Soliloquy of Stars: Final Sprint

 Well, we've made it to the end folks. This sprint was a rollercoaster of emotions, it literally felt like this:

We start this sprint off with me trying to troubleshoot the mocap data, and figure out why the cleaned data wasn't matching the mocap data in the sequencer. I noticed that the frame rate of the mocap data in the project was at the original 120 fps that motion data is captured at. After hours of trying different solutions like changing the frame rate of each mocap section in Motion Builder and exporting them to unreal, and re-baking the animation to a higher frame rate, I came to the unfortunate realization that once you plot animation back to the skeleton in MoBu, you can't go back. Basically the updated animation was set to 30 fps, but the animation we had timed our entire cinematic around was set to 120 fps. This meant that all the shots, vfx, and lighting sequences were no longer in the right spot and had to be redone. Yeah, not great. 

Troubleshooting RAHHH

So with the help of my goated project lead Jules, we spent a half day re-timing the cinematic. Once this was complete, I helped set up a test render so we could catch any other errors with the project before the final render. And then, between the test and final render, I spent the rest of the time cleaning up my mocap section to the best of my ability. I then added everyone's sections together using the Story tool in Motion Builder, and placed it in engine for the final render. The mocap isn't perfect by any means, but considering the time we had I'm proud of everyone for their efforts!

Overall, there's been a LOT of hiccups throughout the duration of this project, but I'm proud of the product we created as a team. 

Soliloquy of Stars: Sprint 5 Delivery

 For this sprint, I tried to focus on mocap cleanup and getting my section of the data as cleaned as possible for this update. I couldn't work on it as much as I was out of town for the first week, and also answering a lot of questions from my colleagues about their tasks. I had to meet with a lot of different departments to review their work. For example, I had to check the lighting setups for each shot, as well as review the vfx placements by shot in the sequencer. 

Once, I got the mocap sections from my other animators, I had to put together the three sections of data using the story tool in Motion Builder. For the first character, the Black Hole, I was able to get all the sections blended together and exported as one file. For the Star character though, I ran into a ton of issues. With Emily's mocap section, somehow there's a namespace issue where the star's mocap isn't named the same as the star's skeleton, so the character doesn't map to the animated data and stays in a T pose. With my mocap section, there's no namespace issue, but for some reason the data still won't attach to the character so he also stays in a T pose. 

I couldn't figure out what to do for the star, so I figured I'd just put the Black Hole's cleaned mocap section in engine to show that progress has been made. However, when I did this, for some reason the Black Hole's timing is different than the original data, so it's not synced to the shots or the vfx placements. It seems like the data slows down in the middle of the dance?

Basically, there were enough problems that I didn't feel comfortable pushing these changes, so there isn't an update for the mocap in engine this sprint. 

This weekend and next week, my plan is to figure out these issues. 

:(

Mocap Attempts

Soliloquy of Stars: Sprint 4 Delivery

 For this sprint, we really focused on getting everything in engine and starting to get the vfx into the sequencer. One of the first things I did was make a document for the vfx artists called VFX Placements, it showed them what shot to place their effect, as well as what specific frame I wanted the effect to play or stop. It also had a column for our lighting artist indicating what colors we wanted the environment to be at certain points throughout the cinematic. 

Speaking of the sequencer, I went shot by shot and set them up with subsequences for VFX and Lighting. This way, everyone could work in the sequencer independently and not worry about overwriting someone else's work. 

I then checked with our rigging artist to review the final rigs and make sure that everything was working fine. We had some problems initially with the bones of the skeleton not matching up with the mocap data in MotionBuilder, and crunching the mesh as a result, but we got them figured out eventually (I had a similar problem initially with getting them into engine but that also was solved). 

I had to oversee a lot of departments this sprint and had a lot of people asking me questions about their tasks, so I didn't get a chance to do much more cleanup on my section of the mocap. Next sprint, I plan on making that a priority so we can show the cleaned data. 

Soliloquy of Stars: Sprint 3 Delivery

At the beginning of this sprint, the other leads and I met to discuss down-scoping our project. Originally, our environment was five islands of varying colors all matching a stage of grief. With the time constraints we have, we realized that this setup was going to create a lot of problems for different departments, and decided to switch to one island. 

This took some work off of a lot of people, however, Kate had to redo all of our cameras. So at the beginning of this sprint I worked with her to reformat the shot list and figure out where the characters would be when dancing across the new island. 

Then it was on to mocap cleanup. Finally the proxy rigs were working with the mocap data and we could begin the clean up process. The long, tedious process...

To do this, I've been watching the feet contact with the floor, making sure they are actually interacting with the floor. I also have been fixing any interactions between the characters. Things like when the Star character lifts the Black Hole at any point, when the characters hold hands or collapse together, etc. 

After doing a first pass of the clean up, I imported the fbx file in to the engine so we had an updated animation to play. I then update the rigs that are in engine. The Star character imported fine, but i was having a lot of trouble with the Black Hole. For some reason the neck joint would import in by the wrist joint. Eventually i figured it out with the help of Elijah. Once they worked, I mapped the semi cleaned mocap footage to the rigs. 

Perforce:

Soliloquy of Stars: Sprint 2 Delivery

This sprint was the sprint of problems for me.

 For this sprint, I worked with Kate, Emily, Jules, and Cheryl in the mocap stage to try and get live link working so we could capture real time data for the camera movements. We ran into a lot of trouble with figuring out how it works and setting up, but eventually we got a take for one of the shots where the camera moves. See the video below for proof of our progress:

Next I added the mocap skeletons from our take to perforce and wrote up some documentation for our rigging artists to follow. They needed to place the mocap skeleton from our two actors into the proxy meshes that Kase created last sprint. They had to move the joints in a very specific way to ensure our custom character rigs would map onto the mocap data properly. 

Once I had the skeletons from the riggers, I tested them in Motion Builder. I encountered some issues where the skeleton would almost map to the mocap's root bone but would only snap to the side of the character. Eventually we figured out that the ankles were put in the wrong place when being rigged, which was throwing off the scale of the initial mocap skeleton. 

After that problem was solved, I added the new characterized rigs to the unreal project. 

Soliloquy of Stars: Sprint #1 Delivery

 For this sprint, I started by creating sprint plans for this first week with the other leads, as well as the following sprints for the rest of the semester. In this meeting, we finalized the 3D and VFX asset list, and decided who on the team would be working on each asset. 

 

I then imported the skeletons and skeletal meshes for Quinn and Manny to prepare for when Emily imported the characterized mocap data.  

 

From there, I assisted Kate with setting up a first pass of the cinematic cameras in Unreal. To do this, we set up a root level sequence with 23 sub-sequences for each shot. Then, using the video animatic, we set up rough compositions/movements for each camera. Kate mostly handled this part, so while she was doing that, Emily and I cut up the mocap footage to create a proxy animation for each shot. Not all of them were implemented into the video first pass, but they are all in engine and imported in the corresponding sequencer shot.  

 

 

 

 Finally, one of the last things I did this sprint was figure out a uniform art style for VFX and for the 3D textures with the other leads. This way, the tech artist have some references to go off of when creating their VFX.

 

 

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