The project in my demo reel is Rock in the Road, a 12 minute animated short that I had the pleasure of working on when I was in college. It's finished and available to view. I hope you'll enjoy it in HD and share the link with your friends and family!
In a faraway land, a king governed his realm so well that his people were in want of nothing. As the years passed, the king noticed his people had become lazy and selfish, so he devised a simple test to show them the value of others. As a young boy unknowingly faces the challenge, the future of the kingdom is built on the strength of his character.
In the fall of 2007, Southern Adventist University’s animation students set out to create a three-minute short film based on a simple parable. This artistic venture, intended to be completed during one year, turned into a five-year journey. The result is the twelve-minute animated short, "Rock in the Road."
The scope of the project grew as the team became interested in telling a longer form story. But as students who started it graduated, and other projects were begun, finishing the short became its own “rock in the road.” However, professors and students persevered, realizing the completion of the film would benefit everyone who was involved. A small, dedicated crew worked on it between other projects to finish the film at the end of the 2012 school year.
Yeah, I'm a copy cat. A friend reviewed Brave. I'd been meaning to do the same, but I didn't put fingers to keys until she did. Oh well.
Brave was a fantastic, beautiful movie that everyone should see. More talented people that I have reviewed this movie, so I'm not going to. But I had three issues with the movie that I haven't seen anyone else mention. Maybe this isn't the place for it, but here we go:
(MASSIVE SPOILERS!!)
1) I never felt like Merida was the star of her own movie. Just when I was getting comfortable with her character on screen, Queen Elinor stole the show and never gave it back. The best example of this is the ending. Merida doesn't get to have a showdown with Mor'du, the movie's antagonist. Queen Elinor is the one who fights and defeats him. I would have loved to see the two take equal part in the battle, but it just didn't happen and I HATED that.
I think Brave could have been a better story if it focused on Queen Elinor from the start, or if the creators of the movie put Merida and her mother in a situation where they both had the same risks/rewards. As it stands, Elinor had the worst of it. If Merida didn't reverse the curse, Elinor would remain a bear forever and Merida would have one heckuva guilty conscience. So fairly early on in the movie, I feel more sympathy for Queen Elinor and I'm mad at Merida for putting her in this situation. I don't think this is what the creators were going for.
2. The creators didn't take advantage of this huge world they created. We get sweeping views of a vast country and we hear about other clans yet Merida never travels more than 10 miles from her house. (Ok, that's a random number I pulled from the sky, but you get my meaning). It would have been nice to see Merida and her mother travel to more places than the cabin and the ruins. It also would would have been nice to see more from Merida's three suitors and their clans. To those who would argue that you can only get so much into one movie, I call BS. Look at how many unique locations they had in The Incredibles, or even A Bug's Life.
3. Mor'du is the most random, USELESS antagonist ever. I don't think his character was integrated into the story well. In my opinion, his presence in the movie wasn't needed at all. If the witch who gave Merida the cursed pie said, "to break the spell, you need a tooth of Mor'du!!" or something random like that, I'd get it. As it stands, I feel like he was just there to add an element of action and danger to the movie. That in and of itself isn't a bad thing, but I just felt like he was tacked on as an afterthought.
Nitpicking issue 3.5: Why is it that whenever a woman is a lead in an animated feature, there's an issue with marriage/a man (i.e. Jasmine, Cinderella, Ariel, Belle, [I can keep going]) . Why couldn't the issue be something more interesting? Leave behind her dreams of freedom and leading the clan? Not wanting to go through a rite-of-passage ritual of killing a bear (which, by the way, would have been a fun way to introduce and explain Mor'du). Heck, I could have settled for Merida not wanting to take up tap-dancing. But no, the straw that broke the camels back was the thought of an arranged marriage.
It never fails. When I try to explain just what I do, people look at me like I'm eating a cheese and whipped cream sandwich. It's hard to explain to people that from beginning to end, dozens of people, not just me, had their hand on one shot to make it what it is. It's even harder to explain my title because my title isn't concrete. Depending on where I work, I could be called a:
Character Effects TD
Technical Animator
Hair/Cloth TD
Character TD
Simulation TD
So I think I can kill 3 birds with one stone with this post. What are other peoples titles? What is a Cloth/Hair TD? What does a Cloth/Hair TD do?
Before I do that:
What's a TD?
Ask 10 different people and you'll get 15 different answers. TD stands to Technical Director, and it's usually associated with a job that's, for lack of a better explanation, more technical than artistic (for example, an animator isn't called an Animation TD, but someone who creates rigs, a highly technical job, is called a Character TD). It's a common title and can be misleading because Technical Directors aren't necessarily directors and some studios don't even use the title. A Lighting TD can also be called a Lighter. An Effects TD can also be called an Effects Artist. It's silly, but hopefully you get the idea.
