June

Damn... Now it's already june. Time passes sooooooo quickly.

In one week I planned to hand in my short movie - that means on the 9th of june.
I can't say that I have done nothing but I definitifely can say that I need to do much more.
Sometimes I wish I am a kind of 20 japanese workoholic mangaka & animators but even with a slightly split personality I never managed to become more than one physical person.

Here's a nice Screenshot ;-)

BLA BLA BLA...ish... ahh my brain hurts like a bread filled with chillies!

BUUURRRPPHHHHH...AHHHHHH... yeah it's over.

First BG Shot ever - scene02/shot01

Yupphhhhhiiiiii - here is the first shot for a background. Its atually the establishing shot at the beginning of the film where the camera enters the head and ends in the brain.

The cat is gonna jump in to the frame soon but not here 'cause its only an Image and not a film... hahaha...

But seriously - there are still a few problems with this shot.
1. Glow with Vpost does work on planes with alphamaps on it BUT if there is something behind the plain it also gets the glow (;-) ...get the glow in the flow, man... shut up... strange voice in my head! I have to work!)

2. In the left side of the frame are some overlapping planes also with alpha channels on them. First they rendered well but then in my infinite curiosity I did something and now the most forward plane is the brighest while the planes more in the back are darker.

3. The edge of the rock in the forground is very sharp 3d programm sharp - that's bad

... there are still more problems but at the moment ai cunnot rimemberrrr itshhh tooo baddd ahir quwallity in 105...

Environement - concept scetches

It's better to think first then to go directly in to 3dMax and start to model an environement...

As I get lost in very time consuming work while sitting in front of the Computer I thought it might really be better to take my beloved fineliners and scetch a bit around to save a lot of work and time afterwards.

The rough idea of how the setting should look was already in my head but the challenge was to translate it in to a quite small 3d environement that can be used for the shooting with the character models.

Assemblies

Assemblies are useful for creating combinations of geometry and light objects that act as lighting fixtures.

You use them to represent the housing of a lamp and its light source or sources. You can use assemblies to represent lighting fixtures such as simple desk lamps, lighting strips, track systems, wall sconces with fluorescent or incandescent lights, chandelier systems, line voltage cable systems, and so on.

When you create light assemblies, first you create your objects and build a hierarchy, then set joint parameters and assign inverse kinematics (IK) . As a final step, you assemble the object hierarchy. The lights you use in the assembly have light-multiplier and filter color controls. You wire the Dimmer and Filter Color parameters of the Luminaire helper object to the parameters of the light sources that are members of the light assembly.

In order to wire the Luminaire controls to the light parameters, you must first open the assembly. Then, after wiring, you close it.

tunnel scene - a test

I spent the whole day making tests for the pursiut of the two characters in the tunnel... but obviously too much motion blur... The textures are also not the final ones. I just took the texture from the synapses and copied it to the tunnel...

Synapses - a render time test

Modeling:
Very basic, bacause its a background item. So Its a hexagon extruded along a spline. The top polies are extruded and scaled manually to get the supper shape.

First I had some problems with smooting because its so low poly modelling. I tried the smooth modifier but somehow it didn't work for me so I found in the poly sub selection group of the object also the smoothing group panel and was able to assign them propperly.
But I found something even better! In the Subdivision Surface Panel in the top- or polyoutroll there is "Use NURMS Subdivision" I set the render iterations to "2" and left the display iterations at "0" for faster display.

To test if the nurms don't take to long to render (as turbosmooth would do) I just made 1000ish copies of the synapse modell, threw a middle complex texture on it (standart OrenNayarBlinn, with falloff to 40 and Index of refraction at 1.3 in the ext. Parameters rollout - all other numbers stay as they are...) and hit the render button.
And it took only 16sec!

HELP! Did I change to a NERD allready or is it normal to think about things like this?

The S - Words

Script, Screenplay, Scene Script, Shootingscript, Shootlist and Storyboard

...häääälllllpp!!!

Ok, a Script a Scene Script and a Screenplay seem to be basically the same thing with different names. They describe all the scenes in the movie (NOT the shots!), place (INT/EXT) and time (DAY/NIGHT) them.
The Scene Screen Script Play features the characters, the characters movements, dialog, narration, the key props and the location so that later on shots can be extracted.

Sounds cool... now further into this story...

A shootingscript seems to be derivated out of a script (aka...) and contains each specifical Shot. It adds more information for the crew on the set. Things like the transitions, camera positions and framing (WS/ MS/ CU) are written in the shootingscript but they leave space for spontan creativity.

Ähm... OK...

A Shotlist is very precise about cameraposition and angle in the scene. Often they are made dayly for the planned shooting.

And last but not least the Storyboard...
Not every director seems to use it in the same phase of production and in the same amount or artistic perfection. For Animation it is quite usefull to have a more or less accurate storyboard based on a rough shootingscript.

THE BREAK DOWN:

1. Outline an Idea
2. Write Script -> improve it
3. Write Shootingscript
4. Draw Storyboard
5. Write Shotlist
...

• a shot: beginns and ends when camera is switched ON/OFF
• a scene: contains several shots (same location and time)
• a sequence: is a narrative unit out of several scenes or shots
  

changed scenes

CGI.the problem.INSIDE THE HEAD

Suddenly something goes wrong. The firing of the synapses reduces dramatically so the former electric storm is down to a minimum. The Audience gets glimpses of parts of SillyBillyFish who turns synapses of with his lantern. The sound changes to a threatening humming combined with the sound of electronic power switched off.

The Buzzcat gets irritated and sets up to locate the source of this incident.

INT.knock out.STUDENTS ROOM.AFTERNOON

A daized and confused person still sitting on a chair in front of a laptop slightly swinging from one side to an other. It isn't capable of doing anything.

CGI.the hunt.INSIDE THE HEAD

(short fast moving takes. Those of the cat bright and shiny and those of the fish dark and threatening)

The Buzzcat hunts the fish of whom only glimpses can be seen. The two of them are never in the same picture. As the hunt goes on they pass a dark tunnel down into the deeper areas of the brain.

(find metaphor for deeper brain to help visualising)

The fish slips with a deep blowwwwph soung through a barrier in to his lair. The cat stops worried in front of the barrier.