Review of the work (ANI306)

Shot 1 : Fire and Smoke
(3 Folder > Artist > 01 fire_smoke)

In this scene, Alex, the main character, walks in to the kitchen and she sees huge fume from the kettle. The Director, Valentino, asked me to make medium size of smoke as he will put hologram effect in the post. I did few test for the smoke with particle, fluid and finally settled down to particle sprite render type. Sprite render type connects one or more image to emitted particle and usually used for making clouds and sand storm.(See 3 Folder > Technical > 02smoke) It wasn't too hard to create the smoke but it took some time to adjust right level of opacity and colour of the smoke.

For the fire, Valentino wanted a realistic fire flame from gas stove. I broke down the fire into two element which is blobby flames from a hole around the gas emitter and flare around the emitter.
I made a Nurbs shape of a flame and duplicated one it as softbody to goal to original object. So when I connect the softbody to turbulance field, it looks like slightly shaking by wind around the flame. I duplicated one flame and put around the gas emitter.
Making flare was a bit harsh. I used fire menu of the maya dynamics, and I had to adjust colour, incandescence, transparency and glowness. It took awhile to get exact colour I wanted to make.
(See 3folders > technical > 01 fire)

Shot 2 : Steam from teacup

The steam wasn't a major part of this scene, it was secondary animation as Alex is reading a book and tea emits steam from a cup on the table.I used fluid to make subtle steam. As I worked on a separate scene which wasn't fully lighted and textured, it was hard to make satisfactory effect. So I had to keep it in mind that the bright light will fill in the room and it will desaturate the colour of steam. (See 3 folders > technical > 03 steam)





Shot 3 : Aura

In this scene, Alex sees black aura around her dog and she knew her dog was gonna die soon. Valentino asked me to make smoke trail like when the Death eaters vanish with black smoke.




(Reference from youtube)

At first I just made a smoke trail but it looks just floating above the dog and it didn't look like "an aura", but I came up with an idea of tweaking a method for the fire. I copied the dog mesh and duplicated one as softbody and made it to goal (same way I made the flame). Then I made the softbody as fluid emitter (emit from object) so that it looks like the dog itself is emitting dark aura. It worked very well and I just deleted its head and legs from the mesh otherwise the aura would totally cover up the dog.

Also, Valentino asked me to make more gap between the dog and the aura. I scaled up the mesh and put higher value for the turbulence, so the aura looks more squirmy around the body. However, Val wanted it to be slower so I had to reduce the value. (See 3 folders > Technical > 04 aura)







Shot 4 : Piano 
(See 3 folders > Animation > animation & piano animation)

I've worked on this scene quiet long, since November last year.I have tried many different ways of making the colour particle. When I interviewed Alex the real girl who has synaesthesia, she said she sees spraying colours from piano keys. I decided to exaggerate it as small fireworks rather than a spray.

Before I start to make the link to the keys, I had to analyze the animation to see which keys get pressed at which frame. I made a key-particle sync sheet, and only 16 keys(A-, A-#, C-, D-, E-, F-, G-, A, A#, C, D, E, F, G, A+, A+#) were used for the animation. And (A, A#, C, D, E, F, G ) these seven keys are repeated, so I labeled a colour for each of them. As there are seven keys and Alex said she sees green when she press F, so I gave them a rainbow colours.

For example, C: red, D: orange, E: yellow, F: green, G: blue, A:navy, B:purple. But as we don't use B key in the animation, I gave purple to A#. (See 3 Folders > Artist > 03 piano)
In summary, I needed 7 colours in 2 shades, darker for the minor keys and brighter for the major keys.

I created 16 small polygon balls to use them as the colour emitter for matched keys, and tried to make different colours for each balls.

However, all 16 balls emitted same colour that I made first. I tried to link particle shading node to the different particle shape node, but it only connected to one shading node. The problem was this initialParticleSE node, this node is default particle shading node and it connects the particleShape nodes and particle color node. I tried to delete the initialParticleSE node, but as it's the default node so it was unable to delete. It seemed the particle emitters need each different shading node to have its own colour map. I also tried to create another shading node to connect to particleShape node instead of initialParticleSE, but couldn't find the way to create new shading node.

initialParticleSE connected to ParticleShape node, and there is an error message that initialParticleSE is non-deletable node

I googled it, and could find a solution from CG Society that independent shading node can be created by mel script.

http://forums.cgsociety.org/archive/index.php/t-716734.html

The only thing I had to do is make one shading group using the mel script above, and disconnect the particleShape from the initialParicleSE node and connect with the new shading group I just created.

