Welcome to '' La Sucia - Animation'' A 3D project of a Honduran legend.

A little contextual information to understand the project...

Abstract

La Sucia or its English translation "The Dirty woman" is one of the most famous legends in Honduran mythology. Its history depends on the region, but they share several patterns; a beautiful woman bathing in a body of water like a river or lake, a drunk and / or an unfaithful man who spies on her, and a transformation into a monster where the man dies or is scared. This legend is presumably influenced by Mayan and Mesoamerican mythology, it will be presented in an animated short format using 2D and 3D techniques, with a grayscale palette and without dialogue.

This is intended to attract the attention of people inside and outside the territory who have a nostalgic association with rural stories, who have heard or read the projects of Cuentos y Leyendas de Honduras (Stories and Legends of Honduras) by Jorge Montenegro, or who are fans of Latin American mythology.

Here an example of early considerations in the project:

Introduction and Background

Honduras is a country located in the middle of the American continent, with an economy largely dependent on its agriculture, so its contribution to globalization is usually limited to raw materials.

Although the country has suffered from an unbelievably bad international reputation for several years, it was in 2012 that it was classified as "Murder capital of the world" by the United Nations, having the highest homicide rate on the planet, reaching an estimated violent death every 74 minutes, these crimes mostly committed in San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa. 

This had a catastrophic influence on the country's tourism sector, which is why an attempt has been made to create decrees such as Ley de Fomento al Turismo (Tourism Promotion Law) (Trucchi, 2019) and organizations that encourage cultural, ecological, and archaeological tourism. Marca País was created in 2015, an organization that promotes the alliance of the public and private sectors in order to highlight the positive aspects such as ecological reserves, historical sites, indigenous influence and all the raw material that is for export. (Marca Pais Honduras, 2015)

The beginning of this project consists of cultural approaches to the country. In 2018 a strenuous investigation of the various regional or / and indigenous legends was carried out, with which we will highlight the work of Jorge Montenegro who was a writer known for his work in the compilation and dissemination of the Honduran oral tradition, through various books, comics, radio shows and a movie. (Honduras.com, 2020) His radio program called Cuentos y Leyendas de Honduras was broadcast since 1964, broadcasting for more than 50 years and many of his episodes are still available on YouTube. (Cuentos y Leyendas de Honduras, 2015)

We cannot rule out that these programs have contributed to keeping many of these legends alive in rural areas, but specifically speaking of La Sucia it is a story found within the Honduran family, one of the best compilations of the various oral histories were made by Fernanda Maria Martinez Reyes in her thesis report La Narrativa Oral En Honduras: Nuevas Exploraciones en los Inicios Del Siglo XXI (The Oral Narrative In Honduras: New Explorations in the Beginning of the 21st Century) for the University of Alcala, with a minimum of 10 different versions told by farmers from different parts of the country. (Martínez Reyes, 2016)

The history of La Sucia has been shown for years in all sectors of the population, from radio programs, comics, movies, and school events where students and teachers dramatize the popular song ''La Sucia '' written by Manuel Castillo Giron in his album CATRACHISIMO Cantares de mi Patria. (Manuel Castillo Giron, n.d.)

An example of these events is the one acted by the folk projection group of the Sheridan Bilingual School in La Lima, Cortes. (Jomzag, 2011)

Another decisive factor worth mentioning is that the Honduran animated sector is still relatively new and partially developed commercially but not artistically.

It was not until September 2020 that the Museum for National Identity (MIN) and its educational program EduMIN made 2D animations of some Honduran legends, which has once again attracted the attention of the capital's population and social networks. (MIN, 2020)

With this we want to make clear the importance of the representation of Honduran elements. Although this project is not intended to repair the reputation of a country with an animation, but rather to attract a little more attention to unique elements of its culture in an intercultural environment with the help of the Honduran embassies in Europe and Asia.

Finally, this project seeks to innovate in the Honduran animated sector, following the trend of grayscale animation to reflect "antiquity" to history, without the need for dialogue, so intensive translations beyond the title and credits will not be necessary.

For our story prototype we have taken three main elements, a drunk and unfaithful man, a beautiful woman bathing in the river and the transformation into a monster.

When the story begins with the moon and the title, a drunk man is walking in the forest while looking at a photo of a sexy woman, from his pocket the photo of his family falls.

As he continues his route, he meets a beautiful woman bathing in the river and he decides to spy on her, as he approaches, she transforms into a monster that is about to devour him, the movement of the camera takes us to the moon with the hat and boot flying.

Here we assume that the man has died, but the screen goes dark, and we see the man wake up scared, with the photo of his family in his hand which he looks at with love.

However, he also notices that he has the marks of La Sucia's claws, so we see him running to get away from the forest, and we close with La Sucia’s face in the moon and a macabre smile.

For reasons of better understanding, an animatic published on YouTube with this story was made.

Acknowledgements 

The completion of this project would not have occurred without the supervision and support of Constatinos Sophocleous and Richard Cunningham. Carlos Bautista is also thanked for his advice in the area of sculpting and modeling.  An incredible gratitude to Kingston University, which provided all the necessary programs and materials for the project. Big thanks to the Discord communities of Agora, Ask a Rigger and AnimState; where many users offered feedback and tutorials. Special mention to all animation events provided by London ACM SIGGRAPH, in which it was received special feedback from animators from different industries. 

Finally, it is immensely grateful for all the help and inspiration from family and friends, especially Richard Lovell. 

Aims and Objectives 

Resources 

In more detail these are the Honduran works that the works of Jorge Montenegro are being considered: Tales and Legends of Honduras vol. 1 and 2 (1972 and 2006) 

Tales and Legends of Honduras (radio 1964-2018) Tales and Legends of Honduras (2014 film) The doctoral thesis prepared by Fernanda Maria Martinez Reyes (2016) The Oral Narrative in Honduras: New Explorations in the Beginning of the 21st Century. And a story within the Salinas family, where the great-grandfather of the author of this project, Pedro Salinas Matamoros had an encounter with La Sucia in the surroundings of Jacaleapa, Honduras. It is worth highlighting the use of visual references from various animated films and communities, this project is strongly influenced by the following projects: 

• The Amazing World of Gumball (2011-2019) 
• Paperman (2012) 
• Frankenweenie (2012) 
• The Peanuts Movie (2015) 
• Dystopian animated short film (2017) 
• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) 
• Purl (2018) 
• Bigtop Burger (2020) 
• The Mitchells vr. The Machines (2021) 

Multiple resources from educational channels were used, which will be specified throughout the report. 

Method and Workplan 

Method 

This project is divided into 3 main phases: Pre-production, Production and Post-production. 

• Pre-production: conceptualization of story, characters, environment, production times and corrections of the written report. 
• Production: Modelling, Rigging, Animation, VFX, Lighting, Render / Playblast 
• Post-production: VFX, Color Correction, Music and Sound Effects, Compositing.

Pre-production 

For the conceptualization of characters, simple designs were made inspired by farmers who are the ones who usually tell these stories; for La Sucia in her normal form, the term "beautiful woman" was taken into consideration according to the cultural context, where she is usually a woman with long dark hair, with a large bust and backside. In her monster form, reference was made to the description within the song of La Sucia by Manuel Castillo Giron: 

''Suddenly the beautiful girl transformed, her eyes bulged, her teeth fell out, her nails grew and such a laugh! She was screaming! '' 

And considering famous elements like her bust falling and sticking out of her clothes. 

Once the manuscript was ready, we began to work with the storyboard and animatic.

Design and conceptualization of the characters was based on three main ideas, for the drunken farmer he was inspired by the typical peasant clothing of the towns, work boots, hat and an appearance of macho, which stereotypes that the men must wear a mustache and chest hair. 

For the guapa (beautiful) version of La Sucia, it is usually represented with a supermodel beauty with wasp waist, instead a more common appearance in Honduran women was chosen, long hair, thick body, shorter and slightly darker skinned. In addition to the use of the torn white dress that is present in almost all versions. 

Finally in the design of the monster, we played with the idea of the growth of the parts of the body, an elongated skull face refers a bit to the versions in which it transforms into a horse skull, its breasts uncovered and considerably larger than the farmer. 

For the remaining elements such as trees and shrubs, it was based on simple geometric figures with some reference to Nobuyoshi Sakashita's tree study work (Sakashita, 2014), which as an important detail used plans to add small leaves that protrude from the main base of the tree. 

Production 

Modelling 

For our next stage, various modeling methods were investigated for the characters and the environment; Among the options available was to sculpt the characters in Zbrush or model them in Maya. The biggest problem was the use of the various software and the weight of the learning line that would have to be done to carry out the final objective. 

So, in the end it was decided to model the characters in Maya, using the support of various supervisors. It should be noted that this was the first time that a character of this style was made, so many references were sought in construction processes. 

One of the most used resources in this phase was the series of videos created by Polytoon, where it shows step by step the construction of characters but highlighting the creation of loops in the topology (Polytoon, 2019). Something that will be needed later for rigging and animation. 

It was a process with a lot of trial and error, where the character that suffered the most modifications was La Sucia Guapa; She required the use of Maya sculpting tools and a complete retopology to be sure the face loops worked. 

The second part of the body that needed more work was the breasts since a natural appearance was sought. The dress was made starting with retopology on the body and then editing the details such as the broken parts. 

Once the body was fixed, different versions for the hair were made, it was desired to maintain a cartoon appearance but also be able to animate in parts, in the end the tutorial created by GGP_Animation was followed where it creates the hair fragments using the Curve tool Warp Deformer. (GGP_Animation, 2019) 

The Farmer was created with a similar process, directly connecting the parts of the body to the clothing; The hat was left as a separate element since it would be animated separately in some scenes. 

The monster was created from the model of La Sucia Guapa, applying deformers and then making a retopology to guarantee a better animation. 

Finally, as mentioned above, elements such as trees and bushes were created from simple geometric figures. 

UV mapping and Texturing 

At the end of the character models, work was done on the creation of the UVs, for the workflow we worked with UV Tiling Mode, following the advice of our supervisors and tutorials from channels such as AntCGi and FlippedNormals. It should be noted that some elements such as legs and arms were superimposed to reduce space and apply symmetry in the texture. (antCGi, 2021) (FlippedNormals, 2018) 

In the texturing process the Procreate program was used, where the UVmaps were colored in 2D, this was before the update at the end of 2021 when the application added a tool for 3D elements. 

Another crucial step in our texture was the use of the Aitoon Shader in combination with the Ai Standard Shader, taking advice provided in artist.B’s video where he combines both shaders to create the effect. (artist.B, 2021) 

Rigging 

To create the rigs of our characters, the Advanced Skeleton plugin from Animation Studios was used under the license for use for an educational project (Animation Studios, n.d.). The plugin's learning curve includes the Animator Artist Life channel's video series (Animator Artist Life, 2020) and Joshua Jones, where the basics for rigging a bipedal character is presented. (Jones, 2018) 

However, some elements required a separate study, combining the basic Maya tools with the plugin. For example, for the rig of the breasts of La Sucia Guapa and its monster version, the tutorial '' Rigging Dynamic Breasts '' (Steve, 2012) was followed. The hair of both characters was rigged like limbs sticking out of the head and the dress was a combination of what was learned from Jeremy P's material and Advanced Skeleton tools. (P, 2015) 

Skinning was an arduous job that required a lot of patience, although the plugin has some tools that facilitate the process, the workflow presented by Gio Coutinho which really helped to finish the job. (Autodesk, 2016) 

Although the Rigging process officially ended in mid-July, once the animation process began, problems were found in specific scenes, so variations of Rig were also created for a single character, in the case of the Drunk Farmer a version with photographs in both hands, where the visualization was deactivated when necessary. 

And a version in which the hat could be assigned to the hand, head or animated independently. The latter with the method presented by Sir Wade Neistadt using Parenting Constraints. (Neistadt, 2018) 

Water 

An important mention is made in the process of water animation since it required many changes, firstly it was planned to use a flat texture with 3 layers of planes, animating the mask connected in geometry. However, the result obtained did not satisfy the desired quality level, it also created an error in which the main texture "flashed" in the rendering. 

However, after much searching and advice on various platforms, I found this incredible tutorial by Uhr in which a texture is animated using mathematical formulas. (Uhr, 2018) This method combined with Dikko's video, key drivers and a Sine deformer was what gave the result that is seen in the final render. (Dikko, 2018) Here's a comparison Before and After:

Animation 3D 

In the initial stages of the animation process, he concentrated on blocking poses and configuring backgrounds; it was at this time that he studied and experimented with camera animation and its lens variation with dramatic motifs.

Speaking of specific animations, the first and last scenes have many elements in common, particularly the presence of an animated cycle (drunk walking and running) so following the advice in our feedback sessions, we worked with the flow of fig. 20. 

In most cases the feedback was about the Drunk and Run cycle, so many versions were made until one was chosen and polished. 

For our animation we also used a series of plugins that facilitated the creation of in-betweens, tweenMachine and Overlapper. (Barret & Widener, 2020) (Kolpakov, 2018) 

The latter was used for the animation of the Monster's hair, using as a reference the scene of the goddess of the Sea in Ponyo. (Miyazaki, 2008) Another factor was the continuity of the scenes with each other, especially with camera changes. For this reason, some scenes were removed or modified. Many changes were made to the scenes, but these were the ones that most influenced the story: Scene 2, the time of this scene was shortened and the continuity of the walk of the previous scene was connected. Scene 3, before you only had one photo in your hand, it changed to two. 

Scene 4, in the first place it was planned that the photo of his family would fall without him noticing, however the message that he left his family was not clear, so it was changed to throw the photo. Scene 7, this shot was lengthened, and the farmer hiding was added.  Fig 21. Change of scene, where the farmer shoots the photograph on purpose.

Lighting 

First of all, Skydomes were being used for the general lighting of the scenes, but this quickly became a problem in rendering times. 

So it is switched to using direct lights and some area lights. But the biggest factor around lighting was the allocation of lights by element. We can see in a simplified way the configuration with which the lights were separated, assigning a light to the background, two lights to the elements (one main and one to soften shadows) and between two and three lights to the character. 

The amount of lights depends a lot on the scene and the elements, also some lights were used only to illuminate without generating shadows. 

In almost all the scenes a dim light was placed directed to the ground and affecting the assets and the character, this to create a shadow on the ground. 

