Project 7: Mouse Trap

Part 2: Animatic

Due: Thursday, 11/21

For the next phase of production each group will begin translating their storyboards into an animatic, which is just a 3D rough-in used to establish a film's shot composition, layout, and timing. Use your thumbnails and storyboards as a guide for how many shots to create, but realize you may need more shots per thumbnail to express more complicated ideas. Conversely, there are times you can compress several thumbnails down into fewer shots. Those who have worked more on the storyreel will have an easier time setting up shots. This is where we see how well our 2D drawings translate to 3D space.

Think of the shots in your film as their own miniature productions. Each will live in its own individual Maya file, and each will have its own unique set of challenges to overcome. The animatic shot files will also serve as a jumping off point for most of your production work. As the project progresses you will add more refined motion, lighting, and effects to these shots until they slowly transform into the final product.

Film Assets

Your first task is to begin developing the components needed to assemble your shots. Review your story and consider any extra props, sets, or characters that you will require. Each extra asset will take some amount of time to develop (some more than others!) so now is a good time to trim out any extra props or characters that are not important to the story.

Compile a list of these assets into an "elements list" and submit it to Canvas. Name it elements_list.txt.

Next, make a first pass at developing each of the items on your elements list, whether they're props, rigs, or set modifications. Prioritize! Don't spend a lot of time on modeling props that are not very important to your film. Hopefully most of these were culled from your elements list.

There is production space available on the network so now is the time to begin using that. You will find a folder already created for your group here:

\\csenetid\cs\unix\projects\instr\capstone4\mousetrap\group[#]\

Note that your group number is based on the listing at the head of this assignment write-up.

Be careful to work only within your group's folder! Everybody has 'render' access now, which means two major things: 1) You will be able to use the "render farm" and 2) You can now modify almost any file on capstone4. This will be conducive to working in a shared production hierarchy later, but remember that with great power comes great responsibility! Be extra careful not to modify or delete files/folders that aren't yours.

Your production folder setup should look something like this:

This is a slimmed down version of the hierarchy you will use in this year's capstone. Right now you only need to worry about the assets folder, where your props, rigs, and sets go.

Later on you will be doing a lot of rendering, so we have a render farm set aside to assist you with this task. It's 20 or so machines that just sit in a dark basement somewhere and render out frames for you. There's a catch, however! These machines are pretty picky about the file paths they use - so this is a good time to start naming your folders and files in a way that appeases the them. File paths should only contains lower case letters, numbers, and underscores. No spaces. No capital letters. No other special characters. Make sure ALL of your paths meet these requirements!

Additionally, when specifying texture file paths in Maya you will need to make sure to use a network path and not an "O: drive" path. For example, the following path would work:

\\csenetid\cs\unix\projects\instr\capstone4\mousetrap\group0\assets\prop_static\box\textures\box_texture.png

But this path would have problems:

O:\unix\projects\instr\capstone4\mousetrap\group0\assets\prop_static\box\textures\box_texture.png

This is because the O: drive is a mapping that our lab workstations use to refer to the network. The farm machines have no concept of the O: drive, hence they need a direct network path.

Preparing Assets to be Used in Shots

Before setting up the shots themselves you will need to prepare your assets for referencing.

So what exactly is referencing and how does it differ from importing? Importing copies another Maya file and its objects directly into your scene. Referencing just points to another Maya file without actually copying any of its objects. The implication here is that when a Maya file is updated any scenes referencing said file will see those changes. This is a fairly handy method of automatically sending geometry/shading changes out to all of your shots at once.

Be warned that referencing comes with its fair share of limitations and can sometimes break stuff, so it is best to tread carefully and only reference "clean" files. To clean out and prepare a given asset for referencing make sure to look over the following check-list and address each item:

• There is only one root node in the Outliner. Any sort of clutter should be deleted. No empty groups, image planes, or sets.
  
  There are times you may find yourself wanting to keep these extra things around just in case your asset requires further modification. In such cases you will want to distinguish a "working" file from a "published" file. For example, kitty_rig_wip.ma and all of its iterations would be the working copy containing any image planes, sets, and blendshape meshes, while kitty_rig.ma would be the clean file referenced by all the shots.
  
  
• Everything is named logically, especially the root node and objects that need to be keyed.
  
