Making Of,Production,Weeklies

Weekly Work & Tell: December 6, 2014

8 December, 2014 |  9 Comments | by Elysia Brenner

This week we were short a few familiar faces (enjoy your vacations, Ton and Sarah!)…but still plenty long on stuff to share. Here is the weekly, for anyone who missed it, plus a quick peek at the highlights, gathered below!

 

Weekly Highlights

 

A Totally New Animatic

The animatic has changed a LOT since last week. For one thing, it’s now less than 15 minutes. You can see the first 8 minutes in the weekly above, and you’ll find the file itself to watch at your leisure in the Blender Cloud.

 

Mathieu directs Hjalti and Francesco as they record new placeholder dialogue for the latest animatic.

Mathieu directs Hjalti (“Victor”) and Francesco (“Franck”) as they record new placeholder dialogue for the latest animatic.

 

Also updated this week (and not included in this shorter animatic) is the layout for the tricky dragonfly scene, which now more clearly shows that Franck is chasing Tara…and taking control of the erratic beast he’s riding. Hjalti’s latest (non-drug-influenced, YouTubers) sequence is both more coherent and more frantic. Note that there is no camera shake added…the camera is just anchored to the insect. Also note the huge difference in scale between the 10-centimeter characters and the 40-meter trees behind them… See the latest iteration for yourself:

(Still TBD: how exactly Franck gets on the dragonfly in the first place.)

 

Rad Rigs

You’ll now find Daniel’s preliminary frog rig (which he calls “Blinky”) in the Cloud! And Daniel also created this “making of” video to share the different tactics he used, the pros and cons of each, and what challenges (like the gaping mouth) still need to be tackled:

 

Daniel also created a basic face rig for Tara using shape keys.

Daniel also created a basic face rig for Tara using shape keys.

 

Modelling, Lighting, & More

On the jungle floor 1

Pablo and Sarah worked on making jungle magic this week, including these two jungle-floor renders by Pablo (using some assets from Sarah).

Pablo and Sarah worked on making jungle magic this week, including these two jungle-floor renders by Pablo (using some shaders and mushroom models from Sarah).

While working with the sunbeams node, Pablo uncovered the Bug of the Week...which Lukas of course promptly fixed.

While working with the sunbeams node, Pablo uncovered the Bug of the Week…which Lukas of course promptly fixed.

Sarah tweaked the log models you saw in the last weekly.

And the look of the twisted jungle trees.

…And the look of the twisted jungle trees.

Sarah made some colorful exotic mushroom models.

Sarah made some colorful exotic mushroom models.

Mathieu asked for more mushrooms, and Sarah obliged in this final render she made in the wee hours before her vacation began. Now you get that stickiness (and the bubbles) as originally envisoned — but there are still more details to be added!

The evolution of a scene, the combined work of Sarah and Pablo.

Manu has started working on some simple rigs for the objects he models, like the tape deck you saw last week.

Manu has started working on some simple rigs for the objects he models, like the tape deck you saw last week.

Manu's next task will be designing Franck's sheep island. He's started off by gathering all the imagery of this setting that's been used so far...

Manu’s next task will be designing Franck’s sheep island. He’s started off by gathering all the imagery of this setting that’s been used so far…and putting together a mood board of real-life examples to match (see the video).

 

Developers’ Corner

 

  • Lukas spent time this week following up on an idea that arose last weekend: to attach widgets to a mesh (using shape keys) so that they would exactly follow the mesh around. See the weekly video at 26:45 to see a demo of the test.
  • Lukas also did more work on the hair edit mode, which is much faster and smoother now, and now also uses the new brush system, as in paint mode.
  • Antonis worked on face mapping, a type of vertex group for faces (see a demo at 38:38 in weekly video). These will be used as triggers for the operators Lukas demonstrated (above).
  • Bastien joined us this week to help with the asset management project. This week he worked on small tweaks to make artists’ lives easier, such as making it possible to select and manage more than one file/category at a time, adding quick filters, etc. This is in the beginning stages, but expect to see these features fleshed out over the next couple weeks.
  • Francesco and Campbell have of course been hard at work on BAM. See Francesco’s recent update on the blog for more information about the ongoing testing phase, and check out a local-project-creation demo at 48:30. The next couple of weeks will be spent developing a testing suite, after which the new BAM will be rolled out progressively.



9 Responses

  1. At first, I thought that exotic color decision for this world is a bit weird. And now I think that it IS weird – but in the very good sense, actually! Unique and stylish.

  2. Andy says:

    I love it to follow your progress. The weeklies are great and those post about it are terrific. Thanks a lot to everyone of the Gooseberry team!

  3. Aidy Burrows says:

    Hi all!!!

    This is very clearly going to be very awesome indeed.

    I love looking at these. Great job as always. I can’t narrow things down to give specifics, simply everything everyone is doing is spectacular.

    Please accept this smiley equation as a graphical representation of my general review…

    0_o + :) = :D

    Thanks! Aidy.

    • Elysia Brenner says:

      Lol, thanks for the compliments for everyone, but LOVE the smiley equation. Now that’s science. :-P

  4. warren says:

    Manu – before you leave the laundromat, I think you forgot one detail…

    The washing machine brand!:
    https://www.dropbox.com/s/ill70iwvlg9jlpe/WasherBrand.png?dl=0

    • Elysia Brenner says:

      Manu says, “Haha, that’s a very good idea indeed :)”

      :-)

      • Warren says:

        Yeah , it would be cool, although I made it too large for the sake of visibility in the example- the plaque should be much smaller actually.

  5. Derek says:

    I think the grass 1b test is very very nice compared to the others

  6. Mya Osburn says:

    How did you manage to make a perfect bubble material?

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