Rendering 

Rendering was subjected to multiple tests and advice obtained from the video Removing Noise From Your Arnold Renders was followed, in which they present numerous ways of understanding where the noise is being produced. (R, 2020) 

Once the noise was minimized in the scenes, our next step was to separate the layers; This is because in some scenes the background was required to be out of focus. Although it is understood that this effect can be carried out with Maya's cameras, the decision was made to use green screens, as in the video of Amanda Morrison. (PlantParade, 2020) 

The advantage of using this procedure is to minimize the rendering time in the elements that we will blur and add more details to the characters. The downside is that twice as many layers are rendered per scene. 

Counting all the layers, 4,073 frames were rendered in the final material with an estimated time of 33 hours. 

The time is estimated since the heaviest layers took between 40-60 seconds, and the lightest ones between 10-30 seconds. In this calculation we are not taking into account previous tests where it was rendered in low quality and if any scene required it to be rendered again due to errors. 

Post-production 

Compositing 

For animations and effects in 2D, it had been considered to use the After Effects program, changed to Adobe Animate, in which animations of direction lines, water splash and effects in the steps were added. 

Visual effects include green screen editing, making sure the cut of the characters is good. Although one factor was the implementation of an old camera effect, obtained from Hadwin Channel for editing in Adobe Premiere. (Hadwin Channel, 2020) 

For the base of the logo, Restless Youth Small Caps font was used, adding a small element of water as it is a spirit that appears near rivers. 

Music 

The musician Fernando Gimeno provided background music and support in editing the sound effects. (Gimeno, 2021) 

Here is the complete list of all the sound effects used in the last version: 

• Whoosh (CLEREMTV, 2020) 
• Forest Footsteps (Nagaty Studio, 2020) 
• Forest Edge (KDekay Sleep Sounds, 2019) 
• Soothing River (Relax Sleep ASMR, 2017)

Obtained from the YouTube free audio library, which allows its use: 

• Jog on Gravel 
• Walk on Dirt 
• Walking in Shallow Water 
• Pants Whooshing 
• Light Splashing of Water 
• Punch Swoosh Series 
• Rake Swing Whoosh Close (Youtube, n.d.)  

Discussions 

Most of the audience would be the Honduran public, especially now that organizations such as the Museum for National Identity (MIN) have opened a new exhibition specifically on the stories and legends of Honduras. (Museo de la Identidad Nacional, 2021) For viewing the short, contact has been made with various organizations that have confirmed that once the short is finished, they will be able to support the project in terms of visibility. Among these organizations is the Honduran embassy in the United Kingdom. 

Conclusions 

Although the final objective of the project was achieved, there are many aspects that could be improved and that will continue to be worked on in the future. It could be improved and added more types of plants for the backgrounds, a better texture with the use of normal maps. 

• In terms of animation, fix meshes transfer errors, add leaves falling from trees, polish cycles. 
• The rigs could improve in expressions, use of collisions. 
• Add more visual effects in general, especially in the water.
• Implement more sound effects, specifically screams for the characters. 

It was learned how difficult it is to carry out a project of this magnitude and the need for a team of professionals to complete something longer (for example, an animated series). While many new work techniques were learned from the number of references visited, it was the advice and weekly meetings with supervisors that really shaped the final result. 

Finally, it was found that it is completely necessary to design a timetable before starting a project of this style, while remaining flexible in modifying it. 

Final version for presentation:

Reference List 

Animation Studios. (n.d.). Animation Studios. Retrieved from https://www.animationstudios.com.au: https://www.animationstudios.com.au/advanced-skeleton 

Animator Artist Life. (2020, June 24). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0W7cT2DUDY&list=PLIV47uRi3f2VyGDn4P8fzZqhi5Q7TYILt 

antCGi. (2021, January 12). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICwIgkKojBw 

artist.B. (2021, February 26). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXVJUeXnTDQ&t=291s 

Autodesk. (2016, November 15). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNy0ngmfb2A 

Barret, J. S., & Widener, A. (2020, January 24). Github. Retrieved from https://github.com/boredstiff/tweenMachine 

British Board of Film Classification. (2019). bbfc. Retrieved from https://www.bbfc.co.uk/: https://www.bbfc.co.uk/rating/15 

CLEREMTV. (2020, July 11). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsSXJXk-whc 

Cuentos y Leyendas de Honduras. (2015, May 25). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com: https://www.youtube.com/c/CuentosyLeyendasdeHonduras/about 

Dikko. (2018, April 18). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx23PPxEQmM&t=128s 

FlippedNormals. (2018, August 2). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dj0uXid9oGo&t=566s 

GGP_Animation. (2019, February 24). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1E3VtkkjCM&list=PLsf2PiL26rAl_UhCzKbK005KDluxxyCWD&index=4 

Gimeno, F. (2021). fgimeno. Retrieved from https://fgimeno.com/ 

Hadwin Channel. (2020, December 10). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOKuRFUPXfo 

Honduras.com. (2020, 11 19). Honduras. Retrieved from https://www.honduras.com/: https://www.honduras.com/aprende/cultura/personajes/biografia-del-escritor-jorge-montenegro/ 

Jomzag. (2011, October 02). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIFT0lcDinU 

Jones, J. (2018, January 22). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRsfy1-0jqE 

KDekay Sleep Sounds. (2019, June 3). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FJIH0Yi2Mk 

Kolpakov, D. (2018). Gumroad. Retrieved from https://dkolpakov.gumroad.com/l/Overlapper 

Manuel Castillo Giron. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://manuelcastillogiron.com/: http://manuelcastillogiron.com/biografia-manuelcastillogiron/ 

Marca Pais Honduras. (2015). Retrieved from https://www.marcahonduras.hn/: https://www.marcahonduras.hn/about-us/ 

Martínez Reyes, F. M. (2016). Biblioteca Digital Universidad de Alcala. Retrieved from https://ebuah.uah.es: https://ebuah.uah.es/dspace/handle/10017/41887 

MIN. (2020). MIN. Retrieved from https://min.hn/: https://min.hn/edumin/ 

Miyazaki, H. (Director). (2008). Ponyo [Motion Picture]. 

Museo de la Identidad Nacional. (2021). MIN. Retrieved from https://min.hn/category/edumin/cuentos-y-leyendas/ 

Nagaty Studio. (2020, November 21). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnBGqT-F9Is 

Neistadt, S. (2018, June 14). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8JXO39aAqY&t=940s 

P, J. (2015, April 29). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzrETjZ7S1c 

PlantParade. (2020, April 8). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwo65InThJU 

Polytoon. (2019, July 25). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xn2w1OumKvA&list=PL9d7CkAxgcqXDW9n6Wd-T2d6g7-yZ-86l 

Pressly, L. (2012). BBC. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.co.uk: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-latin-america-17940440 

Proceso Digital. (2018, Febreary 14). Proceso Digital. Retrieved from https://proceso.hn/: https://proceso.hn/peliculas-exhibidas-en-honduras-pasan-por-rigurosa-clasificacion/ 

R, M. (2020, November 4). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FwYcmojqK4 

Relax Sleep ASMR. (2017, September 3). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE_XAauwu1I 

Sakashita, N. (2014). Vimeo. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/78905152 

Steve. (2012, April 17). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNZw57nC7Cs 

Trucchi, G. (2019, 11 19). Alba Sud. Retrieved from http://www.albasud.org: http://www.albasud.org/noticia/1161/la-ley-de-fomento-al-turismo-en-honduras-un-fracaso 

Uhr. (2018, June 20). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM-XUP_4WAE&t=14s 

Youtube. (n.d.). Youtube. Retrieved 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary

Part 1

Week 8

Substance Painter, feels like photoshop

For this week we have been exploring the subject of texturing, for this we enter the Substance Painter program, which for me, as my title says, reminds me too much of Photoshop haha.

'' Ogres are like onions. Onions have layers. Ogres have layers. '' - Shrek

And this for me is how photoshop works, layers, a lot of layers and apparently Substance has even more layers, since it is not only handling colors with effects per layer, but also the various maps alphas, normals, height, metallic, roughness, among others. During class our teacher (Hello Richard!) Gave us a little exercise for the house: go and take pictures of elements that have, in theory, several layers of textures, here is my object. (please click the image to look at it closer)

This is a close-up of the leg of some chairs in the park on a cold winter morning, if we begin to divide the textures we can notice: the chair is made of wood and it has been getting wet for several winters, the darkest part may be the part that the paint has fallen off. We could even assume that it had more than one coat of paint and protection for exterior wood, on top of all this we have a thin layer of ice that would soon melt.

Another experiment was with the Christmas spirit, I found these decorations that we do not use and tried to reproduce the textures one by one.

This experiment helped me to understand more about how the different layers are used in substance painter, however I had problems finding the combination of height that was adequate for the texture of the blue sphere. In addition, it is necessary to place the correct level of reflection on the fabric.

On top of all this I would need to put a layer of "used", since the head looks too "new".

Week 9

Everything coming together

This week we carried out an exercise in which we combined different programs, we will look part by part aspects in which we have to be very careful.

        Maya

Before exporting your model from Maya:

• Delete history
• Cleanup Mesh (looking for Ngons, Triangles, etc)
• Amount of topology
• Freeze Transformations
• Center Pivot
• Naming Conventions (poly groups)
• Un-used polygons (delete)
• Scale (Create -Measure Tools)
• Hypershader (Edit-Delete unused nodes)
• File -Optimized Scene Size

Maya UV mapping:

• If you can't see the poly-face (like is hiding between other polys, you dont need to put it ''big'' in your UV map.
• With your low poly you need to assign a different shader per UV shell and then put all UV's in one UVshell, High poly doesn't need UV mapping.
• Work in subP with the subdivided version, maching the attribute of the editor with the level of subdividing.

       Zbrush

• Import object in Subtool as OBJ or FBX
• Check for scale
• You can work with the whole object, but if you want to export separately you have to separate them in Subtool.
• Dynamesh is quite tricky to learn to control, save before doing anything ''dangerous'' and have copies.

    Substance Painter

• Open Gl for our normal maps, because is what we using in Maya. 
  
• The resolution is what we see, no what is going to be exported, this is to being able to work without crashing our pc.
• If we have multiple UV's when we import them to maya it would say the number of UV's (like for example, 4).

    Marmoset

• Select the bake option and add your high and low poly
• Select bake project-Geometry-Tangent Space- Maya, then Ouput-Format 16 Bits.
• THEN BAKE LIKE A CHEF.
•  Make sure Height is selected in Bake->Configure.

Week 10

Looking Good!

Let's imagine that we are finishing the project and now we must concentrate on our presentation.

For our animated presentation we can simply combine a camera with a curve and create a view around the character, something that can be done by following this incredible tutorial by Claudio Ramirez.

However, now comes an interesting challenge...

LIGHTS

Let me be honest for a second, I have a stormy past working with lights in photography. One of my teachers in the past didn't teach us anything in his class and when I got to the advanced class, I had to learn "on the fly" how all the lights worked in the studio in less than a week.

I DO NOT MISS WORKING WITH REAL LIGHTS, especially in my country where it is very hot, 3 lights in a small studio heat up in seconds and we had to have the air conditioning on full blast.

Personally I follow the advice of several incredible career partners, the talented Smokwart who hardly shares his work but believe me when I tell you his advice is gold. And Julito Shoots, who has an incredible art direction, learned a lot by working with him a few years ago.

One of the jobs that we always had to do before entering the photography room was to make a diagram of the location of the lights, which would be your main, secondary, filling light, etc.

While I was never good at these schemes, I have provided a great platform that anyone can practice with for free. 

The Online Lighting Diagram Creator.

When I studied my degree, one of the teachers who taught me the basics in lights was "Mau Pin", here I share an entry where he explains the MINIMUM they should know about lights, however it is only available in Spanish. (Unless you translate with google :) )

Jake Garn also does an incredible job explaining how to read, create and use these diagrams for reference, but for practical reasons I will place only one of his examples (original on his blog) using a diagram made by Kevin Kertz. 

How you can see lighting a scene not only depends on the amount and type of light, but also on the elements that will interact with the light.

When we incorporate this knowledge in Maya we find that we have a lot of control with only the lights but also blockers, also that the way we configure the lights will have a greater effect on our rendering. Without a doubt, my favorite feature when it comes to lights in Maya is that you can tell the program which elements should be affected by '' which lights ''.

During class this week we went into a couple of exercises related to lighting, these were some of my experiments.

Here we can see three special configurations: 

• The incorporation of transparency in the elements such as the lamp (Transmission)
• The '' shadow masks '' that can be added in the light without adding the element, like our light coming from a non-existent window with shutters. (AiGobo - Light with shapes)
• Converting an item such as a textured screen to a light emitter with a color gradient, like our TV.

I don't consider myself particularly good at lighting environments with multiple objects, so I liked the following exercise more since it was focused on a character, using Nika's rig with poses provided by our teacher.

Sad Nika :(

In general I wanted to make an environment of a sad music video type light, or theater exaggerating sadness, there is a subtle element that I love to use in the lighting of my drawings (and applicable for these exercises) is to change the tone of the shadow generated by the light, if you look at it in detail, you can see that Nika has a purple shadow on her clavicles.

However, something that I did not like was how the shadow of the head looked on her legs, I would like to soften the shadow, since for now it seems to me that the shadow is like wet water on her pants.

Angry Nika >:(

Anger is one of my favorite emotions to represent, in many countries it is said that there is nothing more dangerous than an angry Latina. I love studying the movement of the muscles in the face and having the sparkle in the eyes. In addition to adding an extra with the phrase "throwing fire through the mouth". Particularly with the lights, I used a few '' Point Lights'' in areas for her hands and closer to the eyes, also amplify the halo inside the mouth.

I would like to improve even more with a dim lighting behind the head, especially the tip of the hair, since you can't tell where the head ends.

Winter Break

HO HO HO, Grandma and Tank

At this time we officially start the major leagues, the two projects expected for this class, We have a Character Design and a Hard Modelling.

Character Design

If there was something that was clear to me, it was that I wanted to challenge myself with something that I have never done. I like to do many girls with traditional Honduran dresses, with braids and jewelry; but in this project I want to get into the creation of the most adorable thing in the world: a grandmother.

For her we collect MANY references of grannies from different perspectives, portrait photographs, 3D animations, 2D illustrations, in addition to other compilations of specific references of jewelry and traditional clothing. It should be noted that one of the greatest inspirations was the Disney movie Coco, where we can appreciate several designs of grandmothers and that also (for my birthday which was in November) I received as a gift the art book of the film.

