Week 2 - Going SOLO

As expected from last week, Amos was asked to leave the team due to missing deadlines, low performance and using up all his strikes. This meant I'd have to re-scope the project to a solo project. Personally, the thought lingered at the back of my mind that I'd have to work on the shots by myself as Amos didn't contribute to any of the three animatic iterations. Hence, I worked on a story with such a workflow in mind. In other words, I couldn't cut down on much of the workload because the story was at its optimum refinement with an average amount of workload for each shot - it seemed doable.

Solo CIU330 Schedule

However, I was asked to reduce the scope so that it could work with my solo schedule. After a series of emails, Amos was officially off the team. This meant he had to send in all of his files. From my end, it seemed very overwhelming at that time to come up with a schedule that I could work with. Nonetheless, I arrived at this after thoughtful planning.

Re-scoping the Project

My strategy is to complete 3 to 4 shots every week, get approvals on them and put them to render immediately. There were some shots which felt could be rendered on my laptop because of less scene density and complexity. I also took into account a "render schedule" while keeping in mind which scenes would need more time to be rendered. Knowing that the render farm will be in great demand later in the trimester, I'm trying to get these shots done and put on the farm by weeks 6 to 9. In my case, I cannot work on the latter shots first because the story has a continuity to the assets and placements, for which, I need to do it in order. Below are three screenshots of the notes I made for each shot as I went through the animatic shot by shot when trying to re-scope the project.

I believe knowing what help I'd need at this stage in the production is really good because that way I could look out for potential collaborators. And that's exactly what I did. I looked around for Studio 3 students and asked for recommendations so that i could find some reliable people. Throughout the week, I tried asking around - which was very time consuming, by the way - and landed up finding the people I needed. I made the necessary formalities with them by asking them to sign the collaboration contracts and NDAs. I also gave them a brief of the shots I want them to work on.

I needed 2 (Modelers/texturing artist and lighting artist) and 1 good Animator from Studio 3. Surprisingly, Dalia and Mai from the other animation team also insisted on helping me as they "couldn't see me suffer like this". It was very thoughtful of them but I made sure to get a confirmation that they would prioritize their production before mine. I trust them on this. Dalia will be working on creating some weather elements like snow and lighting for one of my ACT 3 scene. Mai will be working on some 2D assets like posters and HDRI's. I asked them respectively based on their biggest strengths. Therefore, below is a screenshot of their contracts on our google drive. I also took the time to organize this as a separate folder because of the number of collaborators I will have to manage.

To me, I think this is additional stress on myself to manage more people because of lesser workload distribution. If I had a reliable teammate, the case would've been very different. Nonetheless, I have taken this onto myself knowing that the collaborators i chose to work with are reliable and will deliver with strong work ethics, quality and effective communication.

Render Schedule

Below is the render schedule I discussed (above) which I laid out into an excel sheet for better project management. I have also noted down the collaborators and whichs shots they will be working on.

Communication

The most time consuming and mind wrecking aspect of rescheduling a lot of things at this stage was communication. Below are screenshots of some of my communication emails with the collaborators.

Accounting for Worst Case Scenarios

I have been told numerous times to "not thinking negatively" or to "not stress over the worse case scenarios before they even happen". But, I can't help but prepare for these scenarios even if they seem very unlikely to happen. I believe things will NEVER go right but its okay. Its also okay when you are mentally prepared for these things and take necessary measures through coming up with various problem solving methodology.

This is why I accounted for not being able to deliver on time due to unforeseeable problems like excess render time, etc. Asking for an extension in the case of our project could perhaps not be possible. This is because we are probably going to have to announce a release date for the album in December, and have post releases too. For that very reason, we are all meant to be done by week 10 of the trimester. Realistically speaking, this is unreasonable from my end. I would need the entire trimester.

I did feel like a burden weighing down the load of the team so I took it up to them in our weekly group meeting. We came up with ways we can go about this. Our first solution was to push the release to a week later. If at all I would need more time, we could have another particular date for when we can premiere the entire film. These things can further be discussed along the way, if needed. I felt a lot calmer after this discussion because it took off the weight from my shoulders.

Weekly Progress Updates

As for my weekly updates, I was able to complete the car textures and send them for feedback. I received some feedback to change the interior textures of the car to something more leather like.

I also showed Amos' texture updates and asked for feedback. Below are some screenshots of his work.

I will need to match up the character texture styles with mine since mine are approved. I will also need to fix textures on the scene assets as they don't look like the materials they are supposed to be. I will also need more assets to populate the scene. hence, I have a lot more to do in fixing his parts.

Quality Assurance Checklist

For the quality assurance, I kept it very concise and explained the technical terms in very layman terms so it is easy to understand the importance of it. I still need to work on the lighting part, so that’s the only thing pending for the animation side but for now I have two pointers: Optimization and simulation.

Next Week

As for next week, I need to complete the 3 shots and put them to render. I am also in progress of seeking the time slot booking at SAE to come on campus and put my shots to render on the farm. I still have a few collaborators who I need to brief about. I'm hoping it goes well...

References

Beacco, Alejandro & Andujar, C. & Pelechano, Nuria & Spanlang, Bernhard. (2012). Efficient

rendering of animated characters through optimized per‐joint impostors. Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds. 23. 33 - 47. 10.1002/cav.1422. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230547784_Efficient_rendering_of_animated_characters_through_optimized_per-joint_impostors/citation/download

Brian (2009, Dec 29). What is the Difference Between Animation and Simulation? Retrieved

from https://www.mchenrysoftware.com/board/viewtopic.php?t=181#:~:text=Simulations%20are%20mathematical%20models%20which,move%20vehicles%20colliding%2C%20etc

Dream farm Studios (2019, Nov 27). 3D Animation: The ultimate guide to lighting fundamentals

for 3D. Retrieved from https://dreamfarmstudios.com/blog/the-ultimate-guide-to-lighting-fundamentals-for-3d/#:~:text=Lighting%20in%203D%20animation%20is,as%20time%20of%20the%20day.

Milenkovic, V. J. & Schmidl, H. (n.d.). Optimization-Based Animation. Retrieved from

https://graphics.stanford.edu/courses/cs468-01-fall/Papers/milenkovic_schmidl.pdf

Ray, W. (2019, Jul 29). 9 Types of Lighting Options That Will Help in Creating Animation.

Retrieved from https://medium.com/@raywatsonma/9-types-of-lighting-options-that-will-help-in-creating-animation-6f57e45b63dd

Tvori (2019, Jan 24). Duplication of Animations, Level of Detail, Loading Indicator, and More.

Retrieved from https://tvori.co/2018/01/24#:~:text=Level%20of%20detail%20or%20LOD,fidelity%2C%20optimized%20scenes%20in%20Tvori