Lip Sync - learning curve!!!!

So UV mapping and now Lip Sync....a new vertical learning 'curve'!!

Maya interface, showing our Pre_Vis camera set up for Shot_23. Baby rabbit in the foreground with irate and provocative trolls in the background!
Yellow circles and arrows indicate timeline, and audio playback options in Maya....

I made a few tests of the lip sync, some worked better than others, but all seemed to be either slow, or not make much sense with the mouth shapes...
Katherine gave me a good tip....'record your mouth making the shapes' and copy that...
Surprisingly my mouth didn't make any of the shapes I thought it would...

This clip is just 23 frames long (we are working on 25 frames per second), so the clip zips past and it's difficult to distinguish the sounds.
I ended up with two basic shapes ('w' and 'oo'), and a final mouth pose that I hope looks defiant!

Here's a few notes I made about the process; that tie in with the image above....

Process to import sound....

Open scene number.
File >
Import audio >
Right click on timeline and select sound >
Select audio from sub menu >
Select playback time as 'real time' >

Select blend shapes (facial expressions and mouth shapes) and set them as key frames, in time with the audio track.
So that it's convincing, it's a good idea to key frame the mouth shape, a few frames before the sound emerges....

I then used the graph editor to snap the animation and remove any Maya smoothing....

Here's the lip sync clip!  For shot_23

Powerpoint presentation slides for Axis

Putting together our Powerpoint presentation before our skype meeting with Axis this Wednesday...

Looking forward to seeing the 3D character turnarounds that Sheila is creating!

Going Live - Final Pre-Vis

So our Jeremy Kyle project 'Dark Toy Story' hahaha is coming along really well....all the models are now finished and textured and the 3D character turnarounds look brilliant....

We did some additional work on the Pre-Vis and added on some extra frames at the end, to provide a less abrupt ending to the story....

The sound will be refined as we progress and the levels will need adjustment, as the clips are taken from numerous different shows....

It's been great to see people's reactions so far, to the storyboards, animatic and Pre-Vis.....the humour is really coming through....

We begin animating and lip syncing this week....new learning curve here I come!

Dollshouse texturing, UV mapping, UV texture editor

The dolls house texturing is finished!!!!

Wow - what a learning experience with UV mapping; which I have to say I really enjoyed, once I broke through the pain barrier!
I spent yesterday tidying up the layers in Outliner and naming them, so it was easy to see what was what...
And made sure there was no duplication of the topology....
All looks good and I also learnt the difference between Blinn (a level of shine to a material's appearance) and Lambert (matt material)....
so the outer walls of the Dollshouse had a Blinn finish, to show the plastic effect, and the interior walls had a Lambert material....the textures (wallpaper) were applied in the UV texture editor - which came into its own, when selecting multiple faces to change to a Blinn material....

Here's a few render shots of the final look....I quickly created one direction light, which points straight at the dolls house, to simulate sunlight...it's a rough mash up for now, just to make sure that the textures all come out in the render....really looking forward to seeing it once it's lit properly!

Maya interface, showing the model area, hypershader, UV texture editor and the render view.....the workspace is pretty busy....time to get a second monitor at home I think (haha)

Cam Kennedy, Banana Man and Superman

Great talk by Cam Kennedy, as part of the launch for the new Masters Comic course at DJCAD....
STV were there for the launch and both Katherine and I held up cardboard cut outs of superhero's for the photographers....

I was sat in between Banana and Superman!

Cam Kennedy was very funny, straightforward and highly experienced. A real privilege to hear him speak at length and in detail about his career..

Mock conference presentations

Reflective Practice: Mock Conference presentation.

Here's a few snapshots of the presentation so far....I will include a bit more information about my interview with Barnardos Rollercoaster service in Dundee, in the next couple of weeks; prior to the final conference presentation on March 31st....

Love the buzz of presenting 'live' and great feedback from Jeanette Paul, with ideas about seeing if the counselling service at Dundee University, or the DUSA may be interested to utilise this film, once it's made.....

Exciting times!

UV Mapping - new understanding!!!

UV Mapping breakthrough!!!!!

So, what was taking me about 8 hours (no joke) to UV map one room, floor etc has now been reduced to 10 minutes!!!

And, the rotation Axis when trying to 3D orbit the model, sometimes was far away, so everytime I tried to rotate, the model would whizz off the screen. Before smashing the screen to pieces I found a forum, full of exasperated modelers screaming obscenities at Maya.....hahaha...

Turns out I just needed to hover my mouse over the object and hit 'F' key.....lol

Ha! Maya....I'm getting to know you!

I followed the tutorials given to us by Sang plus the youtube link below...and really began to get my head around the UV texturing process in Maya...

A few images below showing the various stages...

Applying a checkerboard, including numbers, so I could see the orientation of the UV map elements, when they are placed into the 0-1 space.

Then taking a UV snapshot, saving as a .png file and sending to photoshop. 

Then, in Photoshop, opening that .png file and placing textures (in this case 'cream plastic' and 'twee wallpaper' in a layer underneath the .png UV snapshot.)

I can then scale and tile the textured images so that they cover the area of the relevant UV map.

Then I save that out as a .tiff file and open Maya.

Then, with my UV Texture editor open, I select the objects (double checking that all pieces are visible in the UVTE) and apply a lambert material.

In Maya I then assign my .tiff file to that lambert material and it worked!!!