EXTRA: on December 24 I was able to enjoy the new Encanto movie, based on a Colombian environment, although each country in Latin America has its own "freshness", we have a lot in common and it was beautiful to see the design of the dresses and the hairstyles, incredible reference for the Latin part.

Experimenting with the character, I was very indecisive between making a granny based on circles (a figure related to being more friendly) or between squares and triangles (for a stronger and more strict figure).

After reviewing the various references, I liked the idea of a strict grandmother, with a lot of makeup, jewelry and tall, one of those grandmothers who love to look their best, maybe the children of the town think she is a witch.

A couple of sketches of the process:

As you can see, the body process was based on a tall and slim lady, lots of jewelry and decorative elements; I was very indecisive with the hair, although the braids are usually my favorites, in this case I opted for a tied hair because 1. I could easily decorate the back of the head. and 2. The braids fought attention with the jewelry of the neck and ears, having the hair collected they are better appreciated and can even be seen in the silhouette.

The costumes are based on dresses from the hottest areas of the country, I wanted my grandmother to have enough confidence to "show skin." This is another reason why I have a catalog of references of grannies in bikini, curiously what has been harder to me the most is to find references from the upper back (I avoid going into the dark part of the internet).

Hard Modelling

In artistic terms, I have always preferred to work with characters, not machines, not buildings. So finding an element to carry out in this project was quite a challenge. Although my first idea was to work with the Rosalila temple in Copan, as I learned how Zbrush works, I saw that the level of difficulty would be very low (since I could make alpha stamps with the details and it would finish very quickly).

So reviewing my visual references of my favorite games, I came across a classic of classics, the SV-001 tank from Metal Slug, a game full of weapons, zombies, soldiers, powers, and many weird bosses.

While the design of the game was pixelated, there is a lot of art to the creation process with 3D diagrams, in addition to many toys. Being such a popular game, it was no surprise to find that other people have done this modeling before, so it helps me to compare the types of topology, as well as the proportions used. Culturaneogeo and Randohoohaas have a BEAUTIFUL recopilation of the original art book.

What should i do first?

The best thing for me in these cases is to work both projects at the same time, because getting lost in the details could cause me more problems to detect errors.

After having some conversations with the leader of the module and reviewing my class notes, I made this WELL SUMMARIZED concept map of the process to follow with both projects. (click for a better view!)

La Abue goes firts

Since she is a character designed by me, it is best to have a front and side view of her, taking care of proportions. I am still not completely sure in the choice of shoes.

It is very important to emphasize that one of my major references in the construction of my grandmother's body is with the book ''Anatomy For Sculptors'' by Uldis Zarins with Sandis Kondrats, from which you can find a lot of free content on their Artstation account.

Not feeling completely comfortable with Zbrush in the Blocking process (I don't like that I can't have different views at the same time) I did the blocking in Maya.

For the body I am focusing on the parts that will be visible with clothing, in this case the head, shoulders, some of the chest, a bit of the upper back, arms and hands. Hair and jewelry is something that I do not plan to work with Zbrush, but in Maya

For the dress I have been playing a lot with a flat sphere and the clothing dynamics that Zbrush has, in addition to the various brushes that contain clothing effect.

This was the result.

A bigger problem was that when I did the dynamash of the hands, the fingers stuck together. So I decided to create the hand following various tutorials, the one that helped me the most was that of J Hill.

A comparison of before and after. Still needs a lot of work to give her the granny look.

For now what I am creating are a few small variations before presenting it to my supervisor for feedback.

Chibi Tank

For the creation of the tank I had two creative processes, first I created the base of the tank and began to reinforce the edges to keep the shape (especially since some edges are more '' hard ''.

Then, on my first try, I tried to start creating the elements using the base of the tank, however this started to create problems with the topology, especially when I started laying the tubes, as I could not control the thickness of the tube.

At this point I decided that I would take a step back and analyze again how other projects of a similar nature have been worked; One project that caught my attention was that of Joshua C. Hermanto, who explained his process little by little his submission. A very important detail that I began to notice is the combination of elements that are created from the main base of the creature and others that are only "superimposed" such as the eyes.

When superimposing it has the disadvantage that we will have a certain number of polygons that will not be seen in our texture but will occupy space in our UV maps, however we will be able to maintain a more controlled topology.

In our new attempt, several elements have been created from cubes and distributed according to need, others have been created from duplicate polygons of the main tank base.

Last two weeks of the project.

In the last two weeks of the project we got deeper and deeper into polishing all the stages.

Chibi Tank

First of all finishing the creation process in the tank, we concentrated on the elements distributed around the base, many of these elements were symmetrical in distribution so it only turned towards one and then it was reflected.

However, there were two elements that required special processes in their creation: the exhaust pipes and the ''chains''.

Exhaust pipes

This required a similar process found in JL Mussi's channel, where he explains how to create patterns in cylindrical elements. While this helped us immensely in creating the pattern, we had a more difficult time creating the UV maps, as we separated the inside of each circle. For this, we separate the main base of the object and cut the holes one by one, using the cylindrical projection tool.

Chains

During a feedback section, it was recommended to me to use the special duplicate tool combined with a curve for chain distribution, this worked perfectly. For this process, the base with two teeth was first created, UV mapping was applied to this base and teeth, in this way the duplicates would have the same attributes.

Sweep Mesh, I love you

Other of the tools that I used a lot in the creation of the tubes of my tank was the Sweep Mesh, which comes in the new update of Maya 2022, you can see the video of how it works in Maya Learning Channel, but in short it is that you select a curve, press the tool and you can create circular or square tubes, WONDERFUL.

Once all the pieces were created, the very long definitive UVmapping process began, that took me at least a full day. This is because the tank was distributed in 4 UV tails, trying to divide it from the tip to the base.

Transferring this model to substance with its separate UVtales required the following steps:

• We create a backup
• We select each UV tale separately and assign it a different texture, for example lambert, and it's better when we rename it to UDIM_1001, 1002, 1003 and 1004 respectively.
• Then we move the such UVs (with the move tool found in our UVtoolkit -> transform ->move, we will place all the such UVs in the first one.
• We export as FBX to Substance Painter.

In Substance Painter I had a LOT of fun playing around with layer attributes, especially the combination of normals with height and black and white textures. We were advised to work with Fill layers with black mask and adding paint, to have greater control in layer modifications. This worked very well for most of the process, however I also used a few coats of brush to create stencils and then added a black mask to give it a painted effect.

Most of the stencils used are part of the program and were modified according to the number of lines and length. I also wanted to put five stars symbolizing those that appear on the flag of my country Honduras (an extremely military country, you can still see many soldiers around the country) However, I set out to create one in Procreate and then import it, the one I think I made based on my puppy Oscar.

Here is an example of the U1V1 of the tank, where we have Base colour, Emissive, Normals, Height, Roughness and Metalness. However later on we also add AmbientOclussion.

To connect the textures it can be done semi-automatically with the Substance in Maya plugin, otherwise you have to activate it first in windows-> Preferences/settings -> Plug-in Manager and select the Substance ones.

Then we go to the Substance tab (in Maya) and apply Workflow to Maps. Ta-Da! You just need to put the right channels, It will create an aiStandardShader with the textures but may not connect it to the model, instead just select the model and assign an existing texture to it.

Although the textures looked fine in Substances Painter, I still had to do a couple of modifications in Maya, for example the display created by heights was creating a weird effect on the exhaust pipes, so it was disabled.

While the emissive layer was working fine in the end, it wasn't the effect I wanted so I opted to duplicate some parts and add a use as light attribute to them, to have more control over the lighting.

As last modifications, we created a series of lights that will help to illuminate the tank, more than anything directional without shadow effect.

In rendering I was fortunate to be able to render at university where I can use GPU capable equipment by adding an ''imager'' attribute called Lens Effect, which somewhat increases the brightness of the reflections. I really recommend taking a look at Arnold's documentation on this, plus what the system requirements are (not every computer can produce them).

Finally for project reasons, we needed to show Beauty and Wireframe in the final video, so I duplicated the tank and created a couple of render layers to make the process easier, overrithing render attributes and adding a sample in ambientOclussion as an extra.

Please enjoy final version!

Self-criticism

There are many aspects that I would like to fix the tank, listing the main ones:

• A better connection between tubes and the base.
• More details at the bottom.
• More quality in the textures, fix the problem with height maps.
• Specifically: experiment more with texture within canon.
• A couple of errors on the UV map where the textures got a bit distorted.

Abuelita is back!

Continuing the granny's process in Zbrush, we find ourselves with a brush experimentation stage. While many of the artists I follow and reference often use the same brushes for their work; I found multiple packs of brushes that helped me style Granny's skin and dress her up.

• Free ZBRUSH ALPHA PACK HAND SKIN By Renan Assuncao
• Free alpha cloth folds vol.2 By Max Derksen
• Realistic human skin alphas by Rafael Souza
• Cloth Seam Brushes + 4K Alphas by Muhammad Sohail Anwar 
  

We also encountered the difficulty of creating her shoes, while having a plan B: make the dress longer. But after multiple feedback sessions with the supervisors, the heels were improved to the desired quality point.

At the beginning of this project, it was desired to create the hair using Xgen in Maya, however after experimenting it was concluded that due to time, the hair could not be finished following this method. In any case, a brush pack created by Marthin Agusta Simny was used on a copy of the head, along with a sphere to create the tied-up hair.

Little by little our granny took shape, once she completed the desired details in Zbrush, perform a decimation process. Initially, a series of tips and video tutorials were followed from various sources, including classmates.

However, I soon realized that I really didn't understand the process and I was afraid of making a mistake and losing the details I had worked so hard on. So I did what everyone should do in this case: check out the Zbrush documentation.

In this way, the number of polygons in the model was considerably reduced, taking advantage of the fact that Decimation Master detects masks to protect elements such as the wrinkles on the elbows and face.

In any case, two exports were made, a high poly that would be used later in Marmoset for baking, and a smaller high poly for retopology.

This so my computer wouldn't die trying.

For retopology I worked in the following order:

• Face
• Hands
• Neck
• Shoes
• Rest of the body
• Dress

The hair was extremely difficult to retopoly, so a sphere was combined into the hair for the Live Surface, just being careful to add a larger amount to preserve some of the detail. 

Compared to the tank, granny's UV map was considerably easier, however for practical purposes the elements were separated with different shaders each; body, dress and later the jewelry.

Although it is known that the baking can be done in Substance Painter, it was decided to work with Marmoset for the edition of the automatic cage.

Great care was taken little by little editing the part of the face and arms, obtaining a normal and height mapping result, however there were small details to repair in photoshop.

The dress went through a similar process but separately, this because the dress was made by layers that do not touch, something that can be seen in the X-ray view.

In Substance Painter we find ourselves with another challenge: the UVtiles. First, the same procedure as the tank was followed, dividing the useful with different shaders, but this caused a problem with the fill layers in height maps. So the FBX was imported again, this time with all the elements with the same shader.

Although the height map in the body did not have so much problem, in the dress it caused a somewhat exaggerated displacement, even editing it at a lower level, so it was disconnected. Also the only elements that were not textured in Substance Painter was the jewelry, since they wanted to do something simpler made of gold and silver.

The lights were distributed around the body and it was desired to give an air of matriarchal superiority with the angle of the camera.

Final version!

Self-criticism

There are many aspects that I would like to improve with this model and that I will continue to experiment with beyond the assignment:

• The specular of the skin became too reflective, as if his skin was sweaty.
• Combine other attributes to create a better skin texture, like with Sheen.
• Although the model does have SubSurface, find a way to improve it with lights.
• Add even more jewelry, maybe even little details on it.
• Improve or make from scratch with Xgen the hair.
• Much smaller details on the skin, such as moles or BCG vaccine scars.
• Experiment more with height maps, learn to prevent errors.

And this is the end of my adventure within so many programs in relation to 3D modeling and sculpting, however it is not the end of my own learning, soon I will post more experimentation on my social media (like instagram!) :)

Happy start of 2022, year of the tiger!

Welcome to a new adventure.

Part 2 

Week 1

We start with a new class, in which we will gradually learn the secrets of modelling and sculpting.

If you want to read about my process in creating animations, you can see it here, on the other hand if you want to see something related to VFX, click here.

In the first place I decided to continue using ArtStation as my blog platform because I obtained good results in the visualization of my work, also I have made a couple of contacts here and it is always a good idea to keep it active :) 

It also has a good character's capacity (amount of words!), good support in the integration of videos from third sources and I do not worry about the contrast of the elements, since it maintains the graphic line of ArtStation. Finally, It have the option of skecthfab and I suspect it is something I will be using in the near future.

Now, let's talk about...

Background

When the Covid pandemic hit my small country Honduras in 2020, like many I was forced to work from home. While I was fortunate as my job was 99% remote, it was a moment of determination to continue my education.

At that time (March) it was already decided that I would study in the UK and that my master's degree would have to do with 3D, so together with different artists I began to practice with the first program I could get ...

Cinema 4D

Their platform is very intuitive, while Maya may seem a little saturated at first (due to the amount of functions it has) But what I hated about C4D was that to ''sculpt '' you needed to double the number of polygons and at that moment my poor laptop suffered.

As always, the topics that I like to try the most are animals and cultural things from Honduras, here are a couple of examples:

Later, the same friends put together a discord to do a weekly modeling event, forcing us to leave our comforts. A couple of my entries ...

Thesis ''La Sucia Animation''

For my thesis project (an animation of the myth of La Sucia) I made 3 character models, it was my first time in Maya and strongly influenced by the feedback of my counselors / teachers / discord professionals, to whom I am very grateful and They will be named at the end of the animation credits.

Some of my process:

And this was the end result, after a lot of experimentation.

Nomad Sculpt 

Finally (at least for this blog post) I downloaded the Nomad application for my iPad Pro and since the truth is like a simple version of zbrush, it has helped me to practice certain techniques while traveling by train.

Simple little things, heads of characters.

First steps

Before running you have to walk, it was there in May 2021 that I entered the world of Maya modelling for the first time and at that time it was a specific learning moment because my goal was to create 3 bipedal models with a caricature appearance.

