Environment texturing

I have started to texture the environment. The environment has to look like mountains so I thought about having it a brown colour towards the base of the mountains and then green at the tops of them.

I tried to create a UV map for the environment but because we have so many polygons, the UV map is completely green where there are so many UVs so you cannot determine where any thing is.

I was looking around Maya as I thought I had seen a texture for mountains. I found it and then applied it to our environment. The texture is made for snowy mountains so the main colours were grey and white but I changed them to green and brown so the tops would be green and the sides and base would be brown.

It took me quite a while to get the hang of the settings because they are quite sensitive. I would change the amplitude and end up with this:

And then if I changed a setting by even 0.050 then it would end up like this:

The most sensitive settings were snow drop off, snow slope and snow altitude which would constantly cause things to go completely green or brown if they were changed even in the slightest way. 

Eventually, with a lot of trial and error trying to get a mix of brown and green, I managed to get the settings to produce something that was the look I was after with the green at the top and brown at the sides. I could not get it to go onto the base as well so that was left green. 

The only problem that I felt I had uncovered was that the model of the environment was very smooth so where there was exposed rock (which was the brown areas), I felt that the environment should look a bit rougher. There was not a lot I could do about this now as the environment had been modelled and there was no easy way to make a smooth surface look rougher. 

I was quite pleased with the overall look of the texture. I was simple but added a variance to the environment. It also meant that the position of the characters would show different colours and elements of the environment in the background that I think adds interest. 

All the tests I had done were using mental ray to begin with because it was faster to render with and was clearer to see. In the film we are rendering with VRay so the next thing I had to do was render the scene with the texture in VRay. This was the result. 

This was really disappointing. The mountain texture does not appear at all in VRay apart from the green texture which is the "snow" colour. It is a huge shame because this has no interesting features at all and is just one block colour. 

I'm not really sure how I could solve this problem either. I have tried to adjust the settings again but it produces the same result every time. I cannot paint a texture because I cannot create a UV map with the amount of polys that the environment is made up of.

At this moment in time, the environment will have to stay this way until I can find a solution to our problem. It is very annoying because it looks so much better in mental ray but because we need the black outline, we need to render using VRay. 

Screen Play Take 2

Me and Sarah Strickland revisited the screen play today. As a group we have made some changes in the story an therefore thought that we should double check the screen play. When we were reading through it,  there were quite a lot of things we had changed.

One thing form the very vein we said was that the characters would not have mouths as they were no supposed to talk. In the screen play, there is dialogue written for the characters. This needs to be taken out and re-written. The screen play also mentions a lot of other animals in different scenes which we have not modelled and do not have time to model.

Another reason for revisiting the screen play is that we need to start to record our sound. Jeff Chen has agreed to speak the narration for us in Chinese so that we can add subtitles and will sound authentic. The script had to be perfected before we could record our sound.

James Waters wrote the old screen play but together me and Sarah have rewritten it:

OPENING CREDITS

Establishing shot with slow zoom in of environment (Lijiang river and gumdrop mountains). Cranes fly in front of camera.

Introduction shot of CAT and RAT.

NARRATOR

In China, a long time ago, there lived a cat and rat...

Pan slowly across three images of CAT and RAT eating, playing and sleeping.

NARRATOR

They ate together, they played together, they slept together

On top of a mountain under a Chinese arch

Introduction of emperor, zoom out to show escalator and mountain.

NARRATOR

One day, the Emperor decided to hold a race among all the animals in the land.

Wheel of zodiac fades in slowly rotates clockwise.

NARRATOR

The first twelve animals to finish the race would have a year in the Chinese calendar named after them.

Establishing shot of river. Camera pans across.

NARRATOR

You must swim across the river at its widest point

CAT and RAT talking to OX.

NARRATOR

Being two of the smallest animals in the race, the cat and rat convince the ox to let them ride on his back.

CAT and RAT climb onto OX’s back.

