Animator's Handbook

[Michael Cawood - Director]

Preferred system spec:
Maya 2009
Windows (Preferred but a Mac is possible)
More than 1GB of free space on your C:\ drive (for assets and scene files).
If you are running a different setup and still want to animate you will have to make the effort to conform to the rest of the team, and some setups will simply not work. Others will just take some effort to stay compatible (Maya 2011 works but it limits how many people can open your files to help you or follow through with other post post production steps).

Files:
After accepting an invite for Dropbox and the folders you will need (to your standard personal email address). Please install the Dropbox program as instructed and when it asks you, re-direct the sync folder to this location on your PC:
C:\Devils_Angels_Dating

Please also look at these to help setup the correct folder structure: http://devilsangelsanddating.ning.com/video/dropbox-file-sharing-setup http://devilsangelsanddating.ning.com/forum/topics/dropbox-assets1-...

The files will then begin to download and they will stay in sync with the rest of the team as long as you are connected to the internet and allowing Dropbox to run in the background.

Edits:
The latest Quicktime edit will always be in the Edit folder, along with Sound Effects only and Reference footage versions. Do not change or remove these files. There is also a version you can sync to your iPod if you need it.
C:\Devils_Angels_Dating\My Dropbox\Edit

 

Reference Footage:

We maintain a version of the edit with reference footage for the animators to study.

C:\Devils_Angels_Dating\My Dropbox\020_Animation\DevilsAngelsDating_Animatic_Reference.mov

Character Rig Plugin:
When you are assigned a shot with a lead character in the scene you will need to install a plugin for your system setup from here:
http://www.anzovin.com/products/arn1mayaDownloads.html
Note that the 32bit/64bit labels on the file downloads refer to the version of Maya you have, not the version of windows. This plugin is not required if you already have Face Machine installed.

Scripts:
We use several custom scripts that we update regularly. If you install this scripts menu though you will always have the latest scripts installed automatically via Dropbox. We have a Video tutorial on how to install it here. Once the Menu is installed in Maya, got to

ScriptsMenu > Preferences

... and browse for this folder:

C:\Devils_Angels_Dating\My Dropbox\assets\scripts

Layout Files:
Open Maya and ensure you have the Anzonin menu at the top before you open anything with a character in it. If a scene already has previs or layout done you'll find it in here under the scene name. You should find that the shot is already setup for 1280x720 at 24fps.
C:\Devils_Angels_Dating\My Dropbox\02X_Animation_XXX

Character Proxy:
You may find that some characters are low detail when you open a scene, this is to keep the file running fast on slower computers and you can change the detail level on a per character basis. Just select the control around the character's hip and change the "Display" setting (in the channel box) to "Geometry". In most cases this will stil be a low resolution geometry mesh, but if you need to know what it will render like select the geometry and press "3" on your keyboard. To set it back press "1".

Face controls and Library:
Choose a Panel in your preferred layout then do this:
Panels: Panel: Anzonin Panel
Poses: Set Local and Global poses directories:
Global directory - browse for:
C:/Devils_Angels_Dating/My Dropbox/020_Animation/Poses

Saving Animation Files:
Animation files should be saved here:
C:\Devils_Angels_Dating\My Dropbox\02X_Animation_XXX
Us this file naming convention:
ShotNumber_DominentCharacter_Description_VersionNumber_Animation_YourInitials
sh0260_DTH_raiseSphere_v01_Layout_MC
Please don't do a 'set project' in Maya to any folder inside Dropbox.

Playblasts:
Make Playblasts without the resolution gate on at 720 x 405 pixels and place them in the same folder as your Maya file with exactly the same name as the shot (no version numbers or initials, just the shot name). If you can compress them to Quicktime H.264 as well that's even better (here's a guide to help you make a small file). The files will be placed directly from this shared location into the edit so that every time you replace this video with your latest version it will update the edit. It also allows the animation team to review each other's shots with frame to frame control. Make sure to include a frame counter.

