After effects is completely normal

In a completely unsurprising set of events after effects crashes multiple times in a lesson then deleted my project file i was working on… Fortunately i have made plenty of backups as i know that stability isn’t a trait of after effects. After some assistance i discovered after effects doesn’t play well with external devices and i moved all my wok off my hard drive onto a internal HDD and that seems to fix all the new issue.

Once again i am thankful to have a team which all know the pains of working in after effects and between us have crashed more times than we can count so we have experience many different bugs and found our own fixes. We managed to get everything running again in the end thanks to teamwork the creative cow forms and a bit of luck.

Using element 3D and Changing the scene

The Lab scene is almost done and i have decided to abandon the reactor idea as i can’t get it look great and getting it positioned right is important and i can’t find a nice position for it to go in.I am using element 3D to add microscopes to the scene to make a science lab i have never used it before so i am leaning as i go.

I have also added flaks to the scene to touch it up i have a temporary green mat in  it to make the flask visible as it’s glass and transparent on the bright background.

Team work is going great as i have never used Element 3D before i was relying on my group and the youtube tutorials to teach me and they made sure i was able to get my work done as well as their own. Overall i am happy with the scene and with the help my group could provide.

Prepping for the MVP

It’s the final few days before we return to college and have the MVP I just have a few minor things to add then I’ll do a render of my scene to add to what we have so far to qualify for the MVP I will have further changes to make as this is the priority scene I’m working on but I believe it’s of a high standard.

To go with it we have a News report scene done by Liam which should be ready for some minor changes to improve it. Jake is also matt painting a scene outside scene which I have seen parts knowing it should be in a renderable state. And Charlie is still working on his scene and suffering through the pain of working in after effects with various issues slowing down progress. We also have the title scene to add them all too when we get back to college we can all render out our scenes and do an MVP render to gain feedback and do a major progress check.

Overall I’m happy with the progress made over easter both individuality and from the group as a whole. For the project, I’m happy we are on track as we all took the major scenes first and any minor scenes wouldn’t take as long to complete so they aren’t expect to be done right now.

Improving the reactor

I have been working on improving the reactor design as I still can’t seem to get it exactly how I want it to look I’m also considering moving it to a different scene due to having an issue making it fit into the current scene and look realistic. Unfortunately, due to having numerous issues with after effects it’s taking more time than it should due to me needed to troubleshoot issues and deal with crashes.


Communication is holding up I have been working with Jake to assist him in his work due to him having some technical issues with rotoscoping so I have been providing help to get his done. I have also been providing feedback on the scene to help improve parts of it eg colour of the grass and getting the shadows to look like they were real.

Designing a reactor

This week I managed to get the reactor designed and build using saber once I got the beam size and animation designed (flicker, brightness and speed) I found the hardest part was picking out the colour to use. As this is something which doesn’t exist in real life I didn’t have many references. I finally settled on a light blue based on feedback it was between that or an orange I felt they both had the reactor look I was looking for.

We had a group scrum this week to do a progress check and everyone is working independently on a scene each I am confident that we will have 3 scene minimum ready for the MVP and a 4th depending on how quickly my group works. We have been helping each other to build the scenes by sending screenshots and going through changes. With us not being at college I’m happy with the amount of communication we have to cooperate with each other.

Start of the Lab

The lab scene is still being worked as they are a lot to do for it to try and create a realistic lab scene. So far I have adjusted the colour to a blue to make it more like what you picture a lab as I've added graphs and charts to all the monitors one of them being animated. I might put it in the background somewhere else if I can’t find a good location in this scene. I want to try and add some 3d objects as well if I can but for that, I’ll wait until I’m back at college to access element 3D which will assist in the task. The biggest part which will take some time is creating a reactor using the Saber plugin to make an energy beam with reactor casing which will be placed into the wall somewhere. I have a few ideas on how to do this I’ll trying some designs to see what I can make.

I also have another scene where the actor is running down the stairs this one has less to add to it however so it shouldn’t take too long just a colour correction and then some other minor add-ons.

As it’s the easter my group is working more independently as we're not all together but we have communication channels established for providing assistance to each other and for a scrum when needed.