However, this time it will be a generalized learning, with which I will be able to learn techniques that will be applied to various sectors. With this in mind, the first assignment of the class was to review the basics of modelling, here is a short summary:

• Differences between vertices, faces and edges.
• Understand how Maya works between hard-surface and soft-surface.
• Introduction to the difference between modelling for elements that will be animated or not.
• Hot KEYS!
• Subdivision and how that affects my computer's memory.
• How to maintain edges? Supporting!
• The four magic tools: extrude, insert edge loop, Multi-cut and Bevel.

Edge Flows

Polycount was one of the most useful pages I used during my modelling pipeline, specially fixing edge flows.

Personal recommendation: Print or draw this image in your notebook, you are going to re-visit it again and again and again. I did not create this from scratch, I based in some images that i have been saving, specially from Polycount.

Exercises in class

Here is a small compilation of the exercises we did in class, with a bit of information about how I did them and feedback.

First work in the middle of the object, creating a cylinder and selecting some faces to create the circles that will connect the U shape. Then for the U shape, make an extrude using a curve. However my biggest problem was that the tubes had different thicknesses.

I am also aware that my topology could be much better...

Week 2

Exercises at home

USB Drive

In this exercise, what I found the most challenging was the structure of the holes in the USB, since in the end I had to put several "supports" so that even in soft mode, it would retain its square shape.

If I had more time, I know I could fix the topology around it by reducing the faces.

Creating a Stick Grenade

For this object, the point that caused me the most difficulty was the connection between the cover at one end and the hook at the other end. The point that surprised me the most was the use of a helix, since it was used to create the metallic connection, personally I would have tried to create the spiral with curves and combine it with a cylinder, but this technique was much faster.

In my final result, I feel that I could have improved the curvature of many corners, especially the handle since I made it ''to the eye'', it would have been much better if I had ''traced'' it, maybe even using a curve and then converting it to a plane.

Extra: I made the texture of the wood with a ramp in aistandardshader, I liked the result haha.

Security Camera

This exercise was particularly difficult as it was in the reproduction of many elements with many curves. However, along the way, I learned to love the mirror tool, since sometimes the symmetry did not work completely. 

It could improve on many factors, especially between the connection of the camera to its mount (try to improve it with a lattite box) and some loops in general.

Extra: I tried playing around with the light emission from the glass, although technically the light should come from behind the glass.

UV Mapping

UV mapping is the process of dividing a 3d image on a 2D surface, in this way textures can be placed. During the process of my final project I had to learn quickly how UV maps worked, several supervisors assisted me exhaustively in the process.

However now I know that I could improve my UV with all the new that I am learning.

Here is a sample of what I did before class (click the image to see details):

Week 3

Class Exercises

During class we experienced a magnifying glass and a character of a man, the advantage of Maya is that it divides the sectors that we are "cutting" into colours. If we look closely we notice a texture of a grid, this helps us to know how much is the resolution in which the texture will project.

In the magnifying glass for example, it is composed of several separate elements, so the elements that are hidden do not need high resolution, so in our UV map we cut them and we can leave them small.

Another trick to use can be seen in this character, firstly, having all the elements together, we must be careful where to leave "the hidden cut" so that it does not alter our continuity of the texture. Also if we want to take advantage of the UV space to the maximum, we can '' flip '' elements that are the same as the texture will be the same, so leave both legs in the same position.

This trick would not work if, for example, one leg had different elements such as tattoos.

Week 4

Zbrush, I hate you, I love you

Zbrush and I have a story.

From the first course I took where I could not see all the elements of the program since my screen was small to hate the way the zoom works (which I change in the commands every time I open it, let me use the mouse roll Zbrush!)

But in these races the beast must be mastered, so I will be putting extra effort in learning how to use it, also I seriously want to make Honduran outfits in this program. (Spoiler for my final project!)

Blocking Batman

The first exercise done in zbrush that I did was to create the blocking for this batman, however in my first attempt I had a lot of difficulties with:

• Placing the images.
• Center the elements.
• Switch between object and environment symmetry.
• Camera view.
• Colors to make it look pretty.
• uuuuhg

I know that part of the problem is that I keep thinking about how Maya works, in Maya you can '' snap '' objects to a grid, have different views at the same time and work with local or '' world '' controllers with a simple change of clicks.

In the last class we had a fantastic guest, Carlo! who with a lot of patience helped me answering many questions (especially symmetry)

With all this and many YouTube tutorials on how to block, I decided that the first Batman was a lost cause and start over.

Although the second attempt had a considerably better result, I have a lot to improve; At first glance I can tell that the shoes could look better, put more elements on the belt, accentuate muscles and I always had a little problem with the reference images, because we can see that the Batman from the side has a better cranial shape than the one from the front.

Big Shark

In this very long exercise we have applied most of the things that we have seen in Zbrush, if I had to summarize the process it would be something like:

Elements (like a sphere) -> Zremesher-> Blocking -> Add Appends and repeat until you block all character.

It is recommended to do the blocking with elements that have very few polygons, to better understand how the shapes, your silhouette, the reading of your character work and so that your computer / laptop does not die :)

Once with the blocking done, we introduce our dear friend Dynamesh, to add softer and more ''moldable'' surfaces, in this we can work elements individually and then combine the groups little by little until we have something like this:

In Process...

Week 5

Retopology

Surprisingly, retopology is one of my favorite aspects of the process, as my computer doesn't suffer as much.

It is (literal) to recreate the topology in a simpler way and with Quaddraws.

Again an example of my work in the thesis:

(add image)

And now with the exercises in class, among the examples I chose that of an older man to try to work with wrinkles. The model was not symmetrical so that caused problems for me, besides I forgot one of the most important retopology tips: Start with the eye and mouth cycles!

I am mentalized in "the topology must produce cycles". This means that when I select a polygon a cycle is activated. This is especially important for animation, as these loops will help us create rigs for facial expressions. Example:

However with the final result we notice that we lose a lot of details, but do not worry! DO NOT PANIC! We will use another program to combine both models and get the best of both worlds.

Week 6

Characters Concept exercises

Exercise 1

Mastering the technique is very important, it allows us to reproduce what already exists, but working with concepts allows us to create original elements or characters.

In this enclass exercise we were given the following world in which we will incorporate our character:

World Context: In this world, science has no boundaries, but humanity’s numbers have diminished greatly after a series of catastrophic events. To reintroduce genetic diversity, human embryos are commonly spliced with animals, resulting in hybrid races.

In this case we create a character with Latin descent, small stature, with androgenic characteristics, bird DNA (specifically Tucan), with a slim to athletic body. Mohair style haircut, with only one eye, working on organized crime, tattoos and Cyber-punk style clothes. Here you can see the collected references:

The reference task reminds us that in each photograph there may be only one detail that we like, but that detail can make a difference for the character. During this exercise I focused on finding a way to combine the green and yellow colors in the hair, so I have images that have nothing to do with mohair, but more like the degradation of the hair, if the color would only be in The tips are divided, if it is short as it will look, if it is long, smooth or wavy. These exercises will be used for the creation of our characters.

Exercise 2

For the following exercise I chose the character of Jimmy Levinsky, to answer at least 25 questions from this character.

What is your occupation?
I'm a super hero, a bit like a mad scientist, sometimes in trouble with the law because they don't understand my genius and they don't know that to create you have to destroy a little.

What words and / or phrases do you use very frequently?
Don't trust me, trust science.

What do you have in your pockets?
Spare nuts, a marker that never seems to wear out, and a tissue to wipe the oil off my hands.

Do you have any quirks, strange mannerisms, annoying habits, or other defining characteristics?
I am extremely organized in my own way, this means that even though my lab looks disorganized, don't touch anything because I know exactly where everything is.

Do you have any allergies, diseases, or other physical weaknesses?
I am not physically strong, especially in my legs.

Did you enjoy school?
At first because of the access to books, but then I got bored, the teachers couldn't keep up.

As a child, were you popular? Who were your friends, and what were they like?
I thought I had many friends, always laughing with me, but later I described that they laughed at me.

When and with whom was your first kiss?
It was after saving a little leg from an explosion that she does not know that I caused, unfortunately that was the last time I saw her.

As a child, what were your favourite activities?
Silent reading and laboratory classes.

Who has had the most influence on you?
My great-aunt didn't always understand my inventions, but she always supported me.

Do you have a criminal record of any kind?
A couple of accidents here and there, insurers don't like me.

Are you basically optimistic or pessimistic?
I like to consider myself an optimist.

What is your biggest fear?
A superhero should not have any fear, but I have to admit that I am not the best friend of the spiders.

How close are you to your family?
Well I always send letters at Christmas but only one niece answers them, she seems to have a little fascination for science at her young age.

Do you tend to take on leadership roles in social situations?
Absolutely.

What makes you laugh?
That there are still people who believe the earth is flat.

Are you spontaneous or do you always need to have a plan?
Plans are built in the process, I like to be more spontaneous.

Do you smoke, drink, or use drugs? If so, why? Do you want to quit?
Those things weaken the brain.

What is your greatest strength as a person?
My intellect, I always trust my brain.

Do you like yourself?
Yes of course! Although I wouldn't mind liking more people.

Where do you see in 5 years?
Opening my own academy for brilliant minds.

What three words best describe your personality?
Brilliant, genius and charismatic.

What three words would others probably use to describe you?
''Papanatas'', clueless and destructive.

What are your hobbies?
When I have an idea in my head, I usually lock myself in my own mind.

Do you usually argue with people or avoid conflicts?
It's not that I like conflict, but it's that sometimes I can't let an ignorant comment pass easily.

This exercise allowed me to get into the personality and life of the character, make it more real and able to empathize with him.

Week 7

Ai Standard Shader

In this class we delve into the Arnold Shader, remembering what we had already seen in Perfecting the look. Among the various types, in the following image (from left to right and front to back) we see the following variations:

• Base
• Metal
• Specular
• Thin Film
• Transmission
• Subsurface
• Coat
• Emission
• Sheen (Dress)
  

Remembering these functions will be extremely necessary when we start texturing, especially if we want to give it a more realistic look. There is one of the extra exercises that I will have to review more than once, that of aiComposite Shader, aiMix Shader and aiTwoSided Shader; Because one of the elements for my final project will have several oxidized metals.

Let's continue in Part 2

Part 1 , part 2 , part 3

PROJECT WEEK 4: Final Polish

Finally this week was dedicated to cleaning all the breakdowns of all the animations, the feedback list covered two pages since I was noting in which frame I had to repair what aspect.

Considering that Douglas's animation covers more than 1000 frames, we had to start cleaning up by yesterday!

In general, the feedback was focused on:

• Hip movement.
• Eliminate leg slippage, especially in dramatic pose changes.
• Eliminate unnecessary rotations and translations.
• Increase the appeal of the hands (especially in the attack combo and walk cycle)
• Review balances.
• Offset of elements such as ears, clothes, hands, so that each animation sequence does not end at the same time.
• Drag and overlapping
• Review the list of animation principles over and over again.

Final details for all my animations! implementing tutor's advice.

Walk Cycle

• Focus on ears, clothes and hair for overlapping and drag.
• When in the last scene he falls, he first "bend" to the front and then fall and "reverse" the line of action.
  
• Add some extra element to the background. (I added some bottles, they jump when He fells)

Attack Combo

• Check that there are no more overextensions.
• Limit some animations of the tail, they are a litttle distracting.
• SMEARS!

Performance

• Review transitions.
• Change pose "no no no no" to one that favors the transition.
• Add more secondary movement to the tail.

Almost there! Playblast improve

Once all the necessary transitions have been repaired, it is time to generate my playbast, first of all modify some textures and backgrounds, using the ramp option following some tips from Amy Tron.

After one of the most important points: Lighting! Now if I'm honest with you, lighting has never been a strong point (in terms of photography, I prefer to ask my good friend Julito for advice) but in this case I found this incredible, magical and highly recommended video on Maya Learning Channel.

A more visual version of how the distribution of lights was in my scenarios, keep in mind that in all my main light is SpotLight.

Last Problems

As the saying goes '' Si el pato no se hace en la entrada, se hace en la salida '' that means if a problem does not appear in the beggining, it appears at the end. In this case, when I already placed the textures that I wanted and playblast, the textures would "blur" and it was something that could not be fixed with Crlt + Z, but until the file was re-opened.

First of all I started researching some forums, finding someone with a similar problem and experimenting with some of the solutions, without actually working.

From what I also asked my tutors during support hours, the solution was going to (in viewport menu) Renderer> Hardware Renderer 2.0 Options> Scroll down to Maximum texture resolution Clamping> Change it to custom> 2048> Reload All Textures , and If that did not work, try 1024.

It worked!

And finally, the last of the last problems in Maya, every time I exported my video in .avi, the document was '' corrupted '', but this is considerably easier to solve, simply in the playblast option it was to change to export as a sequence of images, and '' paste '' everything in Nuke / Premiere.

Please, enjoy my ''final'' versions

I plan to keep cleaning these animations and create a breakdown video of how it progressed, with music, but for now this is the delivery video for the class.

References, Credits and Assets

Alexander Williams. (2021, March 25). Speed Lipsync [Video]. YouTube.

Andree @maestronoov. (2018). Empanada [3D model].

Barrett, J. S., Widener, A., Herbez, J. A., & Lango, K. (2014). TweenMachine (3.0.0) [Maya plugin].

Coldesina, F., @topfrank2013. (2017). Classic Chair [3D model]. 

FAIL PARADISE. (2017, September 17). Funniest Drunk Walk Compilation [Video]. YouTube.

Freepik. (2015, December 28). Ornamental chinese monkey new year background 831240.

Freepik & fwstudio. (2016, November 7). Texture of wooden boards 971817.

Freepik & macrovector_official. (2019, May 21). Parquet cartoon doodle style seamless pattern 4547294. Freepik. 

Freepik & Patchariyavector. (2016, May 13). Oriental elements collection 868067. Freepik.

Hooks, E. (2017). Acting for Animators (4th ed.). Routledge.

Maya Learning Channel. (2018, October 26). Creating great lighting for Playblasts [Video]. 

NimbahTech. (2013, March 10). Ultimate drunk man beaten by hill [Video]. YouTube. 

Schaal, B. (2018). Douglas (v1.3.1) [3D model].

Toshpointow. (2011, December 8). Drunk Walking With Style! [Video]. YouTube. 

Truong Cg Artist, Nguyen, T., & Nguyen, L. (2014). Zhu Baijie [3D model]. 

TruongCgArtist, Nguyen, T., & Nguyen, L. (2014). Wukong [3D model]. 