  Maya files save animation using the names/paths of scene nodes. So let's say we reference a file into our shot called baseball.ma and the object we get in our scene is named pSphere1. No big deal, right? So we do some animation on the ball, save it out, and everything is good. Now someone else comes along, opens baseball.ma, and sees that the root node is still named pSphere1. With good intentions they correct the name to something like baseball.
  
  Bam! Now the motion we did earlier is broken. This is because Maya still associates those animation curves with pSphere1 and its attributes. It doesn't understand that the object was just renamed, it thinks it was removed.
  
  So the moral of the story is to name all scene nodes up front and logically. This includes everything from objects in the Outliner to materials in the Hypershade. It's not only for organization, it's so you don't give Maya an excuse to shrug nonchalantly and proceed to toss out your hard work.
  
  
• All keyframes are deleted. This doesn't apply to set driven keys. If there are any keyframes remaining you will be prevented from keying those attributes in the shot file.
  
  
• The root node's transformations are frozen. Additionally, its scale is correct relative to other characters and props in your film. Sometimes you'll cheat the sizing of certain assets per shot, but it's best to establish a base scale for consistency. One approach is to just size all props relative to the characters when their Global Scale is set to 1.
  
  
• Pivot is at the center of the scene. The pivot determines the center of the object, so try to lock it down very early on in prop development and keep it at a consistent location between iterations. If this "center" changes it will offset the object in any shots previously referencing it.
  
  
• History is deleted (except on rigs). A lot of props with loads of undeleted history can really bog down a scene.
  
  
• For sets: All objects have their attributes set to non-keyable. If any prop in the set needs to be animated you can hide it and reference in a copy separately. This allows more flexibility in modifying the set without worrying about Maya breaking animation.
  
  To do this, select every prop in the set, select all the attributes in the Channel Box, right-click, and go to Make Selected Non-keyable.


• For sets: Freeze all transforms (not just the root node). This isn't always necessary, but since you'll probably be making a lot of changes and additions to your set the prop transformations will be shifting around all over the place. This can result in objects not appearing where you intended when re-opening your shot files. A good way to reduce the likelyhood of this happening is to just zero out their transforms at all times.

Setting up Your Shots

With your assets prepared, it's time to reference them into a new Maya scene and organize the Outliner. For a given shot, you will want to bring in all the props, characters, and sets you need. It doesn't have to be everything in your entire assets library, just the ones you need for that shot.

Go to File → Create Reference..., navigate to your asset file, and click Open. In File → Reference Editor select the reference from the list and make sure that the Unresolved Name field starts with the network path "//csenetid/cs/" and not "O:/". If it doesn't, just go ahead and replace the beginning of the path and hit Enter to commit the change.

It's pretty safe to key the attributes of referenced objects assuming the above preparations, but other interactions can be a bit more dangerous. You may want to heed these warnings:

• DO NOT change the geometry or shading of a referenced object. At first these alterations would appear to work, but if you start doing tweaks in the source file you will begin to encounter strange geometry deformations and clashes between shading nodes in the shot file. These anomalies can be a huge pain to fix and usually just involve referencing a new copy of the file and copying over any animation. Be safe and only make these sort of modifications in an object's source file.

With all the objects referenced you'll want to group them in some manner for organization. Make sure that you're consistent from shot to shot. A group division that works fairly well is characters, set, props, and lights. For special case shots you may also end up adding additional groups like effects, but don't worry about that for the animatic.

Now that everything is organized there's a few other things to set up before moving on to animation:

• Make sure your scene is set to 24 FPS. Go to Preferences, select Settings, and make sure the Time drop down menu is set to "Film (24 fps)".
  
  

  

• Set up your cinematic(render_cam) camera. Create a new camera and name it specifically "render_cam". Renaming it will enable the quick playblast button to work.
  
  
• Set common render settings. Open up the scene's Render Settings and specify a few things that will be common from shot to shot.
  
  
  • Render Using: Arnold
  • Image Format: .tif
  • Frame/Animation ext: name_#.ext
  • Frame padding: 4
  • Renderable Camera: render_cam
  • Width: 640, Height: 360
    (this is good for a preview resolution, but 1280x720 would be optimal for your final output)
    

The final step is to add some motion. This may be a good point to save out a copy of this file to use as a shot template so you don't have to keep repeating the above steps.

