Cara Christeson

Today was quite productive, although quite hectic. The animatic got an overhaul - Jedrik came over to ACCAD and he and I spruced it up a bit. Next step is for me to make up a prioritized shot list and start cranking on the 3D animatic.

Then Chris came over and we talked combat. I gave him a little overview of Maya's Trax editor and what I had been learning about non-linear animation. Right after he left, I wrote a little expression that added clips to Trax on the fly - exactly what we need to do with our characters. My silly expression just cued the new clip at a certain frame in the timeline, but just the fact that you can add and delete animation to the timeline while it's playing is a huge step in the right direction.

Jan 5, 2006
Project Ideas (jpg)	Brainstormed some ideas for the group project. I scanned my notes and put them here. Basically, I'm in this production mindset where, from a rigger's perspective, it's my job to enable or empower the animator with useful tools. I don't know if that's the best way to approach this project, but it's the first direction I thought of, and the type of projects that would (in my opinion) be most beneficial in the long run as the code would be able to be applied to many different projects. We would simply have to come up with a concept for a shot animation that would require or use our tool in the animation process, which should not be too difficult. I picked "Cloth" as my research topic for Midterm - I've read several TD job descriptions that want perpective employees to have experience with cloth and hair, so I figured this would be a good opportunity to learn.
Jan 7, 2006
Project Concept Statement	Our first outside-of-class group meeting went well. We threw around ideas and eventually started converging on one story, so we developed that into our concept statement which I typed up. Notes for next time: - Make sure we're doing enough PROCEDURAL work (enough to keep 6 programmers busy for 10 weeks) - Keep the final story SHORT - 2 minutes would be really ambitious...
Jan 12, 2006
Storyboards (2.5 pdf)	Last night we met to work. 3 and a half hours later, our group has a complete (and a little ambitious) storyboard that we're all happy with. I really like the direction the story took - the "rock-paper-scissors" theme is really interesting to me, and I love how the story has become circular. I think the plot is much tighter now, and works much better. The storyboard is a bit long, I think - we may have to scale down a bit, or perhaps focus more on the bulk of the middle (the most procedural part) in case we can't handle the whole thing in the next 8 weeks. In other project news, I've done a few tutorials to check out the toon shaders in maya 7, and the Trax editor - both of which I think will be quite helpful for the project.
Jan 17, 2006
Visual Reference images (jpg) Character Concepts (jpgs)	I think our group is going to meet tonight to nail down some more details for the project, but I thought I would get some development out of the way before then. Upon Maria's request for visual reference, I put together some inspiration reference images that I found on the web, and some character sketches I did today. I also started playing with shapes and toon shaders in Maya and rendered out a few images to test the look of a character and an army. We were concerned about how they would read, with hundreds of of stick people with stick arms and legs flailing about... I think my test images show that with some careful camera angles and a little depth of field, we should be able to keep the images clear.
Jan 23, 2006
	I've started doing some research on cloth. I did all the cloth tutorials that ship with Maya, and have downloaded a bunch of ACM papers. I have a PDF from Vita that looks promising, as well as a (really old) Maya course packet. This tutorial looks like a more advanced version of the one that came with Maya, and perhaps may give a little more insight. This website gives some helpful tips about how to work with scenes involving cloth.
Jan 26, 2006
	Did TONS more cloth research! Found about 13 papers and started making a timeline of cloth history. Did some tests in the realm of things that would work with evo-design for Matt (really stiff materials, used for structure making) and had a tiny bit of success... however using cloth to span across two supports seems to make the solver freak out, which is a bummer.
Jan 29, 2006
Walk Cycles (movs)	Finished walk cycles for both the circle and square (rock & paper) characters. I'm really happy with the way they turned out - the little stick guys really have personality now :o)
Feb 2, 2006
New Animatic (4.6 MB MOV)	Today was quite productive, although quite hectic. The animatic got an overhaul - Jedrik came over to ACCAD and he and I spruced it up a bit. Next step is for me to make up a prioritized shot list and start cranking on the 3D animatic. Then Chris came over and we talked combat. I gave him a little overview of Maya's Trax editor and what I had been learning about non-linear animation. Right after he left, I wrote a little expression that added clips to Trax on the fly - exactly what we need to do with our characters. My silly expression just cued the new clip at a certain frame in the timeline, but just the fact that you can add and delete animation to the timeline while it's playing is a huge step in the right direction.
Feb 4, 2006
Cloth Research Website	Research is DONE! My cloth research website is up and running and awesome, if I do say so myself. I'm quite happy with it. I hope I don't have many changes to make after Monday - I've put a TON of time in on it already. Also, my group re-did the group website. I put a link to it at the top of this page.