Williams, R. (2009). The Animator’s Survival Kit, Expanded Edition. Faber & Faber.

You can read part 1  and part 2

Camera Aperture... maths!

In this part we have to take into account the information that our camera contains in the projection section.

1. First we import our 3D environment into Maya.
2. When undistord our video, it might change size (mine didn't) but let's pretend it did, so we'll put THAT size in the Render Settings image size.
3. With our camera selected, we go to the Shape section -> Enviroment -> imageplane [Create].
4. If you are using a video, convert it to an image sequence and select Use Image Sequence.
5. (put the lock on the camera so as not to move it by mistake)
6. Now let's do this calculations:

From the video (old dimensions)

Orig. Width:1920

Orig. Height: 1080

After Undistortion (new dimensions)

New wight: 1945

New Height: 1105

Formula: Overscan % = new dimensions / old dimensions

My Overscan %

Wight:1.013

Height:1.023

Formula: New aperture dimensions = Overscan% x Nuke Camera Aperture dimentions

Nuke camera:

Formula: New aperture dimensions = Overscan% x Nuke Camera Aperture dimentions

New Aperture width: 36.27

New Aperture Height: 20.60

Add the new apertures in your camera (MAYA)  -> (Camera's name)Shape -> Film Back and here we will change Camera Aperture (mm) numbers.

Assets and textures fix

As I mentioned before, I will be using the Warthog by TruongCGartist, but here are some other elements that I plan to use:

• Trunk by SebastianZander
• Fern by Petro.Stepaniuk (this file also include the Broadleaf plant)
• Rock by Andrea Spognetta (Spogna)
• Granite Rock by 3dhdscan
• Second fern by Batuhan13

With these elements, I found that some of them did not have normal textures or were normal in black and white, so I followed this tutorial by Matt Rittman, creating the normal maps in photoshop, I really liked the result :)

Once all the textures were connected in aiStandartSurface, I presented my progress to the instructor, he helped me a lot with several extra arrangements of textures.

First of all we add subsurfance to the plants, since in real life plants absorb light and look greener. It's like when we put our hand in front of the sun and we see it red.

Then we add fractal textures to the rocks.

We changed all the textures that were not Base Color or Occlusion to RAW, for a better rendering.

Check that in the speculars, Alpha is being detected in the lighting. (Alpha is luminance)

With all this, obtaining a better result but at the same time increasing the rendering time.

PROJECT WEEK 3: Render layers, better be ready

Render Layers and AOV's

This week I was motivated to have all the objects ready to render, with the amount of objects I have it was no surprise that I got many rendering layers, let's take a look at my layers and my AOV's.

Some stuff I was CHECKING CONSTANTLY:

• Every object need a alone-layer, without shadows. (Cast shadows off)
• Then a shadows layers, object with Override in Primary Visibility (off)
• If your planes are producing shadows than does not affect your main object, turn them off. (Cast shadows off)
• If you have a plane in front of the object, cast shadows and receive shadows OFF but primary visibility ON.
• Are masks working correctly? Check in main layers and shadow (specially on alpha preview)
• IF your AOV's is not affecting the layer, Override and enabled, for example my sss does not affect any of my rocks.

Rendering...takes forever

During this week Jamie suggested, emphasized, underlined! the importance of starting to render this week (April 14, the project is delivered in 22) the video must have at least 12 seconds of special effects.

Let's do numbers

12 seconds = 24 frames per second = 288 frames.

14 render layers = 4,032 frames

Each rendering frame takes at least a minute to render, sometimes a little longer.

My "wildpig_main" layer that contained all the AOV's you saw before, took 10 hours to render.

All other layers containing color but not Motion Vector, at least 7 hours.

All other layers containing color, but not Motion Vector and SSS (subsurface) for at least 6 hours.

and the layers of shadows that do not contain any AOV's about 5 hours.

Doing the math, it took me AT LEAST 85 HOURS to render EVERYTHING I had in Maya.

I couldn't leave room for mistakes, so before embarking on this adventure of not turning off my computer for days (coincidentally restarting it once a day so it wouldn't die) I rendered ALL MY OBJECTS in just one frame per object. In this way, while the rest of the more than 4,000 frames that were being rendered, I could start to order my nodes in Nuke, leaving them more or less like this:

Trial and error! Rendering my footage

I thought that when I would have my layers rendered it would just be to connect them to my document in Nuke and BE HAPPY!

But no, the errors appear: Copy1: Missing inputChannel, (Something something_#.exr not a Something something_#.exr)

Why is this happening? Could it be that as a human I have been wrong in some part of the process?

Many times we blame ourselves, because the program must be working, but in this case they were corrupted rendering files that for one reason or another did not render well.

It might have been because of my computer's capacity, memory space, or Maya crashed while rendering.

Either way the solution was to find ALL the frames that were rendered wrong.

For this, with a write node, I was exporting sequence of images by CG element, if some number was not exported it is because it was corrupted, I was doing this while writing down which object and frame were corrupted.

In PlantOnRock_shadows there 27 frames that were corrupted, just to give an example.

BUT I FIXED THEM ALL!!!!
The other problem I had was that my document was TOO heavy to render on my computer, so my option was to render one frame at a time (Spoiler: Didn't work, Nuke would close and something like this would appear in my Task Manager, 100% CPU and numbers between 7000-9000 in my Memory Nuke)

After repeatedly restarting my poor computer, I began to transfer my files to the virtual computer of the university but that was going to take HOURS, so also to have a BACKUP, I started rendering in parts:

• Undistorted Footage + PlanarTracker + Lens Distortion
• CG (Rock Back, Plant Back
• CG (Rock Front)
• CG (Plant Round, Plant on Rock)
• CG (Tree)
• CG (WildPig)
• CC + Filter

Reviewing I realize that the rock in the back is not positioned "perfectly" and they have a strange movement that will definitely be noticed, I COULD solve it with a tracker and transform.

But time is running out and I have other projects, so this is when we say goodbye to my Back rock and Back plant, they looked good but move badly :(

Last Fixing/ Little Details

Once finished with the rendering of the CGI elements, it is vitally important to review elements from the beginning again, first we have my PlanarTracker, where I have my bee design.

It looked good, but '' too perfect '' to be painted...

So I wanted to leave it more '' adapted '' to the door, for this I have used some tips from VFX Vibe where he uses radials as masks, it caught my attention and I wanted to use them to fix Colour Corrections , in this particular case I used a Ramp instead of radial (GrievePerspective shows a quick example of how it works with a Constant)

I thought ''Hey, it looks like what I do in Photoshop / Procreate'' and in that I remembered that in one of the sessions with Jamie he had used a node Merge to affect the colors, like layers in photoshop.

Experimenting a bit, I decided that the effect of multiplying the color of the door with the illustration of the bee is very close to what I wanted; adding a radial to leave the center of the bee a little more saturated.

Next problem: My color correction will oversaturate the sky a bit too much, see that green line between the sky and the house's roof? besides that burning of pixels in the branches of the tree ... I needed to repair this!

First, in my CC connect radials so that they will not affect the sky, once with the normal sky I applied a special correction and a Blur (the branches are far away, we do not need to see them detailed)

Finally Jamie gave my project a final feedback, especially with the latest color correction.

I can safely say that this is the final structure of my project.

Final Video + Breakdown

Special Feedback during the process

Here I will mention super important points in which I had problems and / or they delayed me in the completion of my project.

• First of all the complexity of the lens distortion, thanks to the support sessions I was able to achieve it, but I practically had to perform 4 camera trackers until it really worked and was the right size.
• Lose the fear of editing the textures of an object, none of my plants had a normal map so I had to find how to create them, adding an SSS channel also helped to bring them to life.
• Constantly check that AOV’s are selected in each render layer, my shadows do not need to have specular or diffuse, Override them makes the difference between a render of 10-7 hours to only 5 hours.
• PUT. NAMES. TO. EVERYTHING...I had 7 objects in my scene, constantly editing my textures in Hypershader and then putting everything together in Nuke.
• BACKUPS! I have 4 backups, and other Nuke files where I worked Lens Distortion, Camera Tracker and testing nodes for effects, better safe than sorry.
• Finally, learn when to give up, I tried to create a mask with the lockers of the door in the middle of the graffiti, I learnt how but to actually have a good result I needed to create key frames in the perspectives frames, not enough time for a little effect, so I changed my roto mask for a Roto Paint and it looks good!

If I have more time, I'll try to fix my rock in the background, add more flowers and some butterflies flying around! I did have some models for this but too little time.

Conclusions

This was a hard project with a lot of fixing, it shows how powerful is Maya and Nuke and how hard is to make all of this alone.

This project explored different areas that a student can specialize in; lighting, creation of scenes, storyboards, 3D maps, cameras, division of elements for rendering, AOV's, among many more.

The objective of this project is not only to demonstrate I know how to use these programs (Nuke and Maya) but also to understand how to reach a level of professional quality, the ability to organize and leave it ready for delivery.

It has been a great adventure, now I can say that I know how to create a BASIC VFX sequence, since the possibilities are endless.

Please feel welcome to write to me here or Instagram about this project, I am an open book.

Feel welcome to also check my animation blog.

Chao!

Part 1 , Part 2 and Part 4

Week 10: Calendar and planning

During this week we were reviewing what is necessary for our final project, today I am going to go a little more in detail about my process.

First of all, all my processes are divided into quadrants: (click on the image to make it bigger)

The first stage in all the animations is the longest, it is the creation of all the key poses, with some breakdowns, the checklists that I am using are those mentioned in the previous blogs, the animation checklist, Lip Sync and all the feedback that I have. received in different exercises.

The first stage in all the animations is the longest, it is the creation of all the key poses, with some breakdowns, the checklists that I am using are those mentioned in the previous blogs, the animation checklist, Lip Sync and all the feedback that I have. received in different exercises.

Once this process is done, it will be a matter of adding all the drag and overlapping of the secondary elements (ears, clothes, hair, tails, etc.)

And finally after finishing the necessary of the assignment, I can concentrate on adding extras.

But ... what is necessary in these assignments?

• Walk cycle: No less than 6 seconds, with personality.
• Character Performance: No less than 8 seconds, based on storyboard and lin sync.
• Attack Combo: Not less than 5 seconds, must have at least 3 hits (extra if it has narrative)

Why do I work this way?

This brings me back to my times when I work in an advertising agency, all projects are clients with deadlines, everyone wants their project to come out first, EVERYONE WANTS TO LOOK THE BEST.

With this I learned to prioritize, WHAT does my client want? WHAT will my added value be? What will my cushioning mattress be if a mishap happens?

There are 3 animation projects and one CGI (I explain this in my other blog, starting in part 2).

I have the advantage of having my own computer, but also using a virtual access to university computers, so I am animating on a computer while rendering CGI tests on the university computer.

Why do I plan for the worst?

In my beautiful country, in my hometown Tegucigalpa, we have the disadvantage that we never know if the electricity is going to fail. So I used to having backups, emergency batteries and trying to collect all my documents in a memory drive, instead of the cloud (because you don't know if the internet is going to fail as well).

So, call it experience.

PROJECT WEEK 1: Key Poses and Motion Trial

Walk cycle

This first week I focused on the creation of Key Poses, for my walk cycle I tried to create a direction with the head from top camera and it worked in a certain way, but after the feedback I was told how to fix the poses since the exaggeration was it was getting out of hand.

A very important point was to assign the weight to one leg at a time, in the sense of not losing balance in the steps (or at least not until the end).

Among the best points achieved were various poses that define the character, the expression and how I am trying to show that the character is drunk.

Another point to consider is who are doing the hands, add appeal.

Attack Combo

In the same way, I worked on the key poses of the first two kicks, I must be especially careful with clothes and using the tail in the line of action.

For this animation, I am recommended to work it in the way that you can see the pose well in different cameras, since it would be a good example of character animation for video games (yay!)

First Kick

Second Kick

After having worked on these two kicks, we had a session with another of our instructors, Mr. Constantino; this was his feedback:

• More fingers movement.
• More frames in the beginning
• Consider your poly-vectors
• Bring your chest and head
• Fix your anklers
• Add an small step in the beginning.
• Avoid over extention.
• HIPS!!!!

Performance

Elaboration of key poses BUT also the environment and the cameras, for this case I will be breaking the model favoring the camera.

The lines that you see in the camera are guide lines for the rule of thirds (the basics of the basics in camera position haha)

The poses for Douglas were simple at first, but with the help of my teacher we were able to achieve a better emotion.

Also, very important to mention: my teacher recommended to add a pose where Douglas is looking around to emphasize that he is trying to sneakily eat empanadas.

Feedback for GoodBoy:

• Add look around before getting on the table.
• Improve poses
• Yes, deformation is ok, but be careful with your transitions.
• Pupils (0u0)!!

PROJECT WEEK 2: Key Poses and cleaning breakdowns

This week is to determine my most important keyframes and start adding breakdowns, this week I was focused on verifying that all transitions were functional (but not yet stylized)

Functional but not stylish? What do you mean?

I mean that since I'm constantly moving the characters, I have to be careful that the rotations and translations are working correctly.

The best example is with my Attack Combo, in this aerial view I have highlighted where the foot is positioned and in which direction it is rotating, if we see in my graph editor my rotations AND they are in constant elevation, since we are rotating.

Why is it important to understand this? Technically speaking, the position of my foot in 0 is the same as in 360, with the difference that 360 already has a turn. If in my graph editor I changed that rotation from 360 to 0 it would look the same in my pose, BUT when seeing the animation we would appreciate that the ankle makes a complete turn (breaking) since the number before 360 was probably 200 and the next number is greater than 360.

Oh! Math! It is these small details that help me understand how my animation is working and verify that it follows a logical sequence.

Now with this cleared up, let's see how I have worked with my animations independently.

Walk cycle

This is the first animation that I'm sure has a definite start and end, it starts with his head directing the movement and ends up passed out on the ground; with this resolved, it is a matter of working the medium (hahaha a piece of cake? Lol no)

This was the result of the week...

Feedback

• Start fixing spacing and timing, delaying some poses and speeding up others.
• Use more of the chest and hips, to gradually eliminate that "floating" animation.
• Use the control of the ankle instead of the entire foot for this movement:

• Try not to overextend the leg muscles, this can be repaired by editing the Stretchy attribute.

• Focus on the hips, chest and legs; hands later.

Attack Combo

In this update, he added the poses for the third stop and the final pose ... for now, as let's remember that I want to add an ending with the bag falling on his head.

