Texturing

Ryan: Hi, just a little progress shot showing how the texturing is coming along. I need to adjust the colours a bit, especially with the leaves and a bit on the tree trunk, but it's getting there...any suggestions then let me know.

Karen: I really like the detail you have to the trunk but the colours are slightly to bold, if you dull them just a little bit then they shall work nicely with the scene.

Animating issues

Karen: Karl you officially have to animate Pandy now, i have no Maya to work with and can not do much until i get my laptop back as the maya on the laptop from uni does not work and i can not uninstall it to reinstall maya as i am not the administrator. I need you to work on him from this day forward!!!! Do whatever you can do until we are in next. The animatic is on here if you don't have it so you have that to go by! Keep me updated on here or anyone else you need to talk to!

Karl: ok, will do.

Karen: =) Thanks, and i shall do either all or most of Summer to make it fair.

Laura: I dunno if any of you would be interested in this as something for your technical folder, but if I give you the rig and the blendshapes, d'you wanna work out how to make Summer's pigtails move? I'm setting up a basic spline thing for them to see how it goes, but otherwise you could do something collision-y?

Karen: Well i have to say that is a no no for me because well my mac and the one i borrowed from uni the maya on it does not work unless i am in uni so i cant do anything again.

James: oh dear it must be a network licence. theres not much you can do i dnt think exept claim mittigaing circemstances if you need to at the end you dnt realy wana uninstall it and install it again anyway cos the collage will prob yell at you.

Ryan: lol we tried to uninstall it and install it again but you need the administrators password for all of that as well....so lame.

Karen: I am going to try and get a extension for us.

James: lol but the deadline is a few weeks away yet and youl only b able to get extention for you... you can carry on working on film after deadline anyway until degree show.

Karen: Yeah you may have a point there.

lighting

Karl: Is this as bright as you want it? Or do you want it darker?

Karen: I quite like the lighting on it at the moment, but then we put the textured props in we may find its a little brighter than it should.

Karl: Ok cool.

Ryan: i agree, i think we need to find that nice balance between the lighting that james did and the one that i done, as mine is way too dark and james's is a little bit too light as well.

Karen: Ok well tomorrow we can have a play around with it if we put the objects into Karls scene to have a look at it. yeah this def needs to be darker now i have thought about it more, it needs more blue to it, it looks a little to gray still.

Karl: The colour will be hard to sort out till you get the real textures in. But that wont be difficult to change anyway :) This James original version btw, not mine.

Tree Texture

Ryan: Here's another pic of the treehouse inside, the main focus of this is for the tree in the corner, what do you think??

Karl: I like it, but something feels weird. It might be all the grey texture from the tree house tho.

Karen: Yeah i agree the wood planks look really washed out and dull compared to the tree.

Ryan: Hi laura, the scene file for summer is up on adrive, the file name is 'SUMMER_FINAL'. We've only got a few weeks left and we really need to crack on with animation, we would ideally like it to be finished in no more than 5 days if that's possible, thanks.

Laura: Tomorrow is my only day off. I'm at work Saturday, Sunday and Monday, but I'll try my best to get it done asap.

Karen: Ekkkkk oh man.. That sucks, i duno what to do, we really wont have any time to animate and render everything in less than like two weeks, we may have to see if someone else can do it.

Laura: It's only really her blendshapes that need doing. A colleague is off sick at work, and I also really need the money. As well as all the other crap that I have to do for my project. I'll sit down tomorrow and work on nothin but Summer, so hopefully, I'll get her done then. Her controls will be exactly the same as Pandy's, maybe with slightly different names. But yeah, I'm a bit overworked this week and next.

Karen: I know you have your own work to do as well as earn money, its a stressful time at the minute for everyone.

Laura: You haven't had any problems with him, have you? Let me know if you do, and I'll get it sorted, okay?

Karen: None yet, it was impossible to do a walk cycle on him though, but thats coz his legs aren't long enough.

Tree House

Ryan: Hey peeps, here's a little quick render of the interior treehouse, no props in this scene at the moment but they'll be imported soon enough. Still need to texture the wooden rail outside the door, but this is basically what its gonna look like.

Karen: How about trying in with a blue kind of light to get a slightly better view of how it will look.

