Lynth Update #14
Production is well underway for knocking out some more animation on our film. Over the last two weeks I was able to finish our last two blocking shots, as well as rough out animation on two more dramatic shots and get halfway through rough pass revisions on a third. They’re shaping up to be challenging but cool shots that I hope will serve well as the dramatic part of our film. Reworking the cameras and timing has been especially helpful for upping the drama. We were able to get A LOT of really good camera, acting, and other cinematography advice that has been tremendously helpful and really helps motivate me.
We have the entire thing blocked in 3D and are aiming to have just over 50% of our shots roughed out by the end of the week. I’ll be spending the weekend and beginning of the week roughing out one of our earliest shots so that we can also try to have our first 3 shots that will need very little if any vfx set dressed, lit, and rendered out of Unreal Engine to add into our animatic by Friday. It’ll be really nice starting to see shots in more of a finalized look than just greyscale playblasts out of Maya. We were hoping set dressing would be further along than it is currently but I’ve been coming across some issues that I’m starting to really be stressed about. Namely, our two team members who keep saying they are going to be doing set dressing, lighting, and importing alembic files into UE don’t seem to be doing much. The environment is still quite barren with no plants or ground coverage other than generic trees being painted across the landscape, and there’s only a small handful of alembics that have been brought over. It seems like each week the only thing that gets accomplished on that end is 1 alembic being brought in. I’m not sure how to get them to pick up the pace and if they don’t soon I worry I’ll just have to say screw it and do it myself so that it actually gets done because right now they seem to just be sitting around despite having more than enough work to keep them occupied, even with one of the rigs having import problems. The problem is, I fear how much the animation group might fall behind if I take a step back from that to drag set dressing out of the mud, seeing as how I have been the main muscle force driving animation forward to get shots completed as fast as possible. If I step off of that I stink we will start to see animation go stagnant and shots will need to be cut to make more time. I’m not sure what to do.
I am very tired. I really wish half the team would stop piddling around at the active expense of four of us. This whole getting home at midnight each night after working all day including weekends is really taking a toll on me both mentally and physically. I really hope it’s not all for nothing.
