Identify 3 positive events/issues:
The video “bonus” space scene: this purely happened due to circumstances I jumped on having the Transferable skills meeting with Katie early on and this caused me to not utilize my Wednesday class to its full extent. this was in turn a good thing as I created a bonus scene of the outside space environment mainly out of boredom and not wanting to do nothing in that lesson. Downloading unpacking repacking and uploading the major unreal file was not going to happen. I ended up creating it out of some super simple models tied in with some old files I had done in previous Tris. I have no idea how to force a spontaneous idea for future projects on purpose, lock myself in a room with a blank pc with 3ds max on it maybe?
The Stylized Line work: This idea took form after doing some concepts. whilst going on a concept rampage I created some vending machines because nothing screams future city like vending machines. I wanted them to look dumb funny and rough around the edges and the minute I did that they just looked so much like they belonged in Borderlands which was a happy coincidence. the minute my brain made the connection I knew I wanted a borderland toon look to my scene. the objects would look great and I wouldn’t need to pour a lot of time trying to get super awesome lighting and PBR textures working to Convey ideas of what items were.
This purely came together from just sitting down and putting time into concepting some random things. this project began as a blank slate I knew I wanted something sci-fi space themed with mechs a lot of upper-end tech but as I dug around ideas different things became the focus like the Skull dude. He became the focus after finding an awesome punk rocker cyborg image on Pinterest. the extended conception whilst time consuming yielded some great results for me I just had an Idea overload with this project.
The 7th haven logo: So in an attempt to get some crossdis ticked off I contacted Conrad who was more than happy to do some work in exchange for some publicity. Conrad was the easiest person to get a result from but at the point of contact I had done the lookbook draft I sent him links to the book and a synopsis and he had the right idea and vibe and I just set him free. He came back with 2 different logos they were simple but looked clean and interesting with room to expand from. the logo in the current scene helps round out the entire package.
This process was so simple thanks to the research I had cataloged the preproduction wasn’t only helping me stay on track but it was also made bringing other people onboard less of a chore. there was little to no need for me to give them a lengthy spiel about what they had to do just throw them some links get their take on it if its good let them run with it.
Negative:
The Unreal camera was a painful thing to work with making random rubberband movements and just not doing what the keyframes should have been telling it. this may have been slightly on user error side but a lot of it was just in its jankeiness.
this could be overcome by tracking a camera in 3ds max and exporting and tracking into unreal this would however require me to have a greybox in max which I didn’t have at the time and didn’t have the wiggle room to make one.
The cloth modifier light baking issue: this proved to be a huge pain in the butt with me trying different polly counts and shell sizings baking settings within the object and so on. for some reason the object would not take to the unreal light baking if it had been tampered with a shell modifier a lot of my other objects that had baking issues had this resolved with a remapping of the UVs but the cloth didn’t want a bar of it.
How can I avoid this? well the first thing is not having cloth but that’s just silly the other is by doing some more tests and research into why this is happening and how to overcome this issue. this is something I think I’m going to revisit soon as ill want to know how to get around this in future projects.
The other issue that would have caused major headaches was the overall structuring of the project and its deliverables. I have talked to my peers and the facilitator about this and I understand that there are learning outcomes to meet but only because of my stubbornness and foresight into what needed to be finished up for the project was I able to pull off what I did. following the project overview week to week would have left me with no time to create the items I would have needed for the cinematic granted mine was larger than the required deliverable.
From the very get go I started thinking of designs and objects to fill my scene with and had started pumping out 3d blockouts for objects around week 3 and also spent time looking for resources to populate my scene with. now what this did was put a lot of time restraints on other things I would have normally put a bit more time into but prioritizing tasks and having a limit on polish on some of the pre-production tasks is what helped get me a good final result.
Hypothecical team of 10:
So if this was a larger thing I would make it a web series I guess with episodes going for above 10mins for that youtube sweet spot.
The team would work through a standard 3d animation pipeline with concepting and design at the front and compositing audio and editing at the end with the project lead dictating consistency to match the intended style.
In a small team people would have a task that is their main priority and it would be the job as well as the project leads responsibility to keep that task consistent throughout the duration on the project having it operating as an assembly pipeline with some crossover to help with the bottlenecks.
The other thing I would strongly monitor is work allocation and workload. being able to keep track of peoples workload and having a staff with some cross knowledge we can then move our manpower around to tackle bottlenecks and try and help keep the project moving as smooth as possible the only downside to this is that consistency will take a hit so it will come to a bit of a balancing act of time vs consistency for the project lead.
So what would you need? well, I would need a writer but ideally, that would be a secondary roll to the main one they would do.
project lead/director
So I would need someone who models
Some one who textures
A character artist
I would love to have someone who can rig
Audio/ in-house as well as outsourcing
Storyboarder/concept artist
A compositor/editor
Animator
PR-looks after the platform as well as other social media things
-The most Challenging and Crucial roll in my opinion is the Rigger. having someone who can set up a character model with a robust and flexible rig would speed up the animation part of the pipeline greatly as well as having them onboard for technical issues that could arise of the course of the production.
-Conclusion what have I learned for future animation projects?
there has been a heap of unreal skills acquired for this project as well as learning how to do certain things within a 3d studio like cloth simulators.
but the most helpful thing I got out of this project would be having a clear synopsis and moodboard setup and lookbook created in the early aspects of the project. Not only does it help steer the overall project in a consistent direction but its so handy when explaining your idea to other people the mix of visual and written ideas in a presentable way helps the other person digest the information without getting into an earbashing info dump.
Charged and Ready 