Final Result.

After I had finished the trailer and had organized everything for hand in, I went over everything and decided to make sure nothing had silly mistakes like spelling errors, punctuation mistakes etc as well as as looking over the final trailer to look at the mistakes, and see if there was anything I could fix before I had to hand in, there was some masking that I had to fix in the trailer for the eye although when looking at it I'm not too sure if it would make much of a difference although my biggest concern was the last scene as the masking took away the effect of the camera panning to the character. In short I think the overall piece went well I would have also hoped to do a lot better with my model sheet, I intended to give it a lot more of a professional look and then have it printed, however due to time contraints It wasn't possible. I did learn a lot from the whole process and has got me motivated to do more once my time at university is over, which is the main achievement I am proud of however I am still proud of the fact I was able to get the trailer completed and I was able to stick to the original Idea even though I resorted to my contingency plan, and I had made a few adjustments to my original Idea. I have seen my mistakes and I have seen the things I think I did well which is what matters, even though I wish I did have more time to correct the mistake, I really did genuinely have fun with this project!!! :D

Outro

The Outro was an interesting process because I started in photoshop with a basic grunge texture and then eventually transferred it to After Effects. 

I added this grunge texture into photoshop and applied my text over it I didn't want two slides so I just added all my information into one picture.

I added vignette in after effects to give it more of a darker effect. I turned the layer into a 3D layer so I could mess with it a bit more as well as add CC glass with edited attributes to give it a more bumped look. I added a light source and animated it to give it some more effect. I think the over all look matched the whole project and it was exactly what I was looking for!

Restart

during the process my file went corrupt which was a huge blow as it meant I had to start the editing process all over again. it was time constraining however it didn't seem to cause too much trouble as I had all ready been through the process of  putting everything together my main concern was would my laptop be able to keep up with pace I would work at as my laptop is on the verge of breaking down. I somewhat enjoyed the process of doing it again because I found it much easier however it did annoy me that I the file went corrupt!

Fading

As I was putting together the clips the fading was a bit off and I was having some trouble with it.  I was trying various methods to get it to work, I eventually figure out why it wasn't working. the process of figuring it out was what resonated with me the most as I figured it out by trial and error which meant I learnt what could happen if I did certain things, If I had followed a tutorial what I had learned would have been very limited.

Effects on the War Clip!

For The effects on the war clip I decided to give it an old school effect I first decided to add a mask to shave of the corners, I then added a very light orange tint to give it an old film effect, I added a black solid on top of this layer and added a noise effect and then played with the settings to get the scratch marls to give that projected look. I think Overall I did a good job wit the effects I feather'd the mask so it wouldn't be so sharp around the character, it was an easy process as there wasn't too much I had to do to get the effect.

Masking

I had to mask certain areas of the second and the last scene, there were areas that were cut out in the render, but I didn't think it was a good Idea so I thought it was better to mask it out.

This is the second scene that I had to mask I decided to duplicate the scene (ctrl + D) as I tried to mask it seemed it was working so I tried a different method I thought I would try to expand the scene until you couldn't see the areas with the errors.

With this scene I Used shapes and key frames  to cover up the areas that were cut out from the render it was a time consuming process, it included lots of Keyframes!!!

 This last mask was so I could include the war clip into the scene, i didn't want it to cover the character as it was the focal point of the scene. throughout out the whole process I found it quite time consuming but I think it was a process that I had to go through. I think I achieved the look I was going for!

Effects on the Voice Overs

As I was going over and over the I felt that the voice didn't have enough emphasis, I wanted to give it  an echoing effect. I decided to add a Reverb I altered the settings a little to get a better effect it. I think the effect worked well alongside the visuals I dropped the deci bells to make it slightly quieter but still loud enough to hear over the backing track. I feel it gives the right emphasis, and something I would hear in a cinematic trailer. the fusion between the visuals and the audio really works.

Background Music

So once I had all the clips together I was looking at how everything pieced together I felt that the trailer was still missing something so I thought to add some backing music. I found a website (http://incompetech.com/) which allows you to download free music/instrumentals. I tried various background music out, I ended up using a track called clenched teeth. I Turned the volume down so I could still here the voice over, Which I wanted to be the one thing I made sure everyone could he as it would then be pointless to have the trailer. I think the background music worked well it really gave it that dramatic and urgent feel that you would get in a trailer for a war film.

War Clips

so after I had set up the composition, I wanted to look for some clips or war in action I found three stock clips that I found through google I thought I would use these clips all together, however I found that there wouldn't be enough space to accomodate for all three clips as it would run over the 30 second time limit I had set on my self. So I decided to just include the video on the far right with the gun fire, I wanted to create some emotional impact by including this clip, I Think I achieved the effect I was looking for.

Re Rendering.

after I had rendered out all my scenes, I started noticing various mistakes once I had imported into After Effects for editing.

