Hey! BunBuu! / 嘿！奔奔 Japanese Opening and Ending

like a dream

construction 3D template

Descriptions:
The 3D modules were made in Blender and Google Sketcup Up
The whole set was built in Unity 3D

funny Flash animation

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WIKI Flowchart with Deedee

have fun

"There is no particular mystery in animation...it's really very simple,
and like anything that is simple, it is about the hardest thing in the world to do. "
Bill Tytla at the Walt Disney Studio, June 28, 1937.


“None of us is as smart as all of us.”


“Greetings. I am pleased we are different. May we together become greater than the sum of both of us.”
- Vulcan greeting (Star Trek)"



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from John (project supervisor)

"A catch-up with film-making news.
1. Film Festival success!!! for "How Europe Got Its Name" It is an Official Selection for the "New Beijing International Film Week".
http://www.beijingfilmfest.org/NBIFF/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=46&Itemid=71

"How Europe Got Its Name" appears just over halfway down the page. There is a description of it in Chinese - we are curious to know what it says directly back into English if you can help us there please.
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2. Follow this link for the article on my website based on your mini-project results and report:

http://island.manukau.ac.nz/iafilm/shell.aspx?tint=2&mainDir=Content&areaDir=Public&subdir=1.%20Current%20and%20Recent%20Projects&file=3D_Diary02_StuProj.htm
This includes video of a trial scene from "The House of Seville"."

IT MiniProject Self Assessment Report

http://island.manukau.ac.nz/iafilm/shell.aspx?tint=2&mainDir=Content&areaDir=Public&subdir=1.%20Current%20and%20Recent%20Projects&file=3D_Diary02_StuProj.htm

Student name: Sabrina
Student ID:
Due: 07 November 2008

Contents

Objectives of project. 3
Current state of project. 3
Evaluation of project process (changes to scope or plan, client relationship). 3
Successes/achievements. 4
Challenges/failures. 9
Self Development. 14
Technology. 14
What you learnt/ would do differently next time. 14
Conclusion. 14



Objectives of project
The objective is to spend 150 hours to create animation for a short movie or create samples of “animatic storyboard” minimal animation scenes; I will create “Characters” and “Props” and collect them as assets for the client. Furthermore I will prepare a 9 minutes movie to gather metrics and help client in budgeting proposal.










Current state of project
The project has been completed. It takes 3.93 minutes instead of 9 minutes and 3 scenes instead of 12 scenes. 4 Characters have been made, which are Victoria, Daria, Murdoch and Sylvester. 3 interiors have been fully designed, including props and lights at different angle, and those can be delivered to the client so that she can use it for the future film making. Metrics has been done; I think it will give the client a brief idea about how long it takes to make a prop or how long it takes to make a 2 minutes scene. A full budget report will be provide to the client, from the report she will find how much she needs to spend for this particular movie and she will also find the price for each prop used in this movie, it will be easy for the client to calculate the price and propose budget for the movie in the future.










Evaluation of project process (changes to scope or plan, client relationship)
3D animation is new to me, so far the hours I spent is more than I expected. Especially for Carrara and Video editing. The target hours are more even, and I plan to spend 163 hours to complete 12 scenes, the fact is, I spent 190.50 hours to complete 3 scenes. I found the software is more complicated then what I thought and there were more problems than I expected, it took more time to fix as some problems are illogic. I think the problem solving part was a success. In scene 6, basically, the main problems are fixed, and the effect was turned out well.
In the original plan, I planned to start animation immediately after storyboarding, but in reality, I found that was impossible. In a project, it is always slow at the beginning; I need time to get into the software, to get the idea of how the software works, then to learn how to use the software. The productivities started increasing after week10. If I am to plan a project again, I won’t expect to go fast at the beginning.
The communication between me and the client was successful, because we have the same purpose and goals, client supported me with audio and script that was a great help.

miniProjectHoursbyCategory
HoursWorked
Target Hours 163
Total 190.50


Successes/achievements
Achievement for me was interior design, character design, animation and lighting. I will describe it separately below.
Interior design
From image [1] to [4] below we can see firstly the color has improved, image [1] was the very first draft, image [2] has more colors and I started using contrast color. Contrast can express the unusual world. Image [3] had more color and contrast but it was over crowd, so it looks messy and not focuses. I think image [4] was a big improvement. Color was stronger and cleaner, red and green made the contract strong but created a happy atmosphere.
We can also see image [4] has better lighting and layout. Image [1] is empty, image [2] has more props, but those props are not well laid out, image [3] was too crowding, and it did not have proper lighting. Image [4] is the best at the moment.