To disconnect the node : Select the thin yellow line between the particleShape1 and the initialParticleSE, and delete it.

Shading Groups I made for the each key colour emitter

Particle colour shaders I made for each different key

Before syncing the key animation with particle emitter

so the shading node problem has solved and animation time for the particle emitter. It wasn't too hard. Following the sync sheet I made earlier, and set animation key for each emitter's rate value at the right frame. In the below picture, those numbers on the left side are the frame numbers and letters on the right side are the pressed keys. I crossed out when I made animation keys for the selected emitter.

Animation keys of emitters on the timeline

After I made the piano key particle, Valentino asked me if I can make floating colour particles around the room. I was working on other scenes as well so I had to make it really quick. I wanted to make particles are appearing in the air and floats a bit. But it I made normal emitter, it would just sprays out like a fountain or sprinkler. So I used softbody again. I made a big plane, and made it as softbody and connected to a turbulence field so it can float and slightly move in the air. Like I did for the aura test, I made the plane as emitter (emit from object). It didn't even take long to make it and looks quiet good. (see 3 Folders > Technical > 05 piano)

Softbody plane as emitter

When the plane was hid - it looks like particle are appearing in the air

Even though the plane is not even big enough to cover the entire room, but from the camera view, it looks like it. Because I placed the plane at an oblique angle in front of the camera, so it's just an eye-trick but it works.

From the camera view

Shot 5 : Painting room
(See 3 Folders > Technical > 06 Paint & Animation > Animation)

In this shot, I used normal particle for the canvas colour, and nParticle for the particle trail coming out from the canvas. Throughout the earlier test, I was gonna use only the particle for this shot. When I was playing with some maya's built-in nParticle example, I found that nParticle is more flexible and organic than traditional particle system. So I modified the example to suit this shot.

Personally, I never tried to use nParticle before this test but I feel like I'm going to use it more often as nParticle seems optimised to realistic simulation.

nParticle Test

This was the maya built-in example for nParticle. nParticle system wasn't too different to the traditional particle system so I could pick up quickly. I got an idea from this example. Basically, I made the canvas as an emitter (emit from object) and linked to volume curve field. Then this field hovers the particle from the emitter and make them follow the curve. Also I can adjust the speed, dispersion from the curve, size of the volume radius in the attribute. The convenient thing about the nParticle is, I can modify the particle size and colour as its particle age in a graph in the attribute. In the normal particle, I had to use an expression or ramp textures, which was in-directive and hard to control for me.

I made them as emitting totally different colours from the canvas. The painting mainly has red, brown-ish colour but Alex said she sees green and yellow in red colour. I pushed it really far that canvas emits yellow, green, blue, orange but also i made the main colour would be the red.

One of a test shot, we reduced size of the particle and vividness of the colour as we could fail the broadcast quality

Particle

Compare to the nParticle, it wasn't to hard to make it as I made few tests before. I duplicated the canvas to use the emitter and textured with the same painting. And I made the particle to inherit the colour from the texture and also put turbulance field so the particles keep moving, like when she sees words barging (in the 2nd scene of the Synaesthesia film, with teacup shot).

Only thing bothered me was when I rendered this shot for the final output, something was keep blocking the edge of canvas but it didn't show in the work space in maya.(below picture) Later on I figured out it was the easel behind the canvas. I disconnected the easel from the particle render layer but I still don't know why the easel was blocking the canvas. It doesn't make sense because easel is behind the canvas but blocking over the canvas...(??)

Right edge was blocked by something (easel)

After disconnected easel from the render layer

Shot 6 : Hallway
(See 3 Folders > Technical > 07 Hallway)

Concept of this scene is quiet simple. As the last scene of the film, there are six door in a corridor and each door implies each scenes the audience have looked through. The doors I was in charged was 2,4,5 and 6. (See 3 Folders > Artist > 05 Hallway)

I dare to say, hallway scene was the easiest scene to work. I just needed to import all the elements scene file (smoke, piano key colour, painting nParticle) except the aura. I thought it would look better to make smoke trail like the reference as the smoke is just floating around in front of the door.
Also I used volume axis field for painting nParticle instead of the volume curve field I used in the painting scene. I had a test for the volume axis field working like tornado and thought it would suit for smaller space in front of the door. (See 3 Folders > Technical > 07 Hallway)



In summary

My job in our group was FX TD, Dynamics artist. As our film's objective is showing what someone has synaesthesia sees to the ordinary people, so my job was very important for the film. However, none of our group members has synaesthesia and it was hard to imagine how Alex sees the world. We used our imagination as much as we could and at some point, I thought "we could exaggerate this bit more". But at the same time, our film is documentary not a fantasy film. If we made it too unrealistic, i believe it wouldn't be agreed with the original objective.

