P01 - Semester Assignment

Semester Assignment Portefolio 01

The assignment is clear. Take the various models and animations I created trough this year, and use the feedback I have gotten to improve them and then showcase them in a 720p movie that is no longer than 2 (Two) minutes. 

My first regret when I read the assignment was that I have almost no notes of the feedback I've gotten. But fortunately I remembered some of it, and I have progressed enough to see stuff that is not right. So I took care of the obvious mistakes and made a few test renders so I could put down a time-budget and figure out how much time I would have on each project. I knew that no matter how much I spend on one project there is always room for improvements and I can not waste to much time on one project when I got so much to do. 

After making the test renders I put it together in Premiere so I could have a template. I then proceeded to ask my classmates what they thought, and asked them all to take a look and tell me what could be improved. I made them aware that this was not my final product, but my way to figure out what to do. And I got very nice feedback from a few of them. I then proceeded to ask my teacher what he thought. And he gave me a few hints on improving the movie, and then we talked about the individual projects and he gave me a few pointers. This time I took notes so I could make myself a nice time-budget. 

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Monday

• Figure out what I had to do
• Take test renders
• Put it together in Premiere Pro 
• Get feedback

Tuesday

• Get feedback from teacher
• Make time-table
• Fix my video template in Premiere

Wednesday

• Work on the fish
• Improve final render
• Make checker render
• Make edges render
• Finish work file for delivery

Thursday

• Check fish renders
• Start working on my hard surface modeling

Friday

• Finish my hard surface modeling
• Render over weekend so I can continue Monday

*Weekend of, get my stuff together, relax, get ready for last week before christmas*

Monday

• Check computer renders 
• Start working on the environment
• Fix light problems 

Tuesday

• Continue working on environment
• if everything is o.k. start renders before going home

Wednesday

• Take environment renders into nuke to start compositing
• make a clean day and night render of environment
• Finish VFX movie

Thursday

• Take it all back into Premiere and start making the movie with the template I have prepared.
• Continue working on the finished product.

Friday

• Delivery time
• Finish work log and deliver

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Fish Concept 

First thing I did was changing the positioning of the fish. I did not think of compositing when I made the final render for the assignment we had at all. I figure I was to busy with the headache called zBrush. I found a better position and rolled with that. Then I made some new render layers and made a turntable. I think turntables is a nice way to show of my model in a easy way to see the whole fish. So I rendered out Checker, Edges and the final fish on a turntable and then proceeded to add a final render of the fish in his environment to show the end result. 

Computer Concept

I was not satisfied with my computer as it was. The colors was weird. The reflections didn't work the way I wanted them to. And the computer looked way to square. So I changed the model to make it more round and not limit myself to the box concept. Because the way it did look I could call the project "Box Concept" and that is something I did not want. I started working on the colors and optimized the normal map. 

Environment Concept

On this project I knew I would need the most time. It had some noise in it so the first thing I did was figure out what those noises where and tried to fix them. When I was satisfied with that I started changing the colors to make it more appealing. Since I had to finalize my day render and night render I figured I would use my VFX scene. Since I already used the environment to make the dynamics and particles scene. I figured it would help me with the whole read thread through the whole project thing. And I had made so many changes since the weeks we made that project that I didn't want to go back and waste so many hours doing the same things twice. There were no major changes tough. I added the jewelry box I made the first three weeks and put it on the couch just so I could have it there. Other than that I changes many colors and rendered the whole scene in a day scene and a night scene. Then I took it into Nuke to make a few more changes, added some depth and made some more post production color corrections etc. 

So this is my final semester assignment. I hope you enjoyed reading about it as much as I enjoyed working on it! The whole movie can be found at https://youtu.be/j8LOVuRUyPc

Timestamps:
01: Environment Day and night Concept + VFX [Time 0:10-0:50]
02: Fish Concept [Time 0:50-1:18]
03: Computer Concept [Time 1:19-1:50]

Music used in the video from this site: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/most/downloaded.php
Songs: Carefree.mp3
            Wallpaper.mp3

David Aune

Student

Noroff Trondheim 15/16