As you can see in the render above, you can see the point of the light source, which didn't really give my trailer the professional standard I was aiming for. this took up more time which I really wanted to avoid, however I managed to get it out of the way in time for me to get my other things done.

Rendering

I felt it was time to render out each camera, camera 1 and 3 I set at 240 frames and camera 2 at 160 frames, the resolution was 1080x720, the rendering was quite time consuming even though I was using maya software. the process of rendering was something I had been through before,I was impressed with the result as I have always rendered with mental ray I wasn't too sure about the out come. 

Lighting Fixes

So after I had shown florian the lighting of my main hall he suggested that I make things a lot brighter as it would make things difficult to see, and the all the things I had built would be for nothing.

As you can the first image is quite difficult to see, although it did seem like the effect I wanted at first however it was difficult to see any of the objects I was trying to illuminate.

here I played around with the settings to achieve a better result I decided that I wanted it slightly brighter. however when speaking with my supervideo he suggested to make it brighter to guarantee that the audience can see everything. 

I wanted to adjust my lighting once I had added in the props just so I got the right effect I was looking for from the environment.

This is my final result of the environment's lighting, it's exactly what I was looking for it wasn't too bright that it would take away the effect I was going for and it wasn't to dark that you couldn't see anything, I created a flat sphere in the drain and added a surface material to it and gave the material a glow effect to turn it into a light source. I found things in this stage of the project experimental as It was mainly adjusting values and adding and removing lights get a certain effect, I think it went well I think it could of been a lot better if it was mental ray there would have been more realism involved.

Cameras

once I had finished all the textures I decided to add in cameras to start getting an idea of what the final outcome would be I was playing around with the camera and see how everything would turn out. I wanted this camera to capture the light source from the middle drain. I had the camera move from one side to the other, I liked the out come so I decided to keep it.

For this camera My main idea was to focus on the poster, so I wanted to do a simple zoom in. It was a bit too fast at first so I decided to increase the frame rate to slow it down which gave me the exact look I wanted which gave that scene a lot of emphasis.

This last scene was very important because I had to get the main character have a certain look. I wanted to make the face was shadowed in certain areas and the background pitch black so I wouldn't have any problems when it came to adding extra footage.

I had relatively easy process when animating the cameras. I got the look I was looking for and didn't have many problems with animating the characters.

Synopsis

I completed what was my synopsis, it was a basically a brief overview of the story wanted to create, I did include important events that happened through out the even. I split the game up into two parts which would mean there would be two games. I wanted the story to be about the things that happen, that the public don't see, everything is Fiction and original. I was excited about this project because it was something that was mine. the ending didn't have scene that would break out in war because the main factor I was trying to portray was the fact that not everything is revealed to the public.

I learnt a lot from this process, as I use to write stories before this. I understand that I need to get some more practice in on writing stories, in terms of structure as I did feel that my story was a bit over the place and I needed to learn to structure it a lot better.

POSTER

So after I had decided to create some props, I decided it still looked a bit too boring, so I decided to create a poster that would be relevant to the storyline so I decided to create an army recruitment poster.

This is the final Uv I created for the poster I wanted to give it that aged look I imported the image into photoshop and stuck the metal scratches image below, on top of the original image and set the blend to overlay which gave me the result you above. as the poster was just a plane mesh it was easy to uv map it so I didn't have much difficulty with this particular prop.

Pipe 2 texturing.

I decided to make another texture for the drain pipes as the ones I added were getting to boring and it seemed fake. I decided to follow the same structure from the previous drain pipe. I decided to try to add another Normal map via Ndo2 hoever I didn't like the outcome so I decided to stick with the just the texture I applied to the UV map.

Drain Texturing

I tried to UV texture the main drain pipes in the scene.

 I used this texture, I wanted to give the mesh a grity and rusty look to go with the Pipes. I think I found the best texture to give me the look I was trying to achieve. However when applying the texture It appeared to be distorted this could have been due to the way the UV was laid out. I also added a Normal map using Ndo2 to try and get more detail in to the texture however I failed.

This was the UV of the drain, I tried texturing the front of the drain, with a different texture to the insider of the drain. I learnt that I still need more practice with UV Mapping and knowing how to lay them out efficiently, and applying the textures properly.

Construction Cone Prop

I decided to add a construction cone because I thought it would add a bit of color to the scene as everything currently had a dull aspect to it.

This is the UV map I applied to the cone geometry I noticed the stripes were quite uneven which gave the final result distorted finish, I think this would have been much better if I had sectioned of areas on the top and bottom of the cone then exported that UV map like that so it I could use the selection tool in photoshop and just select the uv faces that I wanted orange.

Barrel Prop

This is the Barrel prop I created I wanted it to go with Crate and the planks of wood, I used polygon modeling to create the barrel.

