Maya Tips 07-Laying Out Your Scene

I've held off this series of posts of Maya Tips for at least 2 months but since my license has been renewed, I'm going to get back on track.

Starting Now:

Laying out your scene.

Because of the 3D Environment of CGI, many people had to use a type of layout to determine how to set up the camera and their actors in their 3D workspace.

These principles apply not just to AUTODESK MAYA but also BLENDER, 3DS MAX, CINEMA 4D, and yes even UNREAL ENGINE 5.

And often during layout, there are things to overcome that need to be addressed.

I'm not going to get into every single Layout trick I know from the book but I will try my best to list a few examples.

Let's take this for example:

SCREEN DIRECTION:

In screen direction, it's essential to keep your characters on the same position when doing camera cuts, that way the audience doesn't get lost.

Let's take this scene from Toy Story for example.

In the final rendered scene, There was absolutely no camera cut during the entirety of the BUZZ LOOK AN ALIEN scene but the behind the scenes featurette stated it was a good exercise to tackle screen direction, especially when it came to screen direction on Over-The-Shoulder Shots.

One way to retain proper screen direction is to create what's referred to as a stage line.

The stage line is something used in acting to help the camera operator with keeping things in order during camera cuts, that way, they can keep the character's positions at just the proper position when there's a cut.

During live-action filming, that stage line would be some masking tape layered on linoleum, hard wood, or concrete flooring.

But in 3DCG, the stage line would be a simple line vector. 

But the principle remains the same: DO NOT CROSS THAT STAGE LINE!!!

If that happens, then the characters change positions and screws around with perspective and focus.

Notice how when the line was crossed during the camera cut, Buzz and Woody suddenly have changed positions?

The need to keep the camera from crossing the stage line is essential to keep your characters in the same position when doing different angles during OVER THE SHOULDER shots.

I also dealt with this issue with one of my animations. Luckily, my instructors in College let me know about this and I've been holding on to this Camera Angle Philosophy ever since.

How did I know? I was told by one instructor about the importance of Screen Direction when he reviewed my first pass for a CGI Pre-Viz scene and he didn't like my screen direction. I took that advice and fixed it.

However, I've since lost the pre-viz render years ago so I had to come with a quick a dirty method using one of my existing animations for this educational exercise since I still have the MAYA file to demonstrate.

This animation never had a stage line since the animation was a remake of an old piece of college animation that I had to redo. But for the sake of this blogpost about talking about Layout, I decided to create my own stage line as an example of screen direction.

Here's what my scene looks like with the stage line. Yes it's hard to see but it's there.

If you're wondering what the stage line is, it's the dark blue line that Jasper is sitting on. Not the camera fulcrum.

Now as you can see by these two screenshots from my animation, the camera does not cross that stage line. Both Kayla and Jasper remain in their proper camera placement.

Of course, Jasper is at the center but he's still facing Kayla who's on the right which still counts as proper screen direction.

If the camera crosses the stage line, then this is what happens

Notice how Jasper is now suddenly on the right instead of the left? 

"Why am I on the right when I should be on the left. Also, why do I have this seam on my shirt?"

Maintaining screen direction is very important in this day in age of 3D Cameras so you better take this advice with a grain of salt so I don't go all ROGER EBERT or JAMES ROLFE on students who didn't understand screen direction the first time around.

If my CG Animation Instructor pounded me with brutal honesty about my Sophomore Screen Direction, then you can take my advice too.

Ok. Maybe using this glare from Jasper may have been a bit too exaggerated for my use in reminders. 

HEIGHT DISCRENANCY. (aka HEIGHT TRENCHING).

This is nothing new. It has been a problem with shooting scenes where one's height is greatly different to another actor's height.

One such example is the late actor ALAN LADD SR. 

He was infamously short with a height of 5-FEET and 7-INCHES. That height often didn't lend himself very well to his female co-stars or male co-stars who towered over him.

And considering the romantic roles he had to do with the likes of taller actresses like SOPHIA LOREN

the filmmakers did what's referred to as HEIGHT TRENCHING.

This is where in order to make ALAN LADD look taller but still standing on the ground, the set designers would dig a trench for his leading actress or supporting actor to stand on, thus making the ladies shorter or equal in height to ALAN LADD himself.

Below are two examples from BOY ON A DOLPHIN from 1957.

Both Sophia Loren and Clifton Webb are much taller than Alan Ladd but you can't tell due to filmmakers in the 1950s warping our fragile little minds with boxes or trenches just to compensate for Ladd's Height.

"Why didn't DREAMWORKS do the same height box or trenches for me back during production of the movie SHREK? All I got to show for it is Villainy and my tall tall voice actor JOHN LITHGOW"

WHY'D YOU HAVE TO SHOW YOURSELF UP FARQUAAD! 

ANYWAY......

In CGI, you don't need to modify or extrude the geometry of the ground. All you need to do to combat Height Discrepancy is to move your character's position a little lower to allow your character to fight height discrepancy. Sure, the feet will clip through the ground geometry but it's all worth trenching your characters to fight height.

And it doesn't hurt to move the character's COG and Torso controls a little forward too for that all important Eye Direction.

I guess it's much better than fighting height perspective with wooden Scully Boxes unlike what happened in MONTHLY GIRLS NOZAKI-KUN.

"THIS ISN'T THE X-FILES!!! LOSE THE BOX!!!"

ACTOR SUBSTITUTION:

Often at times, you need to substitute the main model with a different one. One that looks the same but with different attributes.

This doesn't happen all the time but it's frugal for when you need to do something like have one of the GREEN ARMY MEN in Toy Story open a parachute.

For one, due to the limitations of the CG Tech back in 1994 and 1995, there wasn't an efficient way to rig the parachutes on the main ARMY MEN rigs so a secondary model was made for each actor.

