FINAL ANIMATION

The quality that this has being on youtube is quite poor and you cant change the pixel aspect ratio but it is a preview at least:

THE FINAL WEEKS....

Well i finally got my scene modelled and textured by my date i set myself which made me very HAPPY, although there were a few things that needed changing. For example the texture that i had assigned for my main room wall was very poor quality and kept pixellating when i rendered so i went on the search to find a better texture. Id already decided that the wallpaper design was the one i wanted i just needed to find a bigger image and export my texture map to a greater size also. I evetually did find a better image and in maya it looked 100% better.. BUT.. because both the image and the texture map were now bigger maya was no longer my friend and would not let me preview it. How frustrating. It even found the need to assign it the moons texture, if this was a joke it wasn't funny! Luckily, when i rendered the scene the texture was there - thank goodness!

www.oldhousejournal.com/producst2/wall/2701

Here are the differneces in quality:

BEFORE:


AFTER:


I also cmpleted the television section of my animation. I had originally wanted the televisions to have static on the screens throughout the whole animation but was unable to do this in time so i came up with an alternative. I rendered out the final scene before i wanted in incorperate my video sequences and edited the frame so that there were transparent windows in each of the televisions screens. I then layered my videos behind these window so it seemed as if the televisions were playing them. I had help from Tom Foreman, who was my 'actor' for this. Im quite happy with the final thing although i would still like to have had static throughout.

Below is my basic sequence beofre i edited it further for my final animation.





When animating my moving machines i forgetfully animated them almost for the whole thing forgetting that you dont see them continuously - oops. It wasnt too difficut to animate the spinning wheels as onece i had organised the pegs to be in the right place as long as i key framed the first peg to hit and the last peg to hit at the correct times then the rest were on time. This was something i hadnt realised, which was quite a nice suprise!

Below is the preview i made of my spinning pegs before i went on to create my final animation:




Overall im quite happy with the final thing although looking at it now i can see what i would change and improve. It feels to me as if its still an idea rather than the final thing and i can be devloped further. I would definately render using mental ray, the second time round, i was just running late with render time and wanted to get the fastest render possible done so that i knew i would be ready in time. This project out of all the projects opened my eyes to the reality behind rendering time and that it needs to be seriously thought about in the time scale of every project with allowances for things to go wrong.

I thought id be prepared and get it rendered the weekend before hand in but all the computers i had logged on to only reached about 80 frames before stopping, all of which had been set to do 1,000. If i had left this until the last minute then i would have had big problems with the hand in date. Even so it did slow everything down quite a bit, because even when i did manage to get them rendering again they all stopped at different times after about 20/40/100 frames continuously so i had to babysit 6 rendering computers for a day.

The only ANNOYING thing is that before i had set them to render i had forgotten to smooth my robot in the scene ad so he is now left un smoothed. Its so frustrating as he looked so much better smoothed and its such an obvious thing i had forgotten to do - and something i will enver forget again!

UNSMOOTHED:


SMOOTHED:


Although i did remember to smooth the smaller robot! phew!

WEEK 10 - 13 (after easter)

I have created the intro objects for my scene and been working on animating them seperatly although for some reason my computer is rendering so slowly so its taking a while to make alterations to my scene. I have put a link to my short animation i uploaded into youtube. Its extreemly basic but i just wanted to see if my idea would work.

Video of quick demonstration of the sun and moon and cloud
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8jem5hgjMs

From here i have been working on getting my scene modelled and textured properly and in the right era. For all aspects of the scene i have been keeping updated images of my progress up until now my almost finished scene.

I know i am behind schedule and i have been trying so hard to get back on top of everything and not get behind.

I have given myself to the end of this week to get everything in my scene completey finished and as my robot is only requiring joints to get those done as well. Then this leaves me the whole of the following week to animate my camera and small time that my robot is on screen for, and then three days to edit everything.

My only conern is the render time as with my last project i had to leave it unfinished because it only rendered 3,000 frames in two days and all through the night at home, so to be safe if i can have everything animated by next friday i can leave it all to render over the weekend at uni on several computers - this is my plan.

Below is my progress, i have put it all together in a very quick slideshow, just to give an idea of where i am at at the moment, but any more progress that i make i will post,a dn at the end of the week i am going to upload the images of my individual machines and my final room scene before i start to animate them.

WEEK EIGHT, NINE AND TEN......

I have to be honest now, with the other five week project i have been struggling to keep working at this one - now o know three weeks is a long time to forget about something and it is definately something im not going to do again!

