Nearly at the finish line.

Well at last I’m pleased to say that after a lot of stress and inability to do ANY work or use the computer much at all for well over a week (maybe 2? I forget). My laptop has FINALLY finished rendering out the animation of my Sunken temple!

Not sure if it’ll be too big to post here (looks like the shrunken version is not), I have a few things I’d like to edit/fix before the final presentation (of course only re-rendering the necessary frames) but for now it is finally DONE!!! *throws a party*

Pop-Ups in PVs

Looking way way ahead to semester three here but I was recently watching Kanon Wakeshima’s latest music video for Storytelling by Solita  and the ‘pop-up’ style of it all really inspired me. I’m thinking that something similar could easily be incorporated into my ‘The Spider and The Marionette’ piece too add to the storybook feel I was hoping to go for.

(All images are printscreened from the video linked. Video and images are copyright Kanon Wakeshima, no copyright infringement intended)

Something kinda similar was also used in Miku Hatsune’s music video for Fukigen Waltz (by OYSTER project) in the game Project Diva, however I prefer the look in Kanon Wakeshima’s Video where the ‘sticks’ on the pop-ups are not shown.

(All images are printscreened from the video linked. Video and images are copyright Sony and Krypton, no copyright infringement intended)

Update is non-update.

Well there’s not much to update since last week I’m afraid. At the moment my laptop has been rendering out a high quality video pretty much all day and night long because it takes a really really long time to do so.

I’m exceedingly glad I started doing this as early as I did, though I’ll admit it is exceedingly frustrating as I can barely use the laptop to do anything else  at all whilst the rendering process is going on, work or no.

So yeah. This update was really more of a non-update...

Lights, Camera, Screenshots!

Time for yet ANOTHER UPDATE! As you can tell even though I’ve been on a real roll with work all year so far, but lately in particular I have a lot more in terms of having finished things to show for it.

So once again here is yet another video, this one to show the improvements upon the camera since the last video (yesterday).

Going to have another quick check through to check again for any major mistakes that stand out but hopefully now this will be the last draft and I shall be moving on to do a final video. Fingers crossed.

If there’s nothing that needs tweaking I shall first experiment with some different picture sizes to see what the biggest and highest quality video size (in terms of screen size and resolution) I can manage without it taking a bazillion years to render it out.

As it is the 160 x 120 20dpi (pathetically small) screen size takes approximately 3 hours to render out and not too, too long to put together in the video. Obviously this is disgusting quality and I want something a LOT bigger and nicer. However once it gets to the point where you stop noticing any real increase in quality there’s no point going any higher as it’s just taking up time unnecessarily....

So yeah, basically weigh up quality vs time and see which seems viable.

Anyways. Enough rambling, here’s the latest video:

And as a special treat some bonus screenshots of the Maya scene in progress:

Camera Draft Video

Just a quick update of the promised (low quality) video showing the rough draft of the camera movements for my SunkenTemple.

Looking at this I can see several real problem places where I want to completely change the angle and focus! (No Mr Fishie!)

Seeing it rendered out like this looks SO SO different than in working mode I tell you!

It’s a good feeling to see it though! Even as a work in progress.

Heres the video so far:

Crash burn and potentially finish.

Well after a minor set back a few days ago ( where emitters, polygons and skeletons did lots of stupid things they shouldnt have) resulting in the deletion and re-importing of half the things in my scene from old backups; I think I may have finally finished my sunkern temple scene. And ahead of scedual too!

I have literally just finished setting up the camera movements through the scene and am batch rendering a rough draft to see how it looks but fingers crossed, aside from some tweaking my scene should be all nice and done now!

I will of course post the draft video up here as soon as it is done for your (almost) enjoyment.

But until that is done I shall leave you with some simple work in progress renders instead.

Mr Fishie

Just a small update, in terms of lighting I've made some adjustments but the main point of this blog is that I thought it was worth noting the newest addition to my Sunken Temple scene.

