Oh Noes!!!!11!

haha, its all gone horribly wrong...

I can't get the particles to move the way I want, the cameras are playing up which also doesn't help as the particles are only visible through cameras!

The solution is to scrap the large composition, and think about my film more intelligently. Using a series of cuts I'll be able to render x amount of separate movies that can then be editted within final cut pro. It'll make the footage look my professional.

Its just gonna take more time... which I don't have as the Youth music projects starts next week (which remind me must open another blog) and I have to do half of my self promotion project by monday!

oh well...

tj -x-

Camera path

In a huge composition I've plotted a camera path. When I figure out how to render it to a suitable file size i'll upload it.

tj -x-

Testing shadows

Because the emitter is essentially a solid layer the size of the composition, with everything but the particles keyed out I wasn't sure what would and wouldn't cast shadows. In the end everything worked out fine! Its just a shame everything after this fell to pieces...

The first test was to see if the individual particles actually cast shadows.



The next tested whether to not particles accepted shadows from other particles, as I intend to use many layers.



lastly, as I want to use alot of ripped footage I wanted to just make sure that shadows could be cast onto footage. In order to make the screen look more back lit I changed the light transmission of the particles to 50%, so you can still see detail on the screen just at a raised opacity.



I now think i'm ready to begin the final animation. No doubt i'll hit more stumbling blocks though.

tj -x-

Wiggle(x,y,z)

Now I have to get this swarm of squares to look like a school of fish, I played around with the physics settings, my A-level physics and (erm... unfinished...) A-level maths has given me a basic understanding of the functions, so I didn't need to spend to much time understanding the capabilities to a laymans level, although the possibilities are vast, and I think it'll be more a case of "oh that looks cool" rather than pre planned when it comes to the final animation.

I Whacked up the turbulence>affected position function amongst others, this means the squares will move according the the particles (other squares) around them, much like a school of fish. I then got into expressions, little pieces of programing code that affect the animation. It's great! you can use trig to plot the movement of an object along a path, and...

... and I wondered why they called people who used photoshop and illustrator designers and people who use aftereffects and flash geeks...

I tried to make the squares move more randomly, so I used the wiggle(x,y,z) expression within the position function, where the parameters in the brackets are that of the 3 axis you're using. The expression will randomly plot a path within those 3 parameters along the keyframed position.

But in comparing an animation with and without wiggle, wiggle was just to sketchy.





tj -x-

Injecting the animation with chaos theroy

My Fish squares are now all individual with the addition of ink splatters, i have about 90 of them now. The idea behind the ink splatters are that although they are all 'connected' within the school, their individuality shines through in their markings much like herd animals like cows... but not sheep... and I'm really not sure about fish.

You'll see examples of the new improved textured fish in the following animations.

I've decided that its a real ball ache animating each of the 90 squares though, so need to find a way of telling after effects to do all the hard work. The first step was to get after effects to generated them (the fish) randomly. The particle emitter effects within after effects are incapable of generating custom particles but this was definitely the route to go.

I found a plug in that would generate custom particles by referencing another composition. The next problem was getting after effects to generate fish with different markings, the default method was just to reference a composition and generate a copy from the emitter, so I told the emitter to reference a random frame from a composition that was built up from a stop frame animation, constructed frame by frame from the 90 or so different squares (and thus markings) I had created. The result was a swarm of squares (the physics need changing to make it behave like a school of fish), each randomly generated and different! I really chuffed with myself, it actually worked.



tj -x-

Maya

I went into uni on friday just to hand in a camera, that was all... Instead I spent the next 5 hours playing with a computer program called Maya. The reason for this was a continuation of trying to give the little green squares some depth. Maya is not just the name of my ex, its also a 3d modeling program so I was able to create my shapes in 3d space and then animate them.



I've decided to dump Maya in favour of AfterEffects. Even though it looks really good, Maya is just too time demanding, completely unintuitive, far too over sensitive and its really hard to push all the right buttons...

tj -x-

Fish movement tests

Looks like i've mastered Exporting...

Now to make the green squares fish like they've got to move like fish, so I ran some tests:



The first was a basic 2d test Then I moved onto camera angles



The slight jump is where the camera starts to move into the school, it's still actually moving, but the lack of background gives you the "rewind" illusion, something to avoid there. Then I added lighting!



the annoying thing about motion graphics is how it doesn't let you sleep!

tj -x-