So, about who does what. We can just go in production order. This is the [simplified!!!] production pipeline. Keep in mind that many of these process overlap, but I'll try not to complicate things.
Pre-production
1) Story, Script - Who does this? The Writer and Screen Writer. I feel bad for not putting a description here, but it's fairly self explanitory.
2) Concept Art - Who does this? A Visual Development Artist. They handle character design, environment design, sometimes they even handle color. This is a broad field that can be broken down further. For instance, a Character Designer handles how a character will look. An Environment Artist handles how the environment, buildings and scenery will look, but it's all under the umbrella of Concept Art. In a small studio, one person can be in charge of all of this. In a large studio (Pixar, Disney, Dreamworks), you get more specialized.
Concept art of Merida(left) and Elinor(right) from Pixar's "Brave"
3) Story boarder - Who does this? A Storyboard Artist. After the script is [somewhat] finalized, the story boarder draws the story in panels, almost like a comic strip. For a feature length film, you can end up with thousands and thousands of drawings.
Some storyboards from Pixar's "Brave"
4) Layout - Who does this? A Layout Artist. They stage each shot. What that means is they place props, characters, the camera in the scene.
5) Modeling - Who does this? A Modeler. Modelers are responsible for actually sculpting/creating a character in 3D, using the 2D pencil, ink and painted character drawings as reference. Modelers are also responsible for creating props, environment sets (buildings, cars, spaceships, mountains, trees, you name it), and pretty much any object you see in a 3D movie.
Merida's model and hair curves.
Production
6) Rigging - Who does this? A Character TD. A Character TD gives the character the ability to move by "rigging" it, or giving it a skeleton and muscle system in 3D. Before the rigger/Character TD touches a character, the character is just a statue in 3D, without the ability to do anything. This is a very, VERY technical field to go into.
An example of a character's rig.
7) Animation - Who does this. An Animator. An animator gives a character life. They actually make the character move, react, all that jazz.
8) Hair/Cloth/Fur Simulation - Who does this? ME!!!! A Character FX TD. Character FX TD's make hair, cloth and fur move on a character. Sometimes, other things are simulated too, like ropes, chains, grass, leaves in trees, and some props. Depending on where you work, they actually construct and tailor the characters clothes in 3D. (Pixar has Tailoring TD's to do this specifically.) Sometimes the people who do character simulation are also responsible for scene clean up. They make sure that nothing is going through itself, things aren't jittering or slipping, or anything like that.
Animation tests as well as cloth/hair setup and tests.
Special Effects - Who does this? An Effects TD. Particles, dust, water, fire, smoke, lightning, etc., etc., etc. are handled by them. This is also a very technical field.
Lighting - Who does this? A Lighter, or Lighting TD. They're responsible for actually placing lights in the scene.
Left - Unlit, Right - fully lit
Rendering - Who does this? Titles vary. Render I/O Admin? I'll admit that I'm not sure of their titles. This is a hard process for me to explain, so I won't even try. This is an explination from Justin Slick: "Rendering is the most technically complex aspect of 3D production, but it can actually be understood quite easily in the context of an analogy: Much like a film photographer must develop and print his photos before they can be displayed, computer graphics professionals are burdened a similar necessity.
When an artist is working on a 3D scene, the models he manipulates are actually a mathematical representation of points and surfaces (more specifically, vertices and polygons) in three-dimensional space. [They] translate the scene from a mathematical approximation to a finalized 2D image."
Post Production
Compositing - Who does this? A Compositor. They're responsible for bringing together all of the visual elements that were rendered. Effects, animation, backgrounds are all combined into one coherent image.
Video Editing - Who does this? An Editor. Again, this is an answer that far surpasses what I could come up with: "An editor polishes and refines, he directs the focus of the story or article or movie along a particular course. He cuts out what doesn’t fit, what is unessential to the purpose of the story. He enhances the major points, drawing attention to places where the audience should focus."
Sound Editing - Who does this? An Audio Engineer. Fairly self explanatory, but an audio engineer is responsible for the sound and sound editing. There are people who are specifically responsible for sound effects though.
Did I skip a few things? Yes. Did I talk WAY more than I should have? Probably. But hopefully that'll start to answer some questions.
Know this about me: I don't like speaking to people I don't know. I'm award and tall and I feel like I'm looming over people like some weird gargoyle statue. But I really couldn't forgive myself if I didn't say hello. I pretty much ambushed her and introduced myself.
What I wanted to say:
You're my hero! You're the smartest, most talented, most amazing woman ever! I want to get a job at Pixar just so I can look over your shoulder and learn EVERYTHING!! o___o The hair and cloth in Brave was AMAZING!! Teach me everything you know. RIGHT NOW!!!