For this feedback, they mentioned several aspects similar to the walk cycle, fixing the ankles, spacing and timing. However, one aspect to highlight was to add secondary movements in the chest and legs during the "impacts", adding more force in the contact.

I take this opportunity to say that the reason why I am not working with the bags at the same time as the character is because my reference (Don Chibi!) Was performing the movements without impact, this with the purpose of having the cleanest silhouette. It is not the only way to work a combat animation, but for the purpose I want to achieve, it has worked in my favor.

Performance

Finally we have our friend Douglas, applying the various poses suggested by my teacher have helped to give more life and drama to our character.

Among several things, it was to give more emphasis to the eyes and the movement of the ears as an indicator of anticipation of direction, thoughts and emotions, in addition to exaggerating more some poses.

Regarding the feedback, I have received very good opinions about the direction this animation is taking, especially showing the personality.

This does not mean that it does not have points to improve, on the contrary many points are the same as the Walk Cycle and Attack Combo, this I can take as proof that I have patterns or habits that are slowing me down (for example, I did not experiment enough with my rigs before starting the animation).

If we see what I have worked on this week, I hope I can say that my goal of understanding the story without dialogue has been achieved.

This means that now I have to get into lip sync, let's stop for a moment and see what else I have to do in week 3: 

Walk cycle, Attack Combo and ... oh

For those who have not been aware, I have also been working on a CGI project (click to see the whole process, or only in part 2 to see specifically project) for my Perfecting the Look class which is delivered the April 22 (Earth Day!) So considering that my computer will be rendering the entire weekend of week 2 and I will be focused on finishing that project, I have to consider a delay for the 3 animation projects (which are delivered on May 3).

This is why I've been strongly considering changing the ending where Douglas steals an empanada and just cutting it off when he's caught. We have to prioritize scenes! And the priority at Douglas right now is adding audio.

Unexpected problems

After receiving my feedback, I tried to convert my animations to stepped mode (I had left them in spline for feedback) and every time I did it in my walk cycle the program would freeze.

I tried creating copies, removing animation layers, changing the animation display type from Parallel to DG and it still kept freezing to the point that you had to close it with Task Manager.

Fortunately our teacher was able to give me a hand by reviewing the file in different versions of Maya (2019, 2020, 2021) and in one he found that the problem is that my animation has "ghosts", do not ask me how to activate them, but it showed me how to remove them and that fixed the problem.

As you can see in the image, it is a matter of being in your animation mode, go to visualize and select Unghost all.

In addition, the creation of animation layers has slowed down the way I work, so to optimize myself I have been creating sets of parts that I need to edit independently, I did it following the class tutorial :)

PROJECT WEEK 3: Mouth Shapes, overlapping and drag

Part of last weekend and this week was almost exclusively dedicated to finishing the CGI project (click to see the final result) so I had to dedicate more time to the animation that I needed the most: Performance, since being the animation that it will have more score and for this week it still had not started with voice synchronization.

Let's start there

Performance

What will our friend Douglas tell the world? many will ask. First I want to start by saying that in audio matters if I averaged from 1 to 10, it would give me a 3 because since it is difficult for me to hear the errors, so I seriously consider using some movie audio.

In class we shared the following pages where you can download free audios: Movieswavs, movie-sounds, SoundBoard and FreeSound.

However, the talk we had with Ed Hooks + his book inspired me a lot to make a funny audio with a dog, so here we are.

I'm a good boy,

I must resist... but

Maybe just a bite

No no no no!

She would get MAAAAD!

I can... always blame the cat... :)

To be honest, I was very nervous with the remaining time of my animation and the creation of mouth shapes (even now I do not feel 100% with them) even following the advice from class and the festival (how to play with visemes, phonemes, block our jaw movement on 2's, etc).

But at that moment I felt a wind coming through my window, I turned to the corner of my room and said "Y esta rosa?" And with joy I saw this video of How to animate lipsync in a hurry by Alexander Williams

(Reference to a program in Mexico called La Rosa de Guadalupe, for those who do not understand I want to say that by pure luck this video came out in notifications hahaha)

With much more confidence and a bottle of molten dew, I dedicated myself to creating my mouth shapes, here is a sample of how they were combined with the poses.

With this ready, I dedicated myself to clean the arcs that are created with Dougla's ears, legs and nose; always taking into account appeal poses.

This week I started to clean the arches that are created with the ears, legs and especially nose of Douglas; always taking into account appeal poses. Also try to reduce this '' slip '' effect that he on the legs.

Feedback for the 3 animations

Already mentioned, because of the pressure with CGI work I had to run the work times in the animations, so I will talk about the long list of changes that I received on the weekend in part 4.

You can read part 1 here.

Previously in week 6 and 7

In the first part we are left with the implementation of AO and AOV's in layer rendering. To better understand these concepts I was watching a couple of tutorials of people exporting with different settings, this video was one of my favorites. 

Week 8: Rendering again, but with more effects

This week I had a couple of problems with Maya's image plane, it didn't appear in the background of the RenderView, as is usually the case, the solution was to delete the camera with the image and create a connected one.

With tons of things to do, we keep practicing with layer rendering, this time differentiating between Diffuse, Specular and Coat properties.

SUPER important to remember: since we are doing it with layer rendering, when we export we have to do it in render--> render sequence and have "All Render-Enabled Layers" enabled.

Since we are pro, and we configure our location of the project well, this will appear in "images" in two different files since we have two layers.

NUKE turn, we create our first tree for our .exr, the properties exist in our file but to separate them we will use node shuffle, where in "Input Layer" We will choose the property to edit, in this case diffuse, specular and coat. We change the name to make it easier to identify :)

BEAUTIFUL! to connect them we use Merge, but BEWARE! We do not want merge OVER, we want merge PLUS, since we need them to add to each other, not to pile up.

Let's not forget that we have to do the unpremult and premult sandwich and once this is done you can enjoy editing the colors with grades, color correction, etc.

Our little tree will look something like this:

Now, what about we add one more light, this time naming them, so we can differentiate between the attributes of both lights. For this we go to our light--> Arnold Area Light Attributes --> Visibility --> AOV Light Group, then we name them (for example Area and the skydome as HDR)

Once this is done, we return to our AOV rendering configuration and add customs, with the property followed by the name of the light, for example diffuse_Area, taking special care that the capital letters are in the same way as the name placed in the light.

Two lights, two configurations for each attribute, we export with the capable ones and this time we have to place a shuffle per attribute, a total of 6 shuffles, we follow the same previous procedure and we would have something like this:

Personal feedback:

• I have to be very careful with the temperature of the light in the skydome, I feel that it was too blue compared to the background, even though it was the same location the HDR was taken at a different time of day.
• Grades are magical.
• I have to see more tutorials about color correction at the end, as well as when I draw I place overlay and multiply to "tie" the background with the character, I have to imagine that there are similar tricks for Nuke.
• I MUST PRACTICE MORE.

Week 9: Jamie, Thank you for your service!

This week I was trying to get all my 3D assets tested, I’m going to be honest, there’s still a lot of stuff that confuses me in Nuke.

Hopefully we got a special guest, Jamie Bhalla who is already swimming like a pro in this ocean called Nuke! He showed us his Portfolio and a lot of recommendations  for references and inspiration... in a short version here are my notes:

One of Jamie’s advice that really stuck with me was “Look for the assets and build the idea around that.“ In the beginning I made a list of ideas and then for frustated since I couldn’t find assets “good enough “ or I couldn’t afford them.

Then He touched the social media topic, I always think if I want to know about something I must follow hashtags related to that (I follow #bee #science #honduras in ALL my accounts haha) These are some hashtags and accounts for VFX!

• Jilrock1
• Voidzto
• vfxmaria
• Rek0de
• Brickspacer
• vernbestintheworld
• #vfx
• #vfxworld
• #visualeffects
• #compositing
• #nukecompositing
• #howiseedatworld

If you swim in this ocean, How can you catch the fish? (Horrible analogy, but you get the point)

Advices for finding jobs:

• Look at companies websites
• Show your breakdown
• Taaaaake your time
• UPDATE your showreel
• Make a moodboard of the companies work
• Cover letter aim for the company (and add words from their statement)
• Different showreels for different companies! But made one for your website.

Thank you for all your advices Jamie, lifesaver!

Week 10: Lens Distortion, Why do you hate me? (Also last class week!)

So... WEEKS ago I had this problem with my Lens Distortion node, just didn’t work at all, I made my lines and when I press solve... everything gets funky. Both my professor and Jamie helped me with this issue but not even then we could find out WHY this is happening.

If someone is experimenting something similar, let me tell you... try to use less lines!
yeah yeah I know, but this looks until now the only way to fix the issue.

Anyway, since is the last week, I took the opportunity to ask some questions I really want to understand from Nuke, for my own sanity.

”But Johana, this is so obvious” WELL NOT FOR ME >:[

Lens Distortion...why?

When we work with Lens Distortion and STMap, we understand that our len is causing some fish eye effect (even minimum, when we compare we notice) It’s like folding a piece of paper. My mistake was: I thought Lens Distortion was to fix the video and make it straight (but without distortion again in the end) now I understand that if we did that we could out in danger the quality of our video. 

We undistort because we need a straight environment to work better with our 3D assets, and then distorted again so everything fits with the original video.

Here a interesting example of how it works, using a BlackOutside node

Colour Correction and Grading 

Everytime we speak about CC and Grade, one button label as photoshop turns on in my head, I often work with Multiply for shadows and overlay for lights (or add and screen) Nuke has some similar options but the most use are these two, Jamie said in a few words “I use Primary Colour correction for Fixing the video, then a Secondary one to create the mood”.

This is also mentioned in this video recommended by my professor, here they talk about Color Correction node for fixing colours and then Grade node for create the mood, so like in photoshop people work with different workflows but same principles.

PROJECT WEEK 1: Let's get this done

Starting my project, I combined the list of elements I need and the creative process that Jamie showed us in his presentation, leaving this checklist:

1. Colour Correction (firts and second)
2. Lens Distortion
3. MatchMove / Tracking Stabilize
4. Planar Tracking
5. Cloud Generator
6. 3D enviroment NUKE / export camera
7. Assets in Maya
8. Application of PBR materials
9. Render Layers & AOV's
10. Render Settings
11. Rendeeeer
12. Merge & Shuffle nodes
13. Colour correction fix
14. Other nodes and final touches

Some of these points depend on what you want to do in the scene (for example, if I want to put a graffiti with planar tracking) so if your idea does not involve things like that, you do not need to do all the steps.

Due to the pandemic (2020-2021) we could not make our recordings, so the leader of the module provided pre-made videos with the necessary information for our project, after much thinking, I chose this video from a garage, with this configuration :

Focal length: 50mm

Film back preset: 5D Mark iii Video

I have named my idea ''Warthog in urban forest'' using the Truong CG Artist model (check the model there) as the main asset and animated by Le Phi Hung.

The idea is for the wild boar to walk around the scene, which will include other models of plants and rocks to make it more '' wild ''.

Colour Correction (Firts part)

First of all I started to fix the colors, after several tutorials and advice from Jamie, I have come to the conclusion that the Color Correction nodes are better for the artistic part, since you can modify by channel (for example, you only activate the red channel) but this is a personal choice.

Here is a comparison. (original is the gray one)

Lens Distortion

Since with the video they gave us some grids, I used them to create my video undistord, I made it PERFECT, and it did not work creating the same errors that I have previously presented, I created a new node and I made it less perfect, this time it did work.

Don't make it perfect >:(

Tracking - Stabilize

This was one of the points that took me later, in the first place I did not understand why my video did not stabilize after putting 5 trackers, but my error was that I had not checked all these boxes before exporting the baked.

Well, it was at this point that I started wondering which is better, having it BAKED or CONNECTED to my trackers, fortunately Jamie is giving sessions to answer questions of this type.

He said it really shouldn't matter, since connected gives you the ability to edit it later, but also taught me ANOTHER way to stabilize.

Jamie's method: when you have the trackers ready, you go to Transform and there in the one that says transform you change it to remove jitter.

Another wonderful advice he gave was: since your document becomes heavy, export your undistorted lens with the tracking and work the rest in another document, with this I did at least 7 tests of how my stabilizer was working, in the end export one with only 3 tracker, since the difference was minimal if it was those 3 or 5.

Undistorted without trackers

Undistorted with trackers (only 3)

With this I can start creating my 3D map in Nuke and work on the planar tracking part.

PROJECT WEEK 2: Creating a 3d world

Planar Tracking + Roto mask + Roto Paint

Before continuing with the 3D world, we are going to add a small graffiti on the doors, the planar works perfectly but I want to create some masks to remove the graffiti from the locks, I tried to follow this tutorial by Olly Tyler but it is not working, possibly something I did different.

Update: The solution was to add the Roto as a mark in the merge node, the mask work for ONE frame, but then is not tracking, in this case we spoke about two solutions, add a tracker and then put that between merge and roto, or create a planartracker and use rotos there, tried both and the best result is with tracker + Roto, but then the mask is not perfect...

ONE SOLUTION is to create key frames modifying roto's perspective, but it takes so much time and this effect is not a priority of the project, so for now I have only painted the padlocks with ROTOPAINT, so that they are not seen.

If in the end I have some extra time, I could try again, the important thing is that I learned how to do it :)

Camera Tracker

Creating my camera tracker was quite an odyssey, what I was most interested in was creating the environment of the wall, since I want my boar to come out from behind, and have the ground stabilized, but when I create the camera I generate it. .under the GROUND?

''Ugh, okay fine '' I tried to find different tutorials, but the generation was the same, so my virtual map is in decline, it can be better appreciated once I have put the cards...

I suppose it can work, I could modify the camera and try to stabilize everything, but I feel like that may cause problems for me in the future. :(

Update: It does cause some problems later on, SO I'm using the undistorted without stabilize footage, and It's working better that the previous one.

Anywaaaay... let's create a HDRI

In class they taught us how to create HDRI images for our skydome in Maya, for this we use Photoshop, here is a video from Ed Gregory that explains the process, the only thing that I think He does not mention, is we need to save as OpenEXR.

One big recommendation given by my teacher, check your colour info before exporting it, It should be higher than one in the most illuminated area (preferably not less than 7) IN THIS WAY the illumnation would look amazing in your assets.

