Production Logs

This week I tried to get my hands on as many shots as possible to set up their lighting and rendering. The animation was quite WIP, nevertheless it's great to see them in sequence to start figuring out color and shading continuity.

A 2,5 day week that was full of all sorts of smaller tasks for me. I did asset designs and gave notes on ongoing asset modeling, paintovers to figure out light and color for shots currently being lit and discussed texture lines and where we might place them to fill empty areas.

I spent a large chunk of this week on fixing/helping to fix various issues in our pipeline, Blender, our files and our outline tech. Other than that though I implemented a stylized toon shading method to add to our lighting tools and did a quick initial shading pass on the cat.

This week animation team continued working on seq 020, we are starting to call final some of the shots and being send to lighting. Also worked on some cat face poses testing the rig and giving feedback to Met about it

Spending most of the week working on the exterior of the rocket such as adding panels, hatches and smaller details. Also added a couple of props and changed the rocket air refreshener model.

A two-day week for me, mostly focusing on the cat's face rig.

Set up more layout shots but also needed to go back into previous shots and modify them with the updated version of the rocket interior set.

I created additional post-file-generation hooks for the shot builder add-on to speed up the generation of lighting files. Render layers and passes are procedurally set up to allow compositing of the outlines into the shots. The builder also links in a bunch of helper objects and nodes that Simon set up for lighting and outline generation. Everything is brought together in the compositor with some utility comp nodes.

This week I spent mostly on technical setup, such as discussing the lighting and compositing pipeline with Andy and fixing some of our pipeline add-ons in python. Other than that I focused mainly on the dog's face to render the expressions that Pablo has been working on.

I'm more and more getting used at doing several tasks simultaneously from giving feedback, updating the edit and most productively creating shots in 3d layout. Here are a couple i managed to squeeze out inbetween other tasks.

In this last week animation team continue working seq 020, more shots are on layout already, dog rig is almost fine and I've been doing a facial poselib we will be using in animation. Cat face rig is still WIP but i manage to start some face test .

This week I spend some more time with character expressions to help fine tune them for the ongoing pose library efforts and took a closer look at the rocket exterior that is currently being finalized by Beau.

Working on several props and the rocket exterior. The wings are blocked out for Viv to draw over so modeling can start next week.

Worked on the dog face, cat face, rocket interior rigs.

I worked mainly on making sure that the outline tech could be properly use on the environment and props and focused on integrating them into shot 020_0040. Also the pilot chair got another pass with the lines in terms of shading and modeling adjustments to make it work with the style.

With the rocket interior "default" set configuration finished, I resumed work on the rocket exterior based on Vivien's concept. Next week, we will iterate on the rocket exterior and wing design.

This week as mostly about creating the 3d layout shots, preparing the work for animation. Next to that we're exploring 2d effects with speedlines and creating a test animation for the final wing design of the rocket.

Worked on new shots for layout. Also needed to help update the rig for the Rocket Interior set, and then go back to older layout shots to update and/or fix them.

This week I mostly kept exploring the skies and cloud options so we can settle on a workflow for those elements. I also did some quick paintings/paintovers concerning asset/shading/character expression discussions.

this week animation team continue working on seq 020, and i wrapped up the face test on the dog and started working on the facial poselib for the dog

Worked on getting the cat's face rig working, polishing the dog's face rig as usual, and also got started on the Rocket Interior rig (see next week's log).

Apart from still wrapping up my work on the hair nodes release of Blender 3.5 I jumped back into the visual development of Pets. I mainly focused on the outline rendering for the props/environments and how we can set that up in the most flexible way.

I helped out with the robot arm assets and interior design of the rocket by providing paintings and drawovers for Beau and Julien and then also started exploring the look of the clouds. A quick paintover exploration based on Pablico's dog expression provided a nice break from lever and chainsaw re-re-rearrangements.

The modeling stage for the rocket interior is almost done. I'm organizing the file into collections, renaming, and unwrapping the set for Demeter to rig. After I'm done, I'll continue with the exterior/wings.

Worked on more previs/layout shots.

I started helping out the project this week to get the lighting pipeline more fleshed out. For this purpose I set up a simple shot to get the hang of the style.

This week animation team continued working on the seq 020 and also continue testing the facial rig to improve it

Finalizing the dog's face rig and getting started transferring the rig to the cat's face!