I was going to post an image that I submitted for the showcase bulletin but the limit for images is 8 megs and this bad boy is 28 megs! I'll size it down later or post another one but I'm back because its Friday, Norton full system scan day!!!
More victories. I tried to do the .bat executable and made some mistakes at first, not managing files right, using the wrong flags, forgetting to specify number of processors and maximum memory, finding out that Maya doesn't like to batch render Vector globals and makes unreadable .iff files in their stead. However after these early teething gaffs, I see that rendering is manageable. I finished scene 12 which is the car driving past the screen. I imported an image plane (fashioned in Photoshop using the cutout filter and a number of other tweaks) and constructed three different scenes: the first is a beauty pass, the second a shadow pass using a homemade ambient occlusion render using all geometry shaded in a white blinn, with the camera using a white background, the last being the vector render which I do with the using interface running. In my homemade ambient occlusion, I forgot to change the light and shadow colors to black and white, but I used the multiply blending mode in After effects and things looked great anyway. The car drives past the image plane (matching the perspective of the photo to the Maya grid) but what makes the scene come together is the shadows and the lighting. I could even do a vector render of all the geometry not using outlines to match the cutout quality of the Photshop background or even bring the animation into Photoshop and apply the filter to the animation and re-composite it in After Effects, but this is giving me the look I always envisioned.
In bringing files into After Effects I place the vector render on top and play with the opacity. This is also where I apply the dust and scratches and the motion blur. I will use motion blur in the beauty passes, but I think they will only be partially visible under the vector layers. After Effects doesn't seem to be able to read the first or last few frames of a Maya batch render without getting a parser error. I don't know what the deal with that is but since I'm leaving a little padding it I can work around it. I'm finding there are quite a few work arounds that I have to figure out in order to make everything work but I composited the last scene and added the logo (also made in Maya using beveled and extruded curves) made using a drawing as an image plane. The tag-line was also made (in Illustrator) and brought in and animated. I was really rewarding to see the final animated imagery reach fruition. I'm looking forward to seeing everything else move and exist in the reality I'm creating.

The final rigging has been done!!! The blend shapes are finished!!!

The whole week has been a blur since the last post and if I didn't have this time off this would never have gotten this far!! Thank the LORD that I also have ten days starting with Easter week! As things are right now I'm only one week behind schedule. Rigging problems included shoulder, crotch, buttocks, elbow and other deformations. Skin weighting was a challenge but after I figured how to configure the paint weights tool and tweak with the attribute editor things moved more quickly. Blend shapes took from Wednesday to Friday with Jenna and only Saturday with Nikky. Practice makes proficient. Blend shape difficulties included duplicating with a negative scale causing the blends to flip! Messing with the bind pose and causing the blends to shift. There was also fighting with the blend shape creation and adding option boxes. General stupidity can be added to the list of reasons for gaffs: deleting my head control because it wasn't properly labeled, not saving the right version of files and trying to undo skin weighting, knowing full well that the undo won't work on that stuff. If I now can get the dialogue matched to the characters I will feel confident of this projects completion.

Class yesterday was sobering and put a fire in my belly! Prof. Halbstein asked if I was going to have my thesis done; ouch! I'm still fixing the rigs with their deformations but elegance is creeping into their construction. The IK handles and their controls are working, the skinning is becoming easier, there is more facility with the painting weights and component editor work flow and setting the joints, smooth bind settings and deformations is now a process verses an experiment. At class we were able to fix an eyelash problem I was having and he gave us a useful tool for rendering without the Maya GUI. If you convert a text file in a properly set up project scene folder and rename it as a .bat file it becomes an executable render command that renders all your scenes according to the globals you set up within each of them. Hopefully this will cut the weeks worth of rendering time in half!
Enough blogging time to FINISH the rigs!

I'm going to use this version of a rig where the bind position is arms out and they're IK. I built the arms and had the joints where when the arms were outstretched they came out of her shirt!! Jenna always has her hands on the wheel so there is no need for anything else. The hand controls do have finger curl attributes so she can grip the wheel. Rendering in vector allows for novices like myself to hide quantum mistakes in rigging and modeling. There is very little elegant about these models. My favorite is the truck. I guess that's because its hard to mess up cubes, cylinders and rectangular prisms. Nikky is a good looking model but getting her to deform properly with the time constrains is a nightmare. The reason there are two images of Jthe Jenna model is because the one on the bottom is using an ortho camera. the distortion of the Maya perspective camera lens makes the Jenna model look funny to me. The question is can I use the two different cameras or is there a way to fix the lens on the perspective camera? More questions for class...