Image [1]
Image [2]


Image [3]


Image [4]




characters design
In this movie only Victoria was an ordinary person and from the real world. Daria, Murdoch and Sylvester are strange people in the building. Therefore how can I distinguish these people, give audience a strong impression of each character’s personality, the important factors are colour, pattern and emotion. Victoria’s clothes had plain colour and simple pattern, according to the script, Daria had bad taste with colour and clothes, so I gave her pink hair and on her dress there are big pink flowers on it. Sylvester is a costumer and I suppose he likes to try costumes on himself, so I made his clothes look funny, it has strong contrast and exaggerated patterns, and also when I listened to his voice, I feel Sylvester was an optimist, so I gave him a big smile and he is smiling all the time.

Sylvester




Murdoch


Daria


Victoria






Animation
When I started this project, I didn’t know anything about the software. I started from DAZ. At the beginning I could only use DAZ make simple animations, for example, lipsync, nod and wave hand. These animations made talking attractive, but if a movie just includes talking but no movement, the scene will become boring; I realized scene 3 and scene 4 have these kinds of problems.

When I started working on scene 6, I was thinking of how to make a scene more interesting when the character moves in the room, then my supervisor gave me some suggestions, he suggested I should make the character roller-skate in the room. I took the idea and made Sylvester “flying” when he is showing those props to Victoria, in the meanwhile the camera moves and changes direction to make it looks like it is moving with the character. It looks interesting.
Then I did some research to see how a director makes a movie, what movie language do they use. I get ideas and used to measure Victoria and reflect Victoria in Sylvester’s eye. Those changes made scene6 attractive.










Lighting
at the beginning, I didn’t realize lighting could make good effects, so for scene3 I just used default lighting, we can see from the picture right, the room was too dark, and the lighting was no change, lights were even, it made the image looks flat and boring.
When I started scene 6, I tried to use distance light, spots light or moon light. I found Distance light had good effects to make the whole room light, and spot light just made a range of area light, for example, use it as lamp, moon light was softer.

Challenges/failures
This project is a challenge for me. First of all, I don’t have books or tutorials to follow. DAZ is new software; no one has mastered on it. Therefore everything I have done was through my experimenting; my supervisor also tested it and gave me advice and help. It took me a lot of time to do testing, to try doing things in different ways then to find the more effective way. For this movie, scene 6 is more complicated than scene 3 and scene 4, but the time I spend on scene 6 was shorter than scene 3 and scene 4. It took time to learn and then get improve myself applying the software. I had many problems and questions while I worked on this project, I spent a lot of time solving problems, some of them have been solved, such as making the characters work well in Carrara, but some of problems are still there, such as, save function does not work in DAZ, so every time I opened a DAZ file, I had to reset all the settings and characters’ position, it was a waste of time, but to date I am still unable to find a solution. Some problems can be solved by implementing strategies, I will describe it later.
3D is different from 2D, in 3D I don’t need to make characters or props, there are ready made items, but I need to buy them, I have made a list of the amount spent, the total so far is US$78, which includes 3 scenes, in this movie there are 12 scenes, I assume if I am to complete this movie, I will need at least US$100 to US$120.










Platinum Club Monthly Membership= US$30
Characters
Victoria 4.2 Base=US$2
Victoria 4.2 Morphs++=US$21
Mihai Hair=US$2
subtotal: US$25
Clothes
V4 Morphing Fantasy Dress=US$2
Leisure Wear =US$2
Marie Antoinette Gown V4/A4= US$15
M3 Everyday Wear2 =US$2
M3 Everyday Wear =US$2
subtotal: US$23
Total: US$30+ US$25+ US$23= US$78


