Final Thoughts our Clients and project summary

Clients have been extremely happy with our progress and what we have done. So happy that we have all been offered to work on the full production. So as these being test shots we will now take the script and start looking at what scenes need what and work out some animatics and start developing the production model of the spitfire plane.

This project has been a steep learning experience for me rather than a really amazing final out come. We all had to learn different things to get the result in the short space of time we had. I never planned to rely on textures so much to get the outcome but it was a great practice to do it. During the summer I am planning on working on the high res model that will be based on the shape we have now but with all the detail of a real spitfire.

During these 8 weeks I have earned myself sometime at being a modeler at Framestore which again I got great feedback and should be working there as a modeler over the summer.

As for the outcomes I am fairly happy. Unfortunately Nuke, the compositing software we have been using was only on one machine and it wasn't a fast machine so each composite was an extremely long process where we had to take around 2 hours to render out to see our work then another 2-3 hours after we make changes. Whilst in aftereffects we tried every codex and pixel size variation to try get the best picture ready for broadcast settings and h.264 was the only one that seemed to retain the actual resolution but the quality of our work was lowered and the nuke composites seemed to no really look like what we had in nuke once rendered from aftereffects. The shots came out more blurry and transparent due to the depth layer on to high which wasn't the case in nuke. But this project meant to be making mistakes and learning as we were only doing test shots and learning techniques and work out how to make a spitfire plane look real in a shot. Did we mange to get realistic in our test? No, I don't think we did, but I think that's due to time and the fact we were learning so we now know what to do to get what we want.

First thing I have learnt is about my model. It's to low poly, I planned I to be a low poly model so we had a fully work plane, doing a full high poly model would of been costly in renders and A lot harder to texture. Secondary get nuke on a powerful computer and leave more time to develop things in Nuke as that was our weakness, we do not know the software enough to be able to take our composites to the point of realistic. But we have made the first step!

My role on this project has been group leader, modeller and texture artist. Towards the end I was compositing but the outcomes I feel don't show what we had in nuke so that's our learning point for the summer, retaining the quality. I edited the final video as well as getting and talking to the clients.

http://spitfiretuck.blogspot.com/

Above is the link to the clients blog where they were looking at the stuff in progress and they would email me wit feedback and thoughts. They have been impressed and I am due to meet them later on next week. Well the one that doesn't leave in America.

I have also been working on another project with Rory in the third year. The blog link is at the top of the page. I modeller and created the blend shapes for his main character.

Final Turntable of Spitfire

Here is the final render of the turntable of the spitfire. I am happy with the outcome, I stayed to a low poly mesh as I could as it was a small deadline and we wanted to develop the look quite alot and it was a great experimental process for me and my development. I have already been asked to model on the actual production so I plan to start a fully high res detailed model over the summer working with a texture artist from Framestore.

Motion Blur Development

Start to grade the shot to make it blend with the plate abit more. Tweaks are all being done in nuke now, still got to render out some of the passes again so we get the best out of them.

Motion Blur Development

Here is   of development of the first render. Start to play with motion blur as we had some troubles with rendering it without loosing so much of the detail and form of the plane. So we have developed a render pass called 2d motion vector pass which we get complete control over the motion blur within nuke.

First Renders, First thoughts! and Client Feedback!

Here is a first look at the Shot Render!

We tried motion blur the first time round but everything came out very strange and gave us nothing to work with. Although the actually beauty shot came out nice it just wasn't enough for us to work with.

But here is a first composite of the shot. I have recieved some feedback, they like the idea and concept behind the shot as well as the animation. But after talking to them they feel there needs abit of tweaking:

        - Colour grade on last plane: this was my own idea as the back plane looks out of place and strange.
        - odd frame jerk- there seems to be a random frame where the plane jerks. So we need to edit the track for that
        - Play with motion blur- Again something I wanted to take further anyway but its nice to hear the clients also agreeing.

Some other things I want to edit are the ground shadows passed failed to work and the shadows on the plane need abit more to give some more contrast to the actual plane.

I am fairly happy with the first draft but still loads of editing to do.

My Time at Framestore!

I recently I have been asked to model on a Framestore project involving McLaren and our design department! So this is a 3rd part to my 3rd term project.

I am working as a modeler, where I have been building props and building up sets for the production. I have also had the chance to work on character modeling where I have design and modeled Jenson's Button's hair. I also got to model one of the cars and clothes for the characters.

The sad thing is that I am unable to show any of my models or workings as they release date is after the deadline for this term, but soon as I get images or renders I'm allowed to show I will post them here!

Pilot Development