Production Logs

I did a quick pass on the lighting of the Rex shot to pass a render to Vivien for a paintover and started implementing those changes for the shot. I adjusted Rex's eyecolor and started unwrapping his retopologized geometry.

There were some more feedback notes and a missing expression for Ellie's Expression Sheet and I started sculpting the cut hair version of her. There were also many more small adjustments to the sculpt and cleaning up of the file to prepare for the Retopology.

Using the branch library, I started setting up a basic oak tree canopy (combined with particle systems). A bush library was added and more plants were tested using the Phil lookdev scene.

Helped test the website you're reading this on, uploaded all this content, and wrote all these descriptions, and went back to using bendy bones on Rex's eyelids after doing some expression pose tests.

Another week of colorscripting and slowly getting the whole movie covered in paint! Also some paintovers of expressions for the sculpting department.

Completed retopology of Rex's polo shirt and sweater vest, lined up to facilitate rigging. Also, since there will be no cloth simulation on this production, parts of the body mesh and polo shirt mesh hidden under clothing were deleted. This keeps the character model light as well as reduces unnecessary geometry collisions.

In addition to the run test with Rex it's time to explore various runcycles with the other characters as well. In this case Jay and Victoria. I explored different techniques that represent each a different style of movement.

During this week I finished up Ellie and added all the sprites as a blocking version, first with balls and later with a simple rig that represent the sprite mass

This week I finished assembling the set for the forest run test shot and started working on the lighting to set up a different mood.

This time I updated the Ellie expression sheet with some missing tests to wrap up her model for Retopology and I updated the Sprites expressions based on design discussions & for consistency with Elder Sprite.

Among other things I started creating a branch library (from assets Julien created for Spring) which contains twigs that can be mixed and matched to create tree branches.

Addressed a lot of small feedback from animators, including a slightly different spine setup for all the characters. Improvements in the Lattice addon, added Widget Object troubleshooting to CloudRig, and implemented some cool experiments with Rex's face controls!

I made progress on the colorscript after feedback from Matthew and the team. I added a few frames to cover more screentime and give us an idea of the lighting during fight scenes.

Work in progress for clothing retopology of sculpt. Used "Edge->Mark Seam" on both polo shirt and sweater vest as guides to map out clothing edges, seams, and creases. This technique also works well to facilitate lining up the topology of multiple pieces of clothing in order to facilitate rigging.

To test the style of animation in 'Perfomance Shots' as well, we set up a shot with Rex with temporary audio. This way we can explore different expressions, head angles and compare animating on 1s or on 2s. The current state of the rig doesn't have a proper facial rig. These shots will be revisited once the facial rig is updated. WIP.

During this week, I tried another version of the sprites running on 4 legs, more like a wolf will do it, and I added a bunch of sprites to have the feeling of how they will look if they are a lot of them

In this week I adjusted the Sprites sheet to include some more tests and to address feedback. Elder Sprite also finally got some pose & expression sculpts from core moments of the film.

Started picking up Rik's animation test with Rex and assembling a temporary forest set around the animation. That will hopefully give us a lot of insight over our pipeline and the general lighting and rendering.

Rex's face retopology is done, so I started rigging his face yet again! And on the Friday of this week, I decided to stash everything I did until that point, because I wanted to try how things would work out without bendy bones.

I did a first pass on the colorscript to get the broad strokes down and establishing the mood and light scenario for most scenes.

Completed Rex's hair retopology of sculpt. Used "Edge->Mark Seam" as guides to help facilitate in following the hair's sculpted strokes' direction.

Excited to post my first production log here, and super happy to be part of the Blender animation team! For the last couple of weeks we have been testing the rigs extensively, exploring both the style of the animation as well as personal traits for each character in the film. A couple of variations will help us decide which route to pick. Does it blend well to have the animation on 2s with additional line-work, like they did on Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse? Or do we choose the more conventional way? What do you think?

During this week I continue working on different versions of the sprites running, also I made a transition on a run from 2 legs to 4

Worked mainly on the expression & pose scultps for the Sprites. On the side I also polished the Phil expression sheet based on feedback.

Addressed some changes on Victoria's shading, started working on Jay's boombox with some base shaders and set up a scene with the main lineup under uniform lighting to compare the shading between the characters.

I finished the film thumbnail and continued working on the plant assets. The bluebell and harebell flowers were made more cartoony and less droopy. Furthermore, the shaggy inkcap mushrooms were considered too sad looking so I gave them happier colors.

Improvements to the Lattice addon, fixes on the Pipeline addon, some huge CloudRig refactoring, and a script to keep the Sprite Fright metarigs consistent. Also tested some constraint patches and updated some Rigify patches. Lots of coding this week!

Assessed and prepared Rex sculpt for retopology. Developing checklist for readiness of all upcoming characters to allow for smoother sculpt-to-retopology handover. Completed retopology on Rex's head, eyebrows, eyelashes, teeth. Fit inner mouth socket to teeth. Addressed Demeter's request to shorten inner mouth and created an updated rig helper face mesh.

During this week I continue having more iterations on Ellie's run and also I created the first run on the sprites, to check the distance and the speed they were having respect to Ellie. Also I put the walks of all the characters together

Mostly finalizing shading for the 3DWorld cover and transferring it to the production rigs, making sure that everything works on the temporary topology.

Worked on some teeth proposals and reworked Rex to move his retopology along for Angela. At the same time I was working on the first passes of Phil's expression tests to finalize his face sculpt.

This week I worked on the temporary thumbnail that is featured on the Films selection on the Cloud. This included more work on the logo with input from Matthew.

Mostly worked on some Lattice-based addons that the animation department requested.

This week I helped to define Victoria's outfit and design her accessories in detail. Also the spider design slowly emerged after another round of feedback and narrowing down the options.

Starting on Ellie's running away from sprites, first I made a runcycle to define the rhythm and later I apply it to the scene