Making 3D animated films in 7 days with year olds Tom SF Haines

Transcription

1 Making 3D animated films in 7 days with year olds Tom SF Haines

2 3Dami (3dami.org) A summer school (studio) Runs in the UK each year, end of July / start of August Started in 2012, there have been 11 teams Budget first year: 500 for 12 students, 1 team Budget this year: for 45 students, 5 teams This year: 2 locations, salaries for staff!

3 Price It's zero! Free! Many kinds of zero: Always been free to attend Lunch has always been included Transport to/from the event most of the time This year accommodation, transport and three meals per day for all students

4 Their goal Make a short film in 7 days In teams of ~9 From scratch Premiere on last day pressure is on!

5 What do they do? Everything! (almost) Write the script, storyboard 3D model the props, sets Model and rig the characters Run simulations, even write code Animate Render, composite, edit We let them download textures and audio from the internet, though most textures are still custom

6 Why? Technical and artistic - STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Maths) Learn about (real) teamwork Learn about the filmmaking process Project based learning This is the biggest difference between us and our competition Aside: Visits to vfx houses (Framestore - won an Oscar for Gravity) Talks from industry (Rare - made Goldeneye 007)

7 3Dami Supercut 2015 (11 films, 26:11 filtered down to 1:56) (including credits)

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9 This talk Cover what we have learnt in 4 years Initial approach vs current approach Bit scattergun - could talk all day... Where we are (hopefully) going next Want to get more people involved, inc. collaborations (That s you lot!)

10 2012 to 2015 First year: Only two of us with no plan and no clue Little cash ( 42 per student) They ran out of time and almost failed OpenGL renders + I did the edit This year: Lots of planning, lot of experience, 9 staff Lots of cash ( 1000 per student) Close as always, but all 5 teams finished themselves

11 Staff First year: Me (Blenderhead) and Pete (teacher) only This year (per location): Teacher Blenderhead (Me, Aidy Burrows, Chris McFall) Student helper (3Dami graduate) Extra teacher or student helper #teams + 1 is a good rule of thumb!

12 Student selection First year: Let any student come No marketing, therefore: Most came from Pete s after school club Others via teachers recommendations Few more from animation 12 competition Some of the students were turkeys Bad, especially at a high pressure team event We were lucky that most were good!

13 Student selection This year: Students submit a portfolio Proves they want to be there At least one item must be made with Blender Not scared of it! Understand the basics Can follow tutorials We always ask for more work They will listen to and follow instructions Not 100% reliable, but probably 95%.

14 Attendance & motivation Attendance is almost spotless! Better than summer schools that charge money... The students work hard Event is 9-5; most put in an extra 2 hours each day Stress has required careful management They will still turn up when ill We believe all of the above are side effects of the portfolio system (+ it s their film!) Downside: This is not an event for everyone...

15 Marketing We now do it! Need the contacts - takes time This year: ~200 applicants, ~50 portfolios, 45 accepted We actually struggle to fill the event Most schools don t pass us on to their students; don t know why They don t pass any summer schools on? We are different from other summer schools? Not a subject Require work in advance? (priority is the exams)

16 Teamwork First year: Entirely organic, i.e. chaos Some ad-hoc producers appeared Voted for a director, but didn t really work - not enough guidance This year: They vote for a producer and a director Start of second day We make it clear what their responsibilities are We add roles as required, e.g. assistant producer if the producer isn t getting it done

17 Producer Responsibilities: Planning, esp. time management Runs the dailies Keep an eye on the big picture Make sure the team is communicating Take point on problem solving

18 Director Responsibilities: Make sure the story gets told! Final artistic say Consistency, continuity In charge of the animatic, and updating it to become the final edit

19 Team size More students = more content, more polish, better film. More students = failed communication, incoherent vision, chaos, failure. Have to balance: First year: Team of 12 - only just works. Have since settled on teams of 9. Can probably survive as low as 6, but that leaves no room for illness / turkeys.

20 Peer Teaching Flipped classroom, without the (unimportant) flip! Students are encouraged to teach each other Some students specialise, e.g. become the go to for texturing Staff seed knowledge Students who come multiple years are very helpful Though don t always keep up with improvements we have made! It s noisy - shouting across the room is normal!

21 Schedule First Year: First day dedicated to scriptwriting and storyboarding Left to work on their film for remaining six days We didn t know at this point what needed to be done when! Premiere in evening of last day At a different location, meaning they all had to leave an hour in advance to catch a train

22 Schedule This year: First day dedicated to scriptwriting and storyboarding Second day technical talk, linking tutorial, voting Announce what they should get done each day Multiple film submission deadlines on last day Premiere in evening of last day 30 meters from computer room:-)

23 Daily targets Day 1: Scriptwriting, storyboarding, concept art Day 2: Animatic, populate asset manager Day 3: At least one set, one character weekend goes here Day 4: All sets and all characters Day 5: Half the shots animated; rendering overnight Day 6: Second half of the shots; rendering overnight Day 7: Fix problems, compositing, credits, audio

24 Dailies Not done until last year Each team now has at least one per day Multiple per day common at end Introduced primarily as a forced break For stress management - works Mid afternoon encouraged (lunch is the other break) Different from normal dailies: Away from computers Very little feedback on work - that tends to be more ad-hoc More about planning, who is doing what, hitting targets

25 Scriptwriting First year: Gave them an awful theme Did a design by committee thing (accidentally!) All of the good ideas were sucked out of the room Last year: Students write entire scripts Heavy feedback structure, with time to polish Vote to select which one is made

