Cerys Ford Computer animation arts

For me, my Major project has been one of the biggest learning curves I’ve had on this course, as its one of the most complete projects I think I’ve done. Originally my plans for major were to get the garden and kitchen modelled, textured, lit and animated, along with the witch being textured, rigged and animated. I learnt a lot about my own abilities and working speeds, and I now know that this was way too ambitious. However, I still would have liked to get more done for the final film, specifically the garden, although I am happy with what I was able to do. I think one of my weakest areas is still time management, although I think I did make some improvements in this project which I can continue to work on after the course. I would have also liked to get the witch UV’d and textured for hand in, but was unable to do so, which I think was due to me putting it off because UVing and texturing characters is one of the areas I am least experienced in, so I did everything else until I ran ou

Here is the art of for major. I decided to combine the Minor and Major Art ofs to show the continuity between the projects. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1GHjwc89okmQgwE66sl-tyljDLO4MpMX4/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=110976004923016121389&rtpof=true&sd=true  

 Despite my best efforts, I wasn't able to get all of the renders done in time for hand in. So, I took the playblast and edited in the renders I did have over the top of it so I have something to show for hand in. Once I did that, I added a fade in and out to the beginning and end, and added a crackling fire sound effect for ambiance. At first I was going to use forest sounds to further imply that the house was in a forest, but I felt it didn't fit the rest of the scene, so I used a fire sound effect instead. Here is the fire sound effect I used - https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/crackling-fire-14759/

 I had intended to check the rendering over the weekend, but unfortunately the uni was closed so I could only check it on monday. These renders had failed, as the camera exposure settings had not saved, which caused all of the frames to be very dark. While some of these frames looked cool, it was absolutely not the atmosphere I wanted, so I made sure the camera settings were correct and set it up to render again. On the bright side, I was able to edit some of the lighting to fit the scene better, specifically edited the candle point lights to be less intense, and added a area light to the wand cabinet so you could see the wands better. Some of the failed renders: Then, on Wednesday, we found out that most of the computers had been restarted overnight and thus the rendering stopped, putting me back even further. We decided to split up the remaining frames that needed rendering between more computers to try and get them ready for the deadline. My plan was to edit the playblast with music

 Finally, it was time to render. Knowing I had just over a week to render (On thursday, 11th May) I had to figure out the best way to render the project that was both time efficient and looked good. First, I did a render test with a sampling rate of 4/3/2/2/0/0, which looked good but took about 45 min to render a single frame, which was too long for what I wanted, especially as sequence rendering takes longer per frame. So, I lowered the sample rates to 3/2/2/2/0/0, and applied a image de noiser in the render settings. This took about 20 min,and still looks good. As the lower sample rate was more effecient, I set up the rendering with those settings over thursday and friday to render over the weekend. Higher Sample rate Lower sample rate with de noiser

The last thing to do before rendering was animating. The first thing I animated was the fire, which I used an nfluid to create, advised by one of my tutors and this tutorial - https://cgi.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-create-an-awesome-fire-effect-using-maya-fluids--cg-943. It was fairly simple to create with the info that I had, but I think at points its a bit too intense as it's supposed to be a gentle flame. I tried to modify the parameters so it's not as intense, but I wasn't able to get it to the point I like without breaking it further.  For the cauldron, it was as simple as rotating it every 40 frames and keyframing it, which makes it appear to be gently swaying over the fire. for the liquid in the cauldron, I animated that rotating to have it appear to be moving. The final thing to animate was the camera moving around the scene. For this, I wanted a slightly slow movement around the kitchen, almost as if you were walking through it. I created this by moving the came

 Once all the texuring was completed, I moved onto the lighting. I knew I wanted Dusk/Dawn lighting, so I looked around for tutorials on how to create that desired effect. I found this tutorial - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8myb1AUAZm8&t=466s which I modified for my kitchen, especially the window portion. Going from there, I lit up the rest of the room using a large area light, and lit up the candles using point lights. I also added a point light into the cauldron so you can see the contents better.

 The next items I texured were the clutter items, such as the books, Whicker baskets, mushrooms, apples, etc.  For the books, I used a leather texture and coloured it, then added lines and circles to some to make them more detailed and older looking. I created several different textures to give variety. For the Wicker baskets, I used this texture I found online - https://www.texturecan.com/details/151/ and modified it to create a more stylised look. I did the same texture for the round wicker basket. Originally I was going to do the Jars next to the kettle the same colour as the appliances, but I decided to do them pink instead to add more variety in colours, and to bring the pink of the witches colour scheme into the kitchen more. I also went back and edited the appliances to be a bit more pastel, directly colour picking from the witches colour scheme. I also lowered the shininess of them to make them look more like a paint or coating rather than coloured metal. For the Wand Cabinet,

 The kitchen counters and cabinets were suprisingly more complicated. It took me a while to get the effect I wanted, which was old painted wooden cabinets with the paint slightly faded. I did this by using my stylised wood texture, with a fill layer over the top which has a filter on it. Figuring out the colours for the cabinets was quite difficult as well, as I wanted a colour that was contrasting to the appliances that still looked good. I tried out quite a few colours before deciding on a grey.  Once I'd done the base of the cabinets, I added the marble to the countertops, tweaking it slightly to fit the rest of the countertop, then added the metal for the doorknobs and for the island, the tap.  The final part for the counter island was the sink basin, which also took a bit of work to get right. There wasn't a texture that I felt fit the look I was going for, which was porcelain, so I used the 'concrete simple' texure, modified it to look more like porcelain, then us

 The next items I textured were the appliances. I used smeg appliances, particularly their fridges, as inspiration for the colours and textures, although I think they need further tweaking. At this point I was focusing on getting everything textured and then going back and making edits. I wanted the appliances to match the witches colour scheme so it was more obvious that they were additions made to the kitchen by her, along with being the newest looking items in the kitchen. After I'd done the appliances I moved on to the oven, the oven hood and the cauldron. I wanted all of these to have a similar, worn wrought-iron look, which I think I was able to achieve quite well.