlayout. From here I determined where the cuts are made (shown in the screenshot) and then it was placed into a UV grid. The magic of the program is the unfolding of the shapes. It flattens the objects and tries to reduce the stretching as much as possible. After the truck is saved again as a .obj file and loaded back into Maya. Here I make the final adjustments in the UV editor before I begin texturing.

Terrorist Truck

Moe have given me a job to model the terrorist truck that will be animated throughout the film. He sent me a blue print of the truck to be modeled. It was based on a Toyota Hilux manufactured before 1995. I was told to keep the model low poly also doors and windows are kept attached to the model. Therefore, instead of modeling in the details it will be drawn onto the texture.