Meet Mr Fishie:

I’d been considering for a while adding a fish to my scene but doubted very much I could manage it. Yet lo and behold here he is. Mr Fishie is able to swim a pre-set path around the whole room weaving in and out of obstacles as you can see here illustrated by the green line:

That’s Mr Fishie there in the bottom right (Purple thing).

I’ve also managed to attach a wake emitter to him so that a ripple effect will follow him as he moves around. (Purple box)

Mr Fishie is loosely based upon a fighter fish as suggested by a friend. Though I say loosely as my modelling skills are the best and I also did not invest too much time in modelling him in detail as I want to keep the scene as low poly as I possibly can where necessary, so as to reduce render times.

(Picture from http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/lachesis/images/classes/vision_final/images/fighterFishMedly.bmp)

As you can also see from the top down I’ve been doing quite a bit of set dressing adding shells and such to much of the scene, making it feel that little bit fuller and more natural.

Next I plan to add some various different types of coral and weed, some of it animated if I can.

And so to finish here’s a very short rough video where you can see Mr Fishie in action, sort of.

Also since watching this video I’ve edited the way Mr Fishie moves so it looks a little more fish like and less ‘tail wagging’ like.

The Most Frustrating Day Ever!

Well as you can probably guess, yesterday I had an exceedingly frustrating day!

Having made quite a good deal of progress on my Sunken Temple I decided it was high time I did a practice render of the lighting sequence to see where I was at in terms of how it looked and what needed altering.

Recently I acquired the newest version of Autodest Maya, 2011, on a student licence from the Autodest website. But on going to my render settings I found, to my dismay, no sign of the settings to render straight to video; and so I was forced to render out all 5000 frames individually.

PLEASE IF ANYONE KNOWS WHY THIS IS AND HOW TO FIX IT LET ME KNOW!!!!!!

Thankfully as this was merely a test run I rendered them in the lowest possible settings that I could use and still vaguely see the scene in. 160x120 20dpi I believe it was. Patheticly bad quality I know but I didnt need it to be good quality, just quick. This alone took 3 long hours to achieve but the worst was still to come.

For on rendering out each individual frame I realised that no program knew I had would render a video easily with 5000 imges. I tried Photoshop/Imageready, Premiere pro, and Flash but none of these would open 5000 files at once unsurprisingly. So then using Premiere I tried making it in little chunks, only to find it too nearly an hour to put together 200 frames and each frame lasted a lengthy 5 seconds!

Whilst this doesn’t sound much it’s out of the question for an animation frame which needs to be as close to 0 as possible. Then there was the task of pasting them together and trying to speed them up effectively.

After over 5 long hours of attempting this it was pointed out to me by my boyfriend that I did in fact have Windows Live Movie Maker (I didn’t realise they’d changed the name) which easily took all 5000 frames, let me adjust the time of all of the frames in one go instead of individually, and add music as if it were nothing....

To say the least I almost cried...

In the end I got the 3 and ½ min video up and running in under an hour, allowing me to spot where changes needed to be made and check my water effects so that I can finally continue with my work without guessing everything.

One thing this has taught me is that I will definitely need at LEAST a week, probably 2 to be safe, to render out my final piece in high quality, once more set dressing/animated bits/effects/camera movements are added.

All in all an utterly frustrating day, but with a happy ending.

And now I leave you with my terrible quality video which is so far still rather boring but should give you an idea of what I've been up to.

Marionettes and Sea Shells

Well it’s been a good while now since my last update but I’ve been hard at work with a few different things.

Sunken Temple

Firstly an update on my Sunken temple. I’ve been making quite a few alterations to the original design of this piece, only additive so far. As well as this I’ve started adding textures to bits of it and bump mapping a lot of things which I rather proud of only recently learning how to do this.

I’ve also taken quite a bit of inspiration from this photo which my sister recently took whilst on holiday in Italy:

Seeing this exquisite room made entirely of shells really inspired me to go all out in putting some more detail into my model so I am adding a little at a time more and more detail (and shells) as I go as well as generally shaping the room more and more and adding more points of interest.

Essays

Aside from working on this model I have also completed my Literature and Contextual Essays which I shall admit I strongly disliked doing.