In terms of working progress, our team was fully working on the project from the first term and that's why I could finish some of the shots really early. For example, I finished fire and smoke shot in the first term and started to do test on piano shot.
However after the 2nd term, I injured my right arm and had to stay away from work almost for a month. It definitely affected to my work rhythm.
After the Easter break, we rushed it really quickly as 4 members of our team went to the germany for FMX. Except the trip, we only had 3, 4 weeks to work. I finished the aura, piano, painting shot in about 2 weeks time. Also I had to wait til the dog character had done, piano animation had done as I couldn't work without those model and animation in each scenes. I went to Val & Arpit's place for 2 weeks almost everyday to work together and could finish the work.

Our team used "wetransfer.com" to send files to each other at first. The site allows to send up to 2GB files via email. After the 2nd term, we started to connect each others' dropbox account and send files through dropbox. When I had to send render footages of dynamics, the files were too big so we used both at the end.

The imaginary work pipeline would be in order of "concept art - storyboard -modelling/texturing - rigging - animation - lighting - dynamics - compositing". However we have so short time that we couldn't wait til each step is done, so I did tests with basic props while other guys finish their job and just imported & modified when I got the scene. It worked most of the time and we could save so much time, but sometimes the dynamics doesn't work properly when I imported it into a new scene, so I had to make it again and again.

Professional Skills (ANI304)

1.Identify your film/project market

As our film is documentary animation introducing what "Synaesthesia" is, the market can be identified as medical, science, documentary tv channels (BBC documentary / National Geography documentary etc.), conference and festival. Also we can sell it to directors, film producers working with post production houses. (e,g. The Foundry, framestore, ILM, the Mill, MPC, Double Negative, Ingenuity, Shadow Industry)

2. Structure your individual website marketing online presence

Group Website:

www.livingperception.blogspot.com

Facebook Promotion:
http://www.facebook.com/synaesthesiafilm?ref=ts



3. Identify an employer / company who you will invite to the degree show.

I will invite my good old friend, Bastian Hopfgarten, who is working as VFX supervisor, data wrangler and film producer for many years. Also I am going to expand my connection through Bastian, hopefully invite VFX managers and TDs at The Mill, MPC and Double Negative.

Basitan Hopfgarten : http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1506188/
Ben Stallard : VFX department at The Mill
Sophie Jenkins : Recruitment Manager at Double Negative
 

4. Evidence of how other animator/creator have marketed their products.

Ryan is a good example for us as the film is the initial inspiration for our project. His film received many awards from different film/animation festival.

2004 film, Ryan. http://www.awn.com/articles/profiles/landreth-iryani

Awards For Ryan http://www.onf-nfb.gc.ca/eng/collection/film/?id=51259

 

Animation and Film festival is very effective and fast way to impress the people in the industry.

Potential festivals for Synaesthesia:

International Fantastic Film Festival (PIFAN)
Puchon - Korea

International Animation Festival
Melbourne - Australia

Sundance Film Festival
Park City - USA

International Festival of Documentary and Short Film - (Zinebi)
Bilbao - Spain

International Festival for Documentary and Animated Film
Leipzig - Germany

SIGGRAPH / SIGGRAPH ASIA

 

Other Technical Director, such as Andy Nicholas who is working as Senior TD at The Mill, he runs his website to show his work and tutorials, and giving advices for other TDs and students. 

Andy Nicholas : http://www.andynicholas.com/

Many other TDs and animators use their own website and blogs to promote themselves. Especially Vimeo is good way to show their works and showreels. 

5. Individual scheduling - weekly meeting, etc. (google calender)

Our team usually had meeting when we were at uni to save time. The schedule in pink shows the day we went to uni. The schedule in blue is for the individual deadline for group contract. Furthermore, we frequently talked over the phone and skype to communicate well between the members. To transfer the files between the members, Valentino and Arpit construct a network system in their house, and other members like me, we used http://wetransfer.nl. This website provides the service to send big files up to 2GB at once. The site is very useful as we transferred scene files and rendered images bigger than 20mb, which is supported by usual email accounts like gmail, hotmail, etc.

