animatic

Well, as it looks uncertain wether I'll continue with this project, I thought I'd at least upload a flash movie of the animatic. You can hear the voice read and see the edit as it stood before I stopped. Whist there are things I still wanted to adjust, the basic idea is there...
ANIMATIC-MOV


Glenn

experimentation

I have been experimenting with abstracting the backgrounds a little. I am trying to work with more painterly backgrounds... I will try to do a test combining these backgrounds and a CG Adelaide soon.

Glenn

Update

Well, It wasn't till I got up this morning that I noticed how sunburned Adelaide was. The subdermal skin layer needed some serious tweaking..

Glenn

Even more updates.

Well, a lot of work is being done in the background. I think it doesn't look like much till I scroll down to the model from a while ago and it's a big change. Today I added more subtle textures to her skin and fooled around with the SSS mix. I have adjusted her hair to be less 'Boofy' and, the biggest hurdle, I worked out how to do Pixar style eyeballs, where the concavity is in a normal map and not modelled into the eye shape. I have always been annoyed that her eyelids cut through her eyeball when half closed, showing the concavity in her eyeball. If yo've done this kind of work, you'll know what I mean. Now her eyes are simple spheres. Nice.
I have also built an eye rig that separates the eyeball's movenmets so that on extreme looks rft/right, the furthermost eye does not dissapear under the skin abut stops..this is a little hard to describe. i may put up a small QT to explain with pictures.

Next - Fabric.

Glenn

Oh my GOD! an update!

Here is an update of Adelaide, all her passes (diffuse, subsurf, GI etc.) are now in th e one pass. I was going to make this film at work so I stopped the blog but as usual, work is too busy so I find myself tinkering with the project at home again.

Glenn

Facial animation.

This is not an animation test but a simple quicktime to test the blend shapes for Adelaide.
You can find it HERE

I'm also going to use a rig made by Brad Noble. You can find it HERE. It's pretty cool and very direct/uncluttered which I like. There's nothing worse than a whole bunch of shapes and splines cluttering up the line of your character when you're animating.

Glenn

Cool utility.

I found a really cool morph utility yesterday that I will be using on the film. It's really handy for grouping and editing morph targets. It's called SM Facil Morph and you an get it HERE.

I also learned a neat trick for working with compound blend shapes from Avi, a guy at work. hen I get it writen up, I'll post it.

Glenn

Glenn

Raincoat

I began on Adelaide's raincoat tonight as well as her umbrella which needs to collapse and open agian. I am using cloth but it's proving to be a little tricky to get the sim to hold to the ribs of the umbrella. I may have to get by with blend shapes instead.

The raincoat needs only to be seen quite small in frame so I'll wait to detail it when I see it in shot.

Glenn

Render pipe (so far)

Apart from the fact that the environments will take a bunch of render passes by themselves, I have been recently working on the skin shaders for Adelaide and distilled it to three passes. Here is a brief break-down of how I plan to render her. (note to Rok: I have added the eyebrows to the subsurface hold out matte to stop them washing out.)

Glenn

Skin test.

Have been pretty quiet on the blog but that's not to say that there is not a lot going on behind the scenes. Here is an updated model of Adeliade. I have been using MR for SSS on the skin and am trying to keep the look pretty matte. There is some bleed here and there and her eyebrows have taken a bit of a hit. This is also the first working model of her eyelashes. They have been a along time coming.
I will post some facial expression tests soon and peraps a little animation.

Any comments as usual are gratefully accepted.

Glenn

The dining room.

This is the dining room set. I have put in a few Rembrandt paintings but will probably change them for some of my own mock up portraits. The grey square reflected in the tabletop shows the room has no roof. I will have to fix this and other things before this set is finished.

Glenn

Clay figure

Tonight I have concentrated on trying to make a dry-clay looking character. I need to populate this shelf with Adeliade's creations and she will be reflected in the mirror, getting dressed. I don't know if I want to model wooden twigs for arms or make them out of clay so for the moment they are just stand in. I'm sure I'll look at this tomorrow and find a bunch of stuff about it I don't like.

Anyway, bedtime.

Glenn

The grandfather clock.

I built this clock tonight. It plays a part in the story and keeps poor time.

And this is it broken. Now to build a room around it...

Glenn

The Bedroom

This is a render of Adelaide's bedroom. The image is straight out of max and needs post work. It's meant to be stark and cold so I'll probably end up grading it blue/green.

Glenn

Revised model

I have modified the model a little and begun to rig her. I'm using CAT for the rig and Vray for the render. I'm going to use Mental Ray for the sub-surface stuff. Next job is the blend shapes for her facial expressions.

House model

This is the blockout of Adelaide's house. I will probably matte paint it and project it back onto the mesh. Now I have to build the gardens...Sheesh.

Glenn

Adleiade V5

This is my latest build of Adeliade (version 5). I wanted her to be younger than my previous efforts and i am about to start building facial targets and texture maps.

Glenn

Long time no see.

Sorry for not updating for a while, as work has overrun my private life to at present. i will be back on board soon. The project has not stalled (I'm re-designing Adelaide for the fifth time :))

Glenn

The Park in motion.

Here is a rain test for the park. The umbrella was just put in there for placement.

The Park.

Train animation test

This train sequence is only about 3 seconds in total and is just a section of a larger montage.

The Train.

Audio suggestion.

I have been mucking about with music for a while now and have narrowed it down to a piece of music from Debussy. I used a friend's copy of Reason to sequence the tune.

It's HERE and about 7 meg.

More later after I finish a bit of writing I'm doing.

The gallery / studio

This is where Adeliade paints. I have to create more appropriate canvases for the pictures. These current images are just place holders I found on the web.

The concept sketch.

The park

A rainy walk through a park.


This is my concept sketch for the scene.

The train

A three or four second shot using a multiplane look. It's almost a dream sequence so I'm keeping it quite stylized.

The entrance

Another scene. The entrance. This is a very quick shot and I have yet to paint my own leadlight windows. These current windows are from Rippon Lea in Victoria.

This is a concept sketch I made for the shot. Adeliade is shaking the rain from her umbrella.

The atrium

This is a build of the atrium. I have put her cair on bricks to give her enough height to reach the table. t is here that is starts to rain and I have animated several random dorplet hits on the ivy outside.

The library

The library is the first environment I built and most closely resembles my rough sketch.

Adelaide character design

This is the main character Adelaide. I have gone for the slightly older, more naturally proportioned character on the bottom. She is version 5 of the character which has taken a long time to resolve.

Adelaide Grey production diary

Hi all.
A blog to chart my progress with Adelaide Grey.I haven't made a blog before so this is more of a test with blogging than anything else. Needless to say, all images on this page remain copyright to me.