Display > Heads up Display > Current Frame

Show Progress:
As you plan out and progress with your shot post thumbnail planning sketches here along with your notes:
http://devilsangelsanddating.ning.com/photo/photo/newWithUploader
Post Flipbook videos, reference footage and playblasts here along with your notes:
http://devilsangelsanddating.ning.com/video/video/newWithUploader
You may want to use YouTube or a similar service if you plan to post a lot of videos, but you still need to post the code to here so that the team can see you progress. If you do this wait a little while between uploading to YouTube and pasting the code here, if you do it too quickly YouTube won't have made a thumbnail image yet and we get nothing on this site, making it hard to find in our gallery. Try to label entries by the full shot name as well, with decent tags and key words. Also note that when you copy the YouTube embed code you will want to untick the check boxes in order to stop the aniamted menu from appearing on our site (it makes it very hard to replay and review the videos).
Post as much as you can including images, videos and questions into the thread for your shot located here:
http://devilsangelsanddating.ning.com/forum/categories/animation-wi...

Avoid trying to proceed only with private emails as it does nothing to help the team help you. It just causes a bottle neck in the Director's inbox.

Handles
We'll be using 10 frame handles in most shots. So that's an extra 10 frames that is added to the beginning and end of the shot in the Layout file. So scenes will start at frame 1 (with the audio as well) but only frame 11 onwards is currently intended to be used.

Getting updates:
When you accept a shot make sure you click the "Follow" link at the bottom right of the shot's discussion thread so that you receive alerts each time someone leaves you feedback.

Emails:

When you want to reply to emails form this site, make sure you are in a browser on this site. If you try to reply to the forwarded email sent to your normal email client we won't receive it. So if you don't hear back from me, chances are we've not received your email and we're still waiting for you to reply.

[Michael Cawood - Director]

Please take the opportunity to post feedback on each other's shots as well. All comments are welcome just as long as we ultimately agree on what's best for the film.

[Michael Cawood - Director]

Here's some videos that are well worth reviewing so that you understand what you're animating, as our rigs are quite sophisticated.

[Michael Cawood - Director]

A guide to the basic functions of the Cupid Rig...

[iskander Mellakh]

Here is a tutorial to help with installing the menu system that we are currently using for the production written by Savio:

Here is a two tutorials on how to use the dynamic tail/hair system on the characters. Although this is only shown working on Devil, the controllers will look the same for each character.

[Michael Cawood - Director]

If you haven't already seen these videos you should watch them carefully as they contain a lot of information about our production pipeline.

[Michael Cawood - Director]

Dynamics Tutorial:

Here's a look at the Face Expression Library all animators on the project have easy access to (just follow the instructions above):

[iskander Mellakh]

Dynamic Controller breakdown:

Here is a quick breakdown of the controller and what each section does.

NOTE: For the dynamics to look right you need to change the timing to 'play every frame' in the maya settings.

1) These check boxes activate/deactivate the dynamics systems. ticked means active.

2) This drop down box gives you quick access to the display options on the rig. Proxy mode works the fastest, but you will need to check the deformation of the mesh from time to time.

3) This section is to control the Goal Smoothness and Goal Weight of the dynamic softbody.
Goal Smoothness:
The lower the value the less bounce the dynamics will have, so it will go back to its original state quicker. The higher the value the more bounce the dynamics will have and the longer it will take for the geometry to go back to its original state. This is most probably the area most people will use to tweak the simulation.
Goal Weight:
If this is set to 0 the dynamics have no effect, if set to 1 the effect is 100% currently the default is 0.5. This setting may go depending on how much use it gets.

4)This section gives you full control on the weighting of the particles on a per particle basis. Each dynamic section (tail/hair/hood) has 5 particles controlling the behaviour of a spline curve.You have control of each particles weight.
Float basis (eg: 0.1 (minimum: 0 maximum:1)) so if a particle is set to 0.1 the particle will be more responsive to minor movements. If set to 0.9 it will less responsive.

5)This section is for creating a particle disk cache (PDC). This is helpful so you can scrub through the playback and the dynamics will not blow up. below is the process to creating a PDC.
a)Select the dynamic system(s) that you want to create a cache for from the selection box.
b)Enter in the start frame and the end frame of the simulation.
c)name it.
d)press the 'Create PDC' button to create the cache. To create the cache it plays through the timeline so it can be quite lengthy if it is a long scene.
To activate/de-activate the cache toggle the PDC Active option.
NOTE: Particle disk caches can become very large files so the more you create the more space you use. This is why it is good to name it so you can remove any unwanted caches if needed.

6)This section is for baking the simulation to keys. This is helpful so you can scrub through the playback and add/edit any of the animation. The animation gets baked to a group above the tail/hair/hood controller. There is labels that should tell you which controller is which.
a) Select the controller(s) (eg Death:Tail_Control_grp) you want from the selection box.
b) Enter in the start frame and the end frame of the simulation.
c) Press the 'Bake Simulation' button to bake it to key frames. This process also plays through the animation so can sometimes be lengthy.
d) Turn off the dynamics and add any additional animation.

