BSKYB Health & Safety video

[Barry Baker]

Happy New Year to you all.

I've uploaded my recently completed Moho epic to my website. It's about a quarter of the whole film, the rest was animated in Flash.

A few words of explanation, from a Moho point of view. First of all, not all the characters have been animated in moho. I was directing the whole film, and animating as much as I could, but was the only moho-user on the job. So when I needed help on my section, my colleagues animated using Flash, and I imported their work as quicktimes into moho and composited them into the setting.

The Kitty character is pure moho throughout, except for one scene where she appears in profile (I just didn't have time to construct a new position for her), whereas the hog-boss is Flash throughout (I didn't have time to animate ANY of his action).

Everything else was constructed in Moho, except a few 3D objects which were modelled in Wings, textured in Gile[s] and imported into the Moho setting. The particle effects were what took the most time, both to design, and to render, but they would always have been complicated, and moho was brilliant for what I needed to achieve.

I will be happy to answer any questions about the piece - in the meantime, enough explanation for the meantime, and here's the link:

File is back up again! new link:

http://barrybaker.stormvisions.com/HSLesson3.mov

Apologies to those on dial-up connections, it's a 14MB download - I'm afraid a lot of patience is required. Also, to those whose English is not so good, there's a voice over all the way through, but the action should still be easy to understand without the commentary.

[HuGGyBeaR]

wow.

[kdiddy13]

Wow is right! That was very nicely done!

About how long did it take you?

Were the papers animated with Moho's particles or some other method?

Very inspiring, quality work. Thanks for sharing!

[Barry Baker]

About how long did it take you?

Were the papers animated with Moho's particles or some other method?

It took four weeks of actual production, including weekends (after the storyboards), which is pretty quick for such an involved piece. The last week was absolutely frantic, ending on an all-nighter. A bit too intense, but a big tribute to Moho that I could finish it in time.

The paper effects are all moho particles, as you correctly surmised. Moho's particle system impressed everyone here, including the people who have worked with 3D systems like Maya. Partly it was the fact that it was included as part of the software at all! Once I got the hang of the controls, I found I could make the paper do anything I wanted. It took an age to render the more particle-intensive scenes, though. I found I was increasingly splitting the rendering up into layers which I would composite afterwards in Moho, or else give to others to put together in After Effects.

[Squeakydave]

Wehey!
Congratulations Barry. I'm in particle hell at the moment so I can appreciate exactly what you went through.
I love the Cat character (Do I detect a little fake 3d on the face?)
Thanks for sharing and showing the World what Moho is capable of!!!

[musajoe]

Hello Barry,

Job well done!!! That looks very professional. I have tons of questions:


1. The 3D items - the desk, chair, room, File cabinet, office ceiling, and office items were all done in a 3D app. Which were done in Maya and which were done in Wings 3D.

2. The cityscape seen from the windows, how was that done? (Photoshop texture map?)

3. How did you animate the paper (when Ms. Kitty is stamping the paper and putting the "approved" sheet in the "done" box.

4. How did you achieve the shadows for A) Ms Kitty, B) Hog-Boss and c) the inanimate objects (chair, table...)

5. Did you do all the camera movements in Moho? Did you use AE/Maya for any camera movements?

6. How long did it take you to animate all of Ms. Kitty (the Moho animated parts)?

7. Did you do the storyboards for this project? How long did it take to script and storyboard this animation.

8. What was the "fun-ist" thing about this project?

9. What was the most challenging thing about this project?

10. What part of this project, going in was "thought" to be easy but turned out to be hard?

11. What part of this project, going in was "thought" to be hard but turned out to be easy?


Sorry for all the questions. I am currently working on animating a project and its really hard to "get your arms around" how all these tools work together to create animation. You work rawks, keep up the good work!!!

MusaJoe

[kdiddy13]

Again wow! I'm hoping to accomplish a similar look with humans, and seeing the quality of your work has really inspired me, thank you.

And thank you for your responses.

I used to teach a 3d class as well as some After Effects classes. I'm a huge fan of rendering in layers and compositing afterwards. It may seem to be more time consuming but I'm always happy with myself when I can just render out one fixed character without having to render the whole scene out again. The "pros" split it out even more, doing individual passes on color, specularity, shadows, etc. It ultimately gives you more control over your images.

[Barry Baker]

Wehey!
Congratulations Barry. I'm in particle hell at the moment so I can appreciate exactly what you went through.

I totally sympathise - it can be quite frustrating until it "clicks" into place.

I love the Cat character (Do I detect a little fake 3d on the face?)

Yes, it's exactly the same technique I developed on my singing girl character of splitting the face into layers separated in depth along the Z axis. It works a treat! I can turn her head all the way from 3/4 left to 3/4 right, and up and down, without giving away the trick. I remember you did the same thing with a carrot, and it looked really good.

[Barry Baker]

musajoe, lots of questions. I will respond to them, just don't have time right now. Thanks for everybody's reactions.

[Squeakydave]

The layers trick is a useful technique as long as you don't move the characters too much in frame. Yours looks like you didn't seem to be too limited by that. I know when I did the Carrot moving too far in the 'X' dimension it ruined the illusion. I'm guessing that your layers must be quite close to the head background layer.

