Some CGI comparisons

I absolutely love this movie! I think what I love about it the most is the character development,

it really works, despite very little expression or language used, the emotional impact is carried

through amazingly simply by sticking to body language and of course basic facial expression-

mostly conveyed through the eyes.

In terms of technical aesthetic the movie is absolutely stunning and at times I find it hard to

believe that this is pure computer graphics- with reference to the early scenes in which wall-e

is cleaning up around the city and the camera pans out to display the buildings etc it looks

very realistic- especially when compared to later scenes when wall-e and eve are aboard the

ship and the rubbery flubber type humans come into vision.

I noticed that the video content played within the film was actually "real life" (unless i've been

totally fooled?) which reminded me of "happy feet" which used the same method of mixing

real life humans in with the CGI, this effect seems to work almost perfectly now with no jarring

whatsoever, unlike the other way around, when films use CGI for special effects and it can

sometimes be quite jarring to go from live-action to CGI and back again.

which brings me to another technical achievement in CGI, "beowulf" which uses CGI to basically

imitate real life, so the characters are human featuring realistic skin textures, eyes, teeth etc and

cleverly made to resemble "real life" actors in order to bring about a sense of familiarity and some

sort of connection to the characters.

From what I have heard, not alot of people liked this film, and so many people couldn't understand

why it was done in CGI when it was made to look so life-like.

My response to this was budget. surely it must save them money just sticking to software?

another reason besides the obvious artistic implements, or maybe not so much a reason but just the

fact that you don't have to worry about that jarring feeling that can occur when watching real life

suddenly jump to CGI, ie: spiderman, ok it looks cool but it's also a little irritating to me to see him go all

rubbery and fake looking as he starts to jump around, although visually quite breathtaking as you are

able to see things as you never have before, you are still always aware that it is not real.

FIRST CONTACT FINISHED VIDEO AND EVALUATION

Finished "first contact" video, now with sound!

I decided to come into college today to do a bit more to the video in terms of editing as I wasn't really happy with it just as it was. I also wanted to change some of the camera angles in maya but it wasn't having it, by not allowing me to see the key frames for the perspective, so I decided to leave it alone.

EVALUATION:

When I read through the brief and discovered we were making an animation about "first contact" between two characters, I was genuinely looking forward to it as I like to create my own characters and enjoy story-writing.

I was still working on my interactive story which I was really getting into and having fun with, (although now I am wondering why I bothered? it has not been shown to the group and I can't figure out how to have it on my blog) anyway, as soon as i'd finished that I decided to get on with my maya, yes I had been dabbling in it and drawing up storyboards, but was not ready to give it my full attention until my other projects were finished.

Moving on, my first impression of maya was "oh my god! what the hell is this?" I never thought I'd be able to use it and didn't even have the heart to try to be honest, I found it visually- a total eyesore, chaotic and far too "techy" I didn't even like looking at it! never mind touching it!

It took me weeks to get to grips with modeling, I found this frustrating and feel alot of time was wasted, (looking back I don't know why I found it so hard, I think I was trying to use too many tools that I didn't need to) 

I asked for help but it wasn't getting me anywhere, I just didn't get it! but after maybe the 6th week something twigged and I started getting to grips with it and a small surge of confidence came about, maybe if the interface wasn't so hideous I would have "twigged" sooner, but nevermind!

I was happy with my finished sperm model, I did attempt to make quite a few, never happy with them so I kept trying till I got a pleasing result, in the end using a picture imported into the software to model against, (wish I'd known that sooner!)

The next stage was to use deformers and handles to make the sperms "wiggly" and to also keep their tales in a swimming motion, this wasn't so bad, it was explained to me step by step and once I had done it once I found I was able to repeat this for all of my sperm models.

I disliked the rotation tool, every time i used a deformer it would appear in the wrong position and I would spend several minutes sometimes faffing about with rotation to get it in the right place, (as when you think you have it, you turn the camera and oh you don't have it!) I realize there were other view that could be used and a graph view, but I didn't like looking at any of them, it just looked like advanced physics to me! (all those lines and dots-yuk) I much preferred working in the standard view with shaded models, not see-through liney confusing wireframe!

anyway enough of that, on to animating, again this took a couple of sessions to get used to, but i found i picked up each new obstacle quicker each time, having got that bit more used to the shiteness that is maya! (sorry i just really hate it!)

I found that the delivery of this module was a bit too fast for my liking, by the time I was coming to grips with say A, we had already moved on passed B, C and D! so most of what I have learnt has been from pestering the teacher for one on one time as I just couldn't follow the group classes, If during the classes the steps had been broken down a bit so that we had to follow them step by step I feel I would have learnt more as it would have been beneficial to have done the steps whilst they were still fresh in my mind, rather than us all forgetting as there was too much information in one gulp.

besides that I really appreciated the one on one time I got otherwise I doubt I would have been able to progress at all. 

