Mikayla Fuehrer - The King and the Pawn

Well, this is it, the last blog post I will make about the creation of this film. It's certainly been a journey. I will include a syncsketch link at the bottom of this post to show the work I did this last week, but I really wanted my final post to be a bit more reflective of the overall product and experience rather than the final work I put in.  Looking back on everything, I think that the making of this film was full of so many twists and turns. I've learned a lot every step of the way though and I am so very proud of our team and what we have accomplished. I believe that there are things we could've done better, however every artist would continue to refine their work forever if they were allowed to do so, so I believe that what we've accomplished in the time we had is very good too. In this past year, we've endured a lot of things that maybe aren't always visible on the surface. We combined with another team and took on a lot of new members ver

Lighting continues to move onward. Right now a lot of the team is pitching in to help with rendering so that we will be able to meet our deadlines. We are fortunate to have a lot of team members to help out, but we have faced technical difficulties so all we can do is keep working and hope that the technology will hold out.  For me, I'm continuing to get my shots done, and help out where I can with paint-overs or trying to fix render errors (caused by technical issues) with compositing. There are some inconsistencies we are dealing with between rendering on our computers locally, rendering on the school computers remotely, and rendering with the school's renderfarm. We split this stuff up to help save time, so putting this stuff back in would not help with doing things efficiently. I have a lot of experience with adobe products so I wanted to try to step up to help see if there was some fixes we could make in aftereffects (or photoshop, I honestly found it very powerfu

And lighting is continuing, as always! For this Unit, I have taken on some additional shots as I have finaled almost all the ones from my schedule. Some of our team members are falling behind due to technical difficulties with the render farm, so I really wanted to help out where I can. I am doing more chess world shots as I have a lot of experience with those. I am both nervous and excited to be lighting my personal favorite part of the film. This part is what has always gotten me to tear up, so I really want to try my absolute best. It's still in early stages, but I feel as though I'm in a good starting place. Below the lighting videos are some images of some technical difficulties of my own. Our pillars unfortunately weren't UV'd in the best way before they were rigged. As I went shot by shot, I just adjust the UVs to give the pillars the look we want. It appeared fine in the file, and I rendered my shot to turn in. I was so startled to find that when I open

Lighting is carrying on for this next unit. I am working hard to address all the notes given to me and achieve what I can with the limitations of these methods as well as the short time. I believe that I am making progress. I have particularly spent time experimenting on sq200s120, and 140. We wanted to try incooporating glowing effects into other shots along the film to help make the chess world more imaginary and other worldly. This has come with some successes and some failures, but there was a lot of learning as always.  I'm really enjoying working in the death world, the effect is so powerful. It is also so challenging. I say that with a smile on my face of course. I find it a challenge to not have the luxury of light linking. I was taught to utilize this to attain the most control in the appearance of lighting. This allows for a lot of refinement. Without that, it takes a lot of time to position lights where a falling pillar doesn't fall towards a spotlight, as i

Lighting is going well this week! I'm working on my next batch of shots. It's fun because they all have different challenges. But I think it's off to a good start! Right now what I am spending most of my time on is sq200s120 and sq400s060. In 120, we are experimenting with adding a glow behind the queen chess piece that way we did in the green chess world. We really liked the effect that had so we want to try making something like that work for emphasis in the yellow chess world too. Also in s060, we have a pillar that is coming down and falling on David, so we really want a shadow to fall over his face to clue in the audience about like what is to come. It's almost like a foreshadowing thing. This one is definitely a bit of a challenge for me because I am animating and block come in front of a light to 'cast the shadow' but I also need to be matching it up to the pillar that is shown falling in the next shot. I actually haven't animated something in ov

This unit I had a lot of shots due for final. It was a bit of a crunch with midterms going on, but I'm proud to say that I got all my shots worked on and submitted on time. I had some fixes to make towards the end, but I think overall it really helped the work look much better.  The backgrounds were getting a bit too grey and the pillar's visibility was getting lost. So for each shot I went in and adjusted the gradient of the background sphere so that even if the camera is ''lower' in the environment, the viewer can still see the full range of the gradient. It was a bit hard to keep everything consistent, so I did have to go back and forth a bit but I think I succeeded in that considering nobody noticed issues in that area. I got everything approved except for shot 160. I just need to make the chess piece a bit brighter so that it stands out against the background. I know how to do that though so it's a pretty easy fix.  I really loved working on t

I was able to take and apply the notes I got in class to make the lighting much more ambient because there is no 'sun' or major light source in the chess world. I especially spent some time on the 'death' world scenes, with the green. I changed the color of the black king piece to a really dark red and shine green lights on it so that it would still appear like a black piece. Before, the colors made it seem like it didn't belong in the world. Changing it to a dark green made it blend in the environment too much and adding more light took too much of the black away and it looked like a green piece despite it being an extremely dark color texture wise. I think I got it working better than it was before Again, in case blogger has troubles displaying my work, here is a link to syncsketch https://syncsketch.com/pro/#/project/94008/reviews/601985

For this short unit, I really wanted to focus on getting this shot cranked out. It's short but it has an interesting transition into another one of my shots and I know we will need time to get that figured out. I went through quite a few iterations of this shot but I think I've got it to a place where the viewer can really focus on the chess board before the scene cuts. 

