Production Logs

This week I was doing much more set work to wrap up the Sprite Village work. Only some tasks are left for me now. Other than that I made some minor props for the Sprite Village sequence such as pine cones, flowers and leafes.

Lighting and rendering the two scenes 070_homerun and 110_rextoria was my primary focus this week. Together they consist of around 24 shots of varying complexity. Currently they are both getting various updates to improve the (lighting) continuity and set dressing.

Completed retopology on Jay. Finalized hair, hat, pants, shoes. Ready for the next steps; rigging, surfacing, grooming.

Rik and I finished up rextoria scene!!!

This week I helped put out a fire on Victoria's eyebrows, continued work on Elder Sprite's face rig, and made some updates to the code and documentation of some of the addons I've made in early pre-production, which are now finally seeing some use.

This week was unfortunately taken up mostly by chasing issues and bugs, to make sure that things are working. I implemented a user interface for the override system that I mentioned last week and integrating it into our pipeline and making sure that the underlying system is working properly took some additional effort.

This week I started haircut sequence. Next week we will have some more shots of others animators too!

I did not get to work too much on Sprite Fright this week again but the main task was again on the Sprite Village Set, as well as a bit of prop work for other parts of the movie.

Started the week by addressing a high priority 'rextoria sequence' request on Victoria's hair meshes; updated them to match grooming. Then back to continuing Jay retopology; completed hands, legs, jacket, and chain.

A bit of a catch up, but I've been busy between animating shots, onboarding new animators and creating instructional content to get new animators started. Check out the 'animation style guide' to see what guidelines we have set for ourselves to get the style solid and consistent

This week I've still been working on the homerun sequence.

This week I finished some open shading topics on Victoria, addressed missing snail effects in Rex's death sequences. I also started work on an elaborate python override system that we need for our lighting pipeline, there will be something to see about this next week.

Rigged many things! I am so far relieved that I managed to find what seems like a simple solution for the fannypack unzipping, but we have yet to see if it will be good enough. On the other end, the Cocoon rig relies on incredibly complex ways of abusing the Library Override system, so let's hope that doesn't explode. Also rigged some forest creatures which at this point is just a meditative exercise.

This week Rik and I almost finished the rextoria sequence

This week I continued to work on lighting shots in 110_rextoria.

A two-day week for me, that was spent catching up on some fresh Victoria TODO's after my holiday, most importantly, rigging her particle hair!

This is my progress from the last 2 weeks where I detailed the Sprite Village set for various shots. The lighting and character placements are all still temporary or imported from the layout.

This week I focused mostly on getting Victoria's shading up to speed. Other than that I worked on some tests and smaller shading topics. I gave the tripping branch a simple shading pass, set up a test of the shading override system and made tests for the tech of cutting Ellie's hair on a shader basis.

Continuing on Jay retopology, completed eyebrows, rig helper, iris shape keys, and retro shades retopo. Addressed request on Victoria's tongue, which also needed to be addressed on Jay.

This week animation team (Rik and Pablo) continue working on the rextoria scene.

This week I've been working on the homerun sequence, mostly on the first shot.

Hairstyle week! I worked on the disheveled and distressed hair styles for both, Victoria and Rex.

This week was occupied with two main tasks: Hair-styling Victoria and helping Paul (TD) and Simon to test and debug the caching workflow. While I ended up spending most on the time on caching, I managed to rework Victoria's hair completely based on the sculpting template from Julien.

Apart from hunting down and trying to elimiate issues with the caching pipeline, I did a bunch of smaller shading updates and tests and worked on the moss to make it look more soft.

This week animation team continue working on their shot on the rextoria sequence

I was busy animating shots on the rextoria sequence, next to that I did some facial expressions to test the rig of Victoria. then lastly, I made an instructional video for new animators to get started with the Sprite Fright rig setup.

I made some more updates to the plant and fungi assets and updated the moss for the sprite village set. More set work will follow.

More Sprite shots! Since animation is progressing at quite a fast pace, the lighting for the new shots was also blocked out. The snails got multiple color makeovers. We first tried purple to set them apart from the background (and the sprites), but since then we decided to go back to a greenish hue to make them more slimy and gross.

I spent the week mostly on more environment shading and elements for the rextoria sequence. Finishing up webbing the set, adding and fixing details for the slingshot tree, prop shading for the thorn weapons and going back to the snail system with actual animated snails.

This week animation team continue working on their shot on the rextoria sequence

A little catch up from the week before, I established some of the different runs and walks we're gonna implement for the Sprites throughout the movie. These will function as a base for animators to jumpstart their shots and making sure the speed and style are consistent. Apart from that I animated the slingshot shots in the edit, which you can see in Pablo's production log.

Started Jay retopology. Completed the head, separating it at the neck from the rest of the body hidden underneath clothing. Also completed the eyes and the teeth with its alternate 'square' teeth shape key.

Last week I got Victoria's face and the spiderweb rig to a testable state, and this week I implemented a huge amount of feedback on them and put out some fires!