I am surprisingly pleased with the outcome actually, I had begun to design some backgrounds in photoshop but felt they looked "tacky" and rubbish, I chose to stick to the black background in maya, and I actually quite like it, the shadowed edges of my models blend in with it, although I had to add some additional lights to add balance, and it gives it a dark undertone which I like to have in my work anyway, I am pleased with the sound effects- I chose to have the jaws theme as I did in my animatic, and some bouncing sound effects along with screams of terror as the "Egg" kills off the sperms one by one.

In the end the story-telling, idea and editing have made it shine through as always, not my technical ability!

but to say it was complete utter rubbish to begin with I am more pleased than I thought I would be considering and am happy with the end result.

It's a shame we will probably have to use maya again at some point, I have no interest in 3D animation whatsoever, but at least next time we have to do this I will have some prior experience- if I don't forget! 

First contact finished movie

Here is my finished video "first contact" for maya.

To say I am not happy with it would be an understatement!

EVALUATION:

Follow the link for my INTERACTIVE story!

http://6567567709421278201-a-1802744773732722657-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/digitalparadiseproject/Home/Spritefinished.swf?attredirects=0&auth=ANoY7cq1neb9m6RH7pHRIPiex55S2_FDw3PJ6BlhzMKYzyPRvLCV7Vo1GQB4J09UqvKQGbHFAksLkZzAlqf2DA16fwICcXQ3AKnG8V9eUrYSNB4UFn96YKIRDlaqkAl67q7sHnAoXkA2dz-EWTlWpMXM39mOGLOg_gJmESde4aFw3-He1_LFOQxOstYj-ULqh79g673ZGPtEE4uE3bLrysa9nBtkDOLJZILkn9HKso1SBvHfvFs2r_g%3D

Second life survey

This is the survey questionaire we developed and put into practice as part of our market research.

Second Life group project

We have had some fantastic ideas for second life, starting as a house in which each room focussed on a different aspect from the government initiative, ie: sexual health, healthy eating, environment etc. but then we were told to focus on one aspect as this would be too much and that quality is better than quantity! 

we then decided to stick with general health and create a virtual doctors surgery that people can visit and obtain information and guidance on a range of health issues, although my gut feeling was always that it would be more appropriate for teens who may have sensitive issues that they are nervous about discussing with a GP face to face.

Our next move was to do some market research, this resulted in devising questionaires that we then planned to take to the leeds student health practice down the road in order to question patients to find out if they would use a 2nd life doctors and why, and also to get their thoughts on the service and why it might be useful!

However after asking the receptionist for permission we were told that we couldn't conduct the survey there, so we had to come back to college and question the students here, we also made sure to question staff so as to get a more balanced result.

After reading through the answers together we came to the conclusion that the service would definitely be more appropriate for sexual health issues concerning younger users who may find it difficult to express their concerns with a person face to face.

The contraceptive pill is now available for girls aged 11 up WITHOUT their parents consent, this is to try and combat the rising number of teenage pregnancies in the UK, however it is also rather alarming in that children as young as 11 are having SEX! we feel that at such a young age they are very likely to be misinformed, what parent is going to talk to their 9,10 or 11 year old about sex? sex education in schools is currently done in stages, between the ages of 11-14 pupils are taught about the menstrual cycle and how it relates to human reproduction, physical and emotional changes brought on by puberty, how the fusion of a male and female cell causes fertilization and how a foetus develops in the uterus, they are not taught about sexual intercourse, and more importantly STDs until they are 14-16 and even then the focus is more on hormones and fertility with STDs sessions being limited to one day or one week workshops!

so as you can see information is limited and very mediocre at that.

going to a sexual health clinic for information will most certainly be very daunting for a young teen/child who has symptoms for an STD, just think this could be any number of things which I won't go into but I imagine they would be extremely frightening for anyone, especially when doubled with the mentality of an 11 or 12 year old, that could be a very life-changing and scarey prospect, not to mention the emotional distress that comes with first time sex.

Our virtual clinic, (which we are now thinking of making into a "ride on" experience) will be light-hearted and informative, we don't want to scare clients to death but they need to know the facts, what to look out for, symptoms, information on how "Exactly" STDs are transmitted, this may seem obvious but of course someone as young as 11 may not know this, and of course we all know how "kidz" like to make up stories! 

here are some posters I designed for the surgery but will probably not be used now that we are focussing on STDS! 

H&M website

http://www.hm.com/gb/#/spring_fashion09/

check out this website, thought it was pretty cool! has shown me that website design doesn't have to be boring! wonder how this was done?

Maya scene 2

This is the 2nd scene in which the sperms are making their way toward the egg!

Salmon fingers!

