Finished product.

Here is my finished ident.



It took a long time to render. There was also issues with my software which caused problems but after a bit of tweaking I got going again. I made quite a large mistake - not changing which camera to render, so all my footage came out of the same camera. This meant I had to render it all again. Once it was all rendered, I put it into After Effects and added the audio. This fitted perfectly which was a big bonus.

I am quite happy with the way it turned out but I think there could be some improvements.

The first being smoothing the reels. The more I watch my work, the more it annoys me that they are not smoothed. It didn't bother me at first but now it keeps niggling at me. It took over an hour to render, and hour to upload and some more time putting ti into After Effects so this close to the deadline, it can stay unsmoothed.

I would have also liked to have added a background. This I didn't even think about until about ten minutes ago. I don't think you would have been able to see it because it is so dark, but I would have liked to experiment all the same.

I had big issues with the lighting. I have discovered I cannot do lighting AT ALL. I must have wrestled with the lighting for at least a day trying to get it right. I think I need to read a few books and practice a lot more. I think the reflective textures didn't help too much either but at least I have learnt from this.

One thing I can definitely say is that the next project, I will manage my time much better. I managed to finish before the deadline but there is a lot of things I would have liked to improve and change so the extra time would have been better.

Anyway, it is done so lets move on to the next project.

The end is near!

I have done the model, I have textured it, I have added the lights and added the cameras.

I added the piece of film which goes all around the cogs and added an animated texture. I made it slightly transparent to give a better effect. I also smoothed the reels slightly to make them less geometric but they do not seem to stay smoothed on the renders. Im not too worried because i think they look good even when they are not smoothed. I am pleased with how my model turned out. It looks like a projector and could get away with it being a real model. I am pleased that I managed to do it with only one reference image. This was due to the lack of images I could find of the same projector. I had to take away some of the cogs and switches because they were not important or could not see where they went to or how they fit in.

This is my final model.

This is mostly untextured. I wanted the texture to have a metal look to it but still be a grey colour. I made the base red to add some colour and on the photo, it looks like that is supposed to be the colour of the base. Below is a close up shot of the cogs and screws of my model. This also has the metal texture applied with the red base and the black object which sits in front of the reel.

 I added the film reel and then made it slightly transparent and the picture below shows how the film wraps around the cogs and screws. It does not have the texture applied to it but this will be the an animated texture to make it look as though it is moving between the reel.

The picture below shows the image when it is rendered and has had the animated texture applied to it. It also gives a good idea of how the projector works with the film going past the lens to be projected onto the screen. It shows the film going between the two reels. This image also gives a better view of the textures. 

The image below shows the setup of my scene. It shows the lighting and the screen with the large animated texture on. The screen will show the footage that I created earlier. The cameras will be positioned at different angles to show the different areas of the projector.

This image below shows where the cameras are going to go. The light will have to be changed slightly for each cameras to show the best parts. In some cameras, the parts are much darker so by adding and moving the lighting, it will show them better. The mood of the piece is going to be quite dark because its a projector and rarely do you have a light on when a projector is going.

All I have left to do is render the four cameras and then put the footage into After Effects and add the audio. Each angle is on the screen for two seconds, apart from the last, which will make it fit to the music perfectly (I hope). But this is the last stage now. It is slightly annoying that the reels will not be smooth in the finished render but that is a small issue that does not look too bad.

3D model

I created a 3d model of one of my reels and then had it printed out.

I wanted to keep it on the theme of projectors but my projector was too complicated to print. Instead The next best thing was to do one of the reels.

I added a bit of film to to make it look better. My first model that I sent to print was too thin so instead I made it thinker and bigger and I ended up with this:

I am pleased with the results and it did not break. I think I chose the right component to print as it depicts the exact theme of my final piece. 

I like it and shall put it on my window ledge.