OX goes onto river with them on his back.

NARRATOR

The long journey had made the cat and rat very tired.

CAT and RAT curl up and go to sleep. Fade to black.

RAT wakes up. Over-the-shoulder shot of the emperor at the finish line on top of the mountain.

NARRATOR

When the rat woke up, he saw the emperor standing at the finishing line far away.

RAT looks at camera and has a glint in his eye.

NARRATOR

The rat had a plan so he would come first in the race.

CATs ears twitch and the CAT wakes up. RAT on edge of OX’s back looking into river. CAT goes over to see what the RAT is looking at. RAT indicates for the CAT to catch some fish.

Shot of CAT looking at all the fish in the river. Reflection of CAT in the water.

The RAT pushes the CAT.  The CAT tumbles into the water with a splash.

NARRATOR

As the cat leaned over, the rat pushed her into the river.

CAT resurfaces and struggles onto a log floating in the river.

Back of OX swimming away, towards mountains.

When they reach the bank, RAT jumps onto the mountain and jumps up the stairs.

NARRATOR

As part of the rat’s plan, he jumped in front of the ox and ran up the stairs before the ox could climb up the riverbank.

EMPEROR with a knowing smile, watches RAT cross the finish line.

CAT struggles across the river to the riverbank.

Camera pans up slowly with EMPEROR in foreground with background behind.

NARRATOR

All the animals were placed in the order they finished the race to make the Chinese zodiac

 With the cat coming last, she never made it onto the zodiac.

Zodiac wheel with all animals on.

CAT and RAT facing away from each other.

NARRATOR

Because of the rat’s betrayal, the cat and rat have been enemies ever since.

END CREDITS

Because we have changed the screen play, the animatics also need to be redone to give us all a better idea of timing and how the shots are going to be laid out. We can now record the narration and then start to create animatics and move on to creating the final shots. 

Dissertation

At present, my dissertation is taking up quite a lot of my time so progress on this project has been slow. At the moment, the dissertation is taking priority as the deadline is in a couple of weeks and because of my computer failing, I am behind on my schedule. I will pick up the pace as soon as my dissertation is complete because I know this is a priority as well.

VRay

We have a solution to our toon shading problem.

The problem I had with using toon shading built into Maya was that when I was adding it to a scene or model, it was seeing it as an object rather than a render setting. This was why the rig distorted, because it thought there was another object attached to the model. The other problem with it was that I could not find an easy method to attach a texture map to it. When you use the toon shader, it uses a ramp shader to create the shadows which is fine for block colours but with the cat model, it is supposed to have blotches of colour over its body. Sarah Strickland had painted the texture but I could not find a way to turn that into a ramp shader so that it would give us the shadows.

James Tomkins was the one who found the solution. Using VRay. It is a rendering plug-in for Maya and has something called VRay Toon. It is different to toon shading because it adds the black outlines when it renders. This means it does not attach to the model and it allows us to have our own texture for the cat.

The two images below show the comparison between the two methods. The first images uses toon shading built into Maya and the second uses VRay Toon.

The black line around the model using VRay Toon can be adjusted to make it more obvious but the other benefit is that it keeps the shadow that any lighting has created on the model. This makes it look 3D with the 2D twist. 

Computer Failure!!!

The worst thing that could of happened, has happened. My mac malfunctioned and I had to take it to the Apple store. They have asked me to do a complete erase and reinstall action of my mac which means taking it back to scratch. It will take a few days to get all my applications and files back on my computer which could not have happened at a worse time. I have my dissertation draft due in today and my progress is really going to slow.

I have all my data backed up so it means that I can use another computer, if mine does not start working again or needs to be taken in for repair. I now have to access my files and use a computer to send in my dissertation draft but also reinstall all my applications and then restore my files back again.

I have already tried to erase my computer and reinstall it a couple of days ago but it is critical that I get it to work this time as I cannot afford to get behind on my project.