The animation required for your animatic is minimal. Remember, you're going for positioning and timing. Move and rotate your characters' top cons to their approximate starting locations and orientations.

Poses may help readability of your shots but keep it minimal. Do the key "golden poses" only! Animate how the character is going to roughly move across the screen. And for editing purposes, pad your shots with 120 frames on either end - and make sure the motion doesn't completely stop during the padding; you should start or continue all motion well into the padding.

Frame and position the cinematic camera next. You may even find it easier to do this before animating your characters. It will most likely be a back and forth between the camera and animation until you end up on a composition that works. And if you are thinking of animating the camera, DON'T. Okay, so that may be a bit harsh. Just make sure that any camera animation is delibrate and contributes to the narrative in a meaningful way. You don't want to do camera motion just for the sake of camera motion. It can easily end up just distracting your audience, or worse, make them nauseous.

Once you've finished your shot click the playblast button on the production shelf, save an iteration via the button on the shelf, and move on to the next shot.

Editing

The final step is to edit your animatic together. Create a new Premiere project in CS6 and drag the individual playblast files into the project panel. These settings are recommended when you first create the project:

Render out and upload a first version of your animatic to Canvas. Use H.264 compression.

Part 3: Motionmatic

Due: Tuesday, 11/26 (First Pass). Motion should be complete on 12/03.

With your story coming along and animatic hierarchy set up the cogs of your production are now beginning to spin in full force. The next phase is to develop a motionmatic, which is a reel of your film similar to the animatic but with more sophisticated animation. It's no longer just about timing, layout, and camera composition, it's about developing character motion from blocking up through polish.

You are not required to iterate any further on your thumbnails. The goal is to make your story read well based on the motionmatic alone. Polish doesn't have to necessarily happen yet, but you want to block in something for everything (even if minimal). Before going too far into detail on shot motion be sure to address the feedback you received during the previous class. Fix things at a higher level and then refine.

When finished, submit a copy of your motionmatic to Canvas before class on Tuesday.

Here are some miscellaneous tips to help you along:

• It will save time if you just copy the Premiere file from your animatic and use that as a starting point for your motionmatic. As you finish up motion, replace the clips for the animatic with clips for the motionmatic
  
  
• Use the "Save It" button on the production shelf as often as possible. There is nothing worse than doing a lot of work on a shot just to have Maya spontaneously crash before saving. Incremental saving is also an option, but be aware that as your shots become more complicated and take longer to save it may become more of a hinderance.
  
  
• Motion paths are a good option for animating certain objects. Make a CV curve, select the object first and the curve second, then under the Animation menu set go to Constrain → Motion Paths → Attach to Motion Path.
  
  Select the object, go to the channel box, then click on motionPath1 under INPUTS. The U Value determines where it is along the path from 0 to 1, with 0 being the start of the curve and 1 at the end. By default Maya keys it, so just select the attribute, right-click and Delete Selected. The twist values change the object's rotation relative to its forward facing direction.
  
  Note that once the motion path is set up you can change the curve's CVs at any time.

Part 4: Rendermatic

Due: Tuesday, 12/03 and Thursday 12/05.

In addition to further developing your film's motion you will also begin working on a "rendermatic". The rendermatic enables us to evaluate lighting and effects much in the way the motionmatic enabled us to review animation.

Most of the time in production lighting takes longer to update than motion, since new motion relies on re-playblasting while new lighting relies on re-rendering. It's perfectly fine to have two reels: 1) A motionmatic with the most updated animation and 2) A rendermatic with the most updated lighting but outdated motion.

Since this production cycle isn't very long you probably want to condense it all into your rendermatic and just continue updating that. Feel free to copy over the Premiere file of your motionmatic as a starting point for your rendermatic (don't worry, this is the last time you'll be doing this).

For Tuesday we require at least one rendered shot per sequence so we can get an idea of the look and feel of your film. Focus on what you predict to be your most difficult lighting shots. You will want to do an entire pass of the renders of your film on Thursday, even if it's rough, so you can catch any render errors now rather than have them sneak up on you closer to the deadline.

Part 5: Final Film (Rendermatic with Audio and Credits)

Due: Wednesday 12/11 on the Network.

Continue iterating and submit your final rendered film with audio to Canvas. First and foremost make sure your story reads. The ideal resolution is 1280x720.