SunCoast Production Log #009

FEB 03 - FEB 09

ETHEN DENT

Retrospective

As the deadline for the retrospective approaches, I am predominantly tasked with finishing in time for submission. Most of my time this week will be on the retrospective. I will, however, move on to anything else if needed or asked.

Master Spreadsheet

Aside from the retrospective, the rest of my time has been spent correcting information on the Master Spreadsheet

Updated Roster Chart - to reflect the updates to the team roster, the roster sheet has been changed. Information regarding equipment, software, etc has been updated as well.

[Master Spreadsheet, Roster Sheet update]

Production Checklist - Rather than departments, individual elements have been added to the production checklist. This is common practice, but also gives a better idea of the status of the production.

[Master Spreadsheet, Production Checklist update]

Updated Gantt Chart - to reflect the new production list, the Gantt chart has been integrated into the production checklist and each element will have its own schedule.

[Master Spreadsheet, Gantt Chart update]

Other spreadsheet fixes - A couple of errors in the production budget sheet and financial projection sheet have been rectified.

SunCoast Website

During the weekend, I’ve implemented some changes to the website based on feedback we received on Wednesday and Friday.

Website Landing Page - A landing page has been added to the website. Similar to BLUEZOO’s landing page, we intend to have a studio showreel that displays the best of our work. For the time being, we have rendered out a test SH10 of the animated project. This will act as a placeholder until we have the showreel prepared.

[SunCoast Studios, Website Landing Page]

Website Team Page - Individual team member profiles have been made to depict highlights of people’s portfolios and showreels.

[SunCoast Studios, Team Member Page example]

What I’ve been listening to this week:

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GEORGE MORRIS

Buoyancy

"Throughout this week I have been trying to finish the first shot of our short film early using a plugin in the Unreal Engine. I am doing this as the first shot requires no animating, mostly technical problems such as rubbish floating in the ocean. Our Director came up with the idea to have rubbish floating in the ocean as it shows the viewer that the ocean is already in a poor state with all this rubbish still floating in the ocean. "

"I made the rubbish be able to float by putting them in a buoyancy blueprint that bobs above the water found in the ocean plugin. The only problem is that I need to put the rubbish inside a buoyancy cube and not the individual asset itself, making the asset look stiff and stuck on a plane when a wave comes and knocks it. To fix this I will have to find better assets to use in order to make it more realistic."

What I’ve been listening to this week:

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JACK DEVEREUX

“Started work on editing the previs and re-recording lines for the project”

What I’ve been listening to this week:

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JESSICA HILES

Weight Painting

"This week was fairly straightforward as I was weight painting for the whole time. As I mentioned last week, I had done all the simple stuff, such as setting out the skeleton and adding the controls and constraints, so now it was time to make sure it all moved correctly. I started with the central body and worked my way out to the flippers, then I went from the shoulder to the edge of the flipper to make sure the weights were smooth along the extremity. Then I went to the face and had to re-do most of it as there were a lot of joints in close proximity, so Maya didn't place the default skin weighing correctly."

"Not much was done other than that this week, as I had to focus on this. One thing I did to save a bit of time was make sure of the mirror skin weighting tool, this meant I didn’t have to repeat the weighting on each side I could just do it on one side of the rig and mirror it's over."

What I’ve been listening to this week:

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MUHAMAD USMAN

"After completing the terrain, I was browsing Quixel Bridge to find the most suitable textures and materials that will be suitable within the scene. I needed to find a sand texture that would resemble clean underwater sand and two rock materials that will also blend well within the sand materials."

"I then exported the terrain from Unreal Engine to Maya. The polycount for the entire terrain was around 16,000,000 triangles or more. I will need to trim down the detail up to a point where it will not interrupt the animation scenery so that the animators will have a smoother time animating in Maya. I then placed the blockout banner and stalls within Unreal, and exported them so that the assets that are placed in the Unreal scene will correlate with the placement in Maya."

What I’ve been listening to this week:

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PRIYA SHAH

"To start announcing and promoting our business, we decided to open up an Instagram page. At the moment we are aiming to get quite a few followers and once it builds upon we will be eventually spreading around other social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, etc. Our Instagram account consists of our website, the team and an introduction of what we do as a business and what our goals are. We aim to create more content to put there, mainly examples of our services and we hope that we can get a wider audience as per previous research which you see in my blog, it mentions that Instagram is currently the number one social media platform that businesses have been using."

What I’ve been listening to this week:

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