I will continue with my camera tracker math calculations in PART 3
  

Part 1 , Part 3 , Part 4

StoryBoards

In class, we did a short exercise creating the storyboard / Thumbnails for the first page of the Monsters Inc. script.

Here is my result...

Feedback:

In general I got good opinions, only in page 3, middle box 2nd line, ''It's the only time we see the character from behind, and the camera angle crosses the line'' and gave me a good link about the term and how to prevent it. Something that I will definitely consider in the future.

Extra:

On Valentine's Day Don Chibi gave me the book '' Steven Universe: Art & Origins '' by Chris McDonnell, Rebecca Sugar & Genndy Tartakovsky. BEAUTIFUL and super recommended, not only for its detailed process in creating the show, but if you are like me and you LOVE the show is mega rewarding to read. You can have a quick look in this video.

AND NOW...

I’m going to introduce you to the assets I’ll use in my final project, for now these are ideas that I have been working on:

DRUNK WALKING CYCLE

During a holiday with Don Chibi in 2019, we went to one of my Favourite places in Honduras, Amapala, more specific we visited “La Isla del Tigre“ an island with a conical basaltic stratovolcano. In those magnificent beaches we loved to see my inspiration for this project: a drunk man walking in the beach, somehow drinking sea water from a beer bottle.

Ah! The memories!

So for this drunk walking cycle I’ll use Zhu Baijie, a maya rig by TruongCgArtist, concept art by Tuan Nguyen  and Finalizing Model & Texture by Leo Nguyen.

You can have a look of their preview video here.

I have to say, so far this was the most difficult model to find, since I wanted a rig with tummy, but without being a character with a sphere instead of a maleable stomach.

3 HIT COMBAT

For this part of the project we were given the option to choose between create a 3 hit combat or a character lifting an object, excited I decided to go with combat and record Don Chibi doing Kung Fu moves over and over and over.

For this rig, I found in a different website ANOTHER rig from TruongCgArtist, called Wukong, concept by Tuan Nguyen  and Textures by Leo Nguye.

Aaaand here’s their preview video!

For the third part of the project I still haven’t choose my rigs, but for now I’ll let you with...

LIST OF WEBSITES FOR 3D ASSETS.

Something that can be helpful for more than one person.

• CGtrader
• Open3Dmodel
• TurboSquid
• Sketchfab
• Renderhub
• HighEnd3d
• CreateCG
• Gumroad
• Textures (mostly textures, but also some 3d Objects)
• 3Dtextures.me (more realistic textures)
• GlobePlants (only high quality plants models, nothing free though!)
• and of course, here in Art Station!

If I find any other website I’ll add it to the list!

Week 7: How to create a performance

During this week I have been walking, eating and breathing principles of the animation, I have gone to the park and I begin to fill my sketchbook with walking key poses (when I improve them I will post them here)

Until then I would like to incorporate the annotations I made during the lecture with ... d r u m s ... ED HOOKS!

ED HOOKS IN THE HOUSE

Ed is a MASTER, actor recognized for his techniques, He has created a guide for actors AND animators, in this case highlighting his book '' Acting for Animators'' which I am eager to get my hands on :) 

Thanks for the gift, bro!

These were quick notes, so if I misunderstand something bear with me jajaja

In animation, your character is an ACTOR, not a puppet. If I touch your cheek you are going to have a reaction.

Acting is BEHAVING BELIEVABLY in pretend circunstances for a Theatrical Purpose.

A lot of people would say your character needs to see... real, but nobody cares about regular reality, that's boring. Humans are the only ones who can pretend, animals can't. However this ability only begins to manifest on children between 4-5 years old, not younger.

We have to study humans like we are a martian, Why would humans like to walk into a room with a big screen and sit watching images for two hours? Why do some decorate their bodies with pictures? Why do they change their voices when they speak to animals? Oh! the mysteries!

EMOTION leads to ACTION-- You should be able to freeze your character and know: action, obstacle and objective.

In reality we think CONFLICT as something bad, but in acting that can change, you can have a conflict about choosing an ice cream flavour.

Your animation have to be theatrical valid, your audience don't care if your character is natural, they care about the story. BELIEVE in your story, villians dont think they're villians.

In stage, the audience looks at the person talking.

In movies, they look at the person listening.

Some studios made the mistake of record first the text (audio) this looks like audio is more important than animation. THIS is why acting has almost nothing to do with WORDS.

Also It's good to think about what is your character thinking while they're speaking, for example is we have a romantic dinner and one of the persons says ''I love you''  to the other, could be a very confident one, a shy one, if it's the first time or the 100 time they say it, words are the same but body languages tells different stories.

ANIMATE the THOUGHT! 

Coming back to our romantic dinner, It's the first time saying I love you, how the other person is going to react? We are waiting for a BLINK.

Blinks are magical, they help to cut scenes and open to emotion. FUN FACT: We humans need 3 blinks per minute just to keep our eyes wet, all the other blinks are emotionals, full with thoughts. ANY 5 years old are experts on this.

Finally, Ed gave us the option to email him if we had any more questions. This was mine...

What do you think about foreign animation studios/work? More specific with Latinoamérica.

I am always curious how they see us in Latin America, in a few words He agreed with me that the industry in many countries is non-existent (like Honduras where we mainly animate for marketing). The studios that are being developed are mostly in Mexico and Brazil. Although, now with the pandemic the doors of working as an independent artist are opening more and more, it does not matter so much if you are in the same city or if you are in India, Thailand or who knows, Honduras. Now it depends more on your portfolio and your ability to make yourself known in the community.

Animation Community

This was another topic touched on in class these days, how to interact with the community of animators, there are different platforms (like auqi in ArtStation) where giving and receiving advice is easier and more, lately I like to see what people are doing on the AGORA Discord, Or review the processes of different artists on Twitch; but what I've really been paying a lot more attention to is the animation analytics that Frame by Frame Animation shares. (I told you before, breathing animation jaja).

Week 8: Conversations that are fun to watch! (lyp sinc)

This week we not only learned about lip syncing in class, it was also a topic covered at The VFX Festival but we'll get to it.

Apparently, there are 38 different phonemes in the English language, these phonemes have associated mouth shapes –a combination of different facial features working together to produce those sounds –jaw, lips, teeth, tongue, etc. 

Although my main problem is that I keep learning about how sounds are produced in English, for example I feel that L is easier to pronounce in English than in Spanish, but I have a problem with TT since in Spanish T has a stronger sound. (So in these cases, I'm seeing how other people pronounce it better LOL)

One of the things to remember is that we don't have to animate EVERY syllable, but work on dividing the sounds with the shape of the mouth.

We also have to think about how important the phrase is, what part is necessary to add certain expressions, for example: if someone is speaking in diminutive (such as talking to a baby or a pet) our mouth will have a different shape than if we speak in a normal way.

One of my favorite examples is the way Hana in Tokyo Godfathers, where She talks with a lot of energy and expression on her face.

Tokyo Godfather's example 

If we pay too much attention to each letter, our animation will be exaggerated, so we have to be careful in which breakdowns are functional; also VISEMES! According to wikipedia, A viseme is any of several speech sounds that look the same.  In class a comparison was made of how to pronounce mama and pebble, almost the same movement of the mouth.

With this in mind we usually only have 4 mouth positions, open, closed, wide and narrow. With the exception of certain sounds like F and V.

In class they gave us this table where it is explained in a better way how the sound distribution would be, I will leave them in high quality in case it works for someone else :) I printed it.

If the dialogue is too fast to fit two frames into the sync, steal a previous frame for the 2 frame count.An exception to this: Consonant, Vowel,  Consonant, Vowel,  Consonant, Vowel...

Tips for Lyp Sinc (in class)

• Mouth is not independent from face, TEN muscles are needed to smile! 
• Breakdown the audio and listen over and over and over!!!
• Peaks are likely your accents.
• Consider the scene setup, create CONTEXT and SUBTEXT
• Do not add too many poses.
• Body language change eveything, but be careful that is not eclipsing our facial acting.
• Time our facial expression BEFORE a major change in body position.
• Shapes 1 or 2 frames ahead of sounds can often work well, but late shapes NEVER work.
• When animating vowels, fast-in to the extreme shape, then soften it to a position that diminishes the sound.
• Make sure the rigs polys are not smooth preview mode!

Tips for Lyp Sinc by Chris Welsby #VFXfestival

During the week I had the pleasure of attending the conferences of the VFX Festival 2021, one of my favorites (and what a good time to see it) was that of Chris Welsby, Senior Animator at MPC, where he was explaining the process in the creation of this commercial focusing on lyp-sync.

Cat Litter from ARM & HAMMER™ TV Commercial

In the first place, Sync is the most difficult and crucial element of lyp-sinc animation, we should see the mouth shape before hearing the sound. Key shapes such as M/P/B/E and O should hold for at least 2 frames or they won't be readable. The software you choose to view your animation can have a BIG IMPACT on sync playback, be carefuuuuul!

Then we have Readability, It's crucial that the lip-sinc is clear and readable, be careful not to include too many phonemes as the animation could start to feel very choppy and hard to read. As mentioned earlier try to hold key sounds for as long as possible.

Think about tour camera angle and distance from the camera, REFERENCE!

The faster the dialogue the trickier this becomes.

Finally we have Emotion/Reference; emotion can have a big impact on the mouth shapes needed. VERY important to get the base sync and readability working firts. Once we have our sync, we can add emotion in the voice, our next stage is ti make it feel that the voice is really coming from your character.

-----> EYES and BROWS are importan at this stage as they will really help emphasis the emotion in the voice. <-------

★·.·´¯`·.·★ What to do when your audio does not work...? ★·.·´¯`·.·★ 

I had this problem where my audio did not work, in the end my teacher gave me the solution but just in case someone else is having the same problem, this is easy steps to check:

1. Your audio have to be .wav (not mp3 or something else, if not you can convert it with this free program Audacity)
2. Right click in yout timeline where your audio appers and check that you Playback Speed is set to Real-time.
3. Go to your preferences -> Settings -> Animation -> Evaluation mode and be sure is set to Parallel (my was in DG).

Week 9: Walk cycle and more lyp syn

During this week I was trying to experiment a little more with Lip Sync, after watching several tutorials and a couple more lectures I got ready to do the next class exercise.

What I tried to do was try to create a motion trial by focusing on the nose. Taking special care with overlapping and drag (hair and earring) I must say that I had special difficulty trying to achieve the shape of the mouth and even now I have been willing to practice a little more in creating mouth shapes.

This was the result:

These are some key points in the feedback given by my teacher:

• Play more in Anticipation
• Careful with Breakdowns
• When you do an action, '' What is leading the action? ''
• Mouth should be wider

Other tips he has given in class is to review:

• Book '' Anatomy of Facial Expression ''
• Website Face the FACS
• Google references for Facial Action Coding System.

I was also working a bit on practice and creating a walk cycle for my project, in this case I was reading over and over and over and over again "the walking section" From Animators Survival Kit, creating mini cycles and motion trials. 

However, all these details are explained in this video, including my sketches for the three projects. (Subs in english and spanish)

See you in Part 3

You can check my progress with Perfecting the Look here.

Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4

 Narrating my path in Media Specialist Practice.

Before going into the details of the class, I will comment a little on aspects that I learned that helped me to incorporate a little into the program before week 1.

About a month before starting the module, I received an email from the course leader advising the students to take a look at Maya and a reading list about animation principles.

I have to mention, that having a little bit of experience with Cinema 4D, the transition from this platform to Maya was initially a sudden shift, the Maya interface is intimidating at first glance, and the editing systems have different workflows.

Among the various tutorials that I watched to familiarize myself with the platform, this introduction by FlippedNormals was the one that I liked the most as it explained the interface and the shortcuts, I took the liberty of writing down each of the points explained and practiced them little by little in the program.

On the reading side, The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams continues to be one of the best guides within the principles of animation.

Week 1: Introduction and lots of practice.

In short, the case project will consist of very specific animations; a human walking cycle, an animal animation and a range of expressions.

Since the topics are broad, I will list a couple of ideas that I have come up with to make them fun.

• For the walk, a fat drunk walking with great difficulty, reminding me of a time when I went on vacation to the beach and there was a man drinking sea water instead of his beer.
• For animals, I would like to experiment with a reptile as I feel like they crawl uniquely, especially a crocodile or a lizard.
• Finally for expressions, I would like to make an awkward expression, as if someone wants to sneeze but can hardly achieve it. I would still like to make flirty expressions.

Closing the week I was practicing with some of the exercises from the course, especially one of a ball hitting a wall, the only thing that frustrated me a bit was that I could not install a plugin called TweenMachine that helps create breakdowns in Maya, so I did them manually.

Week 2: Practice, practice, and more practice.

Just as it is written in the title, this week I focused on practicing and experimenting with Maya. I have learned a lot about how the program works and also how MUCH it differs from Cinema 4D.
Also, I managed to focus a bit more on creating playbasts, especially basic lights, so the animation example (no need to render) looks decent enough.

I will leave a gif here with a compilation of the exercises that I worked during the week, making it clear that I did not create the rigs or the models, I just played with the animations, especially experimenting with the timing.

On the other hand, I would like to record the animators who I usually follow for their work, a lot and with whom I usually test tutorials regarding the principles of animation.

Alex Grigg

Gastón Pacheco  

One of my favourite from Latinoamerica, check his animation in 00.48. Either way the whole compilation in this ad is amazing.

(Also his new project Gorrionetas)

Kevin Gemin

Now, THIS LEGEND! This artist introduced me principles of animation waaaay before I knew those were principles, his work is incredible and I have been following his tutorials for years, here some examples. He have a lot in his Patreon.

I have to say that I have sinned a bit in the sense that most of the animators of which I refer are 2D, in 3D animation I usually follow studios or projects, of which my favorites:

• Pretty much anything made by Studio Laika.
• Pingu, non-dialogue projects like this are a great reference for stage plays.
• PuiPui Molcar's project, scenography, emotions without dialogue.
• Yakuza, Like a dragon, has been a title that has impressed me a lot in the sense of 3D animated designs, eccentric and with an air of fantasy without leaving aside the absurd.

Finally during this week I was working a little on the advancement of my final project, specifically in the segment of making a combat animation. For this I asked Don Chibi (my partner) to perform some Kung Fu movements in the park, then I filtered the videos and made some syn sketches, the movement contains 3 kicks, however I would like to replace the second with a high kick. What I have in mind that will be the object to hit will be pieces of wood falling from the sky, a small example of what I have in mind:

Week 3: POSE!