I have found some strategies to save budget. Firstly, I tried to use props already made by DAZ, then I changed the shape and colour to make it look different. For example, a top could be changed to a dress by dragging the bottom edge down in “Hexagon”, I also used the texture I designed myself, and I made the texture very different, so audience will focus on the colourful texture and ignore the style of clothes, for example, Sylvester’s clothes are based on M3’s clothes, the original one looks like old fashion, but after I changed the texture, it looks modern and interesting. Secondly, I made simple props by myself. I made a 3 storey building for the last shot “fire in the building”, because it was a wide shot and audience cannot see any details of props, so I did not need to buy a prop. Thirdly, combine 2 characters together. M3 does not have face and head morph, but Victoria4 does, in order to make Morduch old, I connect Victoria’s head to M3’s body by my supervisor’s suggestion. So I didn’t need to buy M3 morph.
Time was the big challenge for me. I had limited time to work on this project, so I used most of my weekends and study break. And DAZ3D is very time consuming, I will explain it below in details.
At the beginning, my computer had rendering problem, it didn’t render and it kept restarting frequently without any warning, as a result I had to keep redoing the work, I negotiated with my supervisor and project coordinator, after installing a video card the problems were solved.
DAZ3D Studio is new software, it is still growing, so there are some problems in the software itself, some of them could be solved by skills, but some of them need to use strategies.
Firstly, I would like to point the time I spend on rendering, importing and saving. For my experiment, Carrara took about 120 minutes to render 364 frames (15seconds) movie;
Import props from Carrara to DAZ took 6-7 minutes, as you can see the image at right side, the effect was bad;
Import characters from DAZ to Carrara took 4-5 minutes. The effect was acceptable.




Saving also took long time, Carrara took 2-3minutes; rendering sequence images from DAZ was faster, but DAZ does not do saving properly. Firstly, I couldn’t change location path of texture images, I had to keep textures at the same location; secondly, render settings and scene setting couldn’t be saved, so every time I open a file, I had to reset everything again.
Next, I will describe DAZ and Carrara’s compatibility problem. Firstly, when I import characters from DAZ to Carrara, characters’ skin had been totally changed, we can see it from the image below, it looks terrible.






Fortunately, I found a way to solve this problem, I imported the character first, and then I import the entire room after, now this problem has been solved.




As I mentioned before, imported props from Carrara to DAZ would take 6-7minutes and had bad effect, we can see the image below, and all props loosed textures.
Lose texture
I found there is a way to solve this problem. I render a JPG from Carrara, meanwhile I render a sequence image from DAZ, then I combine them in Ulead, it saved time and had better effects.


I used more than one software to do this project. This project needed software’s compatibility, especially DAZ and Carrara. But these two software need to be more compatible, for example, Carrara does not accept Head and face morph from DAZ, so I couldn’t import Modurch into Carrara, because Murdoch was made by Victoria’s head and M3’s body. But Carrara offers better animation, if I wanted to make Moduch waving hammer, I need to put M3 in Carrara, the strategy I used was I hid M3’s face as you see from this image.



There are also failures I met, I tried but I couldn’t make perfectly, for example, LipSync works, but it was not working perfectly. I think if I had more time on it, it could be improved.
Self Development
From this project I learned how to make a 3D movie from DAZ and Carrara. I learned how to design a character, design a dress, and how to create simple timeline animation, such as using LipSync. From Carrara, I learned how to make a more complicated animation, I found lighting is important and can make special effects, I also learned how to design an interior, and make it suit the character’s personality. During the project, I meet problems and solve problems, the process is valuable










Technology
I used Carrara and DAZ at most of the time. Based on the client’s budgets, these software have an acceptable price. Carrara and DAZ offers new functions, such as LipSync, which increase productivities. Carrara and DAZ can make good effects for a short movie. Therefore, I think for a simple and short 3D movie, DAZ3D is the best choice at the moment.










What you learnt/ would do differently next time
I spent most of time to solve problems and do analysis. I also learned some movie language to make a scene interesting. If I would do it again, DAZ wouldn't be my best choice, but I would try more animations in Carrara.










Conclusion
I think I did a good job in a limited time and with limited resources. 3D is a new experience to me, I was upset at the beginning, but I think I started get into it and make improvement. My supervisor gave me lots a suggestions, it helped me get into 3D software