Progress at last

I have finally managed to finish my model ofthe projector. I have also added the screen which the footage will be played on. I found it hard to find a way to make it look as though the footage was playing on the screen. This was because there is some mist in the light so if I was putting it into after effects, then I would of had to of found a way to get the image behind the mist and that was too complicated formme. Especially as I had done some experimenting with mist and compositing two pieces of footage so they played at the same time. It did not go well so I looked at a few different methods. After toning to one of my peers, I decided to create an animated texture on the screen which would look much better. After looking at some tutorials and knowing I had already created the footage, I created a successful animated texture.

The next issue I have is getting the film to move through the cogs. But again, after talking to one of my peers, I decided to use another animated texture so that I appears to move without actually moving. Whether this will be as successful as the other, I do not know but I shall give it a try.

After that I will just need to texture the metal parts, add a little animation to the reels and then render. At least I can see the finish line... Almost.

Tate Britain

I went up London to see the Eadweard Muybridge exhibition at the Tate Britain. I thought this would be good research, especially as I am using his photography as part of my project.

Whilst at the Tate, I saw a lot of his photography and also discovered a lot of history about him. He moved to New York from England when he was 22 and then moved to San Francisco when he was 25. He was involved in a stage coach accident and returned to England to recuperate. 

When he moved back to America in 1867, he worked as a photographer, photographing landscapes of valleys and different areas around california. He then began to work for a gentlemen called Leland Stanford who requested him to photograph his horses. 

In 1874, his wife has a son fathered by a lover rather than himself. In his rage he killed her lover but was found out and tried for murder. He was acquitted on the grounds of justifiable homicide. 

After this he returns to his photography, taking panoramic pictures of San Francisco and still working for Stanford. In 1877 was when he began to take shots of horses in action. This then progressed to athletes and  in 1881 he published a book with all his motion shots of horses and other animals. He experimented with his technique and used high speed shutters to capture this. He would create a line of cameras with trip switches so when the horse set them off, the cameras would take a photo creating the animals in motion.

It was a good trip and I learnt a lot about the Muybridge. I did not learn much about the development of his technique or where the idea came from which would have been more interesting but I saw his photography and his book of animals in motion.

Footage

While I am making slow progress on the model, I have decided to make the footage that will play onto the screen. It was hard to find any footage that was not copyrighted and that I could easily edit. There were plenty of images on the internet so I decided to use the images, cut them up and create my own footage. This way I could also add the Sky Arts logo. 

It took some PhotoShop work, a lot of slicing and building up of layers and some creative thinking to create my different images to create my final footage. I wanted to have the Sky Arts logo look as though it was part of the original film so i had to use some blending and blurring techniques. I originally wanted in on the horse but the soon discovered the horse bends and contorts too much for me to add the logo on its back. I then decided to add it to the corner but to make it look even more authentic, have it moving slightly from frame to frame to male it look jumpy - just like it would of looked in that century. 

This is an example of one of the images:

There is eleven of these images which make a sequence which is looped. The end footage is also very jumpy and flickery which is the old style effect I was going for. 

This is my footage so far:

This has definitely been a successful couple of days.

Progress

I have been concentrating on my model and trying to get all the correct components in place. I am finding it very hard as it is being modelled from one reference image and I have had to model each little component and move it into place.  My model so far does have some materials and textures applied to it as I was testing different materials out. This is my model at its current state.

It still needs a lot of work and better texturing as well as lighting. I still have a long way to go but at least that will be the hard part over.

The light test from last week was not what I had hoped and was not happy with it at all. I had to work around this and find a way of making it look better and more like a real projection. I accomplished this by making the screen smaller than the light so it looks more realistic.

Below is a picture of it to show what the light will look like once the model is finished.

I am also working on getting the Muybridge footage of the running horse. I am having trouble finding it without any protection or copyright on it so I have decided to make my own footage using an image and then am going to loop it. I will need to make a sky arts logo to add onto the footage and onto the projector. I will edit this is After Effects and then try and do a test to make it look as though it is being projected onto the screen.