Previs artists are responsible for creating a rough idea of what the shot is going to look like for the directors to review. The benefit of using previs is so that the team has an idea of what the shot will look like before spending the money to go ahead and film (or pay a team to go ahead and start working). Oftentimes the animation does not have to look good- what’s important is that the camera work, placement, and timing can be reviewed.
Postvis artists apply the finishing touches after filming. This can include visual effects and additional animation to show the director as a blueprint for what the final version will look like. This postvis work will then be brought to the final animation team to create.
Techvis is a subset of these that involves taking the previs or postvis work and making it precisely accurate to the millimeter in order to make sure that it reflects what the equipment that will be used is capable of.
VFX vs Film vs Game Animation
VFX Animation is most often used in conjuction with live action film and involves adding in particle and light effects, rotomation- animating on top of shots using a motion track- or animating in CGI objects, like weapons and superhero suits.
Film Animation usually refers to a movie that is entirely 3D Animated and may be more similar to a Pixar project, with a cartoonish and less realistic style.
Game Animation is usually a longer project. It’s less stylized, and requires the team to take into account the player’s control and world exploration. Everything must be seen from any and all angles.
Method 1 (Voronoi Fracture) vs Method 2 (Grid with Boolean Fracture) vs Method 3 (RBD Material Fracture)
I found last week’s tutorial very easy and fun, but I expected this to be a little more intense, as it says on the tin. However, it did take me about 3 hours to get through the first hour of the tutorial. Most of the extra time it takes me to get through these is spent researching terms I don’t understand like “voronoi”, “vex”, “VDB” and “voxel”, going back to repeat the step when it happens too fast, or going even farther back to figure out why my results don’t match his. While the process makes sense to me overall, I often don’t understand the significance of many of the little steps or how Mehdi is able to tell that they are necessary. I’m also only about 80% confident that I understand the goal of our work in the first hour. I know that we’re creating a realistic fracture of the objects, but is exploded view the end result of the destruction or simply a way to review whether or not the fracture seems realistic? Despite this, I am able to follow along, and often understand it better towards the end of the tutorial, so perhaps it will all make more sense soon.
Side note- here’s a video I found that helped me get on the same page really quickly.
Hour and a Half In
Somehow, this took me even longer, and only for 30 minutes worth of tutorial. I was just about ready to give up for the night when I finally got to see the product of my work- this beautiful destruction- for the first time, and regained motivation.
I feel that, as with the last tutorial, it helps it come together for me to be able to visualize the product of the long line of work.
After a couple Houdini crashes on my slow computer, I figured out how to get my boolean fracture linked up to the DOP network for an even better effect.
I got the rbdmaterialfracture to run, but it’s incredibly slow and not really doable on my machine. I’m going to follow along with what Mehdi is doing in it so I can learn but I’ll have to keep my Houdini on manual update.
Day Two
Before plunging back into the tutorial, I took a mini break to smash something else out of sheer curiousity as well as to test how well I retained the skill.
I also wanted to try a building complex, but these are not made of a solid material and I’m not sure how to do that yet, so I’ll finish the tutorial first.
2 Hours In
The polyreduce node was a big help in speeding up my simulation enough to follow along with Mehdi, in addition of course to keeping my work on manual mode. I will keep that in mind in the future as our tutorials continue.
Unfortunately, it looks as though this will be the first tutorial I don’t complete. I got to the point where we create and active and inactive point group on the cabin so that the entire object isn’t moved during the collision, but rather a small part breaks. I copied Mehdi exactly over and over again and my product was always the same- no change.
Stopping Point
The only possible explanation for the problem I could think was that my geometry supposedly has holes. I couldn’t figure out where or how to locate these, though, and I was using the simple geometry that we made during the tutorial.
This morning my collab group had our first video call discussion to begin planning out our project. The roles in my group are as follows:
3D Animators– Kamil Fauzi, Emma Copeland
Sound Design– Ben Harrison, Callum Spence
VFX– Gherardo Varani, Antoni Floritt
Antoni was unable to make this meeting today as he was traveling back to London, but Gherardo and he will be meeting later to catch up on everything, and we plan to video call again on Monday all together to check in once more. Today we began discussing our work for this week as well as everyone’s initial ideas going into the project. Our sound designers had already begun planning with each other some ideas for soundtrack and effects, and we’d been sharing some files with each other over the past few days suggesting some different textures, simulations, and objects.
For example, on Monday I had found this cave that could be used:
Antoni shared with us a solar system simulation that I’m very excited to see in action:
-and Kamil shared with us some very useful sets and objects that he’d used in the past in different programs and was converting to be used in Maya for our project.
I’m feeling extremely confident in my project, as all of my teammates are very talented, motivated, and bring a lot to our group. We also are having a very easy time communicating so far, which I believe is going to be essential to our project getting off the ground.
During the call we decided that the first thing to do would be create a storyboard. This way we can plan for the timing of the film and give the sound designers a more solid idea of what they’re working with. I will begin working on the storyboard for Act I, and Kamil will begin working on Act II.
We will be continuously uploading our work to the Discord server to check in with the group, and once the storyboard is done the plan is to start building our Maya scenes, with a different scene for each shot. Ideally, we’ll be able to get moving on that starting Monday after our next call.