Rigged Pandy

Laura: Yeah, once you click on the bits like the foot manips, or the finger manips, the options show up on the right hand side in the .... whatever it's called.... display thing.. I think it's the third box above that bit or whatever. Middle mouse + drag those to change them. 0 is default value.

Progress

Ryan: here's an updated version of the summer texture, thought you peeps might like to see some of the progress on her. She's slowly coming along, not long left now =) For some reason i just lover her eyes. The quality is rubbish though.

Karen: Yay shes slowly coming to life!!! Swweeeeettttt!!!! Looking awesome!

Eyes

Laura: Do Pandy's eyes have pupils?
If so, I'm gonna have to make them round, otherwise they won't animate.

Karen: Yeah his eyes have pupils, they are on a blinn layer whereas the rest of the body is on a lambert layer so you might have to reassign the texture to the eyes if its not showing. The texture should be in the texture folder.

Laura: Ooh, I just nicked the scene file, didn't pick up any textures. Is it a problem if I make his eyes round? Otherwise you'll have to do some crazy texture animating.

Karen: Yeah that should be fine!! Do what you need to do.

Laura: Okie dokie. Been at work since Friday, and this is the first free moment I've had. If I make his eyes round, I'll have to re-do all the eye blendshapes.
Alternatively, I can try and create a pupil that sits on top of the eye? The eye controller should be able to move that and his eyes can remain oval, and I won't have to change anything.

Karen: Yeah if you make a pupil that sits on top of the eye that would be best, otherwise it will take even longer to redo the blendshapes, and we dont have time for that as we should have been animating already.

Laura: 'm sorry. Its horrendous at work, as one of the other staff members is back in hospital and I really need the money. Is Summer ready to go yet?

Karen: Thats understandable, we all need to earn the moneys these days. Ryan has started the textures for summer but needs to finish them, he's been away over the weekend and hasnt been able to work but he'll get it to you tomorrow. Will you be able to have pandy finished tomorrow so we can start on the animation??

Laura: Yeah. It's just gonna take me a little while to fix the eyes. Wish I'd realised they weren't round before I started. x_x It just makes it a little more complicated.
Just so you know, I have a 9 hr shift tomorrow, so if I can't get this done tonight, I won't be able to touch it until after 7pm tomorrow.
Yeeeeeeah, sticking pupils on top isn't working. Gonna re-open the file before I cleaned up and just change everything from there.

Karen: Thats ok, let us know as soon as its done and we'll hopefully have summer ready to give to you as well.

Laura: Sorted out all the blendshapes. Just the remainder of the weights to paint now. That shouldn't take me too long. I just need to rest after work. Didn't get a chance for a break today.

Karen: Yay thats good news =D Oh no, not having a break at work must have sucked!! Ryan has been working on summer today but its not quite finished yet, after the eye problem with pandy I found that summer had the same thing, so Ryan remade and re...-textured the eyes to make it easy for you.However the textures still aren't finished yet, we'll have to extend the deadline for that for tomorrow so hopefully you'll have her by tomorrow evening, fingers crossed.

Summer

Ryan: the beginnings of the texturing on summer, what do you think? theres still lots to do on it.
oh and the eyebrow is weird because i had to paint it on, any ideas how to make it better???

Karen: I find her a little scary..

Laura: Can you send me the texture file with her when you send her for blendshapes, so I know where her eyebrows are to move them.

Ryan: yep, i'll send that along for you once its done.

James:

i like it shee loos cute awwwww.
mayb if you blended the ebrow coulor with her skin coulor it would help? i dno.
how is her hair staying in pig tails? shouldnt she have lil bows or soemthing....
i wana poke her cheeks hehehehehe.

Karen: Lol well ryan hasn't coloured the part where the hair band is meant to be. She looks cute, really?? Lol, yeah the cheeks do look good to poke.

Rendering

Karen: Hey James how do you add ambient occlusion layer onto the master layer??

James: you mean add an extra layer and add an ambiant occlusion to it or add occ on the same layer?

Karen: i duno how did you do it in the scene for us?

James:

i made a new layer and used the render all layer feture

just made a new render layer with all the geometry in it then hold down right click over the layer and go to atributes then at the top theres a presets button and go to occlusion then ...go back to the render layers bit and with the occlusion layer selected go to the dropdown tab above it and select multiply and makeshore that all the layers you want to render dont have a cross throught the sphere and cube then in the render window go render > render all layers and then render it and the normal layer will render first then the occ will render over the top of it.

