Originally I thought it would be funny to put my animation in a children’s bedroom because it is almost like the character really believes that they are a little girl. Due to not being able to get the textured from the drive I wasn’t able to use this. Although now thinking of it I don’t even think it would have been that good. It is a little creepy now I think about it so I am glad I had to change. Below you can see how all the textured were missing. Also you can see that in arnold render view, the character looks really unnatural. Not like he looked before so I need to edit his materials and textures so he isn’t so robotic looking.
I had recently watch the US Office series and fell in love with Steve Carell as the bizarre and oblivious boss that he was. I thought it was almost something his character would have said so I thought of putting this animation into an office situation. It might not be totally suited but I think that it is just for my own amusement. Also, all the textures were there so I didn’t want to fuss too much than I already had.
As you can see above, The lighting is good for the office but not the character, He doesn’t look like the focus point, the window looks like the focal point. So I needed to add some more lighting to the characters face to change this.
Here I wanted to looks at the characters materials and change them to show more shadow on his face so that you can clearly see his nose etc. The colours have definitely changed in different rendering views and preferred how he looked when I originally choose this rig.
Below, You can see how I have added in lighting to make my character look like the focal point. I changed his skin tone to match the kind of colours in the office to make him pop with that beautiful brown skin of his. I also moved the camera more to the right of the room so the window wasn’t in view to take away the focus but that I could still take advantage of that natural sunlight effect it has on the room. Now I was able to block the camera so that it would zoom into his face at the certain points in my reference I had previously planned.
Having now come to the end of this project I was distracted by other projects and didn’t think that the render farm would have issues before hand in. However, there were issues so I wasn’t able to successfully render this animation dude to technical difficulties with hooking Houdini up to the render farm.
Final Outcome:
Here is my final animation as a high quality play blast. Luke had assured me that it was okay to just clearly state that the render far wasn’t working and that it why there isn’t a final render for my hand in. I have been trying to get this rendered for 2 weeks and had no idea it wouldn’t be working but as soon as it is ready I will render it and add to my showreel.
My Evaluation:
Having finished this project, I think it has gone a lot better than my previous animation when looking back. This skill has not come very naturally to me but there is however some improvement. I think I am starting to understand splining a lot more now but I can already see things I would have done better now. I would have made the movement of the character between the zoom in and out much smoother. I would have made the dance moves more splined on the graph. I did how ever really like the facial expressions I made. I know they aren’t perfect but I think it was better than I thought I would.
I think I have kind of admitted to myself that I am not a 3D computer animator as such. I could go for pre-vis jobs but I think I have so much more to learn when it comes to animating. This has made me more concrete in my decisions to pursue simulations and special effects. I prefer creating the system to animate rather than spending a lot of time making something move naturally.