Work Experience: Diary - BA Briefing + Pink Project

BA is an an Animation and Live Events company that creates visual effects work for VJing, Live-Events Production, and Moving Image for established and new clientèle. A more detailed profile of BA will be looked at in later post.

As part of an NDA, this particular project I will be undertaking as part of work experience for BA will be under an alias entitled 'The Pink Project'.

My initial idea for the Pink Project is to experiment further within Maya's dynamics and use After Effects/Photoshop as complimentary elements as I develop those ideas. I'll also be researching as much as I can on the subject of cabaret and base influence maps before I start playing within the wide field of dynamics.

At this stage it's pure experimentation. As well as posting progress on here, I'll be spit-balling the best of ideas back and forth with the client to focus on the most successful compositions and/or ones that have potential to be developed further via e-mail.

As this is a tight work schedule, I'm going to work towards my strengths as extensively as I can.

Some initial inspiration:
















Update 28th April: Renamed Name of Client to 'BA' to their request.

Transcription: Summary Post

Pre-Production

Transcription: Project Start
Transcription: Initial Ideas-Tower of Babel
Transcription: Idea Two - Music to Music Video
Transcription: Final idea. Real starting point
Transcription: Influence Maps
Transcription: Direction Change
Transcription: Tower of Babel Sources - WIP
Transcription: Tower of Babel Sources - Continued
Transcription: Normals Texturing Tests with Arabic Ornamental Patterns
Transcription: Final Art Direction
Transcription: Intro - WIP
Transcription: Architecture, Direction and Symbolism of the Islamic World- Part One
Transcription: Architecture, Direction and Symbolism of the Islamic World- Part Two
Transcription: Architecture, Direction and Symbolism of the Islamic World- Part Three




Production

Transcription: Modelling Update
Transcription: Modelling Update 2
Transcription: Modelling Update 3
Transcription: Modelling Update 4
Transcription: Modelling Update 5 - Tower, Trees and Dynamics
Transcription: Modelling Update 7
Transcription: Final Film, Art of and Technical Paper
Transcription: Full Stills



Tutorials:

Maya: Dynamics 1: Particles, Emitters & Forces
Maya: Game Modelling: Head Part 1-3
Maya: Dynamics 1: Particles, Emitters & Forces - Part 2
Maya: Game Modelling: Head Part 3-6
Maya: Game Modelling: Head Part 6-8
Maya: Dynamics 1: Particles, Emitters & Forces - Part 3
Maya: Lighting & Rendering 2: Intro to Mental Ray
Maya: Normal Maps
Maya: Dynamics 2: Goals, Instances, & Sprites
Lighting & Rendering 2: Intro to Mental Ray
Maya: Dynamics 2: Goals, Instances, & Sprites - Part 2
Maya: Dynamics 2: Goals, Instances, & Sprites 2

Maya: Dynamics 2: Goals, Instances, & Sprites 2 - WIP

Instancing Part 10: Animation Cycles (Fish)




Instancing Part 11: Animation Cycles (Robots) (Note: Illusionally Dodgy Movement as I was moving the Camera forward with the Robot Instances.)




Instancing Part 12: Animation Cycles (Spiders)




Goals Part 1: Mud Drop




Goals Part 2: Controlled Mud Drop

Transcription: Full Stills

Containing Beauty, AO and Specular Passes

Transcription: Final Film, Art of and Technical Paper

Transcription: Art of Tower of Babylon



Transcription: Technical Document

Transcription: Modelling Update 7

At this point in time all the essentials are finished. I'd honestly like to do more with the foliage and flooring, (especially the sand dunes) but time is running out and I need to prioritise/sacrifice.

Got a backdrop with a matte painting behind it, colour correction, torch lights, and Physical sky sunset lighting + camera movements + 3 minutes worth of raw footage of it batch rendering over the weekend. I'm going to take as much as I can of the footage that's good and couple it with transitions for a 1-2 minute film.


For now, here's a playblast of the raw camera footage.








Bad news - Particles unfortunately fail to render. I'd like to find out why and fix it, but again time is a big factor now and there's too many reasons why it could to go through. Instead I'll be re-doing them, rendering them on another layer on Monday, and place it in during post-production with what I already have.

Also worth noting clouds + dust particles were going to be added to the scene too add more moving elements, but for the time it took to render and how unconvincing they looked, both were cut. The walkthrough was also going to be a lot less static with the buildings, i.e. buildings, pillars, and such were going to rise from the ground in wireframe and transition into the full render as the camera focuses on it- Again cut because lack of time unfortunately.

For the weekend I'm going to prep the sound, create the interior for the Tower, and generic interiors for the temples and render seperate shots for them on monday.

Transcription: Modelling Update 5 - Tower, Trees and Dynamics

Tower is almost complete with the only remaining part being the insides of insides of the tower, to be completed alongside the temples insides. Also almost complete is the Statue of Marduk which will be placed in the centre of the Kigalla and connected to the tower.






The starting stages of vegetation have also been placed - Dotting palm trees and bushes throughout the courtyards and Kigalla. At the moment the tree's base looks odd rooted to the ceramic flooring, so pots will be added soon in the Great Courtyard.
I'm also doing experimentation with adding vegetation coming down from the buildings, in order to add some variation to the very stone-like exteriors.


Finally there's the dynamics- I've started on water for the fountains, and fire with smoke for the Torches.





By tonight the vegetation will be finished and I'll be ready to prep all the required lights, cameras and passes for rendering tomorrow.

Transcription: Modelling Update 4

Added Temples for the 'Gate of Ishtar and Zagaga', as well as the temples in the Zagaga, UV'd and added textures to all of the buildings (probably not final), swapped the positioning of tower and larger temples, as the Tower sitting directly in front of the courtyard's gate was odd. (It doesn't explicitly state where the courtyards were situated, the Tower is still on the West side. The courtyards are on the East so should still technically be correct)

The statue in front of the larger temple is Nebuchadnezzar, King of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. His model was based of reference images.
Another modelled statue which needs to be placed in one of the temples is Ishtar, Babylonian goddess of fertility, war, love, and sex, also based of reference images. I will plan to have a statue of Marduk, patron deity of the city of Babylon, as the 200ft erection that sits in the middle of the Kigalla and connects to the tower.

After the tower is complete I'll be adding in sunset lighting, using dynamics for the fountains and for fire torches along the walls, dotting around vegetation, and a matte painting behind.

Transcription: Modelling Update 3

Combined both courtyards, added the Kigalla to bring everything in scale and laid the foundations for the temples inside the Kigalla.

Few more buildings need to be completed before I can dedicate solely towards the Tower's construction. Specifically, the six temples that lead from the Court of Ishtar and Zagaga. Also various objects need to be added into the courtyard to make it look less empty, eg, gardens, fountains.

Had to backtrack on this unfortunately, UV and Textures need to be redone again due to scene corruption.