She's got bones!!! She needs blendshapes and eyelashes. The interior of the car is fixed too. I wanted to be done with the rigging but I'm taking today and Wednesday to get this part done and @ class today I hope to get help with referencing and rendering. This is one of two (possibly three) Nikky rigs. This one the hands don't move, another one is IK and I may have to make an FK rig with moving hands. Again, if I had farmed this out I wouldn't get the experience that I'm getting now (nor the steep learning curve and the panic!!) Getting the arms to deform properly with the IK rig was impossible!! I think I don't understand shoulder anatomy but that's a problem for another time.

This was the contents of an e-mail I sent to Prof. Halbstien I thought it doubled as a good journal update..
Hey I just wanted to check in and update you. I hope you had a great break. I'm still fighting with the rigs but I think I"m 2 days away from finished. I killed the set up machine in the event that I may have to do work at NYU. I also thank you for the tutorial it was very helpful. I couldn't do it exactly as the document suggested, so I wanted you to check the rig before I stared skinning.
Some other questions.
Do influence object have to be parented and if so where?
How do you get nurbs circle controls to stay attached to the rig where you want them?
How do you make a character control that selects everything so you can scale the character and the rig?
I think I'll be able to proceed without the advisement but I want help setting the project up, organizing the scenes, planning the renders, and referencing the characters.
Lastly I have a pretty ambitious work schedule that I'll need to keep to if this is going to get done on time.
Thanks again for all your help.
Me.
As I read this I forgot to send him a copy of the rig!!!

I was able to fix the shadows and even got advice on how to get the shadows even. The only problem is that I forgot how :)! I'll ask again at class on Tuesday. I finally jumped in and tried to rig the Characters on my own without the Set Up Machine and have had great success. Now they have to be rigged by Sunday according to my revised gant chart , shot list and work schedule. The weather has been snowy and cold after spring tried to peek its head out but I don't mind because my workstation here at home likes the open window to keep it cool, otherwise the fans holler so loud that you think the machine is going to melt.
I'm posting this entry instead of rigging the girls because Norton Anti-Virus decided it was time for a full system scan and its hogging all my processing power. I would rather this happen than to catch a nasty virus while I'm trying to finish my Thesis.
The Work schedule is tight but doable. If I had farmed out the rigging I would have been much farther along than I am right now but I glad I finally have the experience and know how to rig on my own.
Once the rigging is done this Sunday including blend shapes and set-driven keys for the vehicle attributes I start the layouts, blocking in some of the animation and then the final animation with the vector renders directly following their completion. Hopefully I can work out how to batch render and enable render layers so that I don't have to devote extra time to rendering and keep the work flow going with the animation.
The Color correction needs to take place at NYU on the calibrated monitors so during my days off for Easter Break I can nail the colors and finish thins at home using those settings if need be.
These Last Five weeks are going to be tight!!!

Here the street needs to be brighter and the shadows under the car darker. I also have to see If I'm going to try to match the reflections on the car to the one in the background.

This image has the un-rigged Nikky model in Jenna's car. If I can get some more intensity in the foreground shadows I think I'll have the look I'm going for. I'm entertaining separating background elements and composting them on different layers to simulate parallax, but this will purely be a time-constraint based decision. There is also a subtlety to the volumes I'm getting in the composting of a beauty pass mixed with the vector render. Don't mind the rear window, I left it low-poly and I will have to subdivide it put it where it needs to go in between the panels and the car's exterior. Lastly I'm going to see about safety belts and how to get them to move with the characters.

This has been a good week for productivity. This was because I was able to make some breakthroughs regarding the backgrounds for the characters. I was toying with making geometry for the buildings and saw that that was going to be too time consuming, even though it was progressing nicely. I also saw that the final output was too graphic and resembled the foreground too much. I had success with using an image plane behind the characters but found it redundant to separate it from the foreground in After Effects in order to to manipulate focus and the filters I wanted to apply to it. I tried another means of image plane by applying a file as a texture to a plane and got good results with that. However I think I'm going to go with a look that I get when I use the cutout filter in Photoshop and add a gradient and blend them with a Hard Light blending mode. The composting then takes place in After Effects. The only difficulty I'm having now, regarding this is composting shadows to make the foregrounds and backgrounds match. I don't seem to be able to composite just shadows without geometry. I may try making an imitation ambient occlusion renter by making all the geometry in a white shader that does everything that the regular scene does and using that as my shadow pass. I'm seeing that the illusion of light and shadow really integrates the the elements within a scene. I like the combination of a flat image that looks three dimensional because its taken from a photograph and a flattened 3D Maya model with just a hint of volume via a blended beauty pass.