Karen: Ok great thanks, i shall try testing that out!

Laura: Did some more blendshapey bits after work today. Just over halfway on sorting out all the target shapes.
Just having a few issues with getting it to do what I want, but it will soooon bend to my will, and then I'll pass Pandy on to you. :) It's given me a headache, so enough for today!

Ryan: awesome, keep working hard, we need to get animating asap.

Laura: Yeah. I have work all weekend, so it's nigh on impossible to be able to concentrate hard enough to do a good job when I come home. >< Gonna get it all done tomorrow though.

Ryan: nah thats cool and understandable, wow, getting it all done tomorrow?! that would be amazing if you could.

Laura: I've only got.... 12? shapes left to sort out. And then I just need to work out where I'm going wrong with the setting up... It's being a bit dumb. :D I want there to be less things for you to have to mess with, but bleh. They're all named properly, so it should be fine. I'll try and shorten them so it's a bit easier.

Ryan: wow you're really going all out to make things easier for us, thanks laura!! Hopefully summer will come along alright as well once we hand her over to you.

Laura: Just want things to go as smooth as possible for you.

Before

After

James: after slapping occ on its a bit strong but that just means that its easy to ajust in compositing.

Karen: Yeah the occ really makes a difference and is def a little to strong which we can see through the windows buts its def getting there yay. Ooo wheres the lantern light gone, you can hardly even see it anymore. the glow in the windows have gone abit too, so i guess if the occ is turned down then it should be fine.

James: yer getting the levels right for that is normaly done in compositing cos it alot easyer there. when will the candle blow out? just so i know how long it has to flicker for before it goes out.

Karen: It will be the same sort of time as the swing, when the wind gets stronger then the candle would blow out.

Karen: James, i have done some rough texturing and can now give you the updated version of the scene and you should just be able to import the lights into this. Here is a rough pic of how it looks, but will look a million times better once we have the lights in.

James: cool can you just email it to me?

Karen: I went to email you but the file was way to big so had to put it on adrive.

lighting

Karen: Love the shadows that is going on the tree, i think the lantern light needs to be exaggerated as Summers parents wouldn't be able to see that through the window in the house. The house still looks weird though..... Hmmmmmmm and gotta sort out some light in the house.
I think i might need to dull the colours down abit on the swing what do u guys think? I'm guna sort out some texturing on this scene today and can send an updated version to you james later on =) i'll get that house sorted out!!!

James: think once you slap an occlusion on it it will look alot better that and textures. oh and yer i thaught that the candle needed to be a bit brighter but if i make it much brigter then it just goes to bright on the inside of the lamp.

Animate

Karen: Things to animate:

James:
You get to animate the lightning once we have the sound file.
How about animating the bowling ball crashing into the bowling pins to see how they fall over.
Could do the blocks like you just said

Ryan:
Animate the leaves of the tree
the rocking horse
crayons falling on the floor from the drawers

Urrmmmm cant think of much else.

If anyone wants to be really creative and use water, how about using the watering can and see if you can get water to come out, although i would have no idea how the hell to do that, but just a thought.

James: i would but to much to do already, oh yer and if you want he candle lantern thing on the tree house to flicker n blow out ill do that.

Karen: Ooooo yes please, i would love for you to do that.

Ryan: Hi laura, i've uploaded the textured version of pandy onto adrive, the file is called 'pandytest07textured'. I deleted loads of the rubbish i had on adrive as well so it should be nice and easy to find.

Laura: Fantastiche. :) I'll get started on that tonight.

Ryan: sweet, hopefully it's all cool now, i tidied up the mouth and other problem areas as much as i could so it should be a lot easier for you now.

Laura: Ahhh, thank you. I just want to make it look as good as possible for you guys.
Can I separate the eyes from the mesh? Or will that break it?

Karen: Well the eyes are parented to the face so it should be fine if you un-parent it.

Laura: I wasn't sure if it was mapped with the eyes or not. Or incase you'd done anything. Just wanted to be sure before I did.

Ryan: nah the eyes are mapped on a blinn layer whereas everything else is mapped on a lambert layer, so it should be fine when you unparent them.

James: managed to get the render times from 5:21 to 3:57 on my machine with minimal quality loss so hopefuly that will knock of about 10 mins per frame on the renderfarm.

