1/16/21-1/29/21
I worked on blocking cameras and doing some basic animation for the shots that I had signed up for.
1/4/21-1/17/21
I would like to say that I was totally productive during the rest of break, but that wouldn't be entirely honest. I did make some lighting adjustments in one of the base environment scenes. However, I did not go into each individual shot to adjust the lighting like I did before. This is because Tia discussed with me about changing up the toon shading look in the reaper world. This would really screw up the lighting, so we decided it was best for me to wait on going in. Otherwise, I would just have to make adjustments again. I also did texture one asset.
12/5/20-1/3/21
I'll be completely honest. I did nothing during the holidays. I took a break and just relaxed.
11/14/20-12/4/20
With the rendered scenes deadline met and passed, our group took this time to get our assets 80% completed. We also took some of the critique we got and applied changes accordingly. I admit I did not really have much to do during this time. I did model a few assets, but that was really about it.
10/31/20-11/13/20
During these two weeks, like everyone else in the group I helped on getting our scenes rendered and completed. I won't lie. It was stressful. I set up render layers and AOVs for the scene in addition to doing the lighting. These were my main responsibilities, but I ended up having to pick up some extra work along with Tia. I helped with making some changes to help the scene look a bit better, like adjusting camera angles/shots or moving characters around so that continuity was preserved. I also did a little bit of animation cleanup (no spatula hands). Tia and I also had to do some late nights making sure that renders were done and didn't break. Once all scenes were rendered, the whole group helped with photoshopping the characters so that we couldn't see their bodies clip through their clothes.
10/17/20-10/30/20
Man, oh man, these past two weeks were just frustrating. I really got into the lighting for our scene this time, but that wasn't the issue. The biggest issue was the IRS school building interior environment. I discovered that there were five copies of EVERY single asset. Obviously, that was a huge issue and causing major slow downs in rendering. Another fix I had to make was moving Grim's desk from the back of the classroom to the front.
There were many assets that were not textured so I assigned them basic toon shaders at the very least. Speaking of textures, the hypershade window was an absolute mess. Because of the fact that there were five copies of everything, that was also the same for the shaders/materials. In addition to those, there were also additional unused shaders that I deleted.
While rendering, Gill was having issues with her shots, so I ended up rendering for her since I was able to do so without any problems.
Overall, just lots and lots of cleanup. Not very fun.
9/12/20-9/18/20
I replaced the block models for Muerto and Shine in the animatic with our official models.
9/5/20-9/11/20
I worked on some models for the Old Man's house (interior). I made two trophies and a lamp. I also edited my cel shading tutorial to make it more concise and cut off a little over a minute.
8/22/20-9/3/20
Together, our group all worked on blocking out the 3D animatic. Each of us took at least two shots. I worked on one shot from scene 6 and one shot from scene 7.
6/15/20-6/22/20
Using what I learned in the last semester, I created a cel shading tutorial for the rest of the group.
4/26/20-5/5/20
With Muerto, I tested out two different looks for cel shading: hard defined shadows and soft shadows. With input from the rest of the group, we decided to go with the soft shadow style of cel shading. We all helped prepare for the group's presentation to the rest of the class. I also textured the clothing that Tia simulated in the Toon Shader.
4/19/20-4/25/20
I start texturing Muerto in Substance Painter. Once I finished with that, I started to test how he looked with cel shading. I ended up going with Maya's own Toon Shader rather than the other tools I had found due to the ability to be able to use textures with multiple UDIM tiles in Toon Shader as I could not find a solution to that for the third party tools.
3/29/20-4/4/20
I continue to do some R&D with cel shading in Maya and seeing how each method looked.
3/22/20-3/28/20
Spring break. I was still adjusting to remoting in to the lab as well as struggling with motivation. I did do some rigging work for Muerto (although, we ended up going with someone else's rig). I also modeled a picnic table for one of our environments.
From this point, I will admit that my productivity went down like crazy due to struggling with lack of motivation from COVID-19.
3/15/20-3/21/20
This was the first week of online only learning. Admittedly, I did not get much done as I was trying to get adjusted to this new change.
3/1/20-3/7/20
In order to have multiple options to explore, I found another method of cel shading in Maya. Through this website (https://lesterbanks.com/2017/11/arnold-cel-shader-tool/), I got Python code that creates an Arnold toon shader. This tool was created by technical and rigging artist, Steffano Richi. It allows you to create a toon shader using Maya native nodes and is rendered through Arnold. It creates shaders that can all be controlled simultaneously with one ramp node. Also, unlike Enogu Toon, it was easier to use custom textures. However, I could not figure out a way for it to support textures with multiple UDIM tiles.
2/17/20-2/29/20
I continued with my research on cel shading. I acquired a custom program called Enogu Toon for Maya. It includes a set of ShaderFX shaders and tools that allow for quickly and efficiently rendering in Maya Hardware. There are two shaders for different ways of toon shading: parameter-based cel shader and texture lookup based cel shader. This program allowed for flexibility in how the cel shading looked. However, one issue I had was figuring out how to implement custom textures.
2/16/20-2/22/20
I started doing some research and testing on cel shading. I first started out with messing around with Maya's Toon Shader and seeing how it works as well as how it looks when animated.