Creating the Animatic
Once we settled on the idea we were using, I then had to come up with a rough animatic, not only to better refine and shorten the story being told. But also to find the tone, composition and setting we were going for. I started by trying to find suitable music, that fit within the 30 second time set. Eventually I found a song from Inside Out, called – ‘Sadness’.
Not only did this fit the timeframe, but it also displayed the tone I think we were all looking for. Then, based off the rough story idea that was layed out, I began sketching out the storyboard.
I really liked the idea of having the ball remain centre frame, for the majority of the animation, only to be moved to the side of the frame when it had been forgotten/swept a side in the story. To reflect how the ball feels. This also meant less work creating environments and full body characters. In the animatic I made the setting was still quite obscure, since we were still uncertain as to what the environment would look like. However I tried to capture what I believed the composition would look like, as well as the tonal effect the time/seasonal changes would have on the viewer.
Overall, looking back I feel like this animatic was a really good first step, as it condensed and refined our story, and helped to replicate the feeling we as a group were trying to generate. It also helped with timings and reminded us to add Foley sounds etc to our animation later down the line.
Finished Animatic:
Finding the environment
We had some trouble figuring out the environment. After some thinking I drew up a more precise idea for our background.
Rachael also did a background sketch, we decided we really liked the metal fence and setting of Rachael’s, and the camera angle and composition of mine. So we decided we would commune these ideas into one for the finished animation.
Creating the 3D Previs
I then had the task of creating the 3D Previs based off the animatic. I started by animating the ball bouncing properly, then tracking the camera with it as it was shown in the animatic. To see if it would work and translate smoothly to 3D. Once I was happy enough that it translated well, I then focused on creating the scene based off the sketches we had done.
I mostly tried to replicate the composition, since the actual contents of the scene could be fixed later. This is why the rocks and grass etc are all very roughly modelled.
(Without Gate) I then further modelled and added the gate.
(With Gate) – Adds to the feeling of the ball being trapped and lost.
Ball deflating
This was obviously a rough draft of the scene, and with teamwork we would work on making it better and more detailed. As well as adding seasonal changes and weather effects.
The first step for me was creating better trees to use, that could react to the weather appropriately.
(Reference)
My Tree
I started by creating an organic stick shape, based off my reference. Then building off that slowly.
I ended up with this base shape. After some help during class I got started with animating the leaves.
Once animated, I duplicated the leaves and changed the time of the animation using the animation editor to create more natural feeling group movement. 
I felt happy enough with it here, however it would go through further tweaks and various smaller edits.
Such as adding textures
Adding more leaves and branches
As well as adding some keyframes on the tree its self, to make the season/time changes more present.
In one seasonal change in particular I made each of the leaves move much faster. I did this by highlighting the key frames of the section I wanted to speed up in the graph editor, squashing the highlighted section, then copying the squashed version to fill the gap made. As shown here.
Adding dynamic Foley sounds to the music
I started with this base song
However I wanted to add Foley sounds to it, to make it more connected with the scene, as well as make our story more immersive.
Foley sounds added
Once I was happy with these sounds, I began automating them, as well as EQing them. This allowed me to enhance or change frequencies to adjust how the sound interfered with the song. To make them better connected with the tone of the music, as well as to bring out more in-depth parts of the sounds, such as the rain etc. For instance, I was able to recreate the effect of hearing someone walk from left to right behind the viewer through using these tools. Adding to the immersion of our world.
Foley sounds automated and EQ’d
I was really happy with the finished result, as I feel the Foley sounds combined well with the music, and the dream like tone of the song was still present after these sounds were added.
Adding Samanthas Vocal Samples
“Wheres it gone”
“Oh no!”
“Wheres my football”
“Over There”
After a lot of experimenting I found that it seemed most natural sounding when I used two voice lines close together, however after doing this, the lines themselves didn’t sound as believable. So I pitched one of the voices and EQd it. To make it sound slightly different, and as if two kids are looking for it and working together. I really liked this change. I also added further foley sounds to sell the presence of the two kids more, but I still tried to keep the sound dreamlike by using various effects.
Voice lines EQd and edited on there own.
Voice lined added to final song
Although a lot of the work put in to the sound is barely noticeable on a surface level. I like to think that it adds a lot of ambience and makes our short much more immersive.
Creating the grasses/Bush
To create the bush behind the gate. I utilised pant effects. I first found the branch paint effect in the content browser. And painted a stroke. Creating a usable branch.
I then selected the turbulence in the behaviours tab, and attempted to see it simulate. However, it didn’t. I later found out after a lot of fiddling that this was somehow fixed after I randomly changed a number to zero as shown in the branches time attribute menu.
However, after making the branch simulate. I wanted to make the paint effect and its turbulence simulation less stressful on the computer. By converting the paint effect into polygons, while still getting the simulated animation. I followed this tutorial on how to create an alembic cache of the simulated animation and import it into the scene.
Following this proved very useful, as it allowed me to have large amounts of animated foliage without my computer dying. This same method was used for the grass.
These links helped with this process: https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2018/ENU/Maya-ManagingScenes/files/GUID-9221B2E8-7E68-4ECB-94DC-ABEB21E956BF-htm.html
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/maya-animation-and-rigging/trying-to-cache-get-quot-ancestor-relationship-quot-error/td-p/5670660
https://simplymaya.com/forum/showthread.php?t=39232
Grass
I originally started out with much taller grass
However I found that this grass would slow down my scene significantly even with the exported cache method. So I decided to try a less exhaustive way of making grass. I made a few clumps of ground, and gave them a grass texture as you can see below.