6. Individual marketing plan for the degree show

Sending invitations to people in the industry (Recruitment Managers, Production Managers, VFX Managers, etc.)

Business cards, Facebook Group, Twitter

Submitting our film to film/animation festival

Flyers - Galleries around london

Posters

7. Your Individual contract work

VFX website: http://glimcgtd.blogspot.com/

8. A short personal reflective account of how you have responded to this unit.

Throughout this unit, I could learn not only managing time effectively and setting a pipeline within the group but also defining what i need to concentrate on for the job i want in the near future. 

Also I realised the market research was very important to look at, because it's a cornerstone for not only for the film/project, but also for the individual future carrier.

I tended to avoid to use After Effect because I wasn't really familiar with this tool, but I am now learning AE to expand my ability to create visual effect in different ways. 

While the group was working on rendering, because we rendered the scenes with our own machines this time, we couldn't do any other work while the machines were occupied with rendering process. By that, we realised we will need to use either renderfarm or renderman for the smooth work flow. 

The only thing I missed in this term iss my health condition, I could have done much more work if I was in better condition.

9. Animatic with 2 shots finished

Group website (ANI304)

Today's lesson was about creating group website and setting marketing plans

Profile for the Group film

See the world through her eyes. 

Her journey is illuminated with colours from sounds. 

Discover the life of how a Synaesthetic sees. 

This documentary will explore the fascinating symptoms of Synaesthesia. 

Individual profile and picture

- This will be uploaded in the group website as well.

Amelie Gi Lim 

VFX, Dynamics artist of the Synaesthesia team

... I am currently finishing animation course at Ravensbourne in London.

I am passionate learner and natural goal setter. 

I am always open to learn new knowledge.

I wish to become a Technical Director and VFX artist.

The main software I use is Maya and After Effect, and self-educating Houdini and Nuke.

30 second Showreel

I am going to make composition of the project I made so far and add more work, which can show my main area (dynamics). Especially breakdowns of sequences will show how I plan for the visual effect very well. Also I will composite in the After Effect as Amin suggested me, to make the showreel in the fine quality.

Piano scene TEST02 (ANI304)

I did another test for the piano scene during the last week and this week. In this test, i used different way to create the effect.

The problem of the first test was, I'll have to make an emitter for each every keys if the character presses every piano keys. Also when some keys are pressed more than twice, the key should have either more than 2 emitters as the particle system can't be started more than twice. Because when once an emitter operates, it will emit the particles until lifespan of particles or endlessly.

Another way can be rendering each emitters separately and comp it later. However this way will be not only a lot of hassle and take too much time, but also it has very low chance to make good interaction with the character.

So I came up with an idea of using curve emitter. I made a line of EP curve on the piano keys and created vertexes to match up on the keys. After that, I made the curve line as emitter (emitter from object - Emitter type : Curve). Curve emitter makes each every vortexes as the source of particles.

Also I added random function to vary the particles' size. Then I played the animation..

Then the particles are emitted from each vertexes AT THE SAME TIME as you can see from the above screenshot. I wish I could modified the start time for the each emitter....

Plus, all the emitter produced such amount of particles at the same time, particles don't really stick to the goal, and also the air and the turbulence field can't control them like the first test.

 

Side of the particle emitting.

After all, using the curve emitter can make particles without making each every emitters separately, but it's hard to control the each emitter starts at the different time. Also im worried if the particles are too many and it might can ruin the whole scene. Ill keep finding better solution for this scene as we still have time. But hopefully find the solution soon.

Piano scene TEST01 (ANI304)

First of all, the concept for the piano scene is: every keys emit different colours when the character press the key, and the particle colours revolve around the character implying she can "feel" the music. For example, if she press G, it emits green colour. According to the interview with Alex, the girl who has synaesthesia, she said the lower keys emit much darker colours and upper keys emit lighter colours.

So I did first test with one key, and put a sphere supposing it's the character.I plant an emitter on the key and it emits red particles and the particle revolve around her. I selected the sphere as the Goal for the particle, so the particle stck to the sphere, but reduced the value to prevent the particle doesn't stick to it immediately.