7) Setting the initial state will most probably be one of the first things you do. When you first open the scene and turn on the dynamics, the tail/hair/hood geometry will be at the origin of the scene. follow the steps below to get them to the correct starting position.
a) Set the start frame. Subtract 25 frames from your scene start frame. So if your scene starts at frame 1 enter -25 into the box then press 'Set Start Frame'.
b) Select the dynamic system you want it to affect.
c) Turn all the selected systems Goal Smoothness (see section 3) to 0.
d) Press play, the geometry should ping back.
e) When you are happy with the starting position, with the systems still selected in the selection box press 'set Initial State'.
f) Put the start frame back to frame 1 (or the start of the scene).

There are also video tutorials on that will help with the use of this tool.

[iskander Mellakh]

After dynamics have been baked: when you are happy with the dynamics and have baked them, you will need to turn off the dynamics in the controller to see the correct results.

Also there is jiggle on most of the characters, there should be an option on the head controller or upper body controller. when it is turned on, another controller will appear with some additional options.

[iskander Mellakh]

Cupid Hair/jiggle tutorial

[iskander Mellakh]

Process for using Cupids Jiggle:

There is two ways to access Cupids jiggle controls, through the channel box(A) or using the dynamics controller(B).

A) To gain access to the jiggle controls select the head_fk control and at the bottom of the attributes in the channel box there is the 'Hair Overlap' attribute. Turn this on and two controls should appear. One above his head (control 1) and one at the back of his hair(Control 2).

Control 1) This has all the attributes to control the look and feel of the jiggle.
There are 3 main attributes for each jiggle deformer (hair, beard).


Weight: The higher the Weight value, the more movement the hair/beard will have.
Damping: The lower the Damping value the more spring the hair/beard will have.
Stiffness: The higher he Stiffness value the more rigid the overall look.
To get a look that you are happy with for the scene you will need to tweak each of these attributes.

Control 2) This is to add some overlap to the main body of the hair.

B) If you prefer a more graphical interface you can use the dynamic controller. To gain access to the dynamics controller, go to the menu system and select cupid dynamics.
Once the controller has loaded you will have a tick box option 'Hair Overlap Active'(1) at the top of the controller. This is to turn on/off the jiggle.

The first tab named 'Hair Overlap'(2) is where all the controls for the jiggle is. The controls work the same way as described above – just you control the settings with a slider.

[Michael Cawood - Director]

Compression Tips for Animators

Why should that recruiter have to download a 200MB reel when a 20MB reel is just as good? Similarly I'd like to keep our shared folders for this film as small to avoid us all downloading files that are unnecessarily large. So I thought I'd offer a quick guide to what is currently our gold standard for video compression for animators... Quicktime H264.

If you don't already have it, upgrade your Quicktime to Quicktime Pro. It's only $29.99 and it's a tiny investment in your animation career that will reap big benefits. So far very few (even pro level) compressors are as good as Quicktime's own.

I've taken an example of a video here that's already compressed but still no-where near as small as it can be. I'm sure Ryan doesn't mind me using his shot as an example... but we had plenty of other examples to choose from. This video went down from 7.5MB to 1.5MB and you can't tell the difference at all (if you can it's the jpg compression in this picture not the video).

These days I tend to just let Quicktime open my AVI files by default so as soon as I playblast (and you don't have to even save it), it comes up in Quicktime and if I like the results I go to:
1) File - Export
2) Choose 'Movie to QuickTime Movie'
3) Options - Settings
4) Set Compression type to H.264
5) Data Rate restrict to 1600kbits/sec

This is a generous bit-rate that will serve 90% of the most complex rendered shots you want to show on the internet. You can halve it for a smaller file or I have been known to double it for extremely fast, detailed action with a lot of repetitive shapes. But there is nothing in this film or most showreels that requires more than 1600, and 1250 is even quite respectable.

You can make your audio 96kbps and Mono in most cases for a smaller file as well... assuming you even need audio.

The other benefit of using H264 is that it's really widely adopted so no self respecting person in the animation business will be without a way to view these videos.

For the purposes of reviewing playblasts this is actually generously large, and could be even smaller. Many of the shots I compress come to just a few hundred kilobytes!

[Michael Cawood - Director]

GUI character control picker