Short Scenes: Pygmalion Computer Graphics Project

#721

Just poppin’ by…
Good to see so much progress. I’m looking forward to
see the finished scenes :slight_smile:

Btw. Happy new year! :smiley:

#722

It looks like my schedual is a little more giving this week. From the rigging department if you guys need something let me know.

Thanks…

#723

Hey guys how’s it goin’.

I have a playblasting issue in Maya. Usually…I figured out the problem…and it resolves. However somehow this is an interestingly different one…

I tried hiding all my UI Elements to simplify it. Only two or three times it worked … out of ten attempts. Then I tried Fast Interactions. That didn’t help. Simplified the shading. No big results. Optimized it even. I thought it might be because I brought the whole wav file in. I turned it off. No difference. Maybe it’s her hair? Her hair has a lot of reading for Maya.

So I’m trying to figure out what it might be.

Maronson also suggests I go to the Maya section. Meanwhile…I am working on CGL…and so far so good she’s interesting…as in to work with and what I’ve done in her expressions while talking.

However…after all that…I really do want to show you guys soon…and have you critique and comment away for improvements.

Any suggestions?

I’ll go see the Maya forum…yes…but it wouldn’t hurt to get other suggestions from team members here.

Even though it’s bothersome…this is an obvious opportunity for me to learn more on playblast…and practise patience.:sad:

Thanks in advance you guys! Keep up the good work! :wink:

#724

AgentPrometheus posted the taximeter model today. I’ve sent it on to Rakile to rig and animate. nottoshabi is looking at the model of Freddy I sent it to him to see if he can do work on it this week.

Tonight is the second night of auditions. We had lots of good actresses audition yesterday but not many men. I hope some more men show up this evening. I’ll keep you posted on cast selection and rehearsal progress.

Hi pivot. How are you doing?

Loulu79 is having some trouble with playblast. I got this answer from Dariush Derikhshani:

If Maya is freezing the screen (does the screen freeze and SOME of the menu lines or areas of the screen turn white?) when she is trying to do a playblast, ask her to set her Windows XP screen look back to Windows Classic appearance:

right click on desktop, select Properties, click the Appearance tab and set the Windows and buttons menu to Windows Classic style as opposed to Windows XP style. That will help with playblasts.

#725

Okay here it goes testing 1 - 2 - 3:

http://www.savefile.com/files.php?fid=5444929

Edit: Whew…what a relief…I was testing whether downloading was an issue or not…I download my own file to test that one out…it works.

Now this one is not the latest version of her…I’m tweaking and reworking what I don’t like about this one.

For instance … it’s not clean, crisp and strong enough…so I’m working on that.

But please c&c away. It’s fair. :wink:

[b]Edit /b: Maronson: tell Dariush Derikhshani thank you sooooooooooooo very much. It was the Appearance issue!:bowdown:

#726

Hi Mike

Making a start on the cellphone boy compositing atm… what framerate do you want? and (just checking) 720x480 right? I also wanted to ask about compression settings for the finished clips.

Also, there’s a part at the beginning of the video clip, closeup on the high school name sign. Do you want this included at the begining?

Looks like this should be fairly straightforward to do, I can handle any other jobs like this that are ready in the next month or so, and i’ll have to see how it goes with college after that.

Thanks

Amy : )

#727

amy_517: I know we want High Quality DVD output. So 720x480 is correct. I know we want the framerate that is the strange number very close to 30 (29 something). I don’t know what compression rate to specify. Can either Andy Foster, Mike Van Handel or Eric Gorski please answer this? (Or actually, anyone with experience and an opinion, lets hear from you.)

Yes, the picture of the High school name is a quick establishing shot that we added to the beginning of the scene to help the audience figgure out where the scene takes place.

Everyone: Auditions last night went very well. Many males showed up and I was able to cast all parts except Eliza and Higgins. Tonight we have callback to finish the job.

Omega3D: Andy Foster tuned in some Video background from two different pubs. My next job is to go through it and post the best parts for you.

#728

Thanks for clarifying that Mike.
I’m a little confused now about the shots… in the storyboard the second cellphone boy shot is of his hand and his phone, while the frames on the ftp server are of him himself. Please could you let me know what goes where?

Also, you might want to think about encoding the video clips in something other than indeo… i could open them ok on my laptop and then convert them for taking back onto my pc, but maybe other ppl might have problems with it.

Thanks

Amy : )

#729

Jayezon: Amy is correct. There is only one shot of his full face. Did you by chance zip up the same frames in package 2 as you had in packge one?

#730

I received the images and rendered a new version… Check it out…

http://www.universalsites.net/wip/wip_scottish_man_v2.mov

#731

Omega3D: The Scotsman seems a bit more aggressive and menacing now. Now we need to add a thud sound effect when his fist hits the bar to justify the rapid motion of his arm. I like the hand bouncing after it hits. We have to do something else with his drink. Right now he is drinking water from a small plastic cup. We need to put a pint of beer on the bar. I like the shadow of his hand on the plastic cup but I would rather see the cup go away. Very nice integration into the bar.