Karen: Ooooo awesome, it doesn't sound like a lot but it seems like it will make a massive difference!!!

James: yer it should 10 mins of 100 frames would be 1000 mins witch is like 16 hours lol but seen as it renders 60 odd at a time it wnt save 16 hours per 100 frames more like 16 hours per 6000 frames but every litle helps.

Karen: Yep every little helps indeed so that is all good.

Karen: Hey guys here is a quick pic to see how everything now looks for the first scene.

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/QYQATXiwiz_zkfqc9mtGVFP9BEbt_yanoM5VDyKeIvI?feat=directlink

theres the composite that you wanted for the volume and the ambiant light i think that the volume will work when the lightinging comes... i havent set that up yet so yhou have to imagine it lol.

Karen: Hey!! So at first i was not completely sure about it, but then i put up the other render with out the other lights and was quickly flickering between the two, and i think you right, i think it shall be pretty cool. The brightness of the light is really well done too, i think it shall work nicely.

James: cant wait to see it with textures on aswell :D gona look so much cooler than digital enviroments.

Karen: hell yeah it is, and i loved digital enviroments and still have a soft spot for it now. Well i have UV mapped every single plank of wood of the tree house now, so that shall be done soon hopefully.

James: whoa so ur textruing every plank of wood seperately? wow thatl prob make it look pritty cool... make shore the textures arnt to big tho no bigger than 512 square on each plank preferably smaller lol cos if ur doing every bit of wood seperatly thats alot of texture to cache but i guess your gona repeat some textures for each plank so should b ok at 512 square. prob just best to make a big square texture like 2k square then down res it lol.

Karen: Yep every single one, how long huh, but it should make it look super amazing. Yeah you have a good point there, cant say i was sure on that. How do you down res a 2k square?

James: yer well long.... good thing there just cube like objects lol
when ryan makes the texture in photoshop save it as 2k photoshop file so it nt lost n then go image > image size n change it from 2048 x 2048 to 512 then go save AS... n save as a tiff or targa then you have both... ryan will know how to do it.

Karen: Oh i see, cool, okay then i shall remember that. What would we do without ya?

James:
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/n9BZPkmuxpDeLVVhiU04J1P9BEbt_yanoM5VDyKeIvI?feat=directlink

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/OXRvMp8NhH-5Si44fwLwrFP9BEbt_yanoM5VDyKeIvI?feat=directlink

heres what ive done lighting wise let me know what you think some things will have to be adjusted because the size of the scene has changed.. if u like what i done then mayb karl would like to make the ajustments required for the new scene for his tech folder let me know Il give instructions in what will prob need to be ajusted to achive the same lighting effect.
oh one more thing need to test it on the render farm to check if there any fg flickering n still need to add the lightinging effects. oh yer also some per shot lighting might be called for so after all the animaiting n shots r set up n that i could add a few lights so you can see the characters n stuff also would add dramatic effect.

Karen: Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LOVE LOVE LOVE!!!!!!!!!!! It looks awesome, can you imagine how much better that will look with the textures on??!!!! Hehehehehe. When we are next in, we should test out putting pandy by the door to see how his shadow will look as we want it quite big and dark!!!
Yeah i think that sounds like a good idea for Karl, that shouldn't be to hard for him then hopefully. How long did it take to render?

James: cool i write up some basic instructions of what will prob need to b changed then

took bout 5 min to render prob on my shiny new computer tho lol i nt really shore how long it would take to render from scratch cos ive cached the gi from previos rendrs before doing the final one so im guessing it was about 5 mins for a render from scrach lol that at 1280x720.

Karen: Oh yeah as for the space in between each blank, i think its best not to have any light beaming though as it might look messy. So maybe we could have still have a light when the lightning happens, but don't have it coming through. What you think.

James: idno i thaught it looked cool lol... i was gona render it out on a seperate layer anyway so could render it last n then decide on the composite how it looks.

Karen: Oh ok, well if you play around with it abit more then let us know how it goes, you know much more about lighting then what we do.

James: yer il try make a composite of the two in a while so can see what it like.

Karen: Ok great!!!!!! Great work James, like always!!

