Final Update 4/23: Edited animation

Pass 3

I have a lot of problems with the hair here….at the end strands clip into his head. I’ll probably comp it out if I get the approval that this animation is good to go.

Final Update 4/18: New audio + touch ups

Big thanks to Mason for giving me a better audio recording!

So I’ve pretty much updated everything to what the final is really likely to look like:

Here’s some screencaps because again I don’t think the YouTube quality is on par with the actual video quality

I edited the animation to try to make his movements look more deliberate. I also fixed the lighting to be brighter so he can stand out more, as well as added a change in lighting segment for drama. I edited the brow shape which kind of created some weird protrusions so I’ll probably change that later. I changed the settings to a higher quality so the overall quality as well as the light affecting the hair should be improved.

I have the bottom hair laying more realistically than before, though it still moves too stiff. I’m a little hesitant editing that part at this point because if I were to make it more fluid I’m a bit afraid of getting the flickering that the main hair still has at the end. I edited down a lot of the flickering in comp, but it’s still there which sucks. edit: yay i think i edited down the flicker decently enough. there’s still some flicker-y areas but i’ll edit those parts on my last update. I guess I’ll likely still mess with the bottom hair if I don’t have much else to tweak on.

I’m also wondering if I should make his head move at the ending line. For one, I feel like some head movement might actually solve the flickering because I feel like the hair doesn’t flicker when he’s moving (I….have no idea how this system works yo). However, I did kind of intentionally leave it still because it’s supposed to indicate his acceptance of his “dead state”, and he’s supposed to be generally more nervous/stiff at that point.

I also added some effects in the background to fit the mood I’m going for.

Final Update 4/11: First complete animation + lighting pass

I have down my first set for basically everything (aside from my background)

So right now I’m planning on having this as the final render settings because it takes a decent amount of time to render with a quality that is okay to me. I can bump up the quality more if needed though.
edit: The quality is better in my video file than this youtube video…here’s a frame of the video quality

There’s some expressions that I’m not quite sure I want to go with, but an overall okay animation is done so far. I think I’ll be keeping the lighting as it is unless it needs to be changed.

I’ve lowered down the amount of flickering that happens in the hair, but it still does a significant amount at the end. The only solution I’ve read to fix this is to increase the hair count, or have it in motion which I have for the majority of the piece. I don’t want to increase the hair in the front, but I probably do want to dos so for the bottom hair + back hair though; I want to see if I can reassign it to a different hair system because for the top hair, I do want it to maintain the shape for the top hair, but it’s awkward for the bottom hair where it’s kind of floating and has obviously less strands. I hope I won’t screw up in the process…
edit: just edited the hair (tiny image is tiny). will add more volume but is more or less the idea

I’m okay with the textures I have so far, but I can always change with critique. So basically what I’ll be doing next week is tweaking everything, hopefully change at least one hair issue, and working on the final background. The final background will be pretty similar in terms of color scheme (especially with the clouds), but it will have more of an open space of French buildings and crowds more far away. I kind of want to do a small 2D fire/crowd animation so I’ll try to test that out as well. edit: orrr actually if I can kind of just keep the current background I have it and tweak it a little I would be okay with doing that too

Final 4/4 Update: Hair Test + Audio + Vizemes

I’ve mainly been working on hair and a little bit of texturing, as well as getting down the mouth movements in the storyboard to follow the audio (which I do have now) so I can start animating as soon as possible.

First of all, I did finish my tongue control and have some blend shapes + lattice/cluster for more solid nose deformations (though I don’t think I’ll be doing extreme deformations for this particular piece, but just in case).

Here’s my first real hair with some textures test (ignore the bad animation):

There’s still some flickering that I’ll try to fix by next week as well as penetration into the forehead in some parts, but overall I’m pretty okay with the general look.

Here’s my audio with my storyboarded vizemes:

I have a version with a background noise (that’s revolution-y sounding) that I would like to use, but I hope it isn’t distracting:

I have the general facial expressions I want to go for right now, but I will likely be editing them more when I really start the animation.

As for the general look I’m going for according to the storyboard, I would like to have Carton’s head lying on a dirt slope (probably not obscure is face as much as I am in the storyboard though), and I want to do the dirt slope in Maya. The background will be a matte painting that more or less should give the impression of the rioting in France during the French Revolution. I’ll work on all of this stuff when the character stuff is finalized.

By next week, I hope to fix the hair completely and get down the textures (+ some better lighting) and also do the dirt slope as well.

I’ll also try to run some rendering tests on the lab computers so I can have more high quality renders (edit: my file isn’t working properly there because I didn’t realize the lab computer didn’t have Maya 2016, so I’ll be on my computer. Currently it renders 2 minutes per frame for the master and the occlusion which are my heaviest passes. It might increase when I add the dirt slope, so I will try to minimize that as much as possible and of course start rendering earlier)

If my audio is good to go, I can also start on animation as well.