So here is my finished animation, finally! After all the rendering issues, I have finally got an animation. Unfortunately I have not added any sound to the animation as I couldn’t really find sounds that would work with it. Although the animation does not have any sound, and is quite short, for a first attempt at Maya and animation in general I am fairly happy with what I have created. I feel I have exhibited my ability to model objects and setting using Maya, overcoming problems as they appeared, and feel that I have shown that I understand the use of key frame animating to a basic level. I think I have also learnt a lot about the process of rendering animation and how it isn’t quite as simple as hitting ‘export to .mov’. I could of perhaps made my animation a little more complex, but I do feel that I am quite happy with what I have created seeing as I had never even heard of Maya until last month.

Now I had my animation which I was fairly happy with I now had to battle with rendering it. Initially I thought I would be able to render it as an AVI file that could be viewed as video immediately, letting Maya do all the work. However, due to the fact I had used the Mental Ray rendering type, in order to make my glasses look like they’re made of glass, I could only export the file as a sequence of image files. I therefore had a quick search online to get an idea of what I was doing and to understand how I would then convert the individual image files into a movie clip. I opted to save the files as the Maya native IFF, as I read online that this is a fairly small file type and works well when importing into after effects to make the movie clip. I checked all the other settings and then proceeded to batch render the 770 frames of my animation. THIS TOOK FOREVER – 2 HOURS TO BE EXACT. Once I finally had the 770 individual files I imported the first into After Effects and hit the ‘sequence’ option before importing, importing the enitre 770 frames! Now all I did was rendered the file from After Effects as a Quicktime Movie animation. And we’re done!

So I have finally finished and uploaded my final advertisement for this Post Production Techniques project. And here it… PLEASE PLEASE WATCH IN 1080p on YouTube.

Overall I am really very happy with the final outcome of this project and think it looks quite professional and realistic. I feel that it works quite well in order to portray the intended message about passive smoking, but do think that the smoke could possibly be a bit thicker. I do think if I had the opportunity to shoot for this project again I may have experimented with filming some smoke separately on a green screen and seeing if the smoke perhaps looks anymore realistic (however I am unsure of this due to the fact it may not be at the right angle as to look like it is being produced from the models mouths). I am very glad that I opted with serious route using the layered smoke rather than swapping the faces as I experimented with, I feel it fits the advertisement style and message much more fittingly and appropriately than with the face swaps. You may also notice that I have not chosen to use any transitions or fades (excluding the audio) in the advertisement, I did this because I felt they made the advert look a little tacky and unprofessional and stopped the advertisement from flowing. I think the sharp and quite abrupt shot changes add to the impact of the advertisement due to how it really gets to the point. I feel that for a first attempt at using After Effects and Post Production techniques I have done quite well and learnt quite a lot of skills, fitting to the brief by experimenting with a range of different effects and options.

Today I rendered my video in order to put it on to YouTube. I used the quicktime format in order to allow quick upload to both YouTube and Vimeo. Here is the render view… Thankfully it did not take half as long as expected! Only a few minutes… the upload to YouTube and Vimeo was a little longer unfortunately!

Now I had all my modelling in place it was today time to actually animate the piece, which I am opting to keep fairly simple. I used key frames and simple movements to simply make the toothbrush jump from the glass onto the counter, and then escape of screen. It was quite as difficult to animate as expected, largely due to how simple I chose to keep it, but I soon realised Maya does a bit of the work for you. I did some simple movements, but also tried to think about how humans move when animating and making the toothbrush move. For example when I did the jumping from the glass, and the jumping of the screen, I squashed the height of the toothbrush as it pushed down to jump and to land, and returned the height to normal as it was mid-air. Here are some screenshots of the key framing:

After being reasonably happy with the look of the animation, and the movement the toothbrush made, I then decided I wanted to incorporating some camera movement at the beginning of the animation, in order to show of the bathroom (particularly the toilet) that I had modelled. I did this by creating a camera and then key framing the movements, zooming it into the main scene.

Unfortunately I will no longer have time to create a professional voice over for my advertisement, due to the lack of sourcing proper equipment now I am back at home in Bristol. I could make a simple one using the equipment I have, however I feel it would sound really unauthentic and unprofessional, making the entire advertisement feel the same. I am not as disappointed by this as I originally had thought as I feel the use of a simple sound or track for the entire advertisement will add more impact, due to the near silence – really making the audience concentrate on what is happening on screen. I had a look at some of the other smoking advertisement and particularly like the slight rumbling sound in the one below..