Not because I’m against doing research, nor writing. Quite the opposite as I had already spent a large amount of time doing both and compiling my findings before these essays anyways. However I found for the amount of references collected (10 books 10 journals 10 websites and 10 of another variety) the expected essays were pitifully short and it barely seemed worth the effort to do so much research for what is essentially a page of writing where one barely has room to write a thing...

The actual essay writing pert was rather easy, in fact the hardest part was trying to condense it down as much as physically possible.

But by comparison finding that amount of references was EXTREMELY hard indeed!!! Just try searching for books or journals on ‘Video Games Lighting’ and you’ll see what I mean....

And I’m not the only one who’s had problems with this one. Everyone I’ve spoken to seems to have had real problems collecting references too.... It’s a tad annoying I’ll admit as I haven’t really learnt anything new that my own private research hadn’t taught me already. It just seemed to take up a lot of time I COULD have spent much more productively.

However as it is a necessary part of the course I suppose there is nothing to be done about it.

Anyways that’s all done and dusted now thank god so there’s a huge weight off my shoulders.

Looking forwards

As well as my current work I’ve also been looking more into what I’m going to do with my final piece this year. I like to be prepared.

The whole battle cutscene idea has been thrown out of the window just due to the scale being to huge. I always was overenthusiastic.

Instead I have found two great versions of one piece of music which I have merged together to form a nice transition. The piece being the classic Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairystarting off with the classic version and transitioning to a much darker version. Both pieces were created by the talented Kevin MacLeod. Who’s beautiful music really inspired me and can be found here .

With this music I intend to create an animated short ballet piece featuring two characters entitled ‘The Spider and the Marionette’. I have a general overview of the piece in mind and my dancer friend will be helping me choreograph the piece. So as a small teaser here are two designs of the Marionette character.

Windows Cats and Ocean ruins

Long time no blog! (2 weeks nearly! )

After some more work on my previous stained glass window model I have finally produced a few more lighting variations for this set to finish my experiments.

I’m particularly proud of that last one in the up-lit green! Rather spooky if I do say so myself.

So where have I gone since then?

Well I’m looking further into examples of films, games and plays where mood lighting and camera have been used to great effect.

 

 

 

(Example screenshots taken from CATS the Musical, no copyright infringement intended.)

It’s strange but since starting this project I cannot seem to watch a film now without inspecting the lights.

I even found myself examining how the light from a bedroom on my house’s landing was casting yellow light onto the wall while the dim light from outside left blue shadows and thinking to myself how very remarkable it was.

So that research is ongoing. At the same time I have been looking at modelling a nice environment in which to showcase all the mood setting effects I learn this semester.

The environment I have chosen to create is based on this image I drew a while back:

So far trying to recreate this environment I have learned a good deal, in particular about ocean shaders and particle effects, and I hope to discover a great deal more too if possible.

And so on that happy note I shall conclude today’s blog with a few in-progress shots of the ‘sunken temple’ environment:

 

Rainbow Windows

Okay time again for another update.

So since my last update I’ve been working more on setting up a nice mini set to practice my lighting skills and such.

So far (with a lot of studying of online tutorials) I’ve finished and textured the room, added my very first bump map (on the floor) and created a kick ass stained glass lighting effect:

And now with my set all set up and working I can experiment with some of the tecniques I mentioned in my previous blog.
Here's a simple example of how changing the colour of the lighting alone affects the image hugely:

Research into mood and set development

Okay, well after a few days research into the area I seem to have collated quite bit of information on setting a mood through the use of lighting and camera. As here follows

Actual scene appearance

The first thing which should be considered in setting the mood for a scene is the actual scene itself. The props and furniture will be the first thing that the player notices about the scene.

The age if the items within the scene is of great importance, firstly if the furniture and such is old and decaying, covered in dirt and broken, this will automatically make the player feel they are somewhere they should not be, adversely having everything to clean and precise may also have this effect by bringing to mind the sterile environment of a hospital or asylum of some sort. When putting a player at ease somewhere in the middle ground is advisable, lots of soft furnishings in a well kept state with some small signs of life scattered here and there (such as an open book or a children’s toy or whatnot) will automatically make a scene feel more homely than either a spotless sterile one or one in complete disarray.

