Holly Problems!

So... As you can tell from the title.. I am running into problems galore on both projects..
here is a list

Sucker:
1) hair referencing and scaling problems
2) Fur referencing and scaling problems
3) flickering and more flickers
4) corrupting files :)
5)time
6) etc.etc..

Hamster
1) paint weights
2) scaling issues
3)time
4) etc.. etc..

but there are plus sides!
I have succesffully set up around 8 scenes for render.. setting up lighting, passes, and everything else.. Now i have to continue setting up hair and eyebrow passes.
We recieved the hair on time so this is a good sign and now its just getting stuff set up to rendered and then getting rendered

Mostly its the farm that has been giving me problems with this project. The farm is bumping my render times up due to the fur, and it will just for shits and giggles not show textures every once and a while.. so you nkow 60 minutes later bamn i find out its not working and have to set up again.. Althought things are hectick things are getting done, This will get done.. well I hope
below are 2 frames on a rendered scene we have.

Note the fun dust we added :)

As for the hamster i have set up a comp of and learned a ton.
A) DONT DO PASSES WITH FUR.. based on what I have recently read my and own mistakes.. fur passes are not the way to go.. It causes premult and you loose ALOT of detail in the needed detail fun areas!..

Now.. As for the rest... I have a rigged hamster but needs paint weighted and i am rushign the guy but dont know when thats coming to me.. As for animation we have dynamic test animation but this is where the problems arise.. Scaling issues from when i set up to the fur to the scale of the model now have arose. Fur in houdini doesnt like when you scale you objects.. all the maps drasticly change even if the topology doesnt change on the object. So this means i have to go and repaint all of my maps based on the new size.. so pretty much redo the whole hair set up again along with rendering and animation

Comp'd shots are below :


so here is my predicament.. I feel i wont beable to get both of these projects done in time for the end of the quarter (2 weeks. ) I really want to finish this hamster and push it to its fullest so i hope next quarter to finish it and leave it behind for this quater.. Along with this fur proect i am staring another one so i will be able to work on both together and learn a heck of a lot more..
plus shoot bg plates etc.. all at the same time... Hopefully this is all possible slo i can atleast have one finished piece ( the animation piece) By the endo f the quarter

More Info

So.. its been a week since a post.. I apologize for that.. just been.. well ok i plane forgot :)

anyway... over the past weeks. been continuing to work on both projects equally. But unfortunately luck hasn't worked out that way on both. The Animation project has been putting me through hell, and the hamster project is coming along slow but smooth with minor bumps in the road.

As for the animation project. we received the hair for the finished models of the boy, and mom. They are looking nice and we are just now waiting on the mime, which i should be receiving soon. and the ice cream man is mia. We ran into a problem referencing the hair in to the scene, and also importing the hair, It would loose density and clump far more than expected. We fixed it temporarily in a round about way via importing and parenting techniques. But I realized that it still lost density and clumped. I figured out that it is based on the time line. So as far as i know it is working. i am currently waiting on a render to comp on boy scene.

Speaking of the boy scenes. 2 scenes have become ( as far as i know) fully currupt. I have back ups and thing are still going wrong. I realyl cant figure it out, and it doesnt help that all maya gives me is " Signal 11 " error and crashes. So i still hope to get a hair post up soon.. aka today in a few hours during class..

As for the hamster project . I have been working on working on the hair density and thickness to come up with a nice alpha for comping as well as still looking how i would like it too.
I was planing on using a full RGB lighting set up to complete this project but the more i look into and run tests that is not going to go well.. So i went back and am taking on rendering a beauty pass in houdini sans shadows and comping just the shadows in later.

I have set up most passes and am almost ready to work with an animation. Which i am still waitin on a rig for.... i havent seen steve in a while and i hope to see him today with good news so alex can get to animating and i will not long have to wait on pieces of this puzzle.

Below is a real rough comp of where i am at so far.. it consists of the base Subsufrace, and Beauty Fur pass.. 4 shadow passes, an occlusion pass, and background... As said alot of work is still needed. such as coloration and some more fur description tweaking but its coming along as planed.

MoreShots, and More Fur.. Class 10

For Class 10:
I have completed the fur on the hamster. I concluded it was mainly a grooming and styling issue that I was having, trying to get it less like a box and contour more to the curves of the geometry. I started looking more into how hamsters moved to get the styling down, looking at wear on the fur and where abouts the hamster would scratch to get the right look. Compared to the images below ( on mondays post) i feel as if i have made significant progress on such descriptions.




For this project ihave also decide to just a still image as my background plate instead of a actual video file. As much as i would like to use a video plate i feel as if time is against me and to get all of that together will hinder my progress. I will plan on coming back to this next quarter to place the hamster in a moving / life action plate.

Also a turntable is in the dropbox.

Along with the fur.. I have continued work on "Sucker".. the animation project i am working on. I have competed 2 shots as closely as I am able to at this point. One is the boy squinting.. I have reworked it from the previous posts to come together for a more cleanly lit, and looking ( skin wise) shot. With this shot done.. the rig can be used to light and fix the skin problems on 3 more shots.. There for in reality I have more done than expected. I am just waiting on rendering them for finalized animations..


Along with the squint I have rendered and completed a rig for the "Violin Playing" scene. This is the longest scene in the short, and is almost completed animation wise. I have a feeling this is going to be our first fully finished shot. Then this will put us ahead of schedule in a way..

Unfortunatly we have been having issues with file clean up and crashes due to it.. There are of problems we have encountered as of right now based on these issues.. and working to solve them. I have begun the process of cleaning all of the files but it is a larger task than expected.

Also the hair systems are being reworked.. i was planning on having the boy hair rendered and comped into the shot.. but i was having difficulites attaching thehair to the rig and having it scale properly.. seeign this is not my specialty .. nor do i really know anything about it.. i will be talking to a rigger / our hair artist ASAP to figure this problem out.

Both rendered scenes are in the drop box...

More On Both Projects

So, this weekend has been .. well to say the least really busy.. and never ending.. sleep is going to feel quite good come monday night.. maybe if i am lucky...

anyway..This weekend I continued working on the hamster project placed a a new fur set up on the final model.. As of right now I have 5 fur descriptions on it.. some need to still be tweaked but its coming along. I hope to get the skin on it with subsurface relatively soon, that is once i learn subsurface in houdini... or figure out a way to export in maya and go that route... Below is a breakdown of some images starting Thursday to Sunday night.. to show the progress of the fur work.

Final ( below) as of right now.. Work still needs done on the wiskers and ear fur but its coming along

Along with the fur, I went ahead and started lighting a new scene, the longest of the scenes, for alex's animation project. I do have to say I am very happy with where this shot is going. Getting this shot to this point has set a color scheme and style for the piece and it will make it easier on the rest of the shots... below are two images of the shot..

( Shot 4b : Frame 179 )

( Shot 4b : Frame 491 )

Alex hopes to get the shot finished by Tuesday so I can go ahead to render the whole shot out.

Along with both those projects.. I also figured I would state , I finally fixed the flicker problem on a project I started last year, I have been working on other projects to get together a reel for the career fair and other opportunities ..