laikaanimationtamara

[laikaanimationtamara]

This is the completed Star Sailor-1 Animation as shown for our end of year Exhibition Showcase. 

#animatedsequence #postproduction #finalanimation

[laikaanimationtamara]

Just as a nice little final tribute I got an Oscar trophy-style statue prop and repainted it to show and have in the class for our final day in celebration. I think it’s a nice little cap off to the degree and project so I’ll share a picture of him here as the final thing before the Final Animation.

[laikaanimationtamara]

I used just about every single computer in the second classroom as a Renderfarm along with a few computers in the main classroom to make sure we were getting all the frames. They were much faster than the computers in our room and no one else was there to deny access. As long as the computer was functioning, it was usable for the farm. It helped to spread the load as the files were heavy with the XGen and/or particles and it meant I got very good at quickly reapplying the textures once we worked around having each scene needing new fur into just needing the texture files reattached.

I used the Renferdarm for pretty much all the scenes to render Laika isolated from the backgrounds and depending on the shot, sometimes the particles with or without the background as well so we could combine them in the best way that worked. There were several things that needed to be rendered again including down to the final morning before we finished and it never would’ve happened on time without the Renderfarm. We joked about me having a Renderfarm at the end of the first term when I had like three computers going at once before that hand in but this truly lived up to the name.

#production

[laikaanimationtamara]

Bird & Cat Reaction Shot

While we were putting everything together for the shot we realised the timing wasn’t quite right between the 2D and 3D animation and it just needed a bit of tidying so I retimed it from scratch and kept the essence of Levi’s original movements, adding a few small things to just make the movements a little more natural. For this I was working with the barking audio to try and time her mouth opening right. Veronika and I also thought that it would lbe framed better if you saw just a bit more of Laika so her neck was more visible rather than an odd cutoff point for her head.

I had to do my timing separate from the 2D animation and sync it up after each test in After Effects due to After Effects slightly shortening the length of the exported frames from Maya so this took about 15 rounds to get right and was a lot of back and forth but I’m happy with the end result. While it was a pain to do and at the time required moving back and forth between the computer I had Maya open on and the computer I had After Effects running on, it probably worked out for the best testing it straight away as it meant I could immediately see what needed to be tweaked each time. I didn’t have enough SyncSketch space for all the versions in a playlist so instead, I’ve uploaded the first and final versions so you can just see the progression that way.

Please refer to the final animation to see it textured, rendered and composited into the final shot with Levi’s background and the 2D animation. Scarlett and Veronika did the Post Production work on it to combine them all together.

#animation #production

[laikaanimationtamara]

Water Wave Sequence 4

I believe it was me who animated Laika for this shot as I have the files in my naming conventions and the playblasts for testing. I did a test in the capsule template file once the animation was done to check that she was in the right spot. This was a pretty quick shot to animate which I did with Veronika’s input and made sure it lined up with her last position in the capsule from the same view to keep the continuity.

To make sure Laika was properly layered into the shot during compositing we did the same general steps as adding her into the Space Reaction/Shot 10 scene. Scarlett was a big help on all the compositing and passing the shots back and forth with the Renderfarm I had set up after Holly had textured it. 

During editing, Veronika added the lens flare effects for the cat eyes that lead into the following shot. Removing the Bubble Waves involved using the isolated Laika renders instead that I’d also run through the farm to work around the slightly weird compositing order that was needed with them.

#animation #production #postproduction

[laikaanimationtamara]

City Scene & Shadow Dogs

The Shadow Dogs were cut entirely due to technical issues with them. The Rig simply wouldn’t bind correctly with the Mesh; it caused various issues and was unusable. We just couldn’t reconcile the issues and it came down to them being time I needed to spend elsewhere on things that needed to be in the final animation. It was sad to see them go but their inclusion in that state would not have added anything to the animation. I’m so grateful to Rachel for all her help with them and I’m sorry that they didn’t work out for the time she also put into trying to get them to work with me but we really did all we could.

Using the Base Runcycle for WWS2, I created another variant of the run that would fit the entire sequence inside Holly’s city. I then handed that to Holly and showed her and Scarlett how to import the file and attach it to a Motion Path using a very basic mockup file.  From that Holly was able to add a running Laika to go through her shots.  I’ll add those screenshots here to fully demonstrate the process.