Rigging Problems

Laura: Mmkay. I hadn't noticed before, but after setting up all the blendshapes, and renaming all the target deformers....
The inside of the mouth is completely separate to the lips section.
I'm gonna spend this evening, after trying to unsuccessfully create blendshapes with it in this way, sewing the edges together, and connecting the vertices, as it just looks horrendous, bitty and really /really/ wrong.
The bits for the eyes work fine, it's just trying to get any shape out of the mouth and having to move 3 sets of verts to try and get it to maintain a consistent shape. >< It's driving me mental. But yeah, I'm gonna sew them all up tonight.

I'm nearly done with it now. You'll have to sort the uv map out. Shouldn't be too hard though! Just select the edge loop around the inner lip part, and you should be able to cut the UVs there.

Karen:Well Kofi has stepped in to uv map summer, so does that mean we need to give him the updated version now? If so whenever you have sorted it out, could you upload it so that we can pass it over to him, many thanks. Oh how this has been a whole crazy ride!!!

Laura: Summer has the same issue, all the needs to be done is the verts that match up with inside/outside her mouth need to be merged to center, and then alllll the history deleted as it's a fair few. lool. I'll pop the updated pandy on your a-drive account when I'm done. Then I'll crack on with blendshapes. :) Should only be about 10 more mins.

Ryan:I've been doing the uv mapping for pandy over the last few days, but i'm currently about to redo the head/mouth as i had lots of problems. And Kofi is doing the uv mapping for summer. So at the moment, none of the uv mapped characters have been uploaded.

Laura: I'll put up the model in abooout 20 mins? That'll give me time to make sure I've checked it over. Are you gonna sew all the other edges together, too?

Ryan:sew the edges?? whats that mean? do you mean to merge or combine them?

Laura: Merging the verts that are meant to be one together, so all the edges along the arms and hands and legs and stuff, to make the body mesh a single mesh with no breaks. Merge to center them.

Ryan:They should already be merged together, i spent a long time making sure that the arms, legs etc were merged with the body , then again we've had some weird problems where we've opened up the scenes and parts have somehow become unattached.

Laura: Yeah, that's what I mean. It's 'cause they weren't all originally made from one piece, and it's causing all kinds of weird issues. 'Cause the vertices are just next to each other, not /one/ vertex, it's making it go mental.

James:cant you just go mesh>merge vertices and it will merge all the verticies within a tolorence distence of eachother.... there was a way to check all the verts on the edge of the mesh aswell by makeing the outerline thicker somehow.

Laura:Ooh, I didn't know that one. o: Shows how much time I spend modeling. :D

if it's just the one command, it might be easier for him to do it on his end, otherwise, that's the whole upload and download time wasted. Then he can just carry on mapping in the same session?

Karen: Well its technically the same amount of up loading which ever way we went but if you don't wana do then sent it over our way!

Laura: I haven't done much to it, except attempt it on the lips bit, but I think it's gone a bit wrong. I'm not sure what verts are attached to where. x_x I'll put it up, but idk. See what you make of it!

Karen:james you wana sort it out for us, lol, i am soooooo confused on all this. As for the swing could you just send it to my email as it seems have have done everything already.

James:il have a look at it if you want email it to my rave mail or something

found that thing that highlights the edge of the mesh
Window > settings / preferences > preferences > then select polygons in the left hand box and then tick the box that says highlight border edges.
should show were the un joined verts are.
kk il mail it you you right away.

Karen: ok so i took a quite look and yeah the mouth is messed up, it is just that or was there more, i hope not coz there shouldnt be. Oh man the file was never like this before all the arms that were fine, i have no idea what has happened apart from the mouth =S.... I think the arms might still need some work, oh what a damn pain.

James: got it... computer running slow tho arggg... whats wrong with it?... exactly lol

Laura: It's so /so/ difficult to get into any shape for the mouth to make faces. xD When it was separated into bits, it was worse, but now it's one piece, so it's pretty much alright? I'm not sure if I managed to merge it right though.

Karen: Oh man that means ryans gotta uv map everything again in it....

Laura:Yeah, that's why I said for him to do it, so he can just carry on with the mapping and see what's happening.

James: well i cant see any holes in the mesh apart from behind the eyes but there ment to be there lol everything else looks like a full mesh to me.