After deciding that I liked this sound, I had a search online for some open source sound effects of rumbling etc. However unfortunately all of the clips were unsuitable and did not sound right, or the only ones that did cost around $10. This opted to make look at the option of some music that would create a similar impact. I noticed whilst searching online that Sigur Ros allow their music to be used in project work and film and video, as is said on their website…

I had a listen to their music, initially thinking it would be quite suitable as they generally do not include to much lyrics and are also usually slow. After listening to a few of their songs I came across a track called Ekki Mukk which I felt the beginning of would work perfectly and was quite similar to the sort of sound I wanted. After listening to it over my footage a couple of times I quickly realised that the timings fit perfectly and that it really made the advertisement flow. The speed and impact of the song increase at the perfect time. Here is the song I am using:

I downloaded the song from iTunes and inserted it into Premiere. At the end I added a key frame to keep the volume at the original volume until it reaches the final title screen, I then added another key frame at the very end and reduced the volume ever so slightly in order to make the music fade out and work more suitably!

I decided today to insert a reverse of Bradley smoking at the end of the advertisement, between the ‘stop smoking’ title and the very last title. I used the time reverse effect in After Effects to do this and feel it just adds to the message of the need to stop smoking, almost suggesting that the person in the advertisement has stopped. I am quite happy I made the decision to add this to the advertisement and think that it makes the end a little more exciting!

After deciding that I wanted to use the layering and lighten blend effect experiment footage in my final advertisement for this Post Production Techniques project I cut each of these pieces of footage to an approximate size and exported them for use in Adobe Premiere Pro. In Premiere I put the footage into a sequence in order to create the full advertisement. Before dragging each of the parts into the sequence I cut them to the roughly exact sizes, but after dragging them in had to slightly adjust some of the footage. I then used the titles creator in Premiere to create titles in order to lead the advertisement along, hopefully I will also create a voice over to add to this. I opted to use a simple helvetica font with a black background in order to compliment the colours in the rest of the advertisement and to keep somewhat in theme of a lot of the smoking advertisements I have seen. For my final title I wanted to add the ‘NHS’ and ‘Smokefree’ logos in order to make the advertisement look really professional and authentic. I did this by using the ‘Insert Logo’ tool within the ‘Title’ tools. You can see in the screen shot below.

Today I experimented with layering the videos over one another and altering the mode in order to create the impression that people who are simply sat still produce smoke from their mouth. I experiment by changing the different blend options, trying to find one that looked realistic and that the smoke could clear be seen over the moving portrait clips. I used the smoke Bradley produced as planned, due to its prominence. I eventually came across the ‘Lighten’ mode for the videos, and dropped the opacity of the top layer clip of the smoking to 35%. This setting allowed the smoke to be seen enough to give the impression that the people are producing smoke, whilst barely being able to see Bradley. In some of the clips I had to make use of masking in order to remove quite obvious parts of Bradley that still showed on the clip.

 In this screen shot without the use of a mask you can faintly see Bradley’s upper body and clothing overlayed above Adam. However, in  the masked version below this problem has been eliminated to make it look just like Adam.

 I feathered each of the masks quite strongly as to not make the smoke look like it hit a hard edge and vanished as some of it went under the mask etc. In some places in some of the clips you can still see Bradley’s hand rising to the mouth, however I quite like this and think it adds to the message and a slightly ghostly tone – as if someone else is directly putting a cigarette to there mouth. Bradley also is clear in some areas, as he moves slightly, as in the video of Alice below, however I will try eliminating this through cutting the clip if I decided to make use of this experiment in the final advertisement. Here are a couple of examples of this experiment (BE SURE TO WATCH IN 1080P)

Today I decided to start modelling the setting for my toothbrush (which I am yet to model), which is of course a bathroom. It was the first time I have actually modelled something which I will include in my animation, and the first bit of modelling that was more complex than simply creating very simply formed polygon shapes. I initially started by creating 3 walls and a floor using flat polygon surfaces. I then added materials to these, using a file from online to create tiled flooring, and a simple white matte lambert for the walls. I then decided to add shorter flat polygon surfaces half way down each of the walls, applying a black lambert to create the effect of a tile splash-black (creating more of a bathroom look). I then proceeded to using a simple oblong polygon to produce the bathroom counter, fitting directly at the back of the three wall structure; this will hopefully work well when it comes to animating and adding cameras and lighting etc as it creates the effect of an entire room. I then tried adding a sink using a simple oblong that I extruded twice to create a deep hole in, however when i tried to place this into the bathroom counter the black worktop i created showed through. I extruded the worktop in order to allow space for the sink in order to make it look realistic. I also applied simple lamberts to this, applying a wooden texture to the worktop.  I then created a simple tap using an online tutorial. When it came to animating the toilet, which i think is a very important aspect of a bathroom, I started to find modelling much more difficult. I tried to follow online tutorials, however they weren’t that helpful and I ended up creating what looked like a floating ceramic bowl. I decided to give up on modelling the toilet for now and attempt it again tomorrow.