Also I added an Air and Turbulence field to add randomness of particle movements.

 

       

Then I added another emitter. Thinking that as she'll press many keys at short time as music progresses, I'm sure there will be lots of particles floating around her. So I reduced particle rate, but then it won't have the impact as much as before. Also Alex clarified it's like the keys spraying the colours. I think we need to a lot more discussion about this scene, but as we're going to finish the kitchen and the library scene in this term, i'll do many tests first before we can move on to this scene.

Kitchen scene and group meeting with Amin (ANI304)

In this week, my individual schedule was making the smoke for the kitchen scene. However, I ended up reducing the size and lighten the colour of smoke, and making the fire and smoke AGAIN.  I received the scene, which Valentino and Arpit added character and lights, but somehow the scale of the scene got shrunk down so much and the dynamics get messed up if I just scale them down. So I had to make them again to fit in the scene. We still couldn't figure out why the scene has got shrunk down but it took me while to make them again. The only upside of this happening was I learned that why making visual effect is in the last stage of the post production. Because the dynamics can't be scaled up or down, and it needs to be in the exact same position to interact with props' or characters' movement.

After the group meeting with Amin, he suggested me to play with After Effect for the sake of future career. Although Nuke is now the industry standard, but for the our final film, he recommended to me to use After Effect, which is less new to me than learning Nuke. Also he suggested me to come up with many ideas for the dynamics in the film, and try as many examples i can make as my job is creating magical event.

Smoke (ANI304)

In this week, I made smoke for the kitchen scene. In the last term, i made smoke with maya fluid for the scene when we did the second pitch before the break. But for the final footage, i decided to make smoke using method called sprite.

Sprite is one of the Particle Render Type and it is commonly used for volumetric smoke, clouds and sand storms. It takes much less time to render than fluids or nDynamics because it's only mapping the images on the particle elements and the sprite images are always facing the camera. So when particle emits, it looks like the images are emitting instead of particles.

The first image shows the particle sprites are emitted and it looks the images are coming from the emitter in the rendered shot.

then I added expressions so that the size of images are randomly different and get bigger as it goes higher. Also added rotation expression so the images don't look static.

 

The images in the video shows they are emitted in different sizes and tilted in different angle. 

Then I added opacity to the particle using ramp, so it looks like emitting from in the air, not suddenly emits from certain point. Also it disappear smoothly at the top.

Then I added the colour on the particle so the images look much whiter and also removed the black edges. The first video is from the primary setting of ramp, and the second video is that i changed to white.

Then I changed noise value of the images to see how the smoke looks natural for the scene. When I rendered those images, i didn't check on the Depth Sort option of the render type. That's why the sprite images look thicker and overlapped with other images at the back and forward. 

The first footage is when i checked on the depth sort and the second footage is when i turned it off.

Then I changed the image material from lambert to blinn so that it can be looked brighter when it's under the lights in the scene. Below images are showing how it looks in the rendered shot depending on the eccentricity, specular roll off and  reflectivity of the material. When the values are too high, it reflects the light too much and eventually it makes the smoke looks unrealistic and too flat.

the final smoke in the animatic

Referencing in Maya (ANI304)

Today's lesson was about creating reference and using Dropbox for group networking.

I didn't know about referencing before, but it is very useful tool as i'm working on the scene that made from others and i don't really need the props unless their position. Before I used reference, I imported the whole scene and it took a while to load big file, and I had to lock / template the layers to avoid move or delete the props by accident. However, referencing allow me to add the dynamics without affecting the reference scene. I usually worked on the dynamics with the original scene and exported the dynamics only to comp it later or to put them in the scene later. But the reference scene isn't saved with the dynamics I made, the only thing I need to do is just save the dynamics without exporting them. It made my life much easier.

Before referencing, every props could be affected if i didn't lock/template the layers

Using referencing. I don't need to worry about affecting the original scene anymore.

Broadcast Health and Safety (ANI304)

Today, we had a lecture about technical standards for the Degree Show with Mike Dixon. 


BBC technical standards for TV programmes from Moodle
http://learn.rave.ac.uk/moodle/mod/resource/view.php?id=35623

High Definition Format

All material delivered for UK HD TV transmission must be:

1920 x 1080 px in an aspect ratio of 16:9

25 fps (50fields) interlaced* - 1080i/25

colour sub-sampled at a ratio of 4:2:2

*Interlaced video is a technique of doubling the perceived frame rate without consuming extra bandwidth.