Laura:Literally, all I have done is merge the loose vertices to make the mesh a whole mesh, rather than bits of mesh joined up to look whole. I can work with that, but I dunno if you wanted to tidy anything else up and get rid of any triangles or whatever? Ryan or Kofi still need to re-do the UV map, so I can't attach the boned rig til that's done, apparently.

Karen:yeah so any triangles need to be deleted so that the uv mapping will be ok

James:no triangles are fine as far as i know lol 5 sided are bad and 5 or more sided stars from a vertex.

Karen:ok james is right again!!! i just researched it and triangles are fine!!!!!

Laura:Once it's uv mapped? XD IF you map it, then bung a rough texture on it, I can finish the rig, and you can still texture it.

Swing

James: hey guys modeld that swing gona start on the watering can later one more thing tho do you want the swing to be swinning in the wind cos i kinda thaught ifi it was windy and then the swing was just there not swinning or anything then it would be kinda strange... i could prob rig something up and then i could animate it and that would be part of my animation folder aswell.

made watering can model 2http://jamesunit306.blogspot.com/2011/04/modeling-watering-can.html

Ryan:looks awesome dude!! keep it up!! yeah a rig in the swing sounds great, it will look good in the film and will help you with your animation folder.

Karen:Oh wow, you made them sooo fast and they look soooooooo good, super impressed and happy. Yep like ryan said if you would like to do a simple rig and all that then that will be awesome. Thanks.

James:what about textures? should i email to someone to do that or shuld i just slap a shader with a coulor on it... it might work for the swing but i dno bout the watering can? what should i do?

il get right on the rig then :D yay animation

Karen: Yeah the watering can will need to be textured properly as it will be in the tree house, but as for the swing, you have a good point, we wouldn't really need a proper texture on it as it wont be seen, so if you would like to slap a shader on it then i am most happy for you to do that. When you are done with the watering can, can you send it to Karenleigh88@hotmail.com so that i can try and place it in the scene. Thanks.

James: oh by the way how strong is the wind?

Karen:Well it has to be strong enough to make a candle light go out, so i am not totally sure how strong that needs to be. the opening shot is about 7 seconds long, but the wind is not strong from the very beginning, i would say it gets more powerful from the forth second onwards.

James: oh ok so the swing wnt have to swing that muchjsut a sublte lil animaiton then il make a swing animation that goes for about 7 secs then its all rotation baist so you shuld still beable to move the swing around and scale it and rotate it with the master control thing... candle?!? is the candle cg? is it in the scene, is it producing light?

Karen:Well mike wanted us to make a lantern just outside the door of summers tree house, so from a distance the light for it will have to go out, it will only be a small light from the distance but we also have a house outside the beginning too, but we are unsure if any lights from the house should be on or not.

James:oh oky dokie so you dnt actualy see the flame of the candle then cos that would b a bitch to make lol have to b done with fluids n stuf lol oh yer that sounds cool :D i animating the swing atm u wnt me to mail it to u wen it done?

Karen: no no, we are to far away to see anything like that, all we need to show is it going out, nothing more. could you do a quick play blast when u think ur done and post it on here or ur blog so we can see how it is coming along

Ryan: Hey laura! guess what?!?! i have the next version of pandy uploaded on adrive, rather than upload the whole project folder I just uploaded the scene file which is called Pandy18pre-rig.mb Most notable changes are that his eyes have been resized and now has the potential to blink with blendshapes, HOORAY!!! also slightly reshaped his ears and the back of the head and positioned him more in the centre of the axis as he was originally floating a bit...oh and i raised his mouth so its now a little closer to the nose....and i think that was it. I deleted the image planes in the scene as well as the history and generally tried to keep things clean and tidy for ya...hopefully this should be the final fix so that the rigging can be completed *fingers crossed*.

Laura: Ah, fantastiche. I'll get IPP out of the way tonight, and finish up the bones tomorrow. I'll upload them for you to play with while I do the blendshapes. The animations should transfer over. :) Then, it's all you guys!

Ryan: Hey laura! guess what?!?! i have the next version of pandy uploaded on adrive, rather than upload the whole project folder I just uploaded the scene file which is called Pandy18pre-rig.mb Most notable changes are that his eyes have been resized and now has the potential to blink with blendshapes, HOORAY!!! also slightly reshaped his ears and the back of the head and positioned him more in the centre of the axis as he was originally floating a bit...oh and i raised his mouth so its now a little closer to the nose....and i think that was it. I deleted the image planes in the scene as well as the history and generally tried to keep things clean and tidy for ya...hopefully this should be the final fix so that the rigging can be completed *fingers crossed*.

