I was finally able to finish up my animation as it miraculously finished rendering, and the end product is quite different than what I had thought it would be. I faced quite a lot of issues when making this animation, but I'm still happy with how it turned out. When I first started working on this idea, it was supposed to be a simple animation about two girls rowing down a river and wondering at the sights around them. As I went along and modified the animation so that it would work with my limitations, it gained a meaning.
One of the first issues I faced was the trees: my idea was to create some leaves, put them in a group and use that as a particles system for some trees. Then, I'd put those trees in a group and use them as a particle system for the ground. Unfortunately, blender did not like that, and I could not get the leaves to show up. I tried using a particle instance modifier, which allowed the whole situation of "particle system squared", but that just did not work out in terms of rotation and scale. Eventually, with the help of Aiden, I came to the conclusion that I would need to convert the trees to meshes. That was when I knew that this was going to take a long time to render; naturally, I kept that the last step before rendering. However, it still caused me problems when I did come around to rendering it all out. The reason was that the trees were too much for my computer to handle, as it was originally 1000 trees with children. It only started rendering once I changed that to 400 trees with no children, albeit of a bigger size. That kind of changed the aesthetic of the animation as I had wanted the ground to be covered with trees so that the top view would just be a shot of a bunch of leaves on either side of the river. Even after all the modifications, it still took quite a while to render, and it kept on shutting down. When I got to frame 789 and I knew that the viewer would only see some trees from that point on, I deleted the trees on the right side, which helped a lot.
The other major issue I faced came to the rowing action. As I said in my marking period 1 blogpost, I could not get the armature to row right; so, I deleted the first girl and instead modified the animation so that it made sense for only one person to be rowing. I toyed around with making the rowing character some creepy person covered in a cloak, but I ended up making them a parent instead. The animation changed into a story about parents leading/guiding their children through life up until a certain point. Eventually, the child has to get off and continue the journey by themselves. This journey is different for everyone, some don't have parents to guide them at all, or perhaps their ride ends much sooner, or maybe their canoe has holes in it, who knows. Still, I saw the period where they had to leave their parents' shelter as a transition, which fit with the season of fall as it serves as the transition between summer and winter. Additionally, in literature, fall can be used to signify death, or the end. I also saw this as the end of one journey and the beginning of another, less certain one.
With the rendering issue and the modifications came many other tiny issues that I was unable to fix, partially because the file was so slow at that point, and partially because I did not want to risk messing up the animation too much. One of the bigger ones is that the canoe is going to the left even though the character who's rowing is doing so on the left side. It would have made more sense for them to go to the right but my soul was at 1% charge and I could not get myself to change it. Then, with the particle system weirdness came extremely large leaves on trees; the animation was lagging so much by the time I noticed that, that I just decided to let it pass. It did end up adding a certain aesthetic to the video, so I don't mind it that much. I also noticed that there was a problem with different trees being in the same location, thus overlapping and slowing down the rendering process. Again, it was too late to change that by the time I noticed it, but it did piss me off a bit. I also noticed that I'm still having trouble with pacing. The video goes too fast and the lag in the file did not help with timing. I want to figure out a good way to gage what time is long enough for camera movements so that it doesn't go by too fast. Finally, I had wanted to cover the ground with leaves, as that it a fall staple, but any more particles systems might have just broken the file at that point, so I decided against it.
Ultimately, while the animation ended up being much different than I expected, I still am pleased with it. I also think that I can relate to it more this way, and its' shaping my theme a bit; both this and the next animation I'm making have to do with college and my future. I think I'm letting my experiences shape my art a bit more, and I'm pretty happy about that. While, I still love fantasy, this is letting me explore a more serious theme, and it helps me work out my thoughts better.
Work Log:
Monday 10/21: Presentations
Tuesday 10/22: Presentations
Wednesday 10/23: Presentations:
Thursday 10/24: Worked on "Essence"
Friday 10/25: Worked on "Essence"
One of the first issues I faced was the trees: my idea was to create some leaves, put them in a group and use that as a particles system for some trees. Then, I'd put those trees in a group and use them as a particle system for the ground. Unfortunately, blender did not like that, and I could not get the leaves to show up. I tried using a particle instance modifier, which allowed the whole situation of "particle system squared", but that just did not work out in terms of rotation and scale. Eventually, with the help of Aiden, I came to the conclusion that I would need to convert the trees to meshes. That was when I knew that this was going to take a long time to render; naturally, I kept that the last step before rendering. However, it still caused me problems when I did come around to rendering it all out. The reason was that the trees were too much for my computer to handle, as it was originally 1000 trees with children. It only started rendering once I changed that to 400 trees with no children, albeit of a bigger size. That kind of changed the aesthetic of the animation as I had wanted the ground to be covered with trees so that the top view would just be a shot of a bunch of leaves on either side of the river. Even after all the modifications, it still took quite a while to render, and it kept on shutting down. When I got to frame 789 and I knew that the viewer would only see some trees from that point on, I deleted the trees on the right side, which helped a lot.
The other major issue I faced came to the rowing action. As I said in my marking period 1 blogpost, I could not get the armature to row right; so, I deleted the first girl and instead modified the animation so that it made sense for only one person to be rowing. I toyed around with making the rowing character some creepy person covered in a cloak, but I ended up making them a parent instead. The animation changed into a story about parents leading/guiding their children through life up until a certain point. Eventually, the child has to get off and continue the journey by themselves. This journey is different for everyone, some don't have parents to guide them at all, or perhaps their ride ends much sooner, or maybe their canoe has holes in it, who knows. Still, I saw the period where they had to leave their parents' shelter as a transition, which fit with the season of fall as it serves as the transition between summer and winter. Additionally, in literature, fall can be used to signify death, or the end. I also saw this as the end of one journey and the beginning of another, less certain one.
With the rendering issue and the modifications came many other tiny issues that I was unable to fix, partially because the file was so slow at that point, and partially because I did not want to risk messing up the animation too much. One of the bigger ones is that the canoe is going to the left even though the character who's rowing is doing so on the left side. It would have made more sense for them to go to the right but my soul was at 1% charge and I could not get myself to change it. Then, with the particle system weirdness came extremely large leaves on trees; the animation was lagging so much by the time I noticed that, that I just decided to let it pass. It did end up adding a certain aesthetic to the video, so I don't mind it that much. I also noticed that there was a problem with different trees being in the same location, thus overlapping and slowing down the rendering process. Again, it was too late to change that by the time I noticed it, but it did piss me off a bit. I also noticed that I'm still having trouble with pacing. The video goes too fast and the lag in the file did not help with timing. I want to figure out a good way to gage what time is long enough for camera movements so that it doesn't go by too fast. Finally, I had wanted to cover the ground with leaves, as that it a fall staple, but any more particles systems might have just broken the file at that point, so I decided against it.
Ultimately, while the animation ended up being much different than I expected, I still am pleased with it. I also think that I can relate to it more this way, and its' shaping my theme a bit; both this and the next animation I'm making have to do with college and my future. I think I'm letting my experiences shape my art a bit more, and I'm pretty happy about that. While, I still love fantasy, this is letting me explore a more serious theme, and it helps me work out my thoughts better.
Work Log:
Monday 10/21: Presentations
Tuesday 10/22: Presentations
Wednesday 10/23: Presentations:
Thursday 10/24: Worked on "Essence"
Friday 10/25: Worked on "Essence"
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