As to particles. They 'clicked' early on but I've been trying to use them to build a forest. They seemed to work beautifully but at the moment they can't occupy the same 3d space as any other animation. They are either above or below.
I have then had to build the forest by hand and it has brought Moho, the computer and me to our collective knees. Hopefully it looks nice though.

Excellent job. Hopefully I'll have something to show in a few weeks time.

[kdiddy13]

Could you post a couple of "uncompressed" (ie. not video compressed for the web) stills? I'd love to check out the detail on some of the shots, if you don't mind someone deconstructing your work.

[Barry Baker]

The layers trick is a useful technique as long as you don't move the characters too much in frame. Yours looks like you didn't seem to be too limited by that. I know when I did the Carrot moving too far in the 'X' dimension it ruined the illusion. I'm guessing that your layers must be quite close to the head background layer.

The layers are fairly close, but I have also angled the eyes, and used masking to keep the face markings from overlapping the borders of the head. These screengrabs might show better:

Face from the front:


Face from overhead showing layers and masking:

As to particles. They 'clicked' early on but I've been trying to use them to build a forest. They seemed to work beautifully but at the moment they can't occupy the same 3d space as any other animation. They are either above or below.
I have then had to build the forest by hand and it has brought Moho, the computer and me to our collective knees. Hopefully it looks nice though.

I didn't mean to suggest that the whole particle subject hadn't clicked with you yet, but when one can envisage a particular effect, it can sometimes take a lot of experimentation until you hit on the right combination of parameters.

I had a similar problem with the paper - it was also appearing either behind or in front of my characters, but not both at the same time. My solution was to have two or more particle layers either side of the characters, so that they could move in between. Even if they are angled, this can still work, allowing a character to move towards camera. This is what I did in the scene where hog-boss swims towards us through the paper sea to rescue Ms Kitty.

[Barry Baker]

1. The 3D items - the desk, chair, room, File cabinet, office ceiling, and office items were all done in a 3D app. Which were done in Maya and which were done in Wings 3D.

The desks (Kitty's and hog-boss's), in and out trays, piles of paper, sheet of paper which Kitty handles and the ceiling were modelled in Wings 3D, textured in Photoshop and lightmapped in Gile[s]. The stapler was a free model I found on the Web.

All other objects (unless I've missed any), including the walls and floor, were flat planes created in Moho.

2. The cityscape seen from the windows, how was that done? (Photoshop texture map?)

All Moho. I used a photo of a city skyline as a reference tracing image, and recreated the buildings in simplified form with vectors. Repeated a few, flipped them, added trees and gave the whole scene a little blur.

3. How did you animate the paper (when Ms. Kitty is stamping the paper and putting the "approved" sheet in the "done" box.

When Kitty takes the top sheet off the pile, it is a 3D model with a chain of bones running through it so it can bend. As soon as she gets it on the desk, I swapped it with a Moho sheet of paper. I used masking to make the writing appear, and layer visibility to make the stamps appear. When she picks it up again, I swap it back to the 3D model.

4. How did you achieve the shadows for A) Ms Kitty, B) Hog-Boss and c) the inanimate objects (chair, table...)

Most of the shadows were simple vector shapes filled with transparent black and with soft edges. Hog-Boss was animated in Flash, so the animator added his own shadows (for the scenes where he is standing on the ground).

5. Did you do all the camera movements in Moho? Did you use AE/Maya for any camera movements?

All the camera moves were created in Moho. After Effects was used to join the whirlpool scene, where Kitty and the paper are all swirling around the room, to the following scene, where everything has stopped, via a paper wipe (which was created in Moho). After effects also composited a couple of other scenes, notably the very long underpaper sequence, which was rendered in many passes. It would have been impossible to get this all rendered in one go, without some mistake ruining the whole thing!

6. How long did it take you to animate all of Ms. Kitty (the Moho animated parts)?

It took me more than a week to build the Kitty model and the office setting (even though she's 2D, I still think of her as a model). The animation was then spread through the rest of the schedule, so I couldn't say how long it took. The most difficult Kitty animation was to make her interact with the paper, pen and stamp in the first scenes. That took a lot of sweat.

7. Did you do the storyboards for this project? How long did it take to script and storyboard this animation.

The script came from Sky TV. The rest of the project had been designed by and partly animated under the direction of a really talented guy called Matt Jones. Then the first script was deemed too violent, so it was pulled back, rewritten, and I took it over, as Matt was now involved with other projects. He had already designed the Hog-boss and Kitty, but the script for that sequence was totally different from before.

More later...

[kdiddy13]

t took me more than a week to build the Kitty model ...

So did you only have one Kitty model for the whole animation?

I've been debating the advantages of one model for everything vs. several models for different angles. Any opinions? Would you do it the same way again?

[bupaje]

Wow that is really impressive! Very cool. If you can handle the bandwidth -or can get someone to host it who can- post a link at the appropriate forum at cgtalk.com. The few items I have posted over the years always generate a huge amount of hits when I included my links for at least a day -longer if people ask questions keeping the thread from getting buried. Good place to showcase your own work and Moho's capabilities.

Note: You need a high bandwidth site or mirror it and post the alternate links as a few times so many people view it that the server can't handle it so they can't access the file - the high amount of posts then might push your post below the horizon with not many people seeing it.