I then added the less exhaustive cached grass on top of these clumps, creating a much more stylised look, that utilised the camera angle to full effect in order to limit the stress on my computer. In the end I much preferred this new grass to the original grass I was going to go with.
Creating the grass filled park.
When creating the wide open park area, I knew I was going to have to be smart with where I placed each grass clump. I ended up using the horizon line and low angle shot to my advantage, as it allowed me to get away with only adding grass close to the camera, as well as stretching the grass the further from the camera it got. Overall I’m really proud of how the grass actually turned out, as I was worried initially with the earlier grass type and placing method I used.
Smaller adjustments
I added another bench, in front of where the camera passes, to create a further sense of dimension for our short.
I also took inspiration from the last of us part two. And added some small pebbles in front of the camera to better frame and compliment our camera position.
TLOU 2:
I also added the textures for the big tree, the grass, the ground and the bush.
Animating the finished Ball, Camera and Feet
Since I had already tested what the ball would look like through the camera while moving. I was confident enough to just focus on the movement of the ball. Then add the camera following it later.
First I blocked out how far the ball would land each kick, being considerate of how much time I would have to leave for the feet to kick the ball, as well as maintaining an awareness of how far the ball would have to travel to end up in the main area. Once this was done I animated the ball traveling in arcs, squashing and stretching from bounces, and eventually slowing to a roll in each direction. Once the rough animation was done, I then animated the camera following the ball.
One issue I had was getting the camera timing right for when the ball went behind the tree, due to the fact that the camera had to zoom out from the ball, as well as rotate for the composition of the next shot. Resulting in the camera jolting jarringly fast. I managed to fix this by slowly rotating the camera from earlier in the sequence.
The legs
The legs were yet to be UVed, or textured. So I decided to quickly UV and texture them before animating.
I also added socks to the leg model
Firstly, I highlighted the area I wanted to make sock and gave it a new material and colour.
I then extruded this area, so that the shoe beneath it was visibly wider. This quickly created the effect of socks!
Animating the feet
The feet were quite well rigged, so animating with them was easy enough.
However, due to the fact I animated the ball before I animated the feet. I ended up having a few timing issues, with the feet clipping through the ball since the ball took to long to pick up speed off the ground. Although this was an easy enough fix, its still a learning curve as I could’ve saved extra time, by animating the feet first.
Combining our scenes and assets together
To make sure we were all creating usable and easily integrated assets, we each utilised our own copies of the same Maya file, containing a simplified version of our scene. This meant that when it came to me combining all of our work together into one scene. I didn’t have to worry about really scaling or moving any imported assets. However, compositing everything together was a very tricky process. And there was almost too many finicky issues to document. Such as importing the rain, issues with background planes, textures not showing, and seasonal timing differences.
Importing James park area + ground/ Path
James ground was great as it added much needed bumps and unevenness. I did have to modify and clean some parts of it however.
Many parts where the ground would poke up randomly, I deleted.
There were also areas where the textures would mess up slightly.
Before:
After:
I also added a step really quickly to his path.
As well as bevelled the side of his path to make it slightly smoother
Other than this, James’s work was really impressive and easy to import.
Adding Jamie’s Trees
When I imported Jamie’s trees at first:
I wanted to make the fact that he modelled the branches more prominent, since the model looked really cool. I moved the branches down, and scaled them accordingly.
Before:
After:
After some slight repositioning, Jamie’s Trees incorporated into the scene really well!
Jamie’s Textured Rocks and Path
I imported Jamie’s textured rocks and path into the scene.
Path:
Rocks:
I very very slightly adjusted a rocks UVs
I think these turned out really well! I really like the mossy rock texture James used as they added a lot of colour to our scene.
Rendering In Arnold
From this image I realised I needed to add more grass, as well as fix up more of James’s ground.
Me and James decided to split our render times. So together James would render from frame 1 – 539 and I would render from frame 540 – 1250. I helped James when understanding how to import textures and assets. However due to complications with importing the grass I had cached. We were unable to successfully split our render times. Which was a huge shame.
Rendering in Hardview 2.0
Due to this, we ended up having to use the hard view 2.0 renderer. I added Hard fog and other elements to try to make the scene look better. Then began rendering. Once rendered I exported it to be edited.
Final Edit:
I cut a few parts off from when the seasons change, to make the transition smoother.
Finished Animation
I noticed that the ball animation looks quite janky in the final render. I believe this is because when I animated it, I animated it in quite a large and slow file. Meaning I couldn’t properly see/fix the timings. I’ve learned that the bulk of the animation should be done before any major details are added, therefore as an animator you can get a clearer view of what the final animation timings and overall movement will look like.
Overall, I’m happy with how our animation turned out, but I’m very aware of where we could have improved. I feel like we accomplished what we had set out to do initially, and that the tone and feel of the animatic, translated to the finished 3D animation really well! However I feel like we could’ve organised our selves more, and worked as a team more. Since the work kept piling up towards the end. Causing me to feel as if we each had to get as much done as possible in a short span of time in order to meet the deadline. I’ve learned for next time, to organise everyone sooner, and therefore begin creating productive work a lot earlier in the process. Leaving plenty of time for post production and rendering.