Another thing which can affect the player’s perception of the set is the colour and saturation. Dull dark colours with little saturation are very depressing to the viewer whereas very bright saturated ones are energetic but perhaps a little overbearing. Pastels will automatically be soothing, warm reds and yellows either inviting if used sparingly or warning of danger whereas blues and other cool colours are emotive of sadness or when used as an accent with an overall white theme creates a soothing theme.

 (Image from www.mts.net/~william5/sld/sld-100.htm )

Mood Lighting

One of the most important factors in creating an effective mood in a scene, other than the environment structure and content itself is the use of lighting.

Effective lighting can lead a player, or repel them, set them on edge or at ease and provoke a wide range of emotions in between.

The main points to take into account when lighting a scene for a video game are.

v  Visibility - Which parts of the scene you want to highlight or lead the player to, and aversely what you wish to hide.

v  Naturalism – the setting, i.e. time and place. Is there a specific time of day that affects the lighting? Is it indoors? Outdoors? Or something else entirely?

v  Mood - What emotion you wish to trigger in the player.

v  Composition – What is the overall shape and form of the scene that is needed to be shown and how the lighting will affect the characters and objects within the environment?

Direction

Light direction can have a great deal of impact on how a player perceives an environment, character or object. Lighting form different directions can bring out highlights and shadows in different places upon an object highlighting or hiding them and causing them to stand out as important features for the player, either because they can see them, or adversely because they cannot. The main examples of lighting direction are:

v  Top down – When Lighting a character this can be quite a frightening thing as it casts the characters eyes into shadow. However sometimes top down lighting is a nice way to highlight paintings on a wall if used sparingly with another main lighting system.

v  Contre Jour – Contre Jour, also known as backlighting, is also a frightening way of lighting both a character and a set as it not only blurs the edge of the character but also harshly obscures their features in shadow too. This loss of expression (or detail in the case of an object) can be rather jarring for the player and tends to add a sense of mystery.

v  Frontal – Regular frontal lighting is a good way to create a simple and fun atmosphere. The player can easily make out everything they need to see and there is no sense of unease.

v  Low lighting – The use of dimmed lighting from multiple sources creates a soft, relaxing and more intimate atmosphere. It is neither too hard on the eyes like a bright light, nor is it dark enough to obscure anything from the player’s view and it does not create harsh silhouettes.

v  Underlighting – Underlighting is once again another way to create a good creepy frightening atmosphere by throwing the subject’s features into sharp contrast. It also has the added effect of creating looming shadows behind objects and characters.

v  Edge – Lighting from the edge is quite mysterious in a non-threatening manner, it highlights the most important features of the subject but because of it being to the side the rest of the subject is also lit quite softly in the process.

v  Spot – Spot lighting of course is a good way to lead the player’s eye by highlighting something of importance.

v  Reflected – depending on the colouring of the reflective object reflective lighting can either be soft (as it lights both sides of the subject quite well) or very creepy if the lighting is dim with an unusual colour. It’s a good method for picking out detail whilst highlighting different areas in different colours to perhaps show a different mood either side.

 (Image from www.mts.net/~william5/sld/sld-100.htm )

Colour and intensity

Lighting colour is probably one of the less documented aspects of stage lighting and yet it is nonetheless of vital importance as it affects the mood greatly.