I Love this advert! saw it the other day and couldn't stop laughing! stuff like this makes me wanna go into advertising cause i always have lots of ideas. Oh, I just watched it the whole way through and realized it's not the ad from the TV! obviously! lol but this is still funny, in the TV ad the 2 male fishfingers faint when she takes off her crumby outer skin! then after the "birdseye bit" one of them leans up to the other and says he wasn't expecting that! I think the TV add is funnier, I don't see how adding some swear words makes it any funnier, but I did laugh cause I wasn't expecting it, but that's it, it's not funny anymore but the original still holds it's "laugh appeal" for me anyway...

2nd life modelling

The three of us, i'm the pink cat! shame you can't see me properly! Hoi Kam's bunny makes me wanna cry it's so cool!

my cat talking to a dinosaur!

Experimenting with my staff by duplicating it and attaching it to different body parts!

my poor excuse for a top hat, it's just a black cylinder on my head! hardly a hat!

my staff! which i think looks quite decent! (played with different textures)

the first thing I modelled! I was petrified! lol don't know what it is meant to be!

Well I didn't get into the modelling aspect of 2nd life right away as you can probably guess! seeing as I HATE maya! and 3d modelling in general, but I had another go at it last week, (forgot to blog about!) and made myself a cat suit! which is not brilliant but gave me a chance to experiment and practice with the modelling system, camera angles, etc! It's much better than horrid maya! eugh! (can't even say or type maya without cringing) Anyway here are some shots of things that I have modelled so far in 2nd life!

2nd life

how cool?!!!

OOh look an ambulance! but where are the patients? awww, i wanna see blood and gore! hehe think I play too many games, but  Ican't help but look at 2nd life as a game!

These empty beds would look better if they had dying virtual patients on them....

Posters....

We got together in our group today to discuss our project and come up with some ideas, the first thing we thought of was to design a house that people can visit in 2nd life and it would have interactive rooms each focussing on a different area of personal health, ie: Kitchen for healthy eating, bedroom for sexual health, bathroom for personal hygiene etc. but after discussing this with anna we discovered that we should only focus on one area as there will be alot to do, research, modelling, moodboards, planning, themes, slogans, logos, posters to design, textures etc. so we have decided to focus on one area.

Then we looked at doctors surgeries, dentists and the NHS and decided it would be good if we had a 2nd life doctors surgery in which maybe young people come come for information and guidance on a range of health issues. This would be mostly beneficial to those that may be worried about speaking face to face with a GP about embarrassing matters, or even for those who don't have the time to go to the doctors or can't get an appointment in time, rather than looking through pages and pages of text for information users can visit our virtual surgery where they can ask questions directly and get answers from one of our virtual doctors or nurses. This could be done by either pre-programming set questions and answers or by having live health officials actually working there and giving live responses.

I think that sexual health would be something that users would want to enquire about the most, simply because it is the most awkward subject for them to talk about and this way may be easier for them, anyone from the age of 15 upwards can come here for information, or maybe younger? but that is where market research comes in, we plan on making questionaires to give out to students and young people, or to have them answer the questions on the spot, to find out if they would use the service and what they might use it for, or what they think the majority of young people would want it for.

We need to carry out this research to assertain how this service would be beneficial to users and if the users themselves feel it would be a useful service?

typing NHS into 2nd life we found that there was already a london based NHS service, which surprised me as I didn't think there would be anything like that on 2nd life! after looking around we saw that some of the ideas we had, ie: having posters and webpage links were already in place, but what it was lacking was interest, interactivity, fun! yes we need to make it fun or people will not want to go there as it will just be another 3d world, we felt that nurses should have been walking around for you to maybe interact with, it would have been fun to see patients being rushed in on trolleys, (as we were in an A&E section) the whole place seemed a bit dead and boring, it was cool that they had coffee machines etc, but I kinda felt, why walk all over the place for information? surely it would be easier and more accesible on google? 

so we will have to make sure our virtual world has character, vibrance and holds visitors interests whilst giving them useful information at the same time! so maybe we could make a game out of it? 

we have all decided to do individual research over the weekend and then bring it all in on monday so we can develop it further as a group. 

I will be designing questionaires in the hope to find out the main reasons young people visit the GP, and what issues they may find easier talking about virtually, and if they find this idea appealing or not. 

The 3 of us in our group on our empty land! this will soon hold a masterpiece of design!

5 Sperms!

this is it now, I can't make hundreds, so here are the final 5, each with own color and swim style!

I will only have next week now to animate them and provide the interaction with the egg. I stopped doing my flash animatic half-way through because it was taking up too much time, and i'm not working "exactly" to a storyboard anyway, this is because I am such a novice with maya, anything could go wrong, and due to my limited "skills" and time limit more importantly I am just going with the flow, if something works then I'm leaving it in! if it doesn't it's going! I am not expert enough to stick 100% to my storyboard, I just have to do what I can, and if that means I can't make them have a fight, i will have to do something simpler, etc etc.