Sound Quality

Sound must be recorded with appropriately placed microphones, giving minimum background noise and without peak distortion.
The audio must be free of spurious signals such as clicks, noise, hum and any analogue distortion. The audio must be reasonably continuous and smoothly mixed and edited.
Audio levels must be appropriate to the scene portrayed and dynamic range must not be excessive. They must be suitable for the whole range of domestic listening situations.
Stereo audio must be appropriately balanced and free from phase differences which cause audible cancellation in mono.
The audio must not show dynamic and/or frequency response artefacts as a result of the action of noise reduction or low bit rate coding systems.

Tolerance of out of gamut signals


In practice it is difficult to avoid generating signals slightly outside this range, and it is considered
reasonable to allow a small tolerance, which has been defined as follows under EBU Rec103:

RGB components must be between -5 % and 105% (-35 and 735mV)
therefore
Luminance (Y) must be between -1% and 103% (-7mV and 721mV)

Slight transient overshoots and undershoots may be filtered out before measuring, and an error will only be registered where the out of gamut signals total at least 1% of picture area. Many monitoring devices are designed to detect errors to this specification.


Blanking

HD images must fill the active picture area (1920 x 1080 pixels). No ‘blanking errors’ are permitted on new, up-converted, or archive material.
However a two pixel tolerance will be permitted during CG or complex overlay sequences where key signals, graphic overlays or other effects do not fully cover the background image. Where animated key signals or overlays cause moving highlights at the edge of the active image it is preferable to blank these pixels completely. A note of the timecodes and reasons for these errors should accompany the delivered programme.


Photosensitive Epilepsy (PSE)

Flickering or intermittent lights and certain types of repetitive visual patterns can cause serious problems for viewers who are prone to photosensitive epilepsy. Children & teenagers are particularly vulnerable.

All UK Television channels are subject to the Ofcom BROADCASTING CODE 2009 which states:
Section 2: Harm and Offence:
            2.12 Television broadcasters must take precautions to maintain a low level of risk to
                    viewers who have photosensitive epilepsy. Where it is not reasonably practicable
                    to follow the Ofcom guidance (see the Ofcom website), and where
                    broadcasters can demonstrate that the broadcasting of flashing lights and/or
                    patterns is editorially justified, viewers should be given an adequate verbal and
                    also, if appropriate, text warning at the start of the programme or programme
                    item.
The Ofcom guidance is at: http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/broadcast/guidance/813060/section22009.pdf

2.9.1 Testing for flashes and patterning

All programmes for tape delivery must be tested using the Harding Flash Pattern Analyser v2.54b on an SD down converted SDI feed. Any failure whatsoever will result in rejection of the programme, and any affected sections must be repaired and re-tested before acceptance.
Broadcasters will, at their discretion, either test the programme during the Quality Control process, or will require a relevant Harding FPA pass certificate to be delivered with the tape.

2.9.2 PSE-broadcast warnings

Verbal or on-screen text warnings at start of programme may only be used in exceptional
circumstances when:

           The relevant content is completely integral and necessary to the context of the
           programme and,
        
           Permission to use the relevant content has been cleared by the relevant broadcaster
           and documented in writing by those responsible for commissioning /editorial content.

Advance notification and planning requirements will vary by broadcaster.



Mike showed us the pokemon video clip as an epileptic example.

Brief for the ANI304 Professional Skills (ANI304)

The film I am working on is "Synaesthesia", teamed up with Valentino, Arpit, Chris, Jure and Perri. The animation will be made in the form of documentary following the narration from Alex who has Synaesthesia. My role in this film is creating visual effect using particle dynamics. There are 3 scenes that needs vfx, which are 1.Kitchen, 2.Piano, 3.Painting scene.

For the Kitchen scene, I made the steam and fire from stove in the last term. In this term, I am going to make proper fumes like steam emitting from the kettle and finish up the fire.

In the Piano scene, which is the most challenging scene but I am looking forward to finish it well at the same time. It requires rigging for piano keys and some scripting to connect the animation and particle dynamics.

In the Painting scene, it will need particle animation using texture emission. We discussed about making particle texture on 2d images or 3d objects, but haven't decided the details for the final yet.

In this unit, we are aiming for finishing the kitchen and the library scene, so I will concentrate on making fine visual effects for the final kitchen scene.