Visual Effects Project
I will be going through the background research I have conducted for inspiration of my work and how I used the work to create my own piece. I will also give an overview of my work from where it began, what changed and how I came to a decision of what to place in my final shot. Finally, I will be critiquing my work going into depth of what I believe worked well and where I could have improved with my work.
When given the brief for this project I began by looking into a range of animated robot characters to help inspire me when designing my own robotic character. I began with looking at Eva from Wall-E (2008), looking into her shape, movements and her textures. This played a big part in the overall design to begin with as I took her body shape and the way she floated and incorporated this into my first design idea. I then carried on my background research and looked at Ben from Treasure Planet (2002). Again, I was looking into his shape, form and movement but as he was of a 2D medium I didn’t focus on his texture too much. I didn’t like the humanoid approach to the shape of Ben as I felt this was not the kind of form I wanted within my robot, so I began to mainly focus on his characteristics which was very over exaggerated with his movements and is quite a jumpy character which then began to influence the personality within my character. I then carried out a little more research which was just looking into robots created by other 3D artists and just analysing the elements they used within their designs to create their own versions of a robotic character. A few examples I looked at when studying others work are shown below in figure 1 and 2.
The first step I took when creating my own work after thoroughly doing some background research was designing my own character. I began with creating a montage of the different shapes and styles from the characters I spoke about in the previous paragraph which consisted of the body of Eva from Wall-E (2008), the arms of Wall-E (2008), the head shape of Ben from Treasure Planet (2002) and a black bar across the head for where the ‘eyes’ would be. This is show below in figure 3.
Figure 3
From this I then began to block out the initial shape and began the colouring process to work out what colours and what overall shape my character would show as well as setting a colour scheme up for my character. When the initial blocking was done, and I had decided on a colour scheme for my character I then cleaned up the design and drew a front and side pose of the character in a T pose (shown in figure 4) which I could use as reference when it comes to modelling my character.
Figure 4
As soon as this process was done I then went into 3DS Max to begin with the modelling stage of my character. I started off with just a simple block and began to shape up my character using the reference I had created. This was a very simple process as there was nothing overly complicated or intricate within the design. The finished product of this stage is shown below in figure 5.
Figure 5
I then added a cat rig into the model of my character which was when problems started to form within my character. When using a test walk cycle to have a look into how the rig would make the model look when moving I realised there was a lot of errors due to the model itself. The model was too bulky as well as overly smooth so when the arms and body were moving they would flex, in a sense like a human would do when walking, and as this is a metal-based character this should not be happening when the character is moving. From this I had to decide on what could be done to fix this problem. I decided to strip the character down and when looking at the rig I had created I realised that this shape was perfect and the way this moved worked perfectly for a robotic character which was when I came to the final design of my character shown below in figure 6.
Figure 6
When the character was finally created I then unwrapped the UV’s, so I could texture in Substance Painter to add the overall colours, appeal and textures to my character. I made sure to use a metal base for the character and just added colours I had decided in my colour scheme to give it a unique appearance. When this was done I then added this texture to the character in 3DS Max and added lighting to see if the texture for this character not only worked out but looked aesthetically pleasing too, the final texture that I decided to use for my character is shown below in figure 7.
Figure 7
When this was done I then created a new 3DS Max file to work on my HDRI that I used as the background (show in figure 8) for my final piece. After shooting the HDRI, editing it all together and cleaning it up in Photoshop I uploaded it to 3DS Max, so I could prospective match the workspace to the HDRI. As soon as this was done I was all ready to start animating and create my VFX project.
Figure 8
As soon as I had finalised my model I began the animation process. Using my storyboards, I created a short-animated piece but tweaked it slightly. The only slight change I made was bringing the robot right up to the camera to add a somewhat comedic value to my work. When the animation process was done I then rendered my piece out making sure to render out everything separately which was rendering an untextured version, the textured version and just the shadows so I could show all these separate pieces in my VFX breakdown. I then composited all the files together using After Effects to create my final piece.
