Ravine: Animation Sequence

Coral Reacher Nearing Completion

  As on schedule, the coral has been assembled, staged and animated. I might look into rigging and perhaps a controls for animation purposes but at present this is the construction so far. There was talk of including a gradient on concept art and there may need to be a little of colour modification for the final model, the core animation however does appear solid.

  In terms of geometry this is not too complex a model when a single instance is around 1.8MB of data. That may multiply considerably when there are lots of these but as mentioned in an earlier post but work was put into minimising the geometry so that lots of these could be on screen at once.

The Primary Hazard

  The development of the scales generated enthusiasm. The task today was making the coral/organism that would chase after our fish. Originally the plan was to use coral, but there were a few scenes that involved the coral reaching out. Doing some research there was some similarity to the tendrils of sea anemones. Which are a lot more flexible.

  First tests however resulted in a few errors from the way the joints were placed down. These took some time to rectify and were a little annoying.

  Initial attempts at a cleaner model involved joints at every lateral edge, but I discarded this as a control group would have 30 different joints to manage.

  To cut down the number of joints, instead of one joint per lateral edge I looked into one joint for every two lateral edges, which halved the original number.

  Each joint has three controls: X, Y and Twist. One bends the joint forwards, another sideways and the twist helps with curling. It is very flexible with little deformation. Hopefully it is simple enough to be used en masse. And it should also be useful for wrapping around things.

  The final parameter I added was a length control. Unlike the others, this one control affects the entire skeleton, which could really help with any scenes of the construct launching itself at our hapless fish. 

  The coral wasn't entirely forgotten about. I have developed a fairly sound method of reproducing the branches of a tree, which are very similar to branched coral. The plan is to work in a blendshape that will have the coral branches growing from their individual points of origin. 

Testing the Alien Scales

   My primary task this afternoon was to get a working system for having a set of alien scales grow from the body of Ravine's main fish characters. To do this it was suggested to use blend-shapes, which I spent the afternoon working on in order to get the transformation right.

  The core idea was to create a layer that would go within the skin. This layer would fit to the body by being wrapped around using a lattice deformer. A rough shape for the fish's body was used in palce of them odel itself for the time being. The final setup would need more precise positioning as the scales would grow from around the eyes and sweep towards the tail as they spread.

   Because blendshapes were used, the 'duplicate special' tool was used. particularly useful when duplicating large grousp of objects.

  To give the progression a natural feel the scales should ideally look like they're growing independantly. This was achieved by giving variance as to when they would start and how quickly they would stop growing.

 This is the UV map of the scale. Structurally it appears simple but detailed enough. Woudl lower-polygon versions be useful? Perhaps on more distant shots

Ravine: Further Refined Soundscape

   Some further work has been made on the soundscape for the animation, with the principal elements modified being the sound of water as it interacts with the character. As well as some refining of a few other sounds and the way the music is used within the sequence.

Ravine: Environment Modelling and Mapping

   I looked into tightening up the model of the ravine. Some final tweaks merely to make things a little easier come the later stages. This included adding more crags (it was suggested that given the harshness of rock and the concept art we might be able to use an unsmoothed model), UV maps and some modification of the seabed.

  The ravine floor could be kept smoothed. The material could have been sand that was blown over the ledges by the ocean current and settled on the floor, depositing itself unevenly down below. This could also act as  rooting material for some of the plants, as sand is easier to push roots into than rock.

   The lattice deformer tool was used to give the ravine floor a rise on the ends, while an accompanying lattice deformer near the surface was used to give the sense that the split was more extreme in terms of elevation nearer the centre. This will also allow the connecting part of the floor to better sync with any ground plane extension we use

 Some of the geometry along the ledges was removed as it was giving some slightly odd shapes in the shader engine that did not feel natural. While also tweaking some of the vertex positions to smooth transitions between faces.

  Finally some workable UV maps were created. Because of the sheer scale of the model the UV maps had ot be cut up not just to fit them on the UV square but also to ease the rendering times as it will allow us to use smaller texture maps.

