Category: VFX Fundamentals

Critical Thinking

Honestly, I have gained growth and a lot of experience in the process of making this graduation project. First of all, in order to make the hand-drawn style of 3D animation, I studied a lot of ways to make the hand-drawn texture, watched a lot of tutorials, and finally came up with a set of my own hand-drawn style production method. I learned about the use of aitoon shader, how to connect transparency maps on aitoon. In order to make the model have better light and shadow, I explored the specular in aitoon, and how to combine two normal maps to obtain beautiful hand-painted visual effects. At the same time, solving the leaves is a very serious problem, because the leaves always move around. It could be that maya’s solving system is unstable. Because there are so many leaves, I take the easiest option and just delete the problematic leaves. I spent a lot of time on this problem and revised it many times. Then again, rendering is a headache for me. Due to the instability of the school render farm, the texture in each render sequence would flicker and change, I tried many times, and chose to rent a computer to complete the rendering at the end. Through so many problems and challenges, I have a new understanding of non-realistic rendering hand-drawn 3D animation, which can help me improve the production process of this kind of animation. It is very conducive to my future creation.

The story is about a small flower growing at the bottom of a bell tower that wants to climb up to see the further landscape. The process is obviously not easy when facing all kinds of obstacles, can it stand firm on its choice? Similar to our life. Maybe the choices we make are not always the best, and we may encounter all sorts of questions and misunderstandings, but our life belongs to ourselves, and we should make our own choices. Both flowers and thorns are all the treasure scenery on the road. So just be firm with ourselves with a bare heart. Keep the passion and grow wild!

I didn’t have enough time to create a richer story, but I tried my best to create a simple but meaningful story. The heart of the story is what I think, is the most true in my heart. I’m not very talented, and I’ve faced a lot of doubt and self-doubt, but I still want to hold myself to my choices. It may not have worked out for me in the end, but I will enjoy and appreciate the experience.

This graduation project is a very difficult and meaningful experience. Thank you very much for all the teachers and friends who helped me.

The postproduction of the project required synthesizing the sky according to different shots and plots. My original approach was to import the camera from maya into nuke and make a model plane with a sky background. This method needs to accurately calculate the size of the plane to make the size of the sky image, otherwise the sky image will be pulled.

However, this method is not suitable for lenses with large angle movement, so I changed the method. I imported the camera in maya into after effect and used the functionality of the 3D camera to build the sky for these shots. This method is ideal for these shots with large Angle motion.

The most important thing in the post production is adjusting color. I had to adjust the color of each shot depending on the time of day and the environment. At the same time, I need to connect the tones of each lens. Fortunately, I set up different rendering layers for each shot, which makes it easier for me to adjust the whole picture. If I want to make color adjustments in nuke, I need to adjust the lighting and render settings in maya, especially aovs. This is very important because aovs allow nuke to take full advantage of it to get the best visual effects in the film. I often use cryptomatte in nuke. I need to import the rendering sequence of the crypto object into nuke and connect the cryptomatte. Finally, I can select any object in the frame to adjust the color of that node. Since there is no guarantee that every object will get the best rendering effect, I need to adjust all frames of the movie in this way.

Rendering is a very patient and time-consuming process in this project. Since I need to set depth of field for each shot and color for each object, I set render layers for each shot. Taking this shot as an example, according to the order before and after, the flowers and scissors are the first level, the vines and the bell tower are the second level, and the grass wall and the path are the third level. Each level has to be set up with its own model, lens and lighting. At the same time, because of the light and shadow’s connection between the objects, the objects that are not in each layer have to be added, and its settings are not visible, but can affect the light and shadow. Meanhwile, sincen the flower and the leaves are intersecting, I have to set the mask for the flower in the shape of leafs.

This is the last part of the animation. In this plots, keeper fails to catch the flower and chooses to cut it off with the scissor. But the flower escapes these obstacles and controls because the vine grabs keeper’s hand. So the little flower immediately directs the other flowers and vines to climb to the top of the bell tower. The companion of the flower sees the scenery that had never been seen before, immediately called the flower to see. But the flower opens it eyes and finds that they listened to the keeper’s command to go down, and did not climb to the roof. That’s all it had just imagined, that it had stuck to its choice and fulfilled its desire. After waking up, will the flower stick to its own choice or listen to the keeper’s command?

The difficulty of this part of the animation is to control the rhythm of the conflict to the climax and then to the ending. I need to use anthropomorphic actions to show the little flowers’ emotions from nervousness to anticipation to excitement. At theend, it should be stunned by the fact.

The second part of the plot is that the little flower sees the keeper leaving and quickly directs the other flowers to secretly grow up to the second floor. But the keeper sees the shadow of their growth. For the free growth of flower, flower is very happy, the administrator is very helpless. The flower thinks that when it grows to the second floor, it could see the scenery outside the wall. But the wall is too high that the flower could not see anything. At this time, the keeper climbs up with a ladder and wants the flower to go down.

The focus of this part of the animation is to add naughty personality and actions to the little flower, like a naughty child who does not listen to adults. Another point is to promote the atmosphere of the plots, and provoke the conflict between the flower and keeper.

The first part of the animation is complete. At the beginning of the story, a little flower wakes up in the morning, rubs it eyes, opens eyes and looks up into the sky. Suddenly, it hears footsteps, sees someone coming, and immediately closes its eyes. But when the man sees that the flower is taller than the grass, he cuts it off at once, in order to make the grass more tidy.

The difficulty of animation in these plots is that the flower simulates people scratching their heads, rubbing their eyes, and stretching. I simulated the movements by myself several times to determine the frequency and timing of the movements. At the same time, I did rendering test of still frames for each shot to estimate the visual effect of each shot.

The main special effect of this graduation project is the growth of vine. I looked for a lot of tutorials on how to make plants grow in maya. The main branch of the vine uses the curve wrap to let a long cone bend and move according to a set curve. At the same time, the growth of leaves is made by attaching plant brush to curve. The parameters of ivy and strokeshape can be adjusted to adjust the shape of the vine. Meanwhile, turbulence can be used to create the effect of wind blowing the leaves. However, it should be noted that this effect is not very stable since some leaves will shake. Then, according to the plots, I need to animate the vine’s growth with the Max Clips of the end bounds. Remember, cancelling Tube Completion can create better growth.

The grass is made by maya mash. I need to make a plane for the leaves, and a sphere for the base of the grass. Then use mash to copy the leaves onto the sphere, and use random to adjust the irregular rotation angle of the leaves and the animation of shaking.

Since the art style of the final project is hand-painted, I looked for a lot of tutorials when making the materials of leaves and grass. Because the foliage of the grass is dense, the effect of the material cannot be realistic, and the light and shadow have to be a 2D effect. The material is surface shader because it needs to combine aitoon and transparency. The model of the leaf is a rectangular plane, so it is necessary to make a black and white picture of the leaf shape as a transparency map, connected to transparency. So that the plane can be rendered with the shape of the leaf. At the same time, tuning aitoon’s specular and sheen can help me make 2D visuals of the grass.

I tested the animation and rendering of the flower in bloom. This is the effect obtained so far, reached my expectations, can give people a bright feeling. The little flower’s personality is naughty and lovely, I will continue to make anthropomorphic animation according to the plots.