Week 6 - A New Workflow

I wanted to start WEEK 6 on a positive note. I was determined to get back on track. I didn't want to waste another week feeling lost and confused so I planted my feet on the ground with decisions to help myself. Here's what I did and how it helped me.

Booked a Consultation with Rashed for Morpher related issues

Thankfully, nothing drastic was wrong with the file. I was dreading this because I always felt as though there were major issues with my file since I never got technical help and support last term with my 3D work. Even when I faced issues, I found solutions on my own - which isn't a bad thing. But, I was concerned if I did the right thing or if it contributed to a much bigger issue.

Had a 45 minute meeting to discuss technical issues with file

However, through the meeting which I had with Rashed and Kunjal (since she is working on my morphers), we found out that there was a weird issue with the vertices that was causing problems in the stack. So we had to look for an unconventional fix around it. It worked. Here's what we did (technical fixes).

Moved Edit poly below "unwrap UVW", collapse to
Move Morpher under "unwrap UVW", collapse to. The poly count still retains the same vertex count
Click on character, control V to make a copy in its same place. Delete Skin, delete Unwrap. Move the character to the side while keeping the pivot point in its place.
Then, click on the main guy, go to modifier list and select Morpher. Put that under skinning layer.

With this, all the issues we were facing were resolved!!!! Moreover, Rashed went out of his way to actually demonstrate some CAT rig hacks that i wasn't too aware of. I should have done my research before working on it, nonetheless, the information he provided was incredibly helpful.

When he was explaining the part of changing it from a FX to an IK chain for different purposes, it struck me how my animations were looking off because of this very function. He also told me when to use FX and IK. For example: IK should be used when any part of the body is in contact either with another body part or with an external object like a wall or the ground. He then spoke to us about Procedural and keyframe spine animations and why this is a one time decision ONLY. This was super helpful to know.

Re-scoping the Project Further?

With this, it really pumped me up and got me motivated to work this week. However, I received an email from Student Services that I must re-scope the project even further if I need to complete it on time. Honestly, there's nothing else I could cut out. I did think of options, though. And I discussed this with Josh who also agreed that it would be a bad idea to cut off anything further. Below are some options I had as part of my problem solving methodology:

OPTION 1: cut out act 2 completely. BUT, the story loses value and so does the purpose of the animation.
OPTION 2: keep act 2 pending till after Act 1 and 3 are done according to initial schedule, this way I work on ACT 2 in weeks 10, 11 and 12. If the momentum of work keeps going, I will be able to get three shots done per day for three days of the week (according to my work and uni schedule)

Since the second option looked more preferable, I'm am pinning onto that for now. I even requested a week off from work so that I could focus more on my project.

New Workflow

This was probably the most exciting part of the week. I had a meeting with Amit to discuss these issues but to also get some help with learning the VRAY 5 Material Library. On a side note, I downloaded VRAY 5 and it's compatible with Amos' file but the whole interface is so new to me that I felt completely lost at the sight of it. I knew I needed guidance even if I went through tutorials and documentations online.

However, in my meeting with Amit, I showed him the animatic and he had ideas on how we can cheat our way through it. Sounds exciting!

So, he introduced me to a new workflow where I could do the animations in 3Ds max, bake the animations and export it as an OBJ sequence. I needed to download some plugins for this. OBJ sequence Exporter and Element 3D for After effects. Below are the two downloads.

What is this New Workflow like?

So, this workflow entails that you can do Production AND Post production in After Effects without having to spend time on render. Yes. NO RENDER HASSLE. Woohoooo!!! Anything that can save me from rendering, hell yes!

Amit tutoring me on how to use the software by setting up a sample shot based on my shot 4 scene build up

Basically, Element 3D is essentially a 3D animation application within After Effects which uses an advanced real-time render engine to make 3D objects functional in a 3D space with all the tools required to look as good as if they were coming directly from a full 3D application (Griggs, 2019, p.1). Technology is crazy sometimes! With this method, I can directly work in production and post edit the shots wherein I could just render the final shot after approvals. This will save A LOT of my time. Moreover, it gives me so much more versatility and freedom to create more dynamic shots in more efficient ways. The sound of this is just very exhilarating and I can't wait to start using this methodology. I'm going to add this to my Quality Assurance Checklist too.

Example of how the shot can be coloured graded immediately

Pros and Cons to this Workflow:

With everything there has to be some pros and cons. I have evaluated these before coming to a final decisions and this is my research and evaluation for that.

