Shot List

So the whole group can see what we need to achieve, I have complied a shot list for us all to refer to. This shot list has been created using the new screenplay and animatic that me and Sarah Strickland re-wrote so the story flowed better and made more sense to the audience. It also meant we all knew the story fully and there was no longer confusion over what happens in some parts of the story.

The shot list will allow us to split the shots between each person depending on their skills. Some shots need less animation than others so the character animators in the group (James Waters and Lily Blacknell) can start on the more animated shots.

Shot List
Establishing environment shot *
Cat and Rat introduction *
"They ate together"
"They played together"
"They slept together"
Emperor introduction *
Blank zodiac wheel in pavilion with Emperor *
River establishing shot (widest point) *
Cat and Rat talking into Ox's ear
They climb onto Ox's back
Wide shot of Ox going into river
Cat and Rat fall asleep on Ox's back
Rat wakes up
Over the rat's shoulder shot of finish line/pavilion *
Rat looks into camera with glint in the eye *
Rat sniffs in the air for Cat's attention
Cat and Rat reflection in river - looking at fish *
Rat pushes Cat
Over the Cat's shoulder of Ox swimming away *
Ox trying to get up the bank - Rat jumps in front
Rat jumping up the stairs *
Emperor head shot with a "knowing smile" *
Cat struggling on log and swimming to bank
Emperor in the way of environment - end of race *
Full zodiac wheel with all the animals *
Cat and Rat facing away from each other *

All the shots with a * after them are the potentially easier shots so probably the shots we will start with. There are 26 shots in total and each shot ranges from only 4 seconds to the longest being 10 seconds. The easier shots, we should be able to get rendered and completed quite quickly once all the models and environment is finalised.

Shot 2 - Intro to the cat and the rat

There was not a lot of direction as to what I should do to introduce the cat and the rat. In my own storyboards that I had started, I had a cheesy "popping up" action when they were introduced. Below is the storyboard panel I drew for this shot. I was not told to do any other action for this shot so I thought I would try it.

The first issue I had was perspective. The rat is much smaller than the cat so to get it to look like the storyboard, The rat would have to be very close to the camera and the cat further away. When I tried this and positioned them, it didn't look right. The rat's head became almost as large as the cat's and it was hard to get them both in shot without getting other body parts in there too. The other body parts would not have been such a problem but there were some issues with the rigs so I was trying to hide most of the body but it just didn't work.

For the background, I used another still image of a small area of the environment so when this was out behind the two characters, the proportion and perspective did not match up.

To resolve these issues, I decided to introduce them another way. I put the rat on top of the cat's head so that the cat would pop up first and then the rat would appear from behind the cat's head slightly later. This looked like quite a friendly gesture when they were positioned this way too which added to the point that they were friends.

I did some tests to get the timing right for the shot.



The popping up action was still little slow but I didn't want to make it too fast. In the end, I got the shot timing almost perfect and then any adjustments that I needed to make, I used time remapping in After Effects.

I put all the elements together and then rendered them.



I don't think this is the best way to introduce the characters but it was only supposed to be a test until the decision was made on how the characters would be introduced. In the end, this shot was the only shot created to introduce the characters. It needs a bit more work doing to it before it can be put into the final film, for example the rat needs to face the camera so the audience can see his face rather than just his nose. The music and narration needs to be added too.

Compositing and first shot

I was trying to find out the best way to composite the shots together. The problem that I found was that the river was created using the ocean shader that renders in mental ray, the rest of the environment needs to render in VRay to get the black outline when rendered.

To solve this issue, I tried to use render layers but that would not render the river in the correct shape, it would render the river in mental ray and the rest in VRay but it would render the square of ocean rather than the shape of the river which meant for any shot, I would have to go through and delete or mask the edges of the river so it only appeared in the black lines outlining the river shape.

The test that I was trying was to colour everything in the scene a bright lime green, just leaving the river the normal colour. Then in After Effects, I could key out the bright green colour just leaving the river. I can then render the same scene again with the correct colours in VRay and lay the river over it so it matches up perfectly.

I used out first shot as an opportunity to test this. Our first shot is an establishing shot of the environment. It has a slow zoom from a wide shot of the scene to the finish line which is the pavilion.

The environment didn't move so I cheated a little bit and rather then render a scene where nothing changes, I used a still image of our scene.

When I rendered this image, I had bookmarked the camera angle so I knew exactly where the camera was to match the animation of the river to this angle. 

I then rendered out the river animation with everything else in the scene bright green. Mental ray did not render out the trees as they had VRay Toon attached to them so they would only render in VRay.

I keyed out the green in After Effects but it still left some noise around the river. The only way I could get rid of this was to create a layer mask in After Effects as close to the river as possible to get rid of most of the noise. 

I layered this over the image but noticed that the trees were behind the river as they were part of the background. I rendered out a shot with everything else in the scene deleted apart from the trees so the trees would be on a layer by themselves. This was layered on top of the river. This was how the composited shot looked. 

I then added the zoom towards the pavilion and this was our first shot. 

The subtitles are to be added later when all the shots are finished and we are assembling the final sequence. The music and narration will be added at this point too. 

Adding foliage

Our environment is looking extremely bare at the moment. We have planned to have lots of trees in our scene.

Lily Blacknell wanted the method that they used in 'Okami' to be used in our film. The method they used was to create an image of a tree and assign it to a single plane. The would then be parented to the camera so that when the camera moves around the scene, the plane rotates so that the image of the tree can be seen straight on in the camera.

There are a few problems with this method. 

1) Someone would need to create several different styles of trees
2) They would be .png files so the background would be see-through but VRay would add the black outline to the edges of the planes and not just around the tree.
3) There may be some overlapping when the planes rotate and they could end up going through each other

I have never tried this method so it could work but I have asked some of the artistic members of the group to start designing some trees.

In the mean time, I have been adding foliage with paint effects. I have been using Maya's different tree default paint effects and creating trees that would be rendered in VRay to give it the back outline. The benefits with paint effects are that it will create different variations of the same type of the for you and create them in 3D.

Out of all the trees Maya offers, I picked the most suited to our project and then painted them as much as I could to get as many different variations as possible. I then put them all over our environment. This is the tree that I chose.

This is how the environment looks with the paint effect trees.

The black outline in the trees means that the ones further away do lose details and can colour as the black outline becomes more prominent. I think this is quite a good method to create trees for the environment still but I need to wait for the tree design to be finished before I can test the other method.  

Pavilion

For the top of the mountain, I have modelled a Pavilion. This will act a the finish line so the emperor can stand in it and it acts as a goal for the animals.

For the pavilion, I used some reference images of chinese pavilions to give me an idea of shape and size. The main things I took from these images were the curves and the points on the roofs. They do not have any walls so you can see out of every side but have pillars so hold up the roof. These particular pavilions are double tiered so they have the main roof then a smaller roof attached or held up by pillars above that.

To keep with the theme of the film, it had to be very simple and cartoony. There did not have to be much detail but still have to look oriental. 

This was the basic mesh I created:

I used the curved corners of the roof from the reference images but rather than just making it square, I made it octagonal so it was more circular to fit on top of the mountain. 

Colour wise, I tried making the roofs and pillars red with a gold underneath but that looked a little too odd and the gold stood out more than the red. It was not quite right so in the end I made the whole thing red. The base did not look quite right being red as well so I found a really nice beige stone texture from the internet.

I used this texture for the stairs leading up the mountain and then used it for the base of the pavilion so it matched. 

Below is the final textured pavilion once it was placed at the top of the mountain. It was rendered with VRay Toon so it has the black outline on the render.