Remembering the light colour wheel, and that mixing coloured lights is additive creating white rather than black as with paint, coloured lights can be very usefully used to bring out the correct colours on important focal points of a scene to its utmost effectiveness as well as setting the overall tone.

v  Blues – Used with soft lighting from above and perhaps a leafy patterned filter or cut-out (known as a ‘Gobo’ in the theatre) between the light and scene can create an effective night time mood. It can also be used to create a sad overall mood.

v  Reds – Red, the colour of passion, is generally used to evoke danger anger or lustful feelings in the viewer depending of course on the setting, brighter overall uses of red, or small areas of bright red generally represent danger or anger whereas an overall dim use of red provides a more sultry mood. 

v  Yellows – As a general rule yellow is a colour that immediately feels very energetic when used brightly, and a welcoming colour when used softly, however if used too dimly it gives the feeling of old broken electric lights, if used with a flickering effect this could be quite a scary effect.

v  Purples – Purple as a general rule is seen as quite a rich and mysterious colour, having been made up of both the sultry red tone and the cool blue it can also often be effectively used to complement both reds and blues and to suggest a dusky feeling.

v  Greens – Generally green is a rather soothing calm colour, when a bright warm yellowish green is used it is reminiscent of an outdoors scene on a sunny day, however when a bluer green is used softly with a general dark atmosphere it creates an eerie and dank feeling of perhaps a swamp or dank forest at night-time.

v  Oranges – As a general rule orange is a warm and welcoming colour of perhaps an oil lamp or fireside glow.

v  White – The most common lighting colour of course is a simple white one, this is a very clean and neutral way to light something and doesn’t really affect the mood too greatly either way alone.

v  Intensity – Light intensity plays a great importance in lighting a scene. As a general rule the brighter and harsher the lighting the more intense feeling it gives, whether it be a hostile one or a playful one. While a bright light overall does enable the viewer to see everything clearly, having it too bright can be overbearing. Using small areas of bright light however does effectively draw the viewer’s eyes to things of importance.

Using soft lighting tends to give a mellower and gentle feeling and can also give nagging feeling of danger, either way it is a much more subtle feeling.

And of course lastly sections of darkness, as a general rule these are areas the viewer will generally either ignore or instinctively stay away from.

 (Image from www.mts.net/~william5/sld/sld-100.htm )

Camera angle

Camera is another very important factor when it comes to setting a scene properly as well as capturing action. The framing, angle and movement of the camera are pivotal when it comes to setting the mood and correctly portraying action to the viewer effectively.

Framing

v  Extreme Long Shot – An extreme long shot, it taken from far away and generally used for setting a scene to establish location.

v  Long shot – A shot taken from a distance so that the subject is the full height of the screen. This shot is good for getting in action and the full body of the subject.

v  Medium shot – Slightly closer than the long shot, this is used during conversation between characters and such as a general rule. If concentrating on people it could be referred to as a ‘waist-up’ shot.

v  Close up – A close up of in item of interest or a person’s face, this can be a quite intimate and emotional way of framing a shot.

v  Extreme Close up – Not often used this extreme version of the close up shot is used for looking at something in great detail such as a subject’s eyes or mouth or writing on paper for example. It’s generally used for dramatic effect or to highlight one particularly important factor.

Angle

v  Birds eye – An extreme view from high up and directly above. Little can be seen in terms of detail but it gives a good general impression of a large scene.

v  High – A top down view on the action lends a feeling of power to the viewer being in a position above the subject, and therefore makes the subject seem smaller and more insignificant. However it may be hard to make out expressions and such making it more suited to action scenes than emotional ones.

v  Eye Level – Good for emotional or intimate scenes it is shot at the viewer’s/subject’s eye level and therefore is a good ‘all round’ type of shot.

v  Low – A shot from below the subject’s eye level, sometimes even as low as the ground, this shot tends to make the subject look bigger than they are, instilling a sense of power to them whilst simultaneously giving the player a sense oh helplessness.

And so, after doing this research I have begun work on a very very simple little piece of set in which to try out these different effects and gather people’s opinions on them before using the chosen best effects in my final piece which will hopefully be a short battle cutscene if all goes well.

Here are some images of the set so far, it's been modelled in Maya, 2096 tris, and hasnt any texture applied yet (obviously). I've never been the best at modelling but I'm rather happy with the progress I'm making.

On the back wall there, that is going to be a window of some sort rather than a portrait, giving me lots of options for light directions. I'm considering using a stained glass image I created a while back as a personal piece, just to give the image a nice point of interest. And if you cannot tell its a book and a candle (another potential light source) there on the table.