YAY! Me and Rachel got the film ready for hand in

The film is in but with problems, Where to start? ME and RACHEL had to get all the film finshed for hand in on our own we started yesterday after leaving college and as usual James left early and had no intension to help get the film finished, even when trying to get the film in james continued to txt me to make sure he got the files from the film. he kept texting me saying wan and raph were in waiting for files which he would have been able to give them to wan if he had done the work and responded to numerous emails from wan asking for the files, Rachel had already tried to send wan the textures he wanted but due to the fact that James had done them made it impossible as quite a few of the textures were over 10mb which made them impossible to sent. the only reason a single textures for a single character would be over 10mb is due to the lack of texturing ability by James the "Texture Artist".

moving on... Even after me and Rachel had been awake for two days straight finishing the film and fixing James mistakes he still had the audacity to complain about mistakes which were his fault that we tried to fix. James offered Nothing to help finishing the film which was why it was right up to hand in before me and rach got in, if James had worked as hard as he claims to we would'nt have to have rushed the film at the end. there were loads of problems with james After Effects work he had completly ignored all the shot timings and made them to what ever timing his little mind wanted they did not fit with the render shots even though Rachel had given him all the timings with lables stating what shots were what. but what can you do if its a day before hand in and you still get handed incomplete and half done work. me and Rachel had tried to fix the Pda shots but in the end there was not enough time and they should have been finished weeks ago but James had Failed to even learn after effects before this week.

James was suppost to have done the credits with the title sequence but yet again failed to accomplish even the simplest of task's for hand in. Rachel had to do the credits a few minutes before hand in and I don't blame her for any mistakes as she had not slept and did not have enought time to complete them, the credits will be redone for the degree show and as they were for hand in they did not matter that much.

As for james complaining about Rachels animation being 'a bit poor' is laughable, none of James little animations were to a good standard I had to fix his window cleaner animation as it was not looped the bucket had not been animated and the sponge had keys rather than being parented, his chess player being animated in the wrong place even through me and Rachel had told him exactly where to animate him and his laughting character had one joint keyed for the laughting sequence. so even though James spent weeks animating he still could not produce anything to a good standard everything had to be fixed which took time.

Music and Sound were also an issue because Ben who was doing our music found it hard to create music to the 2d animatic which i had already stated that we should have done a 3d animatic as the timing and cameras would have been sorted months ago and Ben would have got the feel of the film which cannot be seen in a 2d animatic. the reason James gave for the 2d animatic was because everyone else was doing one which is quite pathetic. as for the sound effects Ben also had to do those because James had failed to contact his friend who was suppost to do sounds untill this week even though I continued to ask him to through out this term and the last. I was very pleased what ben had managed in the 3 days he had due to James incompetence, me and rach tried to add the missing sound effects last night and we did the best we could and we were happy in the fact that ben will continue to do sound for me and Rachel to now finish the film without being held back by James incompetence lack of talent and just being Lazy.


Summary of What I've Done/Fixed This Week

• Rendering with Rachel
• Compositing With Rachel
• Sound Effects w/Rachel
• Fixed James PDA AFTER EFFECTS work as much as I could to get them anywhere near long enough for there shots
• Rendering layers for compositing

Getting the Film Finished

Hello Again, Rendering has Started I have managed to render Scene 2 and 5 while Rachel finished the last of the animations needing done we did have a problem with the Jehovah Model as James had failed to give Rachel the correct file before animating so the models had to be replaced and the keys copied which wasted time, we have had similar problems with the sythe as james had not actually textured it till this week which should have been done long ago but what can you do?

We could have actually rendered Scene One as well but as you might have guest yep james had not finished that either which again wasted time. me and rach have managed to render some of scene 4 but again we had to wait on James Window Cleaner animation that was not even finished when we got it.

this week has been filled with more problems from James as he decided not to talk to me which is fine by me, he is very upset about his his sign being removed after I had to fix the scene, he seems to believe a sign of old people crossing the road would tell people that a building is an old peoples home when in fact the way people are suppost to know is by looking at the PDA animation that tells them with a picture and WORDS that it is an old people home.

All of my lighting is now finished as well as my animations and I have also fixed all of the animations that I could fix in time for rendering, me and Rach have left computers rendering over night in the caves, we did have at one time have 14 computers rendering which was hard to maintain as only me and Rachel Stayed to do the work so we can go in tomorow morning and see what is done. as you can see below the difference between my lighting and the default

Less Than Two Weeks

Hello again, not long left now this week has been really hard we are still missing some animations which will be a big problem for rendering if we don't have them ready for friday when we will be rendering.