26 Theme Selection The Olympics - bad Summer never comes - less bad Going home Empty spaces It doesn t really matter as long as it isn t too specific! Try to avoid anything depressing! (the two good ones are song titles )

27 Scriptwriting steps I Phase 1: 10 min of solitary ideation 20 min idea exchange Phase 2: 20 min to make bullet point film script 10 min feedback in pairs; repeat 2-3 times 20 min bullet points -> proper script Phase 3: 30 min groups of three discuss their films; select best 10 min each member improves selected script on own 20 min ideas discussed; original author makes changes if they agree

28 Scriptwriting steps II Phase 4: 5 min presentations prepared 30 min scripts presented to team 5 min vote for film to be made Phase 5: 20 min solitary ideation on improvements 40 min discussion and addition of improvements Phase 6: Concept art Storyboarding

29 Scriptwriting is hard It s not the point of the event, but Good films motivate students Good films encourage next year's applicants Good films help us get funding (maybe) About ⅓ of teams fail :-( Staff can often step in and recover It has spilled into day two on occasion - bad Causes: stubbornness, incomplete scripts, weak endings Have killed a script for being inappropriate Storyboarding and concept art are never an issue (Though never as much concept art as I would like)

30 Film length We tell them to make a 60 second film Average shot length is 3 seconds, therefore 20 shots In practise the average length is 2 minutes and 25 seconds! (with credits) My favorite film is also the shortest They tend to bite off more than they can chew!

31 Technical limitations Before scriptwriting they are told: No more than three characters. No more than three sets. Avoid complex effects. Veer towards cartoony rather than gritty.

32 Props and sets Few problems here Biggest issue is when experienced students do them: We balance our teams - everyone has different skills About third of students have come before This actually results in a culture - we no longer need to explicitly teach as much! Can be a problem when we improve the event Stronger students need to work on the characters

33 Characters Hard, particularly rigging Best students must work on this from the start Highest priority requirement when balancing teams: Someone who has character experience Most hand holding occurs here Have been many problems I now check them

34 Animation Most of them will not have done it before Our animation is usually very bad! Encourage all the tricks: Animators Survival Guide - Rowan Williams YouTube videos as reference Recording own reference video One team actually shot their entire film live action as reference!

35 Animatic First year: Nothing - I did all of the video editing! This year: Photo storyboard, make basic animatic (2nd day) Incrementally improve it, with reference footage and OpenGL renders Drop in final shots when done Multiple deadlines for final version

36 Polishing There isn t time... but limited educational value Worried we are teaching bad habits here Lack of does affect motivation/satisfaction Many of our films have obvious issues with easy fixes Partial success encouraging them to polish afterwards Don t really have a proper mechanism to support this

37 Asset Management First year: Google docs spreadsheet Render farm I hacked together during the event (!) This year: Custom integrated asset manager and render farm Designed to be student friendly, avoids problems Handles credits and licensing information

38 Render Farm Used 2000 cluster at UCL this year! 20 minutes per frame One team went with freestyle, and couldn t use it due to 20 gig memory requirements (trees ) If the render farm isn t good enough students have to use their own computers They will mess around and distract those still working This is bad - you need a good render farm! A University's Computer Science department is a natural fit (UCL and University of Bath)

39 Premiere Evening of final day Like a real premiere Students introduce their films Free food/beer to bring in a large audience Get around 100 people in London The staff create an intro video during the event

40 Premiere Intro London 2015

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42 Why Blender? Free. Necessary, but true for much of the competition Low hardware requirements; runs from a USB stick We target students from poorer background - they often have to make do with crappy locked down computers at school/college Interface is really good (seriously!) Complete pipeline: Has sculpting, simulations etc. It has compositing and a video editor as well Can do everything with one program! (No pipeline TDs) Would never work with a Maya oriented pipeline :-P Too much software to learn

43 Blender observations For list of our biggest problems look at the workflow project! (next, in the main auditorium...) We make films... so does the Blender foundation. Our needs are very closely aligned Video editor and compositor could do with more work however, particularly speed 30 minutes to build a 2 minutes film over nfs from.exr sequences in the video editor (with a gigabytes-per-second backend)

44 Event improvements Every year I tweak and improve things Never ending task... The year: Introduced event specific book (144 pages); will keep and improve, but total value is unknown (for first day and future effect) Reduced amount of lecturing; went a little too far and need to add a bit more back again Tried straight vote for director/producer - bad idea, will revert to them nominating themselves first...

45 The future I I am surprised we have survived this long: Pete and I have full time jobs Begging for cash is hard, unreliable and horrifying Competition is not as good but bigger, louder, touches (ugh) more students - has more cash Intension is to grow, obtain sustainability: Need to get large enough to employ permanent staff Need multiple sources of funding Need to get enough locations that losing one isn t a problem

46 The future II Want four locations next year London & Bath again Head north: Liverpool? Lancaster? Edinburgh? Glasgow? Other countries? We are building an improved website Online portfolio submission and event management, plus tutorials for teenagers and younger Book will grow, may eventually be published There is interest in doing a computer game variant Work for younger audience Already have three hour secondary school (11-16) sessions Will be introducing a primary school (5-11) session shortly...

47 Our students One got an internship at DNeg, largest UK VFX house Another is at California Institute of Arts University requirements have been dropped Everything from fine art to computer science Groups of them made two further films this year, self organising online! See YouTube channel: Hide and Sheep + Dr Who: Personal Space Invasion Most are yet to graduate from uni...

48 Questions? 3dami.org (All films/videos on our YouTube channel)