Text and transition planning

We are planning to re-record the footage either at some point today or tomorrow the goal is to
get it done before the Easter break (march 28th) so that way i have extra footage
allowing me to do some extra work over Easter. In the meantime i am continuing to
work on post production elements.

I also have starting planning out things like the text countdown
on scene transitions which will be something along the lines of “23:55 minutes remaining until impact)

To do this i chose a text font which looks like a digital clock to make it feel more like a timer.
The timer it’s self i created by using a script which counts down it made a couple of adjustments
to change the starting times which i can do for each scene when it’s needed

27th march update

At the start of the day we did our scrum and distributed our jobs among us for us to do over the
Easter break so everyone knew what they were doing i was assigned to continue working on my
footage and see if i can get the footage fixed with the tracking issue using other plugins such as mocha.
We have been collaborating every so often to see each other's work and provide feedback.
The rest of the group is all working effectively and getting everything done on the timeline that we
expect. We should have 4 completed bits of footage ready for the MVP provided we run into no issue.
It’s likely if i can’t get the footage fixed we are going to just re-record it with a tripod to make the camera
perfectly still to eliminate some barriers to what could stop us with the tracking.

The group as a whole is happy with our progress apart from the issues with the tracking which has
caused us to take longer than expected but we should still remain on track.

Starting the visual effects on the lab

Today i have started on the lab scene which i am going to matt paint and do some coloring
and masking to make some adjustments to the scene when needed.
My the first part i wanted to track an image to the scene however they is some issues with the footage
which is making tracking difficulty i have attempted to use different methods and various fixes with
no results. After speaking to my group and a lecture we have decided than the issues with the
footage are harder to solve that we expected and we are planning on rerecording the footage
with a tripod and some other changes to offset potential issues which could cause the tracking
problems.

(on the image shown the tracking lines should be more compact and within the square)

Otherwise i have been working on stuff with other members to assist until new footage is available.
As well as that i have been doing some of the other work that the project needs such as posters
and updating document


The group is all involved and make the collective decision to re-record the footage
as it would likely be faster to do so that fixing the old one would be. Having the whole group able to
provide assistance is useful as everyone is familiar with after effects and the software we use to provide
troubleshooting and then decided when it’s not worth fixing and restarting.

Beginning Production

We have produced a title sequence to go at the start of the project this has our names and a mixture of stock footage to create an opening scene this is something that we all had some creative direction on to help put it together. We wanted to have some of the text move to give it more life however in the end we decided against it as we wanted all text to be either still or moving for constancey.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33sosJ-2d-g

As a team we all have our own jobs to do but we regularly discuss and look over each others work to
see how we can improve and share creative input. Everyone is filling their roles and working well together
to provide feedback to each other to see what we can all do to improve.

Overall we are on track for the project with just a small bit of footage left to get to finish off while other
members have begun working on the visual effects already for the project.  

Synoptic project Filming Oxclose

We met up in Oxclose so we could film a lot of the outside sections of the project we got a large amount of the footage we needed done with behind the scenes as well. We had 3 of us their i was holding and using the camera while charlie and Jake were acting in some of the shots. To steady the camera we just had to use what we could as we didn't have a tripod so a mixture of balancing against a fence and a tree stump were used to steady the camera when needed. We are all confident the footage is good and we won't need to rerecord any of it at all.

We might have had a few issue with consistency of lighting but this will be fixable with some colour correcting in after effects.

Synoptic Project Filming the News

Today we have begun the first of the filming for the Before the after. We filmed the news scene which is the only part which requires a script (Prepared beforehand)  we took some time to get the tripod and camera set up to get the angle and lighting right for the shoot. We did run into the issue of having low battery and not knowing when it might ruin out meant we had to keep the camera turned off whenever it wasn't filming and had to work quickly around it. We were working with someone else who was outside the group so they had to learn the script taking up some time but after that, we were able to capture the footage. We got the footage we needed as well as some for behind the scenes.

Synoptic project progress 5th of march

We have completed preproduction and we were expecting to start recording the footage last week however due to the weather conditions we had to suspend filming which we are now hoping to get started this week.

Otherwise the group is working well and what we can do is coming together to a high standard for the planning, once we have some footage we can begin doing the proper work. We did want to start recording earlier however we can't control the snow and once it's past we should be on track.