When I came to watch the final piece, I was very pleased with the outcome for my piece. The reflections of the light off my character worked well in most parts showing the material used to create the character which I decided on a metallic material, the only part it shows a major flaw is when the robot is up close to the camera and the top surfaces are sort of blacked out which ruins the realistic appeal within the aesthetics of my character.
Another small area in which could have improvements on is the shadows when the robot is in the shed, the shadow shows the shape in which it would show if it was on the ground but there is a small section which overlaps the door of the shed which does not work out at all which to an extent ruins the realistic look I am trying to achieve in my short animation. I could have edited this further to ensure this didn’t happen and improve the appeal of my short animation.
A final way I could improve my short animation is when it came to render my robot I had quite a few problems with my texture which then lead to me having to create another texture last minute that worked in the render. So, from doing this the outcome ended with a slightly different texture than what I was hoping to use and the original texture I had created would have worked better than the final one I used as it has more detail within it and had a must more realistic texture about it as well.
To conclude this piece, I believe that this module has really helped to improve my 3D skills especially in 3DS Max I have learnt new techniques when it comes to not only creating a model, but the rigs, environments, shadows, camera and lighting as well which will have great benefits for me in the future. As this is my first time creating something so complex there is a lot of room for improvement within my work, but I think I have taken a very imaginative and creative approach to it which has worked in my favour to improve the overall aesthetics of my piece and not only make it look good, but I have also added elements that have made the piece entertaining to ensure the positive feel it can create.
References
Films
Stanton, A. (Director). (2008). Wall-E [Motion Picture]. United States: Walt Disney Pictures & Pixar Animation Studios.
Clements, R & Musker, J. (2002). Treasure Planet [Motion Picture]. United States: Walt Disney Pictures
Websites
Steinman, G. (2015) Bethesda. Retrieved from https://bethesda.net/en/article/6Qb9FqogV2ECw6MacaSwwq/fallout-4-creating-codsworth
OODINDD (2011) Turboquid. Retrieved from https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/robot-bot/582473
When I came to watch the final piece, I was very pleased with the outcome for my piece. The reflections of the light off my character worked well in most parts showing the material used to create the character which I decided on a metallic material, the only part it shows a major flaw is when the robot is up close to the camera and the top surfaces are sort of blacked out which ruins the realistic appeal within the aesthetics of my character.
Another small area in which could have improvements on is the shadows when the robot is in the shed, the shadow shows the shape in which it would show if it was on the ground but there is a small section which overlaps the door of the shed which does not work out at all which to an extent ruins the realistic look I am trying to achieve in my short animation. I could have edited this further to ensure this didn’t happen and improve the appeal of my short animation.
A final way I could improve my short animation is when it came to render my robot I had quite a few problems with my texture which then lead to me having to create another texture last minute that worked in the render. So, from doing this the outcome ended with a slightly different texture than what I was hoping to use and the original texture I had created would have worked better than the final one I used as it has more detail within it and had a must more realistic texture about it as well.
To conclude this piece, I believe that this module has really helped to improve my 3D skills especially in 3DS Max I have learnt new techniques when it comes to not only creating a model, but the rigs, environments, shadows, camera and lighting as well which will have great benefits for me in the future. As this is my first time creating something so complex there is a lot of room for improvement within my work, but I think I have taken a very imaginative and creative approach to it which has worked in my favour to improve the overall aesthetics of my piece and not only make it look good, but I have also added elements that have made the piece entertaining to ensure the positive feel it can create.
References
Films
Stanton, A. (Director). (2008). Wall-E [Motion Picture]. United States: Walt Disney Pictures & Pixar Animation Studios.
Clements, R & Musker, J. (2002). Treasure Planet [Motion Picture]. United States: Walt Disney Pictures
Websites
Steinman, G. (2015) Bethesda. Retrieved from https://bethesda.net/en/article/6Qb9FqogV2ECw6MacaSwwq/fallout-4-creating-codsworth
OODINDD (2011) Turboquid. Retrieved from https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/robot-bot/582473