This week I have managed to work out all the little jobs we have left to do and when we have to finish them, I'm at the moment going through all the cameras to make sure they look as good as possible for rendering. Rachel has managed to playblast the entire film for Ben to do the music to which is great because it means that the music can be done before we render. I have been some what held back this week as well by not having the hard drive with all the files due to james working on it, i got the hard drive today so was looking forward to being able to finish my last animation but i was shocked and quite annoyed to find that the first scene that I had concepted, modeled, textured and lit had been changed without me being told, even though I spent hours u.v mapping and texturing the fence it had been deleted as well as the texture on the rest of fence being change. I have spoken to james to find out why it was change but was'nt really given a good reason. I have now had to spend two hours to put the scene back to how it was originally which has been a big waste of my time as i would just like to get the film finished. After fixing the scene I wanted to start my last animation but when i went to import james's animation of the window cleaner i noticed it's not on the hard drive which is kind of wierd as i thought that was the point of me going into college and picking up the hard drive today, I had attempted to phone james 8 seperate times with no avail so i got Rachel to phone for me who got through first time so I can finally get the file so I can finish which has now wasted three more hours of which I could of been working.

Apart for the problems I've been having the film is nearing the end, i did want to render scene two tonight but without the window cleaner animation it would be a bit hard, I am just going to carry on with the camera for now.

Ross Wilkinson Has helped me with the settings for ambient occlusion tests which look really nice but takes ages to render from I think the point light system works quite well and I think I will continue working on the lighting with out the ambient due to lack of time left.

I have worked out so far all my completed jobs for the film and so far I have animated the old army man, Bob, Crow's, Rocking Tv watcher, Baldman watching TV, Grim and Jahova for Scene 5. I have modeled Scene2/4, Scene3, Bob, Old Army Man, Fatman, Baldman, Template, and assets for characters and environments. I have also done all the lighting and almost all the cameras. oh and more U.V and texture maps that i though was possible to create in a short film.

It is now 12:25am and i have still not recieved the window cleaner animation so I think I am going to call it a night, I'm quite fed up now if you can't tell and I just hope the next week goes better.

U.Ving, Texturing, Animating, Lighting anything else?

This week I am working all over the place there is so much to get done still and its quite stressful and problems keep poping up. I have not got time to texture all of my assets which I would like to do but I have to put getting the film finished before doing what I like, James has said he will Texture the assets for me but he can't U.V them so I have to, I have Modeled a tree for the graveyard which james was supposed to texture but when I gave it to him yet again he could not U.V so I had to and I also textured it for him just incase it was to difficult and I would have to end off doing it anyway. I think the film would be going alot smoother if James could actually do work and if he could do it without acting like he is doing you a favor. The point of working as a team would involve helping each other get the jobs done but james just seems to want to do what he likes without learning anything new which is causing problems.

I have got quite alot done I have been working on the animations which is proving hard as I am not an animator but I am trying to get them done as quick as possible.

I have been lighting scene 3 as well and I decided to change the stairs inside the old peoples home as I am not happy with the ones I originally created. here is a pic of the new stairs, the texture map did that me a while to get right as i wanted the stairs to look used but not unusable

One More Thing

For scene two we have an exterior shot of the Old Peoples Home which is on one file and the interior for scene 3 in a seperate file to save on render time ect. I noticed this may cause a problem when you see the exterior with no interior in scene 2 if that makes any sense. To fix this problem i have been testing merging the scenes to add an interior to the exterior which appears to work quite well as you can see below compaired to the lighting test shot which shows the same frame with no interior.

The End is Near

ok so theres 3 weeks left on Friday i believe and still quite alot of work to do but it is possible, this week I have have managed quite alot this week I have managed to finished the lighting for Scene 2 as well as start lighting scene 3. I have been mostly U.V mapping as well as finishing texturing and creating texture maps, I have done so many U.V Maps I have lost count, I would say I am very confident with creating U.V maps now which is a bonus.

I have now finished texturing Scene 2, below you can see the lighting I have created next to the image of the scene lit by ambient occulsion which Ross showeed me how to do. the ambient scene took over 5mins per frame to render without many textures and the scene I lit took 20secs with textures, I do like the subtle shadows of the ambient but the time it takes to render is too long.

This is the 20sec render

This took more than 5Mins

For next week I plan to have Scene 3 lit and textured so i can begin doing more animations and finalising camera work.

4 weeks left?

this week I have managed quite a lot I have animated the crows began U.Ving scene 2 and 3 as well as texturing so we have pretty much got scene 1 finished now all the animation is complete and we are about ready to do some render tests.

I have also been working on the lighting for scene 2 and 4 which i had some what of a problem with as maya decided to crash just as i had got the lighting just right so i have now had to redo the lighting which is now finally finished. all that is left for these scenes is the texturing which i have decided to leave till after the lighting so i can see the areas that will be seen the most to make the textures look really good

I have also Managed to finished the aniamtion for Bob and the Crows which I am happy with as I have not animated sinse first year.