#production

[laikaanimationtamara]

Water Wave Sequence 3

To fix the Cache for this shot I had to adjust the timing/time slider so that it matched for both files. This file was originally one long file before being split but the run file started at Frame 1/0 rather than partway through. Once the timelines matched the file worked again. The next problem was that the file was so heavy (even with the particles removed/turned off) that once it rendered everything it crashed and deleted the Alembic meaning it had to be readded each time. The Motion Path stayed however so once it was sent to the Renderfarm I just needed to reattch it and do it in very small chunks. 

There was an error with Shot 3 that happened with every render that we couldn’t fix where Laika’s run bent oddly on the motion path even after we remade it so the glitched bend was no longer in the scene. This also meant that the transition with the bubble waves no longer connected well and looked disjointed. The workaround during editing ended up being to zoom in on shot 3, slowly zoom out a little bit to hide the weird glitch and then Veronika overlaid more of the particle layers to transition into Shot 4 without the bubble wave in front of it.

#animation #production #postproduction

[laikaanimationtamara]

Water Wave Sequence 2

The rocket was removed as it just didn’t fit into the scene. This also allowed us to instead use this as a closer shot of Laika rather than having to scale her down in relation to the rocket.

Scarlett added a water reflection effect via After Effects which runs like an extra layer in the composite order and basically acts like a mirror overriding the original bottom half of the screen with the particles that fall in that area essentially embedded.

#animation #production #postproduction

[laikaanimationtamara]

Water Wave Sequence 1

Final tweaks were made before the scene was then passed around between Scarlett, Holly and myself for setting up the run on the motion path in the scene, putting it through the render farm, converting the EXR renders to TIFF files in Photoshop to create the Laika sequences with the Oil Paint Filter effect and then coming back to be composited together with the rest of the scene in After Effects. This same process went for all the other scenes as well.

After she was added into the scene I added a reflection effect to match what Scarlett had added in WWS2 but rather than use the same method I used the literal Mirror effect tool within After Effects on just the Laika renders and then adjusted the settings to match. This allows her reflection to pass through the particles without clipping with them and meant there wasn’t a visible mirror line. I manually rotated the reflection to be tilted to the side.

#animation #production #postproduction

[laikaanimationtamara]

Paddle Shot

The fur was added, the scene was rendered and then composited on top of the background I’d made for the scene. Veronika and Scarlett then took this to adjust the colours and lighting to match the shots around it. This was why I wanted to make the background in neutral colours so it could all be colour graded and adjusted as needed later. 

Please refer to the Final Animation video for this shot to see what they did to it in Post Production.

#production #postproduction

[laikaanimationtamara]

I wrote out all the shots that needed to be done on a whiteboard which we used like a to-do list where we added notes and scribbled on it to show who was doing what and what was being worked on. This made it a little bit easier to coordinate and visually see where we were at with everything. As we finished things we were crossing them out and it was so satisfying. It was eventually erased to be used for other things but by then we pretty much had everything on the go anyway.

#production #postproduction

[laikaanimationtamara]

Separation between Term 2 and Exhibition

[laikaanimationtamara]

These are the Production Schedules I was making for the group across Term 2. You can see how things shifted over time in a very non-linear way. This was due to continued unforeseen delays with the Modelling and then the Rigging which left us a very tight turnaround window to put our final submission together.

#schedule #preproduction #production #postproduction

[laikaanimationtamara]

This is the Animated Sequence I’m submitting for the end of Term 2 and the BAW03.3 Capstone assessment. 

#animatedsequence #production #postproduction

[laikaanimationtamara]

This is the final WWS Progress as of the end of Term 2. During the Exhibition gap, it will gain all the completed Laika animation sequences, additional tweaks and improvements as well as the Paddle scene added into it. 

#production #postproduction

[laikaanimationtamara]

Here are some screenshots from the process of creating the runcycles and trying to attach the rig to a motion path/move the world control and getting the deformations. 

I’d like to try and upload all the playblasts to a SyncSketch folder but that will take some time. I’ll link it on this blog when that process is done. 

#animation #prodcution

[laikaanimationtamara]

Here is the animation for each section of my sequence that I had for the end of Term 2 but due to not being textured, XGend and Rendered I wasn’t able to get into the final cut. This along with the animation for Section 4 will all be included and finished for the Exhibition.

#animation #production