Adaptation: Housewife Walk Cycle

Housewife Walk Cycle

This is the basic walk cycle for the Housewife character. In each of the scenes, the Housewife walks in from outside the frame, so getting this right was pretty vital. I've saved the key poses using PoseLib, so I can transfer the basic walk cycle structure between scenes and save myself a bit of time animating what is probably the longest shot in each of the scenes. It needs a bit of polish here and there, but overall, I'm pretty happy with it so far.

Housewife Walk Cycle Front

Housewife Walk Cycle Side

As for the rest of the animation, I plan to do several passes of animation, blocking it all in initially and then refining it once everything is in place. I'm cutting it fairly close to the deadline, so at least if I animate this way, I can make sure I have everything basically animated by the crit, even if it isn't perfect in places. 

Adaptation: Housewife Blendshapes Complete

Housewife Blendshapes Complete

I've spent the day giving my Housewife character the desperately needed ability to express herself (in the words of NWA), constructing blendshapes making overall making her a lot less corpse-like. Other than some minor tweaks here and there (her buttons are misbehaving, for example) she's pretty much done. The Puppet still needs controls added and the strings properly figured out, but I'll sort that once I've got the main Housewife scenes animated, as the Puppet is only on screen for a short period. Below are the Housewife's blendshapes (Note, she has all the phonemes and visemes, but she doesn't speak, so they're sort of superfluous, but I've added them for a little more flexibility with her facial animation regardless).

Adaptation: Prop Modelling- Bottles

Prop Modelling- Bottles

The props are as simple as the rest of the environment, but detailed enough to distinguish them from the general environment. I've attempted to design them so that they are in keeping with the simple graphic style of the rest of the animation. I've got a series of boxes and jars that are yet to be textured, but they should be sorted and uploaded tomorrow.

High Street Environment Progress 13/4/13

High Street Environment Progress 13/4/13

Getting closer to finalising the environment now, just some refinements around reflectivity of surfaces and set dressing left to sort.

Adaptation: High Street Environment Progress 12/4/13

High Street Environment Progress 12/4/13

The texturing is almost finished now. All thats left is to dress the windows and liven up some of the smaller areas, such as the glass in the doors and the pavement area (most likely using a tessellated texture, as I did in the Kitchen environment). The circular texture used here may possibly be changed to something simpler, as I don't want it to be perceived as a graphic but more of a textured surface.

Adaptation: High Street Modelling Progress 11/4/13

High Street Modelling Progress 11/4/13

This is the current state of the High Street environment. The scene will consist of the same building duplicated along a length, spaced out and resized in slight ways to differentiate them to a degree. The repetition should be too much of an issue, as the buildings will be set a fair distance from the camera and out of focus. The modelling is pretty much finished now, but a bit of set dressing needs to be added. Tomorrow, I aim to finish the modelling and get the bulk of the texturing out of the way.

Adaptation: Kitchen Environment Ambient Occlusion Update

Kitchen Environment Ambient Occlusion Update

In response to Tom's suggestion, I've applied a quick Ambient Occlusion pass, just to see how it affects the scene. Its using the default settings in Mental Ray, with no adjustments to shadows or much else at this point (yes, I'm very, very lazy). Its very washed out at this stage, but when I refine it, tone down the shadows and harsh lighting, I can finally see the potential of the final outcome (which gives me one less thing to worry about. Well, half a thing. More a third of a thing. But still! Less worrying!)