Oh my! this brings me memories of my illustration classes. When I do my personal work that includes posing I always take in consideration shadows, mirror, exageration and A LOT of reference.

During the class we good some good exercises with posing ''Jackie'', starting with a T-Pose.

In my first pose I wanted to experiment with a happy girl, full with love and dreams, almost floating in the air.

A little explanation from my notes, the yellow lines are my arcs/ lines of action, this also helps to emphasize mood, usually when you are happy, head goes UP! (unless is a shy happiness), then we have my blue lines where C means complicated and S stands for Simple, this means that one part of your silhouette is going to follow a simple line than the other. Finally something is not always necessary but it helps, trying to get the chin or cheek out in the silhouette, indicating where is going to be the face direction.

In this case my reference is a body mirror in my room, always something handy to work with. Hands and face always tell most of the story, smiling with the eyes and holding tied with hands usually means passion for something.

Next example, Jackie is tired of hearing nonsense, getting annoyed. Son in this pose I'm closing her body, feet feels more heavy and hands are ''defeated''. Extra touch: leave the space between arm and tummy, it looks less busy. Althought I liked the pose I'm not completely happy with how looks the conection between the extended leg and hip.

Alright! This one! Definitely thinking of poses for my final project, taking a reference from a professional fighter, but exaggerating a couple of details.

The first was the extended leg, his foot is at an angle of 180 but that would not look good on my silhouette, so I left it at an angle of 90. Then I had to take the consideration that if I raised the leg more it could be seen rare in the model, like the bent leg, that although it seems that his ankle is touching the rest of the leg, I think it is only an effect of the loose clothing.

A detail that was a bit indecisive was the closed fist inside the silhouette of the arm, since if I took my hand out of the silhouette it reminded me of this emoticon ᕦ (ツ) ᕤ, in the end I feel that just looking at the knuckles get the idea.

  

Finally (for now) I was playing a lot with a panicky expression, I was looking for images of horror houses with snapshots, like this one, and also making expressions in the mirror.

I feel like a nice touch was playing with her hair, like the phrase "It makes my hair stand on end'' or in spanish ''Me pone los pelos de punta''.

Another of the exercises was to do a pose for 15-20 minutes and then go back to improve it, first was evil laugh, then choke and finally sadness.

Very good news this week: I received some feedback in my practice animation and posing, here the major points I have to improve:

Animation Feedback:

• Improve motion trial, with my Pendulum my Motion trial was a little too straight, needs more arcs in movement.
• I need to clean my keyframes, sometimes I add too many in innecessary places.
• Improve Overlapping
• Don't be afraid of Rotation!
• Be careful with timing with legs (my little egg jumping) also I broke their knees a little too much (sorry eggman).

Posing Feedback:

• Caaaaareful with broking bone and spine.
• Eye brows need to follow a connection, since they are connected with a muscle.
• Careful with editing the major position control (the one the determinates our charecter position in the area) 'cause when you animate, change it back mess up with all your pose.

In short: I tend to exaggerate too much and forget about bones, putting a post it in my wall to remind me!

Week 4: Breakdowns and timing

During this workshops we needed to improve our habilities to create interesting breakdowns and correct timing, with some extra exercises applying an Animator’s Checklist. Here’s my quick guide:

Timing: In this exercises we were given several documents with pre-made animations, but all with a timing of 1 frame, so we needed to re-organizate this animations in a way in makes sense, following some examples. SO HERE! I present to you a compilation of my results, in the last one I made two versions, since i wanted one doing just fine with pushups and another struggling a little...

Breakdowns: with the following ones, we were given 2 poses and needed to create a transition between the two, with different moods and trying to create funtional breakdowns.

Oh boy, I did took some extra time with this ones, I feel I have some problems with breakdowns so I was trying to doing some ''pose to pose'' and cheking the examples in the workshop, I did create several ones but this 3 were my favourite.

Maya did also crash, but with a PLENTY experience in photoshop and Illustrator crashing, I was always doing my CTRL+S and autosaves every 10 minutes.

For this one I'm not completely satisfied, but I like it the result of  ''Oh what, you need me? fine here I go'' I tried applying the Animator's checklist, but seeing it again I feel the timing a little too fast.

Finally I took a little of time to check some reference videos of drunk people walking and play with this in Syncsketch and here were my results my conclusions of movement:

• ARCS everywhere, even in their walking path.
• They try to move their body in one direction, but It follows their head, so If they head goes in the opposite direction, all the body needs to move there.
• Arms have their own control, only really moves drastically when they need to body to moves in a completely different direction.
• Between my different references, I really like the most of the body moving like leaving their head behind.

Also, all my references: Drunk on a hill , Drunk 2 , and this drunk boy in min 4.50.

Week 5 and 6: Catching up!

During these weeks I have been practicing and trying to follow the feedback from the previous exercises, fortunately during week 5 they gave us a little more time to '' catch up '' with the workshops.

In addition to analyzing animations, detecting that they have the 12 principles of animation, I personally advance with breakdowns and one-leaf loop exercises (which can be applied to queues, something to take into account for my project, you will soon see why .. .)

Also, during one of the previous weeks we briefly explored storyboarding. Honestly when I was in an advertising agency it was one of the steps I least like to do, but these days I have reviewed the storyboards of my favorite series.

 See you in part 2.
  

The career I have chosen depends on a constant adaptation to new trends, so I should never stop learning.

With this in mind, I am starting a series of blogs narrating my progress in my Computer Animation MA.

You can check my progress with Media Specialist Practice here.

Narrating my progress for Perfecting the Look. 

Week 1: Introduction and Ideas

During this first week I have had to consider where to write my blog entries, usually to have a greater reach I would choose Blogger, being a Google platform and therefore they win special treatment in search engines.

However, considering that I can earn with this blog, beyond fulfilling an academic assignment; It is introducing my work in a new English-speaking market, with people who are on a similar learning path to my own and that if I am lucky, we will share knowledge and inspire each other.

Finally I concluded that ArtStation, being a platform positioned in this field of work and highly recommended by many of my colleagues, is without a doubt my best option.

IDEAS

In short, the project assigned in Perfecting the Look is to create:

1. A video of at least 12 seconds with camera effects, light, Nuke nodes and composition.
2. A video with my work progress in Maya and Nuke.
3. Project must be delivered before April 22.

My main goal is to make a project that I not only enjoy, but take pride in showing as part of my portfolio, this is the result of this week's brainstorming.

• A ladybug walking on a leaf in the park.
• Something related to the cadejo (famous legend of a demonic dog in Honduras)
• Something gloomy / monster coming up the stairs.
• A spider sticking out of an ear.
• Alien ship flying around a tree.
• A puppy made of clouds jumping in the sky.
• Monster sitting on a roof or on an electric wire.
• A flower growing in a park that has a face.
• Interview or newscast about monsters living in a house, with a scene of a little monster walking on the corners.

This week I have also started with the recommended tutorials from class (especially the ones on LinkedIn learning, Nuke essential training). For now I will dare to say that the program reminds me of photoshop but intended for video editing, since I’m just starting to use this program, I may be wrong.

Week 2: Nuke, much more interesting than I expected.

During this week I continued with the tutorials that LinkedIn educational has about Nuke, which I thought was another version of Adobe Premiere. Now I consider it to be superior.

Curious, I looked on Behance for projects in which Nuke has been used, a lot of CGI and 3D is what appeared but I also looked for famous works that were made with this program and among those that I recognized I can name Alice in Wonderland from Dreamworks and Pirates!

But the point that really blew my mind was the 3D functions, from working with elements made in programs like Maya and easily converting 2D backgrounds to 3D with masks. As you can see in this video. 

Between Maya and Nuke, I am a bit ashamed to say that in this past week, I practiced a lot more in Maya, the little that I practiced in Nuke was knowledge that I usually use in Photoshop for montages.

Finally, after a lot of thinking and checking free models online for the different ideas that I have for my project, I had choose to do the ladybug idea, ideally with a ladybug rendered walking in a piece of grass in the part.

Week 3: Getting done tons of exercises!

I believe this week I had started with my right foot in Nuke, complementary with what I have been learning so far with Nuke Essentials (LinkedIn Learning).

Color Correction!

A big, BIG! Step of learning how to do CGI, this time we had 2 documents per exercise, those could be the same image with different colour or two documents that are similar but have to give the illusion that we’re recorded with the same camera, or at least with the same colour temperature.

Beginning with this example, where we needed to match those two images into the colour range of “reference”.

At first it looks easy, but with more complex images (and differences in colours) more complex the exercise, like with this one.

Notice that I even had to play with the different colour channels RGB, but also I couldn’t get (for now) the perfect match. I’ll have to check some other tutorials about this, since I could not fit the large amount of red in my sky and too little blue in my clouds.

This was my final result.

In the next example, we had a building in two different angles and colour temperatures. At first look I believe I did a good job with the colours, but I noticed afterwards that my palms and yellow flowers are slightly darker.

Then, a video exercise, two different shots with very different temperatures.

Following the instructions in the class, I noticed that during the choice of whitepoint the professor didn’t choose a white colour, but more like a soft yellow, since with white the scene would look brighter than the reference, a very good thing to remember when assigning colour temperature.

However there’s one thing I wanted to do but until now I can’t, in the second shot I want to fix the lights in the background. I feel that in the first shot they’re whiter than in the second. I’ll update with a “before and after” when I experiment with some tutorials.

2D Matchmoving

Alright, after who knows how many cups of tea (and occasional hot chocolate), some of my results after following internal tutorials from the class.

First, learning how to Stabilize a shaking video, something I kinda know how to do it in premiere but not very good at it.

Creating around 4 tracks, I found this exercise with waaaay more steps than premiere, but with better results, at least for now I'm very happy with my final version.

In the following exercises It was necessary to use tracking for different reasons, we have a plane tracker for the wall so we can add 2D elements in a enviroment with perspective and movement. A VERY important point of view to take into consideration was the difference in the final effect that is obtained if you work with a sequence of images or a video, for this exercise and to obtain the best result you have to work with a sequence.

Later, in this exercise using some tracking, we add the always reliable (and incredibly loved by those who arrange photos in photoshop lol) CLONE TOOL !, very, very important to play a little with the cloning opacity, if not see a bit between cut, to eliminate the letters at least 4 trackings were used. 

In these cases, you usually work from front to back, since the point where you see all the element you want to delete is not at the beginning. Also take into account the light a little reflected from the ceiling in the metal part of the sign.

Finally in this exercise, it was a combination of planortracking on the cell phone, with a rotomask and to cut out the arm with the cell phone and place it on a new background.

And add a little color correction to it.

incredible exercise to continue evaluating the distribution of the nodes, which is what affects what and how to join them (merge).

I have added my final node tree, just please ignore the node write, since I only put it to export the video :)

Week 4 and 5: 3D Camera

During this week we definitively entered 3D terrain, in class we did a quick exercise in converting a 2D image to a 3D environment using perspective and 3d elements such as cubes to '' replace '' geometric elements within the composition.

Happily, I got my sphere to move within this space :)

3Dmatchmoving exercise

In the following exercise we not only use what we learned in class in the creation and export of 3D elements in NUKE (cameras, shapes, etc.) but also the implementation of 3D elements in Maya and get to the point of seeing them in the video.

However, this is an exercise that does not end here. This workshop is continued in the Lighting and Multipass Rendering Workshop section.

So we will see how we move forward with this exercise in the future.

Anyway, after fixing the distortion of the lens, we add a 3D camera node to create various tracking points, but also with a tracking and rot node we create a mask to eliminate the points created in the window and in the background when the person passes.

This is when I had a little jam, my 3D camera was not detecting the ROTO1 mask, so I have added my magic checklist for when something that should work doesn't work.

1. Check that all the configuration is exact to the tutorial.
2. Check in forums if anyone has had the same error.
3. Visit another tutorial, see if you get the same result.
4. Open a new document and carry out the same procedure but with other assets.
5. And finally (and solution haha) delete ROTO1 and Camera3D and simply perform the procedure again.

The last one I call '' This settings are cursed, it is better to burn it and rebuild it ''

Once this pothole is overcome, we prepare the document to be exported to Maya, for this we need to create a write Geo node; If you look at my node tree, 3D elements created in Nuke (cards) were added, these offer a better visualization of where we will place the elements in Maya.

This is why when we export, we take care that the geometries are selected and the camera.

Once in Maya, in a nutshell these were my next steps.

• We check that the sequence of images is correctly placed as the background of your camera (the one exported from Nuke).
• Put the padlock on Nuke's camera, believe me you don't want to move it by accident.
• Skydome! we place the 360 image that we have from the initial recording, we rotate the Skydome to match Nuke's camera.
• We select both cards (floor and window) and place the aiShadowMatte material on them, in this way it will not be displayed in the rendering but they can also be used as masks.
• In this way, we also create elements that we need to be masks, such as light poles, with these masks we can place elements in the background.
• For the window we can add a Pong or PongE texture to create a slight reflection. However, since we don't want the card to be looked at, in the aiShadowMatte texture go to the Specular section and activate the indirect specular. From this point it is playing a little with the configuration, I found this page that explains it PERFECTLY with examples. 
  • Keep in mind that reflections can also be created in Nuke.

The result after adding our textured 3D elements and masks with AiShadowMatte, is more or less like this:

Seen from Arnold RenderView:

Week 6 and 7: Rendering and Internal Tutorials

During these weeks we were exploring within the class the use of rendering with some types of lights, firstly creating an environment in which you would place 3D elements (background image in 2D, aligned with a plane in perspective and a skydome with HDR of the original image.

Something like this:

We continued with the creation of different materials, however I decided that I wanted to play a little more with the materials, so I was reviewing the Maya Support tutorials that the course offers, creating chrome, glass, brushed metal, marble, Iridescent material and something that was supposed to be Car Paint, but I got too much fun with the combination of textures.

Returning to the main rendering practice, placing more materials (and you can see the other materials in the sphere reflection lol) we started playing with Render Layers.

With Render Layers, you can create groupings of elements and / or specific effects for rendering. For example, if in my scene I only wanted to render the shadow of the cylinder, it would look like this:

Alpha Channel:

Extra tip: Noise problems have a lot to do with lights settings, more samples in the lights means least noise but also more time rendering.Here I mark exactly which is the layer that is working and this is how the shadow would be rendered.

Continued in ''Nuke! Never Gonna Give You Up PART 2''