I have selected the cast but I haven’t told them yet. I will rest on it for a day to see if I chage my mind about someone but I think the people I’ve chosen for the leading roles are all very strong actors. It will be a great show.

#732

omega3d: The renders are beautiful. I swear he was really part of the scene. But is it possible to give him a hint of reflection from the counter? Everything else is. Is that possible? If not leave it.

I still feel the Scottsman need to be more spunky and aggresive … a bit “in your face”. It still reminds me of your last piece. The body language is hitting it right…but there’s still need a bit more “oomph”…as in more spice…more spunkiness…probably …um… yeah…“more in-your-face” attitude. Still not bad. The voice that was given to you really is a bit fast…so…if he does too much spunk…he may look offish. Still try. :wink:

I hope you guys are seeing what I’ve done to CGL…so you can go ahead and c&c away…looking forward to it even. :slight_smile:

…and the final rigged version of CGL…:rolleyes:

Maronson: I wonder what the casts look like…and how they act…Just curious.

Edit:
omega3d: I studied the old one and the new one together. I feel the body language is okay. What would happen if he points his right index finger in such a way that he is talking to someone, who so happens to be out of the camera scene? I feel that it could be interpreted as him leaning forward … showing more attitude. The expressions…I find are good…but make them a bit more exaggerated. Maybe that would give a bit more “oomph” (ie spunk).

#733

omega3d: Is very funny to see Scotsman coming to the life. I agree with Loulu’s comments.

Good luck my friends!!!

#734

Alright! Thats what I am talking about… lol. I didn’t want to go too spunky… At first, I wanted to have him pointing (like you said) and have him hit the glass… haha… :slight_smile: I am having a ball with this one. Its fun acting it out though. :slight_smile:

Well I like the facial rigs on these projects! They are pretty decent! That lip sinc has nice facial expressions. Anyway. I have some finals to study for, so peacin out!

Jon

#735

PS. I fixed the glass… that was just part of my test render. :slight_smile: I wasn’t planning on keeping it like that… lol. Peace!

#736

Whew! Okay Mike, I’ve managed to get my machine back online after the crash, at least enough to work…I’m going to nail this thing and get it to you…sorry about that wait.
odd to have the hal.ddl crash 2 times on 2 machines…must be a virus going around.
I advise people to avoid using trillian for a release or two. I will also add a cigar.

#737

I just started looking at the taximeter today, and it looks like all I’ll need to do is link a few objects together to animate it. That’s the nice thing about mechanical animations, you don’t neccessarily need any sort of skeletal rig. I also imported the obj file Maronson gave me of the taxi cab into 3D Max, and it came in tiny, and the normals going every which way. It’s fixed, but smoothing groups don’t seem to work on it. I’m pretty sure this is what usually happens with importing obj’s, so at the moments things seem to be going well. Hopefully I’ll have the taximeter done by the end of the day.

#738

Hi all,

Sorry for slow response to this question. I’ve been directed to work with the footage titled NewCellKidsFlip and this is what I’ve been animating to.

Unfortunately the storyboards don’t match this footage. Amy this might be the issue you are referring to. The NewCellKidsFlip footage starts with a shot of the school then cuts to CellPhoneBoy (which I’ve labelled CellPhoneBoyShot01). It then cuts to CellPhoneGirl and then back to CellPhoneBoy(labelled CellPhoneBoyShot02).

Mike please let me know if anything has changed.

#739

OK. I think I know what the problem is. The storyboard for scene one
scene one
shows shots 3 through 8 as the cell phone scene.
The background jpgs are shown in the
Animators Guide
on pages 5-7. The caption shows the long shot of the high school as the background for shot 3. Then the brick wall is used in shots 4 and 8 as the Cell Phone boy’s background.

I was expecting the long shot to be used as the background for CellPhoneBoyShot01. When I went to answer Amy’s question I just looked at the storyboards and noticed only one frontal shot there.

How can we fix this? Amy renders CellPhoneBoyShot01 in front of the long shot. I don’t think we can use CellPhoneBoyShot02 in front of the brick wall since that would create a “jump cut”. Can we move the boy toward the wall in 3? That sounds like a lot of work with out much artistic value. I’m open for ideas on this. Otherwise we just move on to holding the cell phones in front of the brick wall and lawn.

Amy will have three layers. The video background, the rendered frames and the subtitle layer on top.

#740

You’ve made reference to a brick wall shot and a long shot. I’m lost right there. There’s the opening shot of the school, a background plate for CellPhoneBoy (only one that I know of), the park bench and then there’s a ground only shot. Has something been updated and I don’t know about it?

Mike which footage should I be using as reference when animating? Is it NewCellKidsFlip?

Cheers