16/06/2011 - Hand in - Scheduling Analysis

Unfortunately at the start of this project I didn't have as much control over the scheduling as I was waiting on other people to finish concepts, although this gave me time to work on my other units for the term as well as experiment with renders in my own time.

Once we started getting concepts and we had a more solid idea of what was going on time scales improved. Our rigger Tara was able to finish a Rig in a week and then fix any bugs that were given to her, allowing animators the chance to start early. My models were all built quickly except for the eagle character as I had some issues with the feet but that was more for creative issues where I needed to sit with the director.

It wasn't until the start of the 3rd term that the scheduling started to fall apart as our lead animator rarely came in delaying the shots being given to me making me unable rendering as I wasn't getting scenes from anyone as the lead animator was meant to help finesse the scenes. About half way through the term maybe a little earlier we got a second year animator Rob on board to help us and suddenly the shot were coming along, Tara basically took on the role of lead animator help everyone to finesse there scenes to a good standard. Although I didn't get any scenes till 2 weeks before the deadline I was impressed with how the scheduling became more on track throughout the term mostly down to getting Rob to help us.

I have to admit personally I surprised my self that I met my plan of getting 2 shots rendered a day, I was expecting to still be editing 5 minuets before the deadline but instead with one day spare the film is fully edited with only small tweaks being needed although the director and i intend to make more changes for the deadline. If I could go back and change any of my scheduling I would mainly just be that I got the shots sooner as I would have liked to spend more time on the lighting in the scene also because i was in such a rush at the end to get the film fully rendered, composited and edited I didn't have a chance to sort out some of the render bugs that I wanted to. (bugs cover in folders evaluation post)

14/06/2011 - 3 Days Till Deadline

So far my Scheduling has gone to plan as I only have 3 days of term left I and 2 more shots to render, this has all gone a lot quicker then I was expecting as I knew I was being optimistic when I wanted to get 2 shots done a day.

Starting to worry about my folders as well as I don't think I will be able to fit everything I have done on there as I have Rendered the whole film

Shots Rendered 17 part 2, 3 and shot 20, 21, 22

08/06/2011 - Scheduling so far

This is a production schedule of how my work has gone so far, you can see how all over the place it is, as I have been given different shots at different times and some of the shot have taken longer to render then planned because of rendering issue. Unfortunately it is really hard to accurately schedule myself as rendering is one of the most unpredictable areas of animation, I have managed to reduce the time as much as possible by using layers and passes but there isn't much else I can do

31/05/2011 - 17 Days till Deadline

Scheduling

As I have finally got scenes to render I have set my self the goal of getting 2 shots finished every day although I know this is going to change all the time as I am going to be waiting for scenes to be finished by the animators and also rendering can vary in length depending on the complexity of the scene. Tara has lent me her desktop to help the rendering get done faster and I also have my laptop for rendering and compositing on. For my production schedule rendering and compositing are in the same box as I am compositing as soon as the renders finish so that i can see if any extra passes are needed.

Ideal Production Schedule

Realistic Schedule

Rendering

Got the first 4 scenes that I could light and render today. The first was the opening shot of the mountains, most of this was pretty much set up as its the scene I had been doing render tests with before I gave it to the animator to do his work.

From my test I knew that I needed to have 4 passes to match the tests that the director liked Ambient Occlusion, Shadow, Colour/Lighting and background. Ambient Occlusion is the easiest to set up as the default usually works well in mot scene. Shadow and Colour/Lighting all relied on the lights being set up. For setting up the lights I generally used a 3 point lighting system with one light as the main light simulating the sun with shadows on and the other 2 i use on a lower intensity to simulate light reflecting of surfaces giving the animation a generally nice look to it.

Here is an example of the basic layer set up

An this is an example of the Layer when they become more complex. This typically happens with shots that have more depth to them so that can be broken down into sections for adding Depth of field and motion blur etc.

There was an issue when I started prepping the opening scene for render because when the animator imported the character the characters hypershade was a mess but were the character had been imported multiple time the scene was a mess and something went wrong with the shaders on the environment and it wasn't letting me render out all passes in one go. I didn't realise this until the batch render had finished, after spending a couple of hours trying to solve this I found the easiest way round this was to render the passes separately as I couldn't afford to waste anytime.

Here you can see a screenshot of the shading issue I was having no matter what I did in one render layer it would affect another making certain object loose their texture completely and render transparent it was nothing to do with the materials transparency as I have had that create issues before . I just couldn't work it out but once this film is finished i intend to solve this problem as it could occur in future jobs.