This is is the texture I used for the barrel, I used a UV map to attach this to the mesh. I wasn't really to happy about the end result, the barrel ended up being pixelated and distorted. I decided to keep the barrel but just cover it up with the planks of wood. It was an interesting process as I had never dealt with UV mapping a circular object, but I hope to keep working at it so I understand how to deal with these kind of meshes, even thought texturing and UV mapping isn't something I want to get into, although it's something that I would really love to have in my arsenal of abilities.

Model Sheet Digitally Painted

This is the Model sheet for julius that I digitally painted it was my second time painting digitally, there are certain areas I think went well and others that I think could have gone a lot better. The torsos look quite boring as they look like they only have two tones. however i still liked that sketchy messy effect it has. I do hope to continue improving my skills as a digital painter! I didn't do the other character's painting as I had trouble getting around doing it. I also attempted to do the outlining in illustrator however I have never used illustrator.

Model Sheets outlines

I created both model sheets to get a better idea of what the two main characters would look like. 

this is deano's model sheet,  the main problem I see is with the second im on the left, the feet don't look right.

I like Julius' model sheet it had a decent amount of detail and accented edges in the right places.

I created both model sheets on photoshop using a wacom intuos 4, I think the outlines could have been a lot cleaner and sharper as the out line seemed to be slightly blurred. the muscle structure seemed to be fine with me although the hands could have been drawn out a lot better and the detail in the face could have been much more clear.

Primary Research

I conducted some primary research on my chosen research topic. I used 10 students around the campus as I wanted it to be a small scale experiment.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1fbWmA-ZOjN3ZgXmO2pD9Ti-domRdr5VYSv7PcmepRj4/viewform

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1fbWmA-ZOjN3ZgXmO2pD9Ti-domRdr5VYSv7PcmepRj4/viewform

these are the results and the questionnaire that I conducted around the university. this was an interesting experience as I have never gone around asking people to fill out a questionnaire its always been through the internet. I learnt that face-to-face communication is much better rather than talking to someone over the internet. face-to-face communication tends to build more trust with the person you're interacting with.

more environment props.

I decided that I didn't want to just create a scene catering to the trailer, but also creating a full environment, which is why I created a toilet and a sink as part of the isolation cell.

I felt this was a necessary component for the environment as it was a cell and it should have basic necessities. as I was building these models I learned that I was slowly getting a lot better a modeling, my polygons were more refined and organized from what I had modeled before. The pipe under the sink was modeled by using Nurbs that is the part I found the most difficult, as I don't have a lot of experience using Nurbs geometry. I do like the outcome, I used a basic anisotropic shader to give it that metal shine. I think it could have been much better If I had more time to spend on it.

skin trial

this is the the normal map for the skin I tried to apply however it didn't blend well with the actual model, I felt it was too small and the normal map seemed more similar too an elephants skin rather than human skin, I did learn to start having references to get a better Idea of what things look like.

Mattress!

I decided to build a mattress as I wanted to pose my main character on there, even though it wasn't going to be in the scene I thought it would still be better to build one as it would give me a bit more practice. 

I built this simple model of a mattress it was a simple cube and i indented the vertices on the geometry to give it that mattress look.

This is the UV map for the mattress I found it slightly complicating as I didn't know how to approach the different segments that were created.

 I wanted the mattress to have that dirty and grimey look as it was going to be placed on the floor, in slimey environment.

This is the normal map that I attached to the texture, I left the texture on as I thought it gave the right amount depth to the image, however when applying to the texture to the the mesh It didn't show any significant changes.

This showed me there is a lot more to UV mapping and texturing that I need to learn. as for the final result of the model, I didn't really complain as I knew it wasn't going to appear in the trailer, but I still wanted to give it a go!

Pipe Texturing

This is another UV map I created, this was specifically for the pipes on the drain, I thought as they are going to be a focal point in one of the scenes it would be a good Idea to make them look as good as they can.

This was another normal map I had created using Ndo2 however after seeing the final results I decided not to use as the detail was to intense.

At this point I was getting more and more use to the process of texturing using UV maps although I was only doing it on simple obejects, I still needed to challenge my self with something a bit more complex, I still need to learn to adjust the intensity in correlation to how it will appear in maya.

modeling wood planks

So I decided I want to include more props into my scene so I decided to add some planks of wood to the scene. the model was just a simple cube that I reshaped to look more like a plank of wood. I decided to start texturing it using regular UV's rather than applying substance textures.

I managed to get a picture of some wood from google images I duplicated the main faces so the would look identical I cut out a portion of the original image and added it to the edges of the plank.

 This is the Normal map of the plank of wood to give the final look a lot more detail. I used Ndo2 to create the normal map as it is a time consuming process to create the normal map from scratch.

I learnt a lot from the process of UV mapping and texturing as I have not had much experience texturing and UV mapping, although it has made me more curious to the practice although the problem with this particular texture/uv map I think the detail was to intense which that wood texture look unrealistic.