Feb 9, 2006
3D Animatic (21 MB MOV)	The 3D Animatic is 95% done! I've pretty much spent all day for the last two days putting it together, and I really like it. It's down to about 1 min 30 seconds, and the animation is SUPER rough, but it's coming along. I just have to finish the very last shot, which shouldn't be too bad once I model some scissors.
Feb 12, 2006
Shot Breakdown	Now, the 3D Animatic is 100% done. It took me FOREVER to model the stupid pair of scissors (which reaffirms why I'm not a modeler). But it's all done now and I'm happy. They guys seem to really like it too, which is awesome. I've given Jedrik an overview on how to animate (Animation 101 in 15 minutes or less) because he's done with his procedural stuff and was interested in trying to animate. I could definitely use the help. While we were working, my dad called to tell me he watched the animatic, and commented on how it was clever that the rock guys were also throwing rocks with the catapults. I hadn't even realized that, and told Jedrik that it would be funny if the paper guys threw paper airplanes or something, which prompted him to muse about an airborne paper guy division that could paratroop in from a paper airplane. Genius. If only we had another quarter or two to work on the project... :o)
Feb 16, 2006
Clip Blending Test (2 MB MOV)	Animated like crazy today! I got the Maya "Character" all set up for Circle guy and figured out how to blend clips together. I think with a little nudging in the right direction, Chris seems to be well underway with the procedural part of the combat systems - Characters are a little cumbersome to work with, but I think the Trax editor and clip blending will make it all worth it in the long run.
Feb 20, 2006
	The characters for combat are over half-way done - I've got a run, walk, hold, 2 attacks, and 2 defenses for the square guy and the circle guy. All that's left is one more attack and one more defense for each, and then one death animation for each. 14/20 clips done. The group met last night and completely re-vamped the timeline. I'm feeling more and more like this is actually going to get done! :o)
Feb 22, 2006
Battle Test Animation (7 MB MOV)	All the attack and defense clips are DONE! The guys can fight now, and it's looking pretty good! Here's a test render I did to play with layering the characters in battle and adding motion blur. Now all that's left for the combat clips is one death clip for each character. Then I can move on to keyframing the other scenes. I think we may have some issues with aliasing with the toon shaders... I'll have to run some more tests, but I may just end up rendering at double resolution and then shrinking them to help anti-alias the edges.
Feb 28, 2006
3D Animatic - Second Pass (22 MB MOV - 320 x 240) Updated Shot List	Death Clips are done. And I've started doing another pass of animation and adding toon shaders to all the characters. Basically, I'm going for a "rough" draft of the whole animation, making notes about things that I could go back and improve. Here's an update about where the shot breakdown stands, and a new pass at the animatic (still with no procedural elements). I did end up rendering at 1280 x 960 and then shrinking the frames down in after effects - it smoothed out the edges considerably.
Mar 2, 2006
3D Animatic - Second Pass, more animation (22 MB MOV - 320 x 240)	Still adding more animation to the animatic. Getting closer. The combat system that the guys are working on is looking really good! I've been waiting on Jedrik for the last keyframed sequence - he really wanted to do it, and he wouldn't let me help him get the shots done, but he promised they would be done by tonight, so that should be ok. In the meantime, since I've been waiting on his animation and the procedural work from the other guys, I've been working on a secret extra sequence that I think will make the short even better! Previews of those shots to come.
Mar 6, 2006
3D Animatic - More animation (22 MB MOV - 320 x 240)	Haven't updated in a while, but just because I've been working too hard. Here's another update of the whole animation. Some procedural stuff is finally in there, and it looks AWESOME! And I finally wrote an awesome script that applies all my shaders for me, so that's been wonderful.
Mar 11, 2006
Full Animation - DRAFT (44 MB MOV - 320 x 240)	We are so almost done!!! We have a full length, fully timed animation. All the animation is in there, just a few tweaks here and there to add in the next few days. Jed and Tim are going to do the sound editing now, while I finish fussing with things. It's really looking good, I think. The credits are still rough, obviously - the animation I have in there now is just my animation over and over with the other guy's names. They're each going to have their own animation with each of their heads on the characters.
Mar 13, 2006
Full Animation - FINAL (45 MB MOV - 320 x 240)	The final animation is DONE! All I still need to do is ending credits, and those are half done. Jed, Chris, Mike & Eric were kind of slackers in getting me their credits animations (I wanted them by 10 AM today) so I'm still waiting on them. If I don't get something from them by tomorrow morning, I'm just putting their names in. Notes for the Final Presentation: - I did all the animation - about 2500 frames of character animation = almost 2 minutes - Built, rendered, & composited all shots - 1280 x 960 to supersample and compensate for aliasing - Show a layered shot and point out the components
	Mar 14, 2006
Presentation Video (53 MB MOV - 320 x 240)	Now it is actually totally entirely DONE. It's too big to put online, so I'm working on compression, but in the meantime, here's my video for the final presentation.