I can just say that it was knowing that the other project was due in sooner that made me focus mainly on that one rather than this transcription one.... a sily mistake... so for these few weeks i have not alot to show. I did manage to get some scenery images completed with colour like snapshots for my final piece. I can see what i want to create so very very clearly in my mind, the colours composition and camera movements around all of which, although i cant always create the best representation of this in my design process or at least all of the detail i know i want to include - but explaining it face to face with someone i can get all of the info accross. I did design my smaller robot character aswell and so the final images from 'him' are below.

WEEK SEVEN

This is the first stage of the music machine. It is a slightly updated version from a windup musical machine on a larger scale.


It provides the pretty much constant sound in the background and is the introduction to the whole song. After the switch is turned on it activates the cog on the end to start to turn and windup the machine. As the central cog turns the small raised sections nock on the metal poles and create pitched different sounds.

There is also a static sound playing in the background and this is coming from the stacks of broken television sets in the corner stacked like you might find cars at a scrap yard. As the electricity gets going it powers up a few of them but with no channels it just gives off the crackling sound.




The main bass sound for the whole piece is made by a similar design to the insde of a piano but against a wall. Instead of pressing keys small hammer type arms tap the central section and create the sound. Different length wires give off different pitched sounds. There is a hinge at the top which allows the hammers to move. At first only a few hammers move but after a few bars more join in until the beat has built up.






Below is the link to my animation i created to give me the timing for when these keys need to be hit. (it was slightly to large to be uploaded directly onto 'blogger.com')) Its very basic but gives me all the info i need visually. I can hear the sounds in this song seperately but needed to find a way that i could break it down into smaller chunks visually enabling me to look at the seperate sounds. I also felt i needed to do this as then i am able to work out what machine makes what sound and when and also if i have missed any sounds off.

this spoon mechanism makes the twanging sound, the spoons are mounted on a rotating cog that turns them and as they spin the pluck the strings. They are slighty offset which means that 'twang' is in time.



When i first heard this song it was the way that the song builds that interested me and so i need to keep this very clear in my animation.

Just like in 'STOMP' you can see how every sound is made....

The link to my animation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5h1ZR8L2P8

WEEK SIX

MY ROOM PLAN:



Development of my initial animation mechanism - THE BEGINNING......

As I have already said earlier in my blog it is the rain that starts the animation and so below is my finalised diagram of why and how this gets the music started. The running theme of the mechanics in this project is similar to the domino effect, where everything happens as a result of the previous, and without it nothing moves at all.

The hole in the ceeling provides the place for the leak...
This then falls into an empty fuse box which is hanging on by only one screw...
As this fills up it overflows onto a mug that has been placed to start a circuit...

This is done so that after the robots power has run out the curcuit can start again when it rains so he can 'powerup'.

The mug is a regulation army cup (1940's) that has a bullet hole mid way up. As the water over flows into it it fills up the cup and makes it heavier. As it gets heavier it weighs down the sea saw mechanism and presses the button to start the 'music machine'. As the hole is only half way up the water is continually flowing out so as it stops raining that cup rises and it all stops... allowing it all to recharge.

WEEK FIVE

This week has mainly been looking at my research into parts of machinery and trying to come up with a more successful robot design. Below are my sketches that I have drawn up taking you to my final idea but i just want to go through my thought processes with the design beforehand.

My design idea for this robot is that he is totally self dependant, built entirely from scraps and bit and pieces he could find (how the building process ever began from nothing is not important in this project – just the fact that he is ‘alive.’) So taking his into account the final design would have to be very collage like, with components together only because they fit and not for any aesthetic design reasons. I really want the viewer to have the, ‘is that a...?’ moment when they look at him noticing everyday things or old things are making him up.

At first i had the idea of incorporating a cassette player into his body but then after researching that i found that cassettes were not designed until the 60’s, remembering that he is born out of the 1940’s that was an obvious problem! So i thought about using a record player. This was within the time period, plus it would have a certain amount of comedy to it when seen in the final animation, by this I’m not expecting a roaring laughter but more a smile.

Another point about my character is that he lives entirely for music, his life depends on it and it is his best friend so this had to show through in his appearance. I wanted him to resemble music machines for this reason and so his is why it features so largely in my final design. Although below i have said it is m final design I feel that he is still open for development or changes as this project progresses.

(i used this design for the chest section as you can see - it is a 1940's radio. I also tried to incorporate the amount of buttons and knobs into the robot design )

(1940's record player - for the heart/chest section on the character)

(1940's speakers - for the face/cheeks sections)

The chosen hinge mechanism