Lighting has a lot of work rescheduling but now we are getting into the swing of things. For me, I am taking on a lot of the shots in the chess world. We are using Maya Hardware 2.0 to render this world and lighting it comes with certain technical limitations. There is a limit of 8 lights, there's no light linking, there's a lot of dynamic camera and character moves.  I find these challenges to be enjoyable to tackle. The lack of linking requires a lot more time and problem solving for light placement. Working with 8 lights is sort of like having a lighting budget. On a personal level, I enjoy tackling this challenge and I find it exciting how much Maya has advanced because I believe we can really achieve something compelling without long render times. Anyways, here is some of what I've been working on. I didn't post all my versions because blogger struggles a lot with videos. I will attach a link to my syncsketch to help the viewing process. https://sy

Another quarter begins and with it comes new challenges! School is online now due to the Corona Virus and spring break was a whirlwind of moving and transferring files so that I can work from home. I'm fortunate enough to have a computer that can run the software I need, but my C: drive was 100% full so I had to backup almost four years worth of college school work so I could delete it all off my laptop and have the space to do work. It was a bit crazy for me, but I got a setup that works now and I can work from home now. But that is all fixed now and I'm ready to jump into work! I updated one of our environment files to have the most up to date textures so that any lighters lighting flat shots will have textures to help their work be more accurate. I wanted to share it with the class so they know to go in and get the updated file off the collaborative space. I talked with Caleb about this shot going from morning to evening. I want to tone down the glo

Finals Week is here and I am keeping busy lighting our film! We have a more established idea of where the sun is in relation to the house now, so I made adjustments to this shot. The first image is a render from a technical issue. It's not pretty, but I feel like it's important to show the technical issues going on since the blog is like a process book. I felt like the lighting setup that we have (which is gorgeous) was too strong for this shot, so I wanted to sort of tone it down so that the hand could stand out more without overexposing it.  This shot I think I've improved. I think the got the over lighting in the background working a lot better now.  I also like the lighting I got on the computer screen area too. What I think isn't working as well is the character lighting. I got David illuminated well to separate him from the background. That being said, I think its too harsh and casting very strong shadows. I got help from a classmat

My plan for week 10 is to refine the lighting that I've done so far. I had meetings with our director and head of lighting to make sure that we have a plan for continuity and a plan for each shot what the time of day is and where the sun is positioned in relation to the house.  Now that that stuff has been cleared up, I believe lighting shots in the real world will move efficiently compared to what has been going on, because a lot of confusion between us has been discussed.  For the chess world, lighting happens a bit differently because we are limited in certain areas compared to what we can do with Arnold rendering. Despite these technological limitations, we spend a lot of time refining the lighting to make it very appealing and we will continue to do so going forward.  I met with Ethan to get some extra help and I plan on sharing my work with him and Olive to get more consistent feedback as I go on the shots I'm lighting. We believe this will help them get

This week was full of shots to get lit.  This shot I tried to just refine some more and get a nice rim light of the pieces. I think there was some continuity issues though with other shots and so I need to go in and change the light source to the other side of the house. Also the textures for the chess pieces got updated so stay tuned for their new look!  This shot I needed to update the textures on because we have darker colored couches now and it definitely helps the focus stay on the character's hand now with the contrast there in the textures. I also wanted the audience to be putting their focus onto the hand, so I added a strong key light to it.  Below are really rough starts to lighting. I'd consider them more of 'blocking' if that makes any sense. This week I ran into quite a few technical roadblocks such as the character's shirt not following the rig. I also had some automatic render aborts that I couldn't finish the render past 2% c

We've got more updated textures for this shot which is super exciting! After getting feedback  from the class, I don't think the stabilization I was trying last week was working well for an audience so I stepped back a bit and refocused and took the notes from our professor and director. Because the sequence is over a course of time, our director suggested that it could be like a time lapse where a 'picture' is recorded at the same time every day, which means that the lighting can stay steady for this shot, solving the issues without adding on a lot of frames for a shot without a lot of complex animation. I think this is a good decision so that the shot is visually appealing while also being logical. I spent time fine tuning the lighting so that we got a subtle rim light on the chess pieces.  After a lot of look development this quarter, we are finally able to start lighting in the chess world! It's super fun to see the bright and fun colors of this e

This week I wanted to get a rough color blocking to help texturing the environments move more efficiently. I wanted to 'block out' the textures to have a focus on just color in terms of value, hue, saturation, brightness etc. Having this information locked down and decided on will also help lighting move forward more efficiently even if the textures aren't 100% done. The more complex objects are UVd and ready to get maps assigned efficiently.  For color schemes I wanted to present multiple options for our team to talk about. I personally feel that the last one is working best but I wanted to share other options as well since color is so subjective and interpretive.  I also did some textures of some of our smaller and simpler props and items. The office is more mature and serious so I didn't want anything too crazy popping out. I also wanted to add a hint of green in there because we are using that color as part of our color story with Harold

This week I juggled a lot between modeling, texturing, and visual development of the chess world. For modeling, I focused on addressing the notes given to me in class and outside class, as well as making tweaks and changes that will help our environments look more refined.  Some of the tweaks that I did were adjusting the proportions of things like the doors for example to better suit the height of our characters. I also worked with the layouts that we have to refine the composition of our environments so they aren't so symmetrical.  I also got some texturing done. I wanted to look for areas where we could add some color into things that were otherwise neutral in color. The vase and the office books were smaller areas that I thought it would be nice to have an actual color on rather than just keeping it all neutral. I tried some options for the phone to have color on it instead of being neutral toned, but they really weren't working well. After looking up

This week was definitely a change of pace. In addition to finishing up the modeling on the environments, I have tasks that involve making changes to the models depending on the feedback of our team of animators and layout artists alike. For example, we got rid of the center hallway of the environment to better achieve the reoccurring flat shot in our film. We also moved around decorative props to best suit the camera. There was also some aspects brought to my attention, like I needed to raise up the door handles to better suit the height of our Harold model. Originally, David was shorter than what he is now, so I had the handles quite low for Harold so that David didn't need to reach too high. With the model height changes that happened a few weeks ago now, and the animators bringing this to my attention, we were able to make changes like this to make the environment more ready for the animators. We've also been having our fair share of technical issues for the a