  Perhaps an alternative when it comes to rendering is to create two models. The seabed will be out of focus or distant so we may be able to get away with a small-ish texture map. But the ravine walls there could be two maps - high-resolution and low-resolution, each on their own separate model that we key to alternate depending on the camera distance. But this might involve more maps and more cutting up.

Ravine bed

 

left-hand wall

right-hand wall

Ledt-hand ravine floor

right-hand ravine floor

Refinement of the Ravine

  Furrther progress has been made with the ravine by adding some ruggedness to the ledges. Some crags and points have been added but the next phase of building will be priority. Textures such as a bump map will definitely useful from here on out to give the ravine a rockiness to it. The next stage so far will be to do something about how level the ravine floor is. Perhaps have it rise near the ends.

  There could be some more pushing back of the upper ledges. With the bulk done, work can progress with the rocky outcroppings because with the time at hand, we can't risk spending too much time on the tiny details as there is still plenty to do. Plants and rocks are needed for one.

  Perhaps the area around the ravine is also extended. To get the effect these were displaced chunks of rock, the lines of the ground around the ledges were altered to make a more defined incline as well as some raising of polygons on the ledges to form more defined overhangs.

  In terms of scale there is still plenty of space, most of the action however might be away from the ends of the ravine. This has yet to take into account how much space will be used by rocky outcroppings. Which will be the next phase after adjusting the height of the ravine at each end.

Refining the Ravine Itself

 As was suggested, depth was added to the volume and the ravine opening was opened up further. The next step will be to add ledges and make the rock more jagged. But so far I believe we are making steps in the right direction. Also ends to the ravine are needed as it would be surrounded by the seabed in the final production.

    The sphere represents our fish. As can be seen this ravine is definitely very large, which should give plenty of time for the fish to travel upwards. It was suggested that there could be a sharp turn to encourage the fish to swim up but that proved slightly difficult without tearing the lower sections of the ravine which would make moving the camera more difficult.

  

  Some defenition was added to the ridge to make the mouth look sharp. But further polygons will be needed to give the ledges a degree of jaggedness. Which should be easily doable.

  To add ease to contruction and animation the ravine has been into three sections that can be switched on and off depending on on what angle we need to look at. One for the left-hand side, one for the right-hand side and one for the floor. It also makes seeing the floor in wireframe view easier. In theory these can all be stitched up for the final model. So there would be a construction layer and a polygon layer with a definable transition. Currently the joins between the rock and the ground appear rather artificial when smoothed out.

  The join could  certainlydo with some unevenness to it anyway as it currently all joins on the same level which does appear rather unrealistic.

Ravine: Modelling the Ravine

  Progress as been made with the ravine, the main location for the events in the narrative animation. This went though a couple of iterations during tonight's development as it initially got very complex, This was solved by going back ot basics with the original shape. In order to give the camera and the fish room to move about without a sense of claustrophobia and an ever-present opening above, I looked into giving space underneath the opening for light and room.

  There is still a little more work to do with this. The ravine floor could be deeper and the mouth could be modified to be less smooth. But the important part for now is the bowels of the ravine, as that will be where the second fish spends most of its time.

   The concept art I am working from included rocky outcrops, another thing that could be added to give us room to work. It would also give a platform for plant life as the thing about a ravine is it is a very steep drop to the bottom and there might be little place for plants to settle and grow. Developing this will be my next step. The other thought was closing off the ends, especially as that is what the ravine does on the surface, and right now it seems a little inconsistent that where the crack is closing, the tunnel is just as wide as it is in the middle of the crack.

  To get a sense of scale, some of the blocked out plants of the last version of the model were brought in and set down. The fish will be smaller than these so the camera could find itself very close to the walls But wit ha lit of space to move.

  Below are stills of the ravine's first version. Less bulging but more confined. The design above could be considered a more theatrical space compared to this one. Although at the same time maybe it also looks a little like a cave with a hole in the top.