WEEK 6 - Whoops!

This week could have a Drama Series of its own (*laughs and cries in the corner*). To summarize this week in a nutshell, we had a member kicked out, realized we were lagging behind with work on the characters and had to reschedule the Gantt chart to compensate for additional workload, revised our LO’s and figured we needed to do way more work than we are currently doing, and lastly had to re-texture the tank due to some reasons.

Whoops! – S01 EP01

One of our animation team members (Paulo) was kicked out due to receiving four red strikes. As per policy, three red strikes and you are out! These were validated as well. Whatever happened in the span of two days was sad and tragic for him, but the team also suffered a loss in workflow. We already had a lot to do individually. Now, we have to redistribute work and account for the quality and standards to move on with. Fortunately, we were allowed to use the work he gave in. Unfortunately, we had to match our styles up to that level of detail.

The dagger texture that Paulo worked on was of extremely high detail. If we chose to continue with this level of detail, we would never finish the project on time. So we have to adapt to newer strategies now.

Whoops! – S01 EP02

On Tuesday, the remaining three animators discussed on implementing newer and more convenient strategies to work with. We thought of allowing Amos to design a high poly texture for all of the assets in Zbrush (since he had experience with it), and later using smart materials on substance to give each of them a hand-painted textured touch. In order for this to work, we had to experiment and test the effectiveness of this strategy.

On the other hand, we couldn’t waste any more time with the rigging and skinning of the characters. As learnt from the previous MDU classes, we would always follow the production pipeline as: modelling, texturing, rigging, skinning, animations, and post productions. But since we couldn’t wait that long, we inquired if it is possible to work on the rig and skin before or in another file as we wait for the textures to be done. It was possible.

Whoops! – S01 EP03

So, one worked on the rigging and skinning of the TANK (Ahmed), another worked on the normal maps for the assets like the AXE (Amos) and I continued to work on the textures for the character. I finished painting the scarf on substance by Wednesday. It was looking good until I was told that there is a more efficient way of going about it.

The hand-painted scarf on Substance Painter, before I was told of the more efficient way of doing it.

Amos suggested he could do the high-poly detailing on the character and would share with me how to use smart materials on Substance Painter. However, he was also working on the ANUBIS model and a couple of other things, which is why I couldn’t get the normal maps by Saturday to finish the texturing by my deadline. I had to give myself a red strike!

I also encountered problems with the normal maps due to some format clashes, quality of the textures and the seams were off. Hence, I had to wait a bit longer to get the normal maps.

Whoops! – S01 EP04

I did not want to waste any time as I waited. So, I worked on the rigging and skinning of the NINJA, even though this was part of Paulo’s work. It took me three days to just rig the character correctly. And the dread of skinning was overwhelming me as well. Thankfully, Amos knew of a better way to skin and helped us a lot with it. I had to reschedule the Gantt chart and distribution of work once again. I was trying to think of better solutions and how to be more flexible with our work.

Rig Skeleton and bone controllers for the NINJA.

So far, these four “episodes” of problems this week meant we needed to rework our strategies. Everyone needs to hustle harder especially in the upcoming week as it will be WEEK 7 (project week). We want to try and achieve the best and most productive output in this phase. Since we don’t need to waste time travelling, we can constantly keep the workflow going next week. Although, we might need to schedule meetings at the start and end of the week to check on progress and fix any issues in person.