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Further Research


Unity

Over the last semester, Cassie has primarily been looking at Unity and the processes needed to bring our Virtual Reality project to fruition.  Due to the heaviness involved in researching unity and trying to learn the software, it is a necessity that the remaining members of our team, including myself, learn various aspects of unity.  This will help when it comes to piecing together our final version of the project and will maintain a shared and equal dispersion of work for each team member.

I have begun looking at how our models and textures work within unity.  Cassie gave out a document she created which helped us to understand how we could plug in textures and values into unity to get our textures to appear within the unity scene.



In addition to this, as I will be taking on some animation roles within the next few weeks, it is important I have an idea of how we can transfer our animated Maya scenes, into Unity in an effective, non-corrupted and productive way.  I have found various information on this mainly via online chat boards and through some youtube tutorials but we may need to bake our animations so that this transfer can be done correctly.  We are using IK based rigs and on initial research, it seems that IK rigs may not be compatible within Unity.  If this is the case, we need to find a round about way of getting our animations into our scene.




Substance Painter

I began researching further into Substance Painter and the opportunities and depth it could help us gain towards achieving our visualized style. Through the Allergorthic Training site, I was able to begin looking through tutorials and adding to my knowledge how the interface and work space setups functioned. After this, I was able to take in basic models from our environment and begin playing around and experimenting with the many presents available within the software. I made a list as to the main textures being used throughout our environment and was able to link the models that will be taking on these new attributes - Leather Models - Stool, Seats, Booth Seats Wood - parts of juke box, tables, counter, frames, Ceramic - cups, mugs, plates Plastic - floor, ketchup, mustard, parts of Juke Box, Metal - coffee machine, cup holder, napkin dispenser, cutlery, parts of Juke Box, chair legs, table legs Glass - juke box, coffee pots, windows I have continued to look at various references both contextual and conceptual as I have modeled and textured. It is important for us to begin to really nail down the final look that we imagine for the set. Hopefully through these precautions and measures of actively seeking out research and then relating back to our early concepts, we will be able to achieve this ideal style. Once the models have been textures to a specific likeness of our team, the textures will be exported using the Unity 4 present in Substance. From here, Cassie will take the exported texture files and link them to the environmental models setup within the Unity scene she has imported from my Maya file. From here, Cassie will be able to begin looking at more finalised lighting set ups and get a better idea of how the textures respond to the light to give us the best possible look within our scene


Matthew Hamill

We received a guest presentation from former Animation Belfast student, Matthew Hamill.  Below are the notes taken throughout his talk which was primarily focused on the workflow and production line of projects in animation -

Research - style

Full stop and comma keys - use to go frame by frame through videos

Reference - you have to shoot reference.

Shoot your own - specific, good craic, be aware of your limitations

YouTube - endless, references, kwonkicker, exercise tutorials, parkour videos, 100 walks

Movies - inspiration

Reference + Image Plane = 😂

Video - Google Drive - Premier Pro (editing software) - import into Maya

Need to call the file a certain thing or Maya won't read it.

Export - Media - PNG sequence - "name of video"

Full stop before numbers, not underscores. E.g. "yawn.0001"

Encode Sequence

Maya - select camera - attribute editor - environment - Image Plane

Hold down control for more control

Prep to make animation easier

Viewport + graph editor

Everything starts in the hips -
HIPS DONT LIE - work out from the hips

Find your golden poses - Blocking Pass

Keep it Clean - all keys on one line each

Breakdowns - spaces in between poses
Refine tour timing - think about spacing - is it snappy or smooth?

Jamaal Polish Pass Check List

Add Overlap / Clean your curves /
Clean your arcs / check for symmetry

When Do I Ask For Feedback? After blocked out animation - ALWAYS

TIPS - when you first get a rig, pose it. Put it in weird poses. Makes us familiar with the rig and know where everything is.

Learn how constraints work - joining things to other things - eg. Weapons to hands - mugs etc

Use Plugins - Animbot / Pose Library/ ZV - Parent Master

USE REFERENCE

listen to podcasts - lanimate / game developers conference / the Joe Rogan experience

Mail other animators

Script Editor - History - Echo All Commands

Create Buttons - clear history, do the thing you want to make a button for - copy and paste to bottom area, create a button and name it appropriately.

TweenMachine

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