Software Flexibility

          For my showreel I wanted to show that although my work is predominantly keyframed animations in Maya, I can also be flexible and use whatever tools or software I have available, so that I am not seen as a 'one trick pony'. It is important for people working in the games industry to be flexible now days and technology is quickly advancing and we have to show that we are capable of picking up new techniques and learning new practices. With that said I wanted to show the work I did on motion capture with the Xbox Kinect. I've therefore set time aside in my showreel to display the recording of the mocap, the targeting process and the final product after cleaning up the animation within Maya, and maybe even in-game if I have the time.

Kinect MoCap capturing

MoCap Re-targeting 

MoCap Cleaned up

The above image shows just a shot of the final animation, however for the actual final render I will be using a 3-point lighting set up (like I have with most of my renders) and having it without a floor. This is because I plan to have a different background once in After Effects, and so having the renders with alpha'd backgrounds means I can place the animation sequence in front of what ever background I choose. It just gives me a little more flexibility when editing. I did consider doing a render pass just for the shadows so that I could still keep them, but I decided they were not important to what I'm showing and so didn't do the shadow pass.

Alpha'd Background

Example of the 3-point lighting I'm using

Ark Gameplay and Animation Spotlight

          As part of the showreel I wanted to have the game I worked on for part of the course shown in the background whilst the animations I did for it were spotlighted in the foreground. This is something I am going to have to play around with later when compositing the video in After Effects (A.E.), but for now I have recorded some game play and have rendered out the different animations found in the game.

Ark Gameplay

With doing it in this fashion I can later choose whether to have a few seconds dedicated to actually showing the gameplay on it's own, but for now I think having it in the background whilst the animations are showing in the foreground to be the best choice. I may even have the animations shown in the bottom left whilst the gameplay is shown. I'll also need to crop the video slightly to remove the window border, but that is easily done in A.E.

Here are examples / W.I.P's. of the spotlighting of the animations, with variations of placements:

W.I.P.-2 Background gameplay, foreground animations

W.I.P.-1 Background gameplay, animations to the side to allow in-game animation to be seen.

I have the animations and gameplay as separate renders, so I think testing the different placements in A.E. will be where I come to a final decision on how to place them.

Rendering and Camera shots on the Ladder Course Animation

          I have rendered out the ladder course animation I made, ready for use in After Effects when putting the showreel together. I decided that because the animation doesn't make use of colours or textures in any meaningful way that I would render it as an ambient occlusion scene.

The A.O. values were eventually kept at the default for both samples, spread, maximum distance and falloff because I had used trial and error to see what settings worked best whilst keeping in mind the render times. I did however change settings inside of Mental Ray so that quality of the sampling was set to 1.25, with a Gauss filter of 1.0 to 3.0 as this seemed to give smoother edges, acting like a sort of anti aliasing tool. I did also think of using a small amount of motion blur, however I chose not to include it as I wanted the animation to be seen for exactly what it is so that it isn't taken as 'he could be covering up mistakes with motion blur', because motion blur can easily hide the small clipping errors or poor silhouettes in animation, or at least make it difficult to tell.

Below are two different renders of the same frame. One was set at 64 samples for the A.O. and one at 16.

A.O. Sample Value: 16

A.O. Sample Value: 64

As you can see it is obvious that 64 is of higher quality, and of course it would be. That being said, I calculated the render time for 64 sample, having 611 frames to render, and it would take around 3 to 4 hours, something I thought was too excessive and time wasting considering the quality difference between 64 and 16 sample isn't enough to justify the time. I therefore stuck with the 16 sample and rendered out the animation. I will take a second look at this once the showreel is complete, and if I find the quality out of place with the rest of the reel then I will re-render at 64 sample, as at that point I will also have the time to spare as well.

Camera shots

For the camera angles and shots I made sure to stick with the 180 degree rule. I wanted to make sure those who are viewing don't get lost in the camera shots because they need to be able to follow it without confusion as the whole animation is split into two parts throughout my showreel, which I need to make sure is understood.

Line of action rule (180 degree rule)

The first part of the animation has 2 camera shots. One shot is of the start where the character is climbing the ladder and the second shot is from slightly higher up. My reasoning for this was to get a good and interesting angle so that the principles of animation can be observed (most importantly time, spacing and arcing) on the first shot, and the second shot I found to be the best angle to allow a person to understand the continuation of the animation, whilst abiding by the rule of thirds.

2nd camera shot

          The second part to the animation, which will be at the end of the showreel, is shot with only one camera. My choice to use only one camera shot was made because this part of the animation has the character traversing the scene in quick succession, and I wanted to capture it all in one shot without the camera moving so the timing and speed of the character can be accurately judged.

Part 2 of the animation with single shot camera