MatchMover

So my next technical thing to learn is tracking in MatchMover. This is an autodesk program which works really well with Maya, just like how easy it is with the Adobe package.

a lot like the ncloth tutorial there is a tutorial for the basics of MatchMover. Located in the help/tutorial section and the files are supplied so you can complete the same track

it's fairly simple stuff, alot like after effects you pick your point you want to track then it tries to track that point, the quality of the track is shown through colour.
green - good
yellow - ok
red - no good

you keep tracking until you have a decent number of good tracks, then you can import it all into maya which creates a camera and stuff which is very handy. then the camera moves round the points so all the points are put on a level plane.

here is the quick track test i did

ncloth clothes!

rigth like i mentioned before we are planning on using ncloth on our characters.

i have only ever used ncloth for small tests in the past just to get a brief idea of how it works.
so i found a good tutorial. it comes with the autodesk package. you can find it in the help/tutorial section. then they supply the scene files so you have everything they have so you follow the tutorial exactly.

with the dress they give you, you have to line it up with the body. then connect the dress vertexes to the shoulders of the character. make the dress ncloth and make the character model a passive collider so that the cloth reacts to the characters movements.

here are the two videos i got at the end of my experiments.



and now for te walking one.



this worked pretty well as you can see. i plan on implementing these same techniques when it comes to working on the characters on our film.

i now just need to wait for Carlos to finish the models and get the clothes themselves modelled.

next i plan on using matchmover to practice some tracking. i have never used match mover before but hopefully it shouldnt be much different to after effects, or atleast the techniques you need to use.

technical work

so there are a couple of things i need to brush up for this project. One thing is my tracking skills, this is for placing the characters in scene and making sure they stay where they are meant to be if the camera moves. also to keep the tree in place.

the other thing is to build upon my skills in ncloth. We plan on using ncloth for the clothes on our characters. i have used ncloth briefly in tests in the past just for fun etc, just to see how the basics work.
here's an example.



This is very basic ncloth. i will need to work out how to make it work with the passive colliders (the objects that react with the cloth) when they are animated and try to keep the clothes connected to character.

model sheets

here are the finished sheets of the characters so Carlos can model from them.

man front



man side



girl front



girl side

tree trunk

i have decided to use maya to make the base mesh then go into more detail with zbrush.



this is the most basic mesh i then just moved a view vertexes to give it basic shape, then it was time for zBrush.




i then used a couple of different brushes to cut some shape into the trunk. and add texture.



i found a texture online and decided for now to add it to the tree to get an idea of what it could look like once i add the final texture.
using paint effects i managed to create the branches and leaves.

for now this is the final tree.



it's not quite there yet, i think i'm going to have to sit down and think about the texture and how i'm going to make this look like it should. obviously its going to have a lot to do with the compositing and lighting.

it's been a while

so haven't posted in quite a while, this has been due to a number of different things, christmas shopping, dissertation, my other unit but mainly it's done to me being tooo LAZY!

what's been going on?... not much unfortunately, things seemed to have really slowed over the holidays.

i have been assigned the job of modelling a tree.
there are a few shots in our storyboard that have a tree to one side which really helps crop the scene nicely and helps draw the eye towards the main focus of the film (our two characters)

the tree is a maple, here are some of the reference images i looked at








this tree needs to be believable, can't be having one that sticks out like a saw thumb, it needs to be fairly photo realistic.

i first looked into a couple of different ways of creating a tree in maya

the first being modelling it from the ground up literally. first creating the trunk then adding the branches to get something a bit like this



the only problem i found with this was the fact it looks too empty, to literally go in so in depth to create a photo realistic tree like this would take forever and would be highly complicated. the amount of large branches wouldnt be a probelm but if you closely at a tree it has thousands of smaller branches.

the good thing about this would be a way of making the leaves. i found a tutorial on creating leaves by attatching them to particles then create them using ncloth so they move in the wind.

have a look.(follow link to part two after)



the bad thing is if i only do the major branches then it will look too empty, especially considering its a maple tree.

after some deliberation i have decided against this, i think it would be a pretty insane idea to attempt this.

and also i have discovered a new, quicker and easier way to give the impression of a large amount of branches, leaves and detail.
by using the paint effects tool you can generate a number of different organic models, and it just so happens there is an option for maple trees :)

unfortunately the brush for the trunk of the tree is rubbish. it looks like this...




its a bit too skinny. and the textures aren't great.




so i have decided to use the paint effects only for the branches and leaves. then model the trunk from scratch.

pendant

also on my list of things is a silver, butterfly pendant.
seeing as i have made the butterfly previously i thought it only made sense to do this next.

i used the exact same model that i made for the lower poly butterfly. i did this because there wont be any close ups of the pendant so it made sense not modelling a new one.

i started off by making a loop from the head by extruding each side and matching them together in the middle. This will be the loop that the necklace will go through.




i didnt want to make a straight copy of the model, plus jewelry tends to have a little bit more detail so seemed to make sense to give it a bit more depth so i raised some of the vertexes to give it a simple detail.




next up i wanted to apply a shine to the model, a silver finish, chrome like almost.
i will show you how i achieved this.

started off with my model, assign a blinn to it.
go to the blinns attributes scroll down to reflective colour, select the checkerbox then choose env ball




then assign noise to the env ball. do this by going to the env ball attributes on the right, click the checker box next to image. make sure you assign 2D noise not 3D.

bring up your hypershade window and hold right click down on the blinn material and select graph network and it should look like this.



with the attribute panel on the right you now need to go to hardware texturing, then in textured channel drop box change it to reflected colour.

then you need to create a point light and place it somewhere in your scene.

press seven, and change renderer to high quality. and it should look like this.



so i did this but for the butterfly pendant and i was quite pleased with the results, i tweaked the colour a little bit and added a slight blue tint to it, which i thought gave less of a standard look to it.




i am fairly pleased with the results i got. it's a small detail in the grand scheme of things but links well to the outcome of the story so hopefully this will be one of the things you notice, not first time watching but maybe the 2nd or 3rd time.