Conclusion

I've learnt a lot this project, and feel i have to remind myself in future projects to:

Get your plans sorted before you do anything else. Dont take too much time. Decide on one idea and stick to it completely. Make sure everyone knows whats going on and what they have to do.

I'm not too happy with the overall project. I was excited by the idea at first, but then as we changed bits and worked on camera angles it lost its possibilities. At the end of this project I feel dissapointed because we could have made it so much more. But having learnt my lessons hopefully it wont happen again. All in all I think I've only contributed to the final composition by animating! I know this isnt good and I am quite dissapointed, but ultimatly its my fault.

Rendering

haha as the file I am rendering is 200 mb! When I try to render even a single frame the Ram usage jumps up to about 2gb.. which of course crashes maya. We desperatly need more computers dedicated for rendering in ravensbourne as its nearly impossible to find one (that people wont turn off.)

Saying that though, its all done now. Finally rendered.


woo.

I seriously cant wait to hand this project in as I desperatly need sleep.

Animating

We had another sdit down and decided what camera angles to use. again this should have already been done with our story boards but as they were so rough we had to do them again. After deciding on the ones to we seperated the scenes up and passed them out to each of us. Chris would animate the start, then Jake, Me and then end with Charlie.

A few shots of the scene im animating:





Some shots of the second scene im animating:






Im pleased with the camera angles of these shots. And the final render looks really good with the lighting and fog that has been made. However, I think we could have been more creative with the shots used in the other scenes, as at the start of the project we were talking about just showing the feet running on snow, or just seeing the shadow of the character run round the streets and have the audience just miss him all the time. In the end I think we just did what was easiest due to lack of time.

Texturing

Im having trouble texturing my models as i have combined the meshes of several houses, and cant seem to seperate them to texture them individually.. my version of maya also seems to crash every time I click save which doesnt help a lot.. ahwell.

After a week of trying to texture we have decided not to use my models anyway as they don't really fit in with the rest of the environment. I think this is because we didnt have complete design sheets or complete story boards before we started modeling. Next time I start a project I'm definatly going to sort out the story boards and designs before I start modeling!!

Its alright though, I'm sure I'll use it in another project somewhere.

Its a shame because I could have spent my time working to make the environment jake had made more unique instead of just repeating the houses and balconeys and changing the textures slightly.

Recent Screens of Work

Heres just a few images from the latest scene. Im just using one basic ambient light at the moment and rendering using mental ray.


Everythings going quite well.. need to finish modeling and texturing this week and then start lighting/animating etc..

Outside Street Alleway

Just a few shots from outside. will do a fly through and post it up soon.

Gravity and Dynamics

Been Messin round with Dynamics.. like gravity etc.




In the story board we were talking about smashing glasses etc. This was done using gravity and simulation, but speaking to Jared, he said it would be good to use for keyframe references, delete the gravuty and then animate it using normal keyframes. Ill try it out and post another video.

Snow etc..

Been looking at some tutorials to create snow using soft bodies and particle collides.. (digitaltutors.com) and made a quick (very quick) render of some snow being walked on etc. Ill post some photos soon. It gives the option to show the characters feet running though snow as the opening shot.

Also just saw this El-P Video which is pretty cool, I think the style could compliment the steampunk genre well, giving it a more comic book feel.


Just a quick render of a shattering glass I made today:

The main character.

After Talking to Jared last week (Hi Jared!) he suggested that we change our prigional concept of the Jekyll and Hyde character to a more SteamPunk character, Putting a twist on the old story. This could give the character extra reason to break into a house and search through the room. If the character was wearing some sort of diabolical steam suit which had been broken in battle (he'd been shot by the people outside for example) he would have to repear it and maybe recharge his steam suit by pluging into the houses steam supply, or finding some steam batteries etc..

Hurry up and decide!

One of the main points of talk this week has been whether the house the guy is breaking into should be his own or someone elses. I personally think if it was someone elses it would make more sense. He could be hiding from the people outside, but also inside. So he could be finding a hiding spot inside the room, or just peeping outside the window waiting for the people to run past, or even walking through the house trying to get to the back door. As we are already five weeks into the project with only four weeks left i think it would be more realistic to just stick with the one main living room.

But now we have to think about the family that lives in the house he has entered, how many people live there, if its crowded for room or if its minimalist, if the people are poor or rich, all of which will show on the objects they posses that we can see.

Id like there to be kids because we could have some mad toys on the floor, like a mechanical rocking horse, some steam powered toy railway maybe, I dont know really, but it would be more interesting.

Also were thinking about it snowing, which brings the idea of christmas into play too. If there are decorations, a xmas tree, presents under the tree, does the character pick up and look through the presents?

Clearly we still need to storyboard and finalise the story.

Links and Renders..

Loads of cool steampunk links..

List of machines:
http://etheremporium.pbwiki.com/Transport

How to draw steampunk machines:
http://www.crabfu.com/steamtoys/diy_steampunk/

Also thinking about rendering techniques. If we render out the scenes in black and white toon shaded we could make the white transparent and use watercoloured painting behind to make a 2d sketchy feel to it.



>

Record Player.

Record Player (Basic geometry and textures)
This could be used as explained before, with the steam pipes getting broken and the power decreasing so the record slows.

Outside window

First Render of the outside of the house. (Basic geometry and textures.)

Steam Organ

First Render of the steam powered piano/organ in the front room. Basic Textures and geometry.








This has started out alright, but needs to be perfect as at the moment its a main point in the story (when the guy knocks over a broom and it lands on the piano key to make an unwanted noise.)

Old Tower

Some old videos of a tower for the background.
Just messing around with expressions to change the lights and make the fans move etc. not sure about the actual towers style.. just messing around really.
Tower 1
Tower 2

More Research

Ok this is going to be a massive insert, sorry for the use of bandwith!
Just putting up some of the many images I have found to reference my drawings/models from.
Steam:

Its interesting here how they have bent curvey bars.


















This Designs really appeals to me, but I dont know why.









Lots of gears and cogs but with victorian styling.




Reference for the fire/heater/boiler in the front room, i dont actually know what it is, but it looks like this is what it is o_0




The style of the street outside with railings, marble and stone, and huge arches.
























Other: The opening shot of our film could be a fly over, this would take a long time to model unless we just duplicated and resized a selection of buildings.. but you would easily be able to tell. I think the establishing shot should be much closer to the actor.





The colouration of this image is nice as it highlights the white steam, but i would like to make it more dark grey & foggy. I think Jake is looking into fog, if not ill have a look into it.














This is probably the most unusual building ive ever seen, but it is perfect for the style I can see our project taking.



















Textures: (from mayang.com/textures, personal photos, and photoshop)
Also used Texture Maker to make the photos seamless.






























After I made it seamless:




Bump map for th cobbles:













After i made it seamless:





the bump map: