Well as many of you might know its almost the end of my university course and its been a long and tough ride but im sorry to see it end.

Tomorrow is my last handin for Creative Character Animation (CCA) and my Viva for my Final Year Project (The Dive), at the moment im still working on my CCA......i was hoping to improve the animation of my last handin for it but as im still feeling like i dont fully understand how to get from the blocking pass to the final pass i dont think im going to be able to improve on it at all.

My only really solution is to try and gain marks on the rendering and lighting of the scene, i am going to be using a technique that i read in an article from an Animation Mentor student.....this involves using IBL (image based lighting) to create a natural look to the scene...i have run a couple of tests and found that so far it looks much better.......

With Image Based Lighting


Without Image Based Lighting

Although it still needs a lot of work added to it i can see a massive improvement compared to the render without IBL.

Since the article is focused on Maya and a lot of the setting its talks about are somewhat unique to Maya im finding it hard to port it over to XSi but im sure that with a little ingenuity and time i will be able to get it looking right in XSi.

I will be using a lot of other techniques such as Ambient Occlusion and maybe a photon map but as photon maps are quite difficult and sometimes unessential i will see if i can create the overall scene without doing one.

Ambient Occlusion


If you are interested at all in trying this yourself this is the article i am using as my templates for my rendering....IBL Tutorial

i'll keep you posted on what im doing and how i get on with it but as i dont want to be posting a load of new pages to my blog i will just update on this page (blog post) so keep checking back.

Update: 11/05/10 21:05

So i added a example overlay for the news cast, im sure it will change over the process of this blog entry but for now this is what im aiming for it to look like.


As you can see from the image as well, i have added my MBAnimations logo to the news bulletin as well so that i show that its mine ^^......got to love Copyright ©

Update: 12/05/10 00:46

Change the light setup and the color of the farmers shirt to give it more of a farmer look.

Color Change and Lighting Change


I think the character matches the scene a lot more with the new lighting setup and the color change.

what do you think?

Update: 12/05/10 03:32

So this is my almost final render....im going to work on the animation again tonight but on the off chance that i dont manage to get the new animation done in time at least i have something to handin.



Transcript: Well it was aliens you see...yes aliens, they came down from up there and stole all my animals, luckily i got insurance on them last week so i can claim it back. *sound of cows* Oh that noise is just my wife she's getting over a bit of a cold at the moment.

As my last handin got me the mark of 58/100 (high C grade, i was only 2 marks off a B) with the lighting and texturing i have done i will be able to gain them 2 marks (or more) and get me at the very least a B-

Anyway this could be my handin but there is a chance of a better one.....the version doesn't have an Ambient Occlusion on it as i didn't render out that pass yet but i have one ready if i have time.