Going Live: FINISHED

Concerning Dragons from Kieran Duncan on Vimeo.

Going Live: Dragon Transformation

I've been avoiding this effect for a little while as I wasn't 100% sure what would be possible given the time we have left. It worked out rather well though!

I started off by using the ID matte for the tree to mask out the eagle leaving only it's ambient occlusion pass, the tree then expands to fill the entire frame with blackness as the eagle begins to desintegrate and the dragon materialises around it. 

It's a similar effect to the one I developed for Ticked Off, but it looks pretty slick and is relatively painless.

Going Live: Shot 02 Composite

I've spent a LONG time wrestling with the passes for shot 02, the main issue is trying to get the shadows for the town to soften accurately, while retaining a stylistically sharp shadow for the dragons which are high above the landscape. If rendered accurately the dragon shadow would be extremely blurred due to the penumbra softening the edges.

I eventually managed to render out two seperate shadow passes and composite them together to achieve the desired effect.

I then precomosed this shadow pass and treated it like a single shadow pass to composite with the rest of this shot. I've still got a lot more to do on this shot, particularly at the end when the ground burns away to reveal shot 03, but at least this problem is solved!

Going Live: First Finished Frame!!!

Going Live: Final Render Passes.

I've completed the final render passes for the film which are listed below. Some may show up better than others and might be best viewed full size. Shot 3 (the one shown) probbaly has the most, but shot 2 also has some unique challenges which I'll need to address.

For simplicity some of the passes (e.g. Fire) have been composited and merged as it's made of up several individual layers/effects. 

I've also been given access to the render farm, which allows me to set off the renders at will. It's a really great asset to have, and I'm picking it up pretty quickly! 

Going Live: Locking down the compositing.

I think I've got a pretty solid idea of what layers/passes I'll now need for compositing. I've spent a lot of time trying different looks and figuring out how to obtain the correct passes. This is how it's looking at the moment, still plenty of stuff to tweak but I'm pretty happy with the progress so far. 

The rest of the production is coming along smoothly and we've got some beautiful animation completed, which I can't wait to render and comp. 

Going Live: Final Paper Shader.

I've finished tweaking the paper shaders and textures for the dragon, really pleased with the look. I could have spent a lot longer messing around with it but I need to move on to finalising the compositing!

I thought it would be cool to add in a glowing fire from inside the dragon to really show off the translucency of the materials. I achieved this by parenting a light to one of the joints inside which I will render out as an individual pass allowing me to toggle/flicker it when he breathes fire.

Going Live: Camera Layout.

I've been finalising the camera moves and layouts for shots 1 and 2 to pass off to the animators. Shot 3 is pretty much unchanged however.

Going Live: Latest compositing test.

I've been messing around more with the compositing and it's really starting to take shape. The textures, rigging and animaiton are all coming along nicely so I've got plenty to play with. I also applied the normal maps to the textures and it's working very well. 

I've added some camera effects such as grain, bokeh, chromatic abberation and flares to try and remove it from the overly CG look and it's getting there... definitely needs more work though.

Going Live: Normal Maps

I've been investigating creating normal maps from photography to enhance the procedurally generated textures within Maya. I photographed different levels of crinkled-ness to give us a small library of options for the final outputs.

I initially tried creating the maps in photoshop but was having some bizarre issues despite following the tutorials exactly, so I investigated further and found a program called "crazybump" which does a greta job of generating normal/bump/displace/cavity maps from images.

Going Live: Early compositing look dev.

No textures, quick lights, bare minimum render passes... just playing around really.

Going Live: Final Dragon Model.

Finished the dragon model! I'm pretty happy with the result and can't wait to see it animated.The rest of production is coming along smoothly and we're making decent progress. I've also started experimenting with rendering and compositing to test the look of the film. 

Going Live: Modelling Progress

Modelling progress, still blocking out most of the body and wings, but you get the idea. 

Going Live: Dragon Head

The rendering isn't quite as good as the first test, but it's more just to post the model. Ignore any shading/texture errors.

Going Live: Character Design

Here's what I was thinking for the tone/look of the dragon, it's a little rushed but you get the idea. He's an evil, greedy, badass... which I tried to reflect.

I intend to pay close attention to the overall shapes and shilouette of the dragon, as that's pretty much all we see until the money shot at the end. Most of the details will probably get lost, and the overall body shape is far more important than the head.... but I drew a bunch of heads.

The middle/left one is the only one I'm particularly fond of... it's got  slight eagle look to it, which I reckon would add a nice touch. 

Going Live: Paper Shader Video

Not as effective at showing off the shading as I'd hoped to be honest, I think a full turnaround would work a lot better. If you look at the back of the head near the base of the horns, you can get a decent idea of how the light penetrates the paper.

Going Live: Paper Shaders.

Trying to experiment with the modelling/texturing/rendering to get the correct feel for the paper... which is made up of lots of subtle but important features.

I used procedurally generated textures and bump maps on a tweaked automatic UV, which I think is pretty successful and would save a LOT of time. The only downside to this is that in order to apply any displacement maps for detailed paper wrinkles/tears etc, we'd need to fully UV the model which would be difficult and time consuming.

I'm rendering a 40 frame video at the moment to show how the light interacts with the paper. I'll post that when I can.

Going Live: Animatic

We've been working tirelessly on finalising the story for the Going Live project. Here's the initial draft of the animatic. The timing needs tightened up a bit and some of the visuals clarified, but the gist is there! 30 seconds definitely isn't as long as it used to be.

Storyboards were created by Sheng, and narrated by Tom, edited by myself. 

Going Live: Production Roles

I've put together a list of production roles that people are keen to do, I imagine this will flow and change a lot throughout the production, but it's a useful starting point so we can start organising tasks. 

Going Live Begins!

We've been given our going live brief from Axis Animation in Glasgow, and it's an exciting project to create a short 30s animation to accompany The Hobbit. 

I was keen to direct the project as I'm a massive fan of the source material, have experience leading an animated production, and had the bare bones of an idea. Mercifully, my classmates were up for it! 

The idea revolves around explaining the mysterious origins of the dragons, which is rather unexplored in Tolkien's works. After some extensive research we settled on an idea that they originated as Eagles, and were captured and corrupted by Morgoth, one of the great gods of Middle Earth.

I'm a massive fan of the iconic map style Tolkien carries throughout his work, and had a rough vision for how that could translate into an animation. I think a combination of origami/papercraft alongside the illustrative ink effects would work extremely well in 3D. Also the paper effects would gel very nicely with burning and fire effects. 

I'm very hopeful for the project, and everybody seems enthusiastic to get started!