Anyway gotta go! here's a screen shot! all the animation for next week! 

This is wicked!

I wish I could produce something like this! it's awesome! 

it's the opposite to my idea, as my egg ultimately kills the 

sperm and doesn't let him in!

I like the way they turn their heads to look at him, it's brilliant! 

and the way he moves in a sophisticated swagger, excellent. 

It has made me think about the sizing, I was having my eggs 

and the sperm almost the same size and a sperm to an egg, 

but in fact the egg should be massive in comparison, with

hundreds of sperms around it. 

so that's something to think about. 

I might make it more realistic...

3 swimming sperms!

Just thought I'd upload a picture of my 3 swimming sperms! I am very pleased with them and never thought I would make it to this stage! I have hope that I can get a bit further, but 2 weeks! gah!

well I will just take it one step at at time and get as much done and to the best of my ability, that's all I can do!

Characterisation maya

Here are 2 Sperms swimming along in maya, the one on the left has a lazy side to side swing and the one on the right, 

(not far right) moves fast and is more squiggly! I noticed how this gives them different charectoristics, (I keep spelling that wrong I know!)

the fast one has an almost cute appeal because of the way it is scurrying along, whereas the slower one seems more dominating and has

a "jaws" kind of creep, it seems more menacing!

I am going to make a few more giving each a different movement, different shades in color and I may alter the shapes slightly.

Then its on to making them swim around on the screen and moving on into other scenes!

Maya Animated Sperm!

well I have finally come up with a sperm model that I like, I got an image and imported it into maya which I then used to model the sperm off of. This has worked out much better than previous attempts! (see images below)

I have added a sine handel and altered the wave length, amplitude, low bound and high bound and then have animated it by keying the offset in various positions.

The above screenshot shows the animated sperm on the far right and 2 duplicates which I am going to animate the same way giving them slight differences for characterisation.

I am not too worried about the egg yet as it will just be a sphere that will turn and bounce. the final scene will be the trickiest as I will have to flatten the sperm as the egg jumps on top of it!

previous models: 

Whole Body Vibration Technology

WBV? I was looking at this a few weeks ago, hearing that it tones you up, improves cellulite, aids weight loss, makes you feel good by releasing certain chemicals in your body and brain, increases muscle, circulation, strength, and one study even claimed that it reduces the signs of aging! 

We have them in my gym, the power plate pro which are the leading UK brand in this technology at the moment, the commercial plates they manufacture cost around £6,000! they also do home versions for a little less, promising to bring the same benefits for you in the home.

how does it work? well apparently the Vibrations cause all of the muscles in your body to contract using 6 times your body weight as resistance, (something to do with the intensity setting you put it on) and apparently giving you an hours workout at the gym in 10 minutes!

It was first developed and used by the Russians who used it as an exercise tool for astronauts to use in deep space to help protect them from muscle and bone mass loss, (gravitational force in space is minimal therefore muscles and bones are not loaded as they are on earth) 

There are different types of plate, tri-plainer which basically stays in a static position moving up and down thus vibrating all of your body at the same time, and there is oscillating which moves in a see-saw like motion lifting one side of your body at a time, which is alleged to be safer as there is less impact on your spine, I don't think this is true however, I think it is just a gimmick to get you to buy the oscillating type as these are usually the cheaper imported "mass-produced" versions that are sold to individual companies who then slap their logo onto it and sell off as their own for their own set price, (I have seen hundreds like this on e bay and amazon!)

I would say it is a matter of personal comfort, I tried the tri-plainer version in the gym and didn't like the head vibrations I was getting, and have been having headaches ever since so I would go for the oscillating platform, however if i buy one it will have to be heavy duty and expensive!

But after much research I have decided that maybe they don't really work? I think they are a bit of a gimmick, especially with sales pitches like: "If madonna has one you can have on!" blah blah blah! 

I guess they work in conjunction with exercise and diet but not as they are being marketed as some miracle machine.

Second life...

We have been modeling today, like last week, only thing is last week my hard-drive crashed and I had to go back to an older version of my flash project and get it back to where it was! as that day was the deadline I spent the whole day working on that as I couldn't do any of it at home and did not want to spend days catching up so I basically did it through the second life lesson therfore missing out on some modeling basics, but I thought it better to just catch that up later than loose marks on my flash as it was now being handed in late!

anyway today we had to make a T-shirt, which I sort of got the hang of but want to make a better one before I upload it, then we made a top hat and then a staff, or lollypop in my case! it took me a while and my model's were not as good as everyone else's! but in the end I think I made a decent stick, then I decided to make my Avatar fat like me and have changed her hair and clothes, I prefer the way she looks now though as at least she looks a little more interesting! the first just looked too "normal"! 

Stills from my Interactive story