Task #1: Character Turntables

For our presentation this week, I wanted to make sure our characters were presented in the best way possible, so I created turntables of both the close-up facial details and full body wireframes. When I started animating the characters, however, I soon realized that a lot of the dynamic properties I tweaked to sculpt the hair did not translate well into animation. After fighting with the hair and fur systems for a while (the characters’ eyebrows kept flying away and Dyer’s hair completely exploded), I realized I had to backtrack a LOT and redo most of the hair. Sigh.

The good news: It all works, and is completely animatable! This took muuuuch longer than I budgeted though, so I had to table a few of my smaller deliverables. I was originally intending to texture the clothing modeled by Dave Maguire, but I decided it would be better to have some REALLY polished head turntables instead of half-assed clothing. I tweaked Dyer’s model to give him more pronounced eyelids, modeled eyelashes, painted additional texture maps (for more detail), and rendered it all out.

• Positive Stuff:  I got some really positive feedback! Everybody seemed to love my changes, and the turntables rendered without any SSS flickering. And, perhaps most importantly, even the extreme close-ups rendered at only 3 minutes per frame.
• Problems / issues:
  • Danforth’s fluffy hat texture took too long to render, so it was left out of the renders. It’ll be added in when it’s optimized a tad better.
  • I didn’t re-UV Dyer after modifying his model, so his wireframes have seams down the center axis. I’ve already fixed this problem, but I didn’t fix the renders.
  • Mustache could be a little fuller.
  • No clothes… yet!

Hours: 15 😦 😦 😦

Task #2: The Presentation

SrProjectProposal_Team1_Final_pdfExport

I created the Keynote for our end-of-fall progress report presentation. I used the same template as our pitch, so thankfully putting everything together didn’t take too long. The assets themselves took a while, though — because so many of our deliverables include motion, I edited together a few videos from everyone’s assets and embedded them in the presentation.

• Positive Stuff: I’m really, really happy with all the progress everyone has made! Looking forward to showing it all off tomorrow. 🙂
• Problems / issues: None so far, but I suppose we’ll find out tomorrow what the faculty thinks.

Hours: 4

LIST OF UPCOMING TASKS:

Before the end of the term, I’d like to have the following completed:

1. Textured clothing
2. Tweaked Dyer model (his eyes are slightly too feminine for my tastes)
3. All textures, shaders, and character details DONE and ready to be imported into the rig