What I actually said:
Hi, I'm Melissa. You're such an inspiration to me. ...bye.
Still kind of creepy, right? But at least I got to say hello. I wanted to take a picture... but that would have been too much. Or would it? Yeah, probably.
...at some point today. I don't have internet access in my hotel, so I'm using SIGGRAPH's wireless service to upload my reel. It's well over 1 gig so it's taking forever, but it will be up by 2pm PST (unless this decides to stop uploading).
I am learning so vet very much! As a CFX TD, I was really REALLY excited for the simulation section with Claudia Chung (love her!). There are so many things that I'd like to test on my own like multiple hair systems on one character to mic really thick hair. We sort of did that for Steve ( the red haired man on my demo reel) but his hair is a series of polygons. I want to go crazy with actual hair.
I'm sure I'll edit this post tonight, but I just have to say again how amped I am. I would love to work in dynamic simulation forever and ever!!
I'm still working on it, but I ran into a problem that, for the longest time, I had no idea how to solve. I asked for help on CGTalk, but no one ever responded. Here's how far I got on my script before I ran into a titanium wall:
Create a UI (done for testing purposes, but as I add to/delete code, I'll update the UI to reflect these changes)
Duplicate the hair mesh, group it
If the hair is made of polygons, convert them to NURBS, group the NURBS
Get the surface curves
Allow the user to choose which way the hair is growing (if in the U direction, select all U spans and the leading V span. If in the V direction, choose all V spans and the leading U span. The leading span [or "root" as I've been calling it] is the span the hair grows from, and then the hair length follows the "growing" spans.)
That all works, and moving the original polygon hair and/or the updated NURBS hair effects the position of the curves perfectly, meaning, once the hair is rigged, you can animate the hair and the dynamic hair curves will follow. So what's the problem?
If a modeler modeled a characters hair on one side, then mirrored it, the direction of the curves changes. If they deleted the history then I'm SOL ("sadly" out of luck).
Note the image above. Both of the highlighted spans are technically the U spans, but because one was mirrored, U now looks like V and V looks like U. I've been looking for a way to automatically detect if the spans are uniform and heading in the same direction, but I haven't had any luck. Then I figured I'd just go for a dirty solution. I hate it, but I really don't have much of a choice. My solution is to have the user select the pieces of hair where the curves were going in the wrong direction and press a Switch Direction button. It would use the Reverse Surface Direction command, which is pretty self explanatory. In essence, it will switch U and V spans and all will be right with the world.
This is what would have to happen in my Switch Direction proc:
Store the name of the curves, groups, etc. that have been created for this piece of hair
Delete EVERYTHING the script has created for this piece of hair so far
Reverse Surface Direction command
Recreate and restore the names to everything in the proper order
Make sure everything goes to the proper group
I looked in the GMH script that a reader recommended to me and got my hands on it. It's a pretty darn fantastic script and I learned a LOT from it, but it has the same flaw mine currently has. If the user mirrored some of their hair, the script will fail and there is no way to fix it. But I THINK with the steps I outlined above, I can fix the problem. Now that I'm getting a little more comfortable with Python, I think I can use a mix of MEL and Python to do this efficiently.
One months salary later and... it's official. I'm going to SIGGRAPH this year! Will anyone else be there? I hope I get to meet some more hair/cloth TDs. I'll be there from Sunday to Thursday and I plan to do as much as I can while I'm there. I'm ridiculously excited! I'm almost ready to go. I just need to make sure everything on my list is checked off.
Finish new demo reel and upload it
Print business cards
Update Resume
Create a few self playing DVD's with my demo reel/other information in case someone wants it
Buy clothes that fit (yeah, I kinda lost 120lbs and my clothes situation is pretty crazy)
Print out everything I need for the flight, hotel and SIGGRAPH
Pack
Contact some studios/companies before hand and setting up an interview (done to a small extent)
Make sure my $$$ is in order
I'm cutting it pretty close with some of those things, but my schedule has been beyond intense these past few months so my progress with this has been slow. Oh well. I'll get it done.
If you're interested in hair simulation at all, I'm begging you to read this article. But be aware, there are one or two small SPOILERS.
I was very inspired (and intimidated) by this article. There's so much I have to learn and getting a job where people know this much would be amazing and terrifying. Well, that's the fun of it all, isn't it?
I think this document was created by a man named Joel Stutz, but I'm not sure. If I'm wrong, please let me know and I'll make any necessary corrections to this post.
He created a document that explains what 95% of the nCloth attributes are and what they do. If you're an nCloth novice, or if Maya's help docs are confusing to you, I highly implore you to read it.
