Bottle Animation

Today I've been working on animating the bottle a little bit for Ethan because the still frame of the bottle looks a little odd. It was a struggle to get the bottle to raise and spin like desired because it was doing weird wiggling. But, eventually Maya did something particularly surprising. It did what I want.

Another thing to work is to up the transparency.

HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN TO MEE, IVE MADE MY MISTAKES....

Nah okay nevermind, Maya hates me and you too. 

Music Thoughts

In response to the music Grace has compiled.

- Danse Macabre: too dramatic

- Anguish: kinda neat, unsettling tone but perhaps too sad

- Bass Walker: blues clues, but neat otherwise, I like the idea of using bass strings and a bit jazzy

- Colourless Aura: I like that it has fewer notes, I think it's effective but again a bit too somber

- Crowd Hammer: This is so fun, could be cool with the bug seeking out a drink, feels very western though

- Crusade: Gives a mountainous feel to the pizza climbing but might be odd with the other scenes

- Deep Haze: SCI FI BUG but no

- Evening of Chaos: too horror

- Fast Talkin: I like this very much for our thing (current fave)

- Iron Horse: Neat and I would love to use it but I think fast talkin fits the tone of the film better

- Mesmerize: too somber

- Metaphysik: too dramatic and emotional for what we're doing

- Night of Chaos: same issues as Metaphysik

- Oppressive Gloom: too dramatic and mysterious, feels appropriate for a dungeon

- Ossuary 4: Feels sinister and I don't know if the bug should feel sinister

- Ossuary 5: Nice and airy, conveys a large space and is rather mysterious but not right for our tone

- Ossuary 6: Drama, but too spoop spop spap for what we're goin for

- Quinns Song: Bug crying, too sad and emotional

- Spy Glass: Another cool one that I like but has a danger of feeling rather spy

- Villanous Treachery: I LOVE THIS BUT IT ISN'T RIGHT BUT I DON'T CARE I LOVE IT

Faves in Order

- Fast Talkin

- Iron Horse

- Spy Glass 

Bottle Colour

At first I was struggling with the bottle being far too transparent and had a complete lack of colour. And adding colour proved difficult until Keat came over and broke the transparency connection.

This is a bit blue so it was fixed. But it became too transparent again

If I go somewhere in between these two transparency settings I may get what I'm looking for.

Ooh not, quite. 

The suffering is over as we have arrived on the dawn of inclusion.

Bump Bump

As per Lauren's advice I took the model into Mudbox to add the bumps. The bulge tool will not work for some reason but the grab tool is allowing me to manipulate the model in the way that I want to.

After meeting with the tutors, the mudbox method of doing things isn't the best way. According to Keat I'm almost there with the previous method I had. The UV just needs some scaling.

Resquidging is working.

I am adding the dots further down the bottle.

So I took away the accidentally rendered in UV lines and inverted the bumps so they're not all weird and concave.

Yeah. I'm getting there. COOl. 

Displacement Mapping

For now I'm trying to work out how to add a displacement map to the bottle.

Ooh, I can't immediately see displacement mapping so I'm gonna try bump mapping for now. However, the bump has been too extreme in terms of depth so I need to fade it out. I also need to make the dots white and smaller.

I'm gonna upload a series of tweaks I make to the map to show my progress.

Wow this is terrifying. I'm having a really hard time.

This isn't a good time. I showed Lauren and she suggested approaching the tutors and asking if mudbox would be a better alternative than messing around with UV issues. I could even maybe try using the brush tool in maya to sculpt the dots after perhaps increasing the poly count.

Bottle progress

I've been playing around with lighting to see how the bottle reacts to certain conditions. I have in this image a basic three point lighting system for the purpose of testing.

Bottle Progress

I've been working on refining the bottle texture so that scratches are smaller and less frequent to mirror real life. I set up some lights to see how the bottle will respond in the animation.

I need to make the specular harsher and brighter on the label I think. Small tweaks. The bottom of the bottom is more scratched than the top because the bottom would've touched other surfaces more often than the middle.

The scratching on the bottom was a bit intense so I calmed it down a bit in the photoshop file for the texture which looks like this:

It's been rather odd to deal with because it's such a pale colour.