catch-up | Tube – Epic Production Notes

Happenings

13-02-2010

For some the calendar is based on the sun; for some, the moon. For we of the Tube project, the calendar is loosely tethered to the inscrutable workings of the Hampshire College academic year. Hosted as we are by its Computer Graphics Incubator Space, the project has fallen under the influence of local rhythms. In the crunch to get ready for the ambitious schedule on which we embark with the start of this new term, the blog has fallen a bit quiet — so there is a backlog of cool developments to relate!

Tube is in part an experiment in distributed collaboration, with a team spread all over the globe, but we also have a great and growing cluster of people collected at the “drome”. Look out for numerous additions to the ‘team’ page, including several satisfying adjustments to the chromosomal divide. We have also been very pleased to welcome Jarred de Beer back from South Africa for a second stint, upgraded from Intern 3D Generalist to Senior Vice Volunteer. And in more good news, yesterday his travel papers came through, so Pablo Lizardo joins us next week from Argentina!

Before things really heat up around here, Bassam and I took a little holiday to visit family in the UAE. On the way back, a long layover in Amsterdam allowed us to drop in at the Blender Institute where the Durian open movie is underway.

Ton kindly made us coffee and invited us to Durian’s morning meeting. They are hard into the grind, and we wish our brave compadres all the best with their fantastical enterprise!

Updates about the exciting progress of our own work will follow soon, stay tuned.

Layouts ( a bit early )

By: Bassam

18-04-2009

2 comments

catch-up, production

Before going into animation, shots need to be layed out- cameras, set, props, positioning of characters and vehicles, etc. before we are ready to animate. Typically I will want to pose the character in the basic position for the shot, just to give an idea for the animator to start.

Of course, we are currently not ready for animation- we are missing too many models, and even don’t have a final blessed character concept- nonetheless, I decided to take an aproach that would not ‘block’ too much at these details, and to do basic layouts with a generic character, to be replaced with ‘the real’ rig once we have it done.

I started with Nathan’s excellent generic biped rig, and modified a little bit to make it roughly the right length (170cm by the scale of the project, instead of the default 2 meter giant ) and also to suggest that the character is a female. If you want, here is the biped rig with our modifications, to use with the same terms Nathan has for his Biped rig.

first animatic

By: Bassam

27-03-2009

7 comments

catch-up, pre-production

Tube had one false start before the team effort. Based on an early script I decided to go it alone, and started work on preproduction. For the animatic I used blender, mainly because I wanted to plan the shots in 3D. Some of those shots are still there in the current animatic, though the overall structure of the movie has mutated considerably. As you can see, the animatic was structured as a ‘typical’ blender project, with a lib folder containing linkable groups (in this case set/character/other simple proxies) and textures. All the shots were in one sequence directory with blends numbered for shots (the ‘crap’ in the blend title stands for ‘crapimatic’- a reminder to myself not to do something too polished at this early stage.

Happenings

Layouts ( a bit early )

first animatic

THE TUBE OPEN MOVIE