Laura: Ah, fantastiche. I'll get IPP out of the way tonight, and finish up the bones tomorrow. I'll upload them for you to play with while I do the blendshapes. The animations should transfer over. :) Then, it's all you guys!

Laura: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=TLN87F2S
That's Pandy skinned. I wasn't sure if I'd already given you him, but there he is again.
His weights SUPER need fixing, but that'll happen once he has eyelids, 'cause I have no idea how changing the mesh will affect it. :)
But you can get the basic things down with this guy! Hopefully, the rig is simple enough to understand. If I haven't made the skeleton layer unkeyable, that'll be happening in the final version, so don't worry too much.

Ryan:hi laura, just a couple things i wanted to ask about. First thing, is it possible to switch models for the rig, for example if i gave you an updated character model of pandy would you be able to attach the rig that you've done so far to it??? if not then would i be able to alter the geometry of the rig you've provided so far in terms of the eyes without it screwing up the rest of the rig?? Also i had a quick play around with pandy, everything seems to move around fine, was just wondering if all the mesh deformations from moving the arms and legs will be easy to fix?? one last thing lol just wondering how you're getting on with the summer rig.

Laura: Yeah, I'll just import the new model straight into the scene, and then skin it, so that'll be mega easy to do. :) I haven't painted ANY weights on the rig I uploaded and sent to you, so he needs a lot of fixing. I know that it deforms a little strangely but it should be fixable. The mesh around his fingers doesn't leave a lot of room for maneuvering. :)

Summer's coming along awesome - I had a little trouble with rigging her spine the other day, but I should be able to get that fixed tomorrow night. IPP needs to get done so it's out of my way. T_T The only thing I'm really concerned about for her is her skirt. What did you want doing to that? 'Cause it just gets eaten by the deformations of her legs otherwise. She works alright at a basic level when skinned - I have yet to rig in her eyes, but once that's done, I'll send you her and you can see what you think.

Ryan: ok thats awesome, i've been sorting out pandy and his eyes so he has eyelids and all that. Yeah his hand is a little limited but luckily it only needs to be able to bend so it gives the effect that he can hold stuff.

Laura: Yeah, I'm likely gonna simplify his hand so it only has one bone, so there's no need to worry about spread or anything... I think it's his thumb that moves weirdest.

Ryan: lol yeah i bet his thumb is a bit weird xD i'm glad summer is coming along ok, in terms of her skirt, is it possible to have a simple rig so that it can be controlled on a basic level, it will only be seen in about 2-3 of the shots, it doesn't need to do anything fancy, just needs to be able to be moved so summer can be on her hands and knees if thats cool?

Laura: 'll see what I can do... It'll be difficult to get it to look like it's doing anything skirt-y though.

Ryan: thats fine as it wont really be seen too much, as long as there is some sort of control over the skirt then it should be fine, many thanks!! =)

Ryan: yooooo laura!! i've updated the sumer model and put it onto adrive again. She's now properly orientated in the orthographic views, i tidied up the main problem areas of the mesh a bit and tried to get rid of as many triangles as possible. I got rid of the poopy eyelids i made so that you can do blendshapes by adjusting the mesh around the eyes, also parented the eyes to the body and attached the tongue and teeth in her mouth.....i think that was it lol...now just sorting out pandy at the moment which i'll get to you very soon =)

Laura:Thankyou very muuuuuch. I'll get it done for you ASAP so you can start working on the animations. or in the future, if you could clean up all the unused nodes, poly groups and image planes - basically everything BUT the mesh, as well as deleting the history, it'd be much appreciated by anyone. It was making my maya crash to no end. ): I've just been thru and sorted it all out.

Doing the last bits to her boned rig this morning. Once that's out of the way, I'll start cloning her for blendshapes. I apologise if I've gotten rid of any textures that you were using, but because my PC couldn't find them, it just kept crashing.