As shown here, The main Army Men jump until they aren't seen on camera.

Off Camera, they rapidly move underneath the stairs, while the camera catches up to a downward shot.

Because of rapid movement with the Army Men's COG, they're disappearing act is not caught on the main camera.

And in they're place are the ARMY MEN who have their parachutes already in the cusp of opening.

So far, the only part of substitution I've done in my animations was with the FUNNY DUDE.

I had some issues with getting rid of his looping animations so I had to substitute that with another version where he had no looping keyframes.

This motion blur was where I swapped the two FUNNY DUDES.

Thanks to my editing skills, I was able to cut to the robot, then cut back to the FUNNY DUDE.

CAMERA COMPOSITES

Sometimes when there's a shot that has Foreground Characters, it can create problems for making an intended shot seem seamless.

For example, this shot from the final act from TOY STORY has Buzz and Woody flying through the trees.  

When the animation was finished, the animators realized that Buzz and Woody were flying at 5mph and the main camera was pointing diagonally.

If they were moving at that exact rate with the trees in place, the camera would not be able to track it down with seamlessness unless some mathematical knowledge was tried out.

Either that, or the animators forgot to constrain the camera to the Buzz Rig but then again, the camera would have to be stable so that wouldn't have worked out.

So what the animators did was have two different scenes rendered and composited together so the camera still feels stable but the trees are zipping by in a perfect horizontal camera movement.

One scene was rendered where the camera slowly moved with the Buzz and Woody rigs while another scene was rendered where the camera zipped past some trees.

The BUZZ & WOODY scene was composited in the front of the Zipping trees shot. 

THE SOCCER FIELD METAPHOR:

Now here's the real test.

One scene where Mr. Potato Head is exceptionally pissed off at Woody for accidentally throwing off Buzz out the window proved to be the real test for the animators.

It would require all that knowledge of Screen Direction, Height Discrepancies, substitutions, etc. And combine all that into a single scene which would require that all the characters be able to stay in their positions like their suppose to.

Because of the small size of Toys, the scene was laid out like it was a Soccer Field

Well not literally a Soccer Field but more like a metaphor or arena to put your characters in.

Basically it boils down to keeping your characters in line with the stage line as well as make sure the camera keeps track with screen direction.

I dealt with this too but in a different way. 

I mean the Soccer Field Metaphor still applied but the underlying principles with a bedroom remained the same.

Just that instead of characters scaled down to the size of a toy, it's characters that are full sized for a typical bedroom.

You know what, I'm just going to show you the VLC Captures of this animation example and I'll explain later after I show them all.

Sorry if some of these animations of mine aren't ray-traced. These were rendered before I built the Maverick PC and also, I had problems with Batch Rendering in some previous version of RENDERMAN.... anyway,

This was my big test to show I had all the nuts and bolts of understanding proper screen direction as well as fight height.

For one, after Kayla and Kyle's fight, 

when Bender shows up to break up the fight and the camera pans, 

both Kayla and Kyle remain in their same position. 

Even after Kyle goes to the left off screen, Kayla remains on the dominant left even after she pushes Bender off to the right.

HIDE THE LIMBS:

If there's some movement that does not necessitate the need for on-screen limbs, don't animate them. It's not worth animating limbs that won't be seen on the camera's view. 

For example, when Buzz and Woody are arguing about whether Buzz can accept he's a toy which he later does, their feet don't even move but you can't show that regardless if it's widescreen or full frame. 

But what about when a character is walking?

Just move the COG slightly and animate the legs just roughly.

But what about when the character is behind a counter and is lunging towards something?

JUST MOVE THE COG.

As well as the torso too.

Why no images from my own examples? 

I found that some of my own examples had parts where the legs were animated but the feet weren't in camera view but they didn't count so I didn't include my own example. I'll keep looking hard in my archives and if I find one or find a MAYA file of mine, I'll update this blogpost.

PLAYING AROUND WITH THE ASPECT RATIO:

Sometimes, there are certain things to hide or to help with Screen Direction that can only be done with a simple trick: Playing around with the Aspect Ratio.

Some scenes work better when in ULTRA-WIDE instead of ANAMORPHIC.

Take for example the Jasper/Kayla Gym Animation.

I've since reanimated this scene from one of my Demo Reels with Kayla and Jasper in the gymnasium but there's one thing I won't change from the Janky Original and that's the aspect ratio.

      

That's because with this animation's janky original, which I was referencing from, had an unfortunate bug with Jasper's hand that necessitated the 2.35:1 aspect ratio.

For reference, here's a screenshot from the Janky Original Animation.

Bland Expressions aside, There was one thing that I had to hide from the camera view and that was Jasper's buggy hands that seemed to be affected by his jaw controls.

It's hidden from camera view but I have evidence of another student's work using this rig

Because I had to animate Jasper's mouth using his jaw, I also had to hide his hands from view so the viewer doesn't see how buggy his hands were.

Later on, the Rig's bugs were fixed and it's that fixed version that what I worked with when I reanimated the animation above but because of the feel of the scene I was re-animating, I kept the aspect ratio unchanged to keep in spirit with the Janky Original's Camera orientation.

One thing that's changed is that the animation is no longer in 720p but rather 4K Resolution.

So as you can see, it doesn't hurt to experiment with layout tricks so you can get an idea on how to tackle camera angles, actor placements, substitutions, trenching, etc.

Self-Experimentation is king through and through.

So here's some homework to consider:

EXPERIMENT WITH YOUR OWN LAYOUT TRICKS IN MAYA, BLENDER, or UNREAL, send me the results via my GMAIL, 

and I'll make a future blogpost on other Layout experiments, provide my critique, additional tips, etc.

Now that's a challenge onto it self.

And as usual, see you next blogpost.