Pros:

Faster and more efficient workflow
Don't need to render
Don't need to get used to the new VRAY 5 render settings as it might be very complex to grab a hold of
Can do production AND post production in one go
More flexibility to make and edit changes
Versatility
3D space and short cuts are the same with W E R so getting used to the interface won't be much of a hassle
Can change camera angle and experiment with better angles in real time
Can animate more easily with environment objects

Cons:

Might take some time to get used to the interface
Consistency issues with the first three shots and the rest
Toon shader
Since Amos used VRAY Material Library shaders, I cannot use the same in Element 3D. Will need to retexture everything or get bitmaps from the material library, but will still have to retexture everything in Element 3D.
Scenes with Character interactions need to be baked together and exported as one. Need to check the feasibility of this method.

Hence, although the pros outweigh the cons, the downsides of going with this method are far more alarming. In other words, I have evaluated that the style that we initially set as a benchmark might be far more unattainable and the the shots that have been rendered might have to be re-rendered.

I looked at some tutorials to better help me make this decision. There is a plugin called Sapphire Cartoon by Boris FX available for after effects, that allows to create a cartoon shader (BorisFX, 2020). However, the results I've seen from these tutorials aren't something to be pleased of and there isn't much available on the internet to guide me on it. Yet, through a lot of research, I found a tutorial that showcases results quite close to the style I wanted to achieve. The video tutorial is below. I can eliminate the paper background but the cartoon look is what i need.

(CreaRec, 2018)

My other option is to check the renders from the last few weeks and work around a way where I can test the Sapphire toon shader to see if the past renders and the future renders will maintain consistency or not. For this, I need to convert the vrimgs to exrs and will be testing this out shortly. If this doesn't work, then i'll have to re-render the sequence without the toon shader and without background too (which wont take long) and use the Boris FX throughout. Knowing which method to go for at this stage is very crucial because if I worked on more shots and made this change midway, it would've ruined the visual quality of my work. So i'm glad I came to this point of realization. Let's see how this goes.

Standing up Animation shot - still pending for approval

There's a lot more for me to research and work on and I'm hoping this week I could finalize this. That being said, I also worked on the animations for the standing up shot which i was struggling a lot with. I booked another consultation with Rashed for this, who showed me an example with a lot of explanation on how to go about the animations. From his feedback, my animations were lacking Arching.

He suggested to have a new take to the animation where I give the character a rested pause which will look more visually appealing and will help to transition into the second motion much better. He also advised that every keyframe should have a body joint motion which will be affected by any given motion. In other words, there shouldn't be a point where a part of the body doesn't react or move. Every joint should have a slight motion in relation to the action taken. I also noticed this as I was using myself as reference.

New blocking Animations

I re-did these animations after creating a keyframing spine as advised by Rashed at the start of the week. It really made things a lot more easier to animate. Below are just blocking animations, followed by smoothing curves in the below video.

I sent these to Rashed for feedback and he wanted to have a meeting with me to discuss some things. In the meeting, he prepared a quick animation to showcase some techniques and principles of animation that proved to be very helpful. He even sent me the file to have a quick reference to.

Basically, I think I will need to re-animate this again from scratch as the feedback changes are quite drastic and would be easier to start fresh. Below are some references I used of myself for this animation.

P.S. wearing a skirt for this was probably a bad idea.

Conclusion

With that, I think I did pretty well this week. I finally know what I need to help myself and whom to go to for questions regarding various concerns. I'm also doing various things to keep myself motivated. As for now, Josh has also uploaded all the video files for the Paradise intro shots. In case I get a little tired of animation work, I could go back to editing the shot (something I enjoy doing as well) to keep my mind off 3D but still on Project Louder.

I'm hoping for better results next week and higher productivity. Let's see how this goes.... Wish me luck!

References

BorisFX (2020). Sapphire Plug-ins for After Effects: Cartoon [blog]. Retrieved from https://blog.imagineersystems.com/support/documentation/sapphire/ae/cartoon/

CreaRec (2018, Sept 28). Photo appearing as paintings - After Effects tutorial [video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUtudrHpf3I

Griggs, m. (2019, Dec 16). Element 3D: What it is and how to use it. Retrieved from https://www.creativebloq.com/features/element-3d-what-it-is-and-how-to-use-it#:~:text=Element%203D%20is%20effectively%20a,from%20a%20full%203D%20application.

LeighAnimation