Ryan:

ok cool, sorry for all the problems, i really have no idea about what has to be done to the model and the scene before rigging. There were no textures on the mesh either apart from the standard lamberts so no worries there...hope you dont have any more problems

Karen: Karl dude, once you have any rendered pics, send them to me over email so that i can put them into the presentation. Most of the slide will just be of concept art and rendered pics, but hopefully that will do. Also, can you send ALL the props you have made so far so that i can place them into the treehouse. Ryan has given me the file to work with, so i just want to try and place them all in the treehouse and render it to actually get a real feel of how everything looks all together. I have made some props for the garden, but they are only basic poop ones as they don't need to be the greatest for one shot.
Our and Karl i have an idea for us animating which i shall talk to you about on Monday.

Laura i hope our model hasn't been too much of an arse to rig and i can not wait to start playing around with him once you are done. Your a star!!! Summer is ready to start being rigged whenever you are ready, just let me know.

James we have an updated version of the treehouse for you to try and experiment with lightning. If your in on monday then we can give it to you then.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend guys,
See you all monday!

Laura: Send me Summer today. Have you or Ryan fixed the Panda's eyelids? that's the only thing, really. Once they're done, I can do the blendshapes, and finalise the weights. :D

Ryan: sorry laura i got a bit confused from the last message we sent to each other, i thought you still had a couple bits to do on it before giving it back to us to sort out, i'll get it fixed asap and have it back to you very soon. Will you be able to copy all the rig you've done so far onto the updated model?

Karen: Summer has been uploaded onto adrive, so whenever you are ready, she is there waiting for you =).

Laura: The rig is super easy to paste onto another model. :D I was just waiting for you to fix the eyelids before I finished off the other bits, otherwise, I'd need to do every single one again as the model would be different.

Ryan: k cool, now i understand, me a doo doo brain!! i'll get on it asap, but until then you can play around with summer for a bit if you have any time.

Laura: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=LPSO801P
Play with it, and tell me if you can break it. :D
Only thing left for me to do is set up blendshapes annddd a manip for the fingers. ^^

Ryan: hey there, i just downloaded the rig but the skeleton isn't attached to the body, i don't know how to attach them together ?!?! :S

Laura:I thought, once I'd uploaded it, that I'd forgotten to skin it~ I'll do that in the morning before I go to work. xD But, does the rig move okay without being skinned? :3

Ryan:yeah the rig seemed to move about alright =)

Laura:Ah, awesome. ♥ I'll pop up a mostly weight painted version tomorrow night. Work all weekend means no time to do uni work. ><

With any luck, the way I've been sorting my skinning recently, it won't need an awful lot of painting, so should be relatively fast to set up. ^^ Blendshapes will take a wee while though. Does it talk, or just make faces?

Ryan:it makes faces and does a scary growl in one of the shots, heres a link to the face expressions of the character

hey laura, just a quick question for you. In terms of the modelling process before rigging, does all the geometry have to be attached or can i just go to mesh->combine?? I was wondering because the other character we have has the head seperate from the body at the moment and it's going to be a pain to join the geometry of the head and body together, so i just wanted to know if by using 'combine' will it still allow the rigging to work properly?? hope this makes sense, i'm not good at explaining stuff lol

Laura: Um, I suppose it'll be more of a problem for painting weights? I'm basically gonna do exactly the same rig, but with more fingers for Summer. So, you don't have to worry about having her head attached until it's done? I can build the rig around the model without the head attached, and it'll work out alright, but skinning it without it being attached will probably look a tad weird, as her neck mesh bits might trip out when the spine moves. I can't really tell until it happens though. Could give it a go?

Ryan:hmmm, it'll prob be best if i just attach it then, i was kinda hoping to cut out some work for myself but it doesnt seem worth the risk in the long run, thanks

Laura:It has just occurred to me that the panda doesn't have eyelids.. So it's gonna take a little working out to get it to blink..

Ryan:yeah me and karen realised that the other day, we figured we'd just model them in and give the rig back to you if thats cool?

Laura:D'you want me to finish this one up, or wait til you've done the eyelids on it? 'Cause I'll have to repaint the weights around the face, and re-do the blendshapes if I start those. :)

Ryan:hhm just finish everything except for doing the face and blendshapes, then we'll add the eyelids and give it back to you so you can properly work on the face without having to redo what you've already done, yay or nay?

Laura: Sounds gooood. ^^ I'll skin it now, and pop it on here for you. I'll paint weights for it all. I'm fairly sure I'll be able to transfer them across to another model. ^^