Procrastination and pipeline

Took a break from Ebil to update some other project and develop some new skills. But I have been done with that for a month or more. Picking Ebil back up is hard for me. I'm very good at procrastination. I'll tell you more about that later.

One good thing I have been doing is keeping notes and tracking of my progress. This makes it much easier to pick up where I left off. I have been using a freeware program called task coach (link)

Task coach

Task coach is a souped up todo list. More than keeping a list of task, it allows you to create categories and nest your tasks. I created a category for characters then broke that task down into Model, texture, and rig. Each can be broken down into subtasks. The program will track you time spent on each task. You can also leave notes. It does not support teams directly, but as a one man band it fits my needs well.

My task organization for character development

One of the many problems with taking a break from a project is skill creep. I have learned new techniques and honed old skills. The desire to rebuild existing assets is strong.

linking and posing workflow

I have been linking my Ebil files using the import>link command and it has its limits, but I am getting use to them, or learning how to use them. I have Ebil modeled and rigged for this project (may revamp for a later episode.)
workflow:

1. Open my current ebil .blend file with my rigged and skinned Ebil.
2. Select all of the elements I want to pass down the chain (model, rig ,rigify bones and custom shapes)
3. Create a group for all of these objects(CTRL+G) name it something useful.
4. Open new .blend file
5. import>link the group from the current ebil.blend
6. import>link or append the rigify script for the U.I.
7. select the rig and create proxy
8. Create pose library for the rig.
9. Select the proxy rig and the mesh and create a new group name it something_poses
10. save file
11. Now I can link that group into my scenes and animate

If I need to update the model or rig I edit the current .blend. If I want to add or edit poses I edit the *_pose.blend

Quick render of the current Ebil rig.

Animatic Workflow (After Effects vs Fusion 7 vs Blender)

Shiny Shiny New Toy! Software!

Recently Blackmagic software made Fusion 7 free with only a few restrictions. This excited me as a free motion graphic alternative to After Effects (AE). I have been trying to stay focused on Ebil, I have been avoiding new software so as not to take away from my production time with Ebil. I figured I would use Fusion to build my animatic as a learning project and get my animatic done. It took me a lot of hair pulling to get the swing of things. I could have done this in about 30 mins or less in AE. I've never used a node based compositor before. The user community on Fusion seems tight lipped. I guess all the pros using it are busy being pros. Whatever the reason (a hot topic on the forums) there is a huge lack of free Fusion tutorials online. You can easily find the basics if you want to do VFX compositing or 3D importing. But I failed to find any tutorials I could follow to give me the skills to load a sequence of images (storyboards) and time them out to an audio file. After many hours of struggle I did manage to load the files into nodes and chain them together. However Fusion 7 lacks the ability to display the audio clip alongside my visual clips in realtime (or I could not find it).

Animatic Fusion 7 comp

After a week of struggle I decided to pass on Fusion 7 for the time being.

Back to Blender (Bender 3D 2.73a)

So it hit me. Blender has a sequence editor already built in. So I took my frames into blender, and I was able to create a sequence in a matter of minutes. Granted I do have years of experience with Blender, but I have never used the sequence before. I did need to watch a few tutorials on the ins and outs. These were very easy to find, and there were dozens more available if I need them. 

Animatic Blender comp

It was a very simple matter to import my audio file and sync it with my storyboard renders.

So for now I will continue to work within Blender.

Project notes:

Making progress on Fart Demon using volumetric texture. Decided to avoid physics sims for this short. I will cheat and use censor bars to comically melt my crowd. This should take a huge amount of time off production (R&D, simulation, Render overhead...)

Conflict with Layer Manager and Rigify Possible BUG

Not sure if this is a bug.
When I use the layer manager and rigify together my feet and hand bones vanish.


1. generate a rigify rig
2. in layer manager set the "all objects on layer to draw wire" beachball button on.
3. toggle draw wire off
4. select rig, enter pose mode. Feet, hands, and finger bones vanish.

The missing bones are still there. You can select them in edit mode or in wireframe view.

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

WORKAROUND

I have found that in pose mode with the missing bone selected (wireframe display) turn on wireframe on the display option under the bone tab, where you assign the custom shape.

Click to enlarge

Storyboards or Animatic

MOVING ON

I have been finalizing the rigs and I think I have most of what I need for Bus Stop working. So I'm blocking out the shots. I have gone about this backwards in a way. I have a dozen rough storyboards that have been reworked a bit over the years. I was creating a polished storyboard to make my animatic from. But...

old storyboard image

I can see this in my head for the most part (I think). I have most of my assets completed. I started staging my assets and rendering shots to place in the polished storyboard to build and animatic from... Redundant? I rendered shot1, 12 frames. Then I layed them out in Photoshop, but I think I should just go ahead skip the polished storyboard and just create the animatic. I am learning Fusion 7 which is free now. It will be a great learning project. Could do it much faster in AE since I already know that program....

Anyway here is my shinny page 2 storyboard I am unlikely to ever print.

New Redundant storyboard

NOTES:

setup storyboard set using linked assets

blocked out shots for shot 1 and shot 2 rendered for storyboard,

figured it would be redundant to make the storyboard from renders since I'm not likely to print them. layout animatic Fusion/AE if fusion is too much to figure out.

Rig revamp and Face rig

New Year New tweaks

Started revamping assets a few months ago. Builts some cars and beefed up the set. Anything I could do to avoid working on Ebil's model and rig. Finally sat down last week and started slogging through the skinning problems I was having with rigify. relearning all the things I did not really learn in the first place. I ended up scraping my old rig because I just simply broke it. I adjusted Ebil's base mesh a bit made a few improvements. Started creating shape keys for shoulder and hip deforms. It just did not seem to work for me the way it does for the gurus. Then about 2 days ago it all started working.

Here are some of the current results.

Working on lipsync shapekeys next. Then onto Timmy. 

Parenting objects in Blender 3D Child stops following parent

Parenting Snafoo

I learned today that if an object has physics on it, it will not work as the child of another object. At some point while modeling the body of my Van, I somehow added a rigid body property to it. When I would parent the body to an empty for rigging it would follow the parent once, then it would stop following. The parent child relationship showed up properly in the outliner, however the child would not follow the translations of the parent. This stumped me for about an hour. I was searching the web and finally found a short paragraph somewhere that mentioned the physics issue. Hope this helps someone else.

Once I removed the rigid body node, The parenting works fine.

Back in the saddle again

Out with the old

I took a break from Ebil mid year to work on a pro bono project :

graveyard

I started working on Ebil again a few months ago and have been reworking old assets.

I lost a good bit of work when my computer crashed. I recovered my project files from the cloud and other backups. In the process I decided to rework some of the things I never really felt 100% about. Mainly the characters. I've spent a little time retypoing Ebil's mesh and I plan to re-rig him. I'm not very good at the rigging process. I'm using rigify with a few custom tweaks I have watched a half dozen tuts on how to use the rig, but I can't seem to get it to just poof parent perfect to my mesh. Still getting weird tears an bends in the mesh. I'm not getting a full animatable range. For the Bus Stop sketch I think it is adequate. There is not a lot of complicated animation. I want to get the project done. I have to consider some things good enough. Scope creep is a thing.

I have been updating the traffic fleet. Hard surface modeling is much easier to me. I could make cars all day long.