This week I prepared my foliage cards in Maya. First I create a new plan and apply the texture. Then I separate each foliage and position the plan. Also I need to duplicate each card to create a larger quantity of foliage so they appear more appealing.
▶Fern
▶Flower
▶Branch
▶Character
Blocking face
I start blocking the feature of this character’s face at this stage. Like foliage sculpting, I use brushes like Clay Buildup mostly to build the major forms of the feature. Because I want to make a stylized character, it is necessary for me to focus on the balance of the overall proportions.
Blocking starts with creating key poses/keyframes following my previous reference and sketch. These poses is the key poses that define the main positions and actions in my practice. By doing block with rough poses will give a good control over the animation I’m gonna do.
For this project, I want to every assests myself. which means I want to go through every process…
Notes on creating rock in ZBrush:
First use clip curve to shape a cube into rock. One of the golden rules of sculpting rocks is to make sure that there is a sense of non-uniformaity.
▶Foliage reference list:
bristlecone pine southern live oak
•Some Shrubs for Shade. Boxwoods. Yews. Rhododendrons. …
•Some Perennials for Shade. Lady’s Mantle. Astilbe. Ligularia. …
•Bulbs to Plant in Shade. Daffodils. Snowdrops. Crocus.
•Ground Covers for Heavy Shade. Ajuga or Bugle Weed. Silver or Yellow Archangel
REFERENCE:
▶Sculpting in ZBrush
I sculpted every foliage asset in Zbrush. For more complicated shape like branches I start by creating a base mesh using a zsphere tools. For small asset such as leaf and flower I usually star with a sphere or a cube. Because I have a reference it work as a guide for me during the sculpting process. Then I use sculpting brushes like Clay Buildup, Move and Dam Standard shape the base mesh and add more detail, giving the mesh the desired look.
Baking is the process where the information from a high poly mesh is transferred to a lower poly mesh. In this way, it saves a lot resources when place the mesh in the engine. Normally, there 4 types of maps being bakes. There are normal map, ambient occlusion map, roughness map and colour map. Normal map captures the high resolution details which allow the low poly model to appear with more detail without high polygon counts. Ambient occlusion maps are used to simulate the shadowing effects caused by indirect lighting.
Baking in 3D refers to a process where the information from one object or surface is transferred or “baked” onto another object or surface. It involves capturing various attributes such as colors, textures, lighting, or other details from a high-resolution object and transferring them onto a low-resolution object or a texture map.
A girl pretending to do a cactus reference for an animation about a moving plants. She sits on the chair and trying to stay balance.
personality: positive, extrovert
Reference & Sketch
I use my old record from three years ago as an reference for the animating reference.
Doing sketches is very helpful when it comes to animating.
It is important to use reference to create a storyboard or animatic for a 3d animated video. Breaking down the key actions, poses and timing of my animation is like a guide for me to animate.
For this project, I decided to make a short demo in different render engines(such as redshift/unreal engine/cycle) around an original worldview of my own. The story revolves around the encounter between two different creatures in fantasy world. I want to show the moment when they connect to each other. That is why I name it Sincerely for You.
▶Storyboard:
This project is not going to be too much character animation. It is more about building an atmosphere, so I will probably focus more on the special effect for the environment. I will still rig the character because I want the character to do a suitable pose for the set.
▶Research:
For the art style, I get my inspiration from The Southern Reach Trilogy. The story has a very detailed description of the decay of man-made architecture and the growth of nature. It is very close to the atmosphere I want.
▶Milestones:
What are the challenges?
This is the first time I’m going to rig a character and render the project in a new engine such as redshift/unreal engine/cycle(blender), and there are a lot of new things to learn.
What to do next?
Next, I will finish sculpting the model and do the retopology and texture.
Also, I will process the environment following the layout I have. I need to do around the process as I do for the character, which is to sculpt first and then bake it for the texture. Then finally, move it to the engine to render.
Our team consisted of eight students, six from UAL and two other students assisting from other schools. Yiyang helped us develop the concept in the beginning concept, and Hefan helped us with the animating. They did a great job assisting, but most of the work was done by the students from UAL. The group started with Yuting, Yiyu, and me. We had an idea at the beginning of the term and started to find other people to join us. To combine everyone’s abilities and show them to the full extent. We decided to make an animation that has both 3D and 2D. Since everyone in the group was very enthusiastic and engaging, we developed the idea and started to work on it. The whole collaboration process is tiring but rewarding. I primarily worked with Yuting as an assistant in the virtual 3D scene during the collaboration.
I’m good at researching and developing a concept for animation, so I did most related work. I also use 3D as a reflective and testing tool for the group members’ design. In the creation of the virtual classroom, I test out the 2D design in 3D to help the final decision on the concept. Creating the characters was quite challenging because it was hard to achieve the characteristic we wanted initially. Because we have sculptures as main characters, the model initially didn’t look cartoonish enough. So I exported the model to different software and played with the decimation setting to find the ideal amount of polygons we needed. After getting the suitable polygons, I modified the model’s shape to make them look alive. I also learned new skills during this group collaboration, such as UV mapping and texturing with Substance Designer.
During this group cooperation, I sometimes had to deal with the situation that I had to rush my work to keep up with the workflow. So I had to figure out the quickest way to do stuff to keep up with the plan. I think this experience is also a necessary part of group cooperation because I don’t work alone. It was hard to decide what I do for the group in the beginning as well because I know a bit of everything. But overall, I’m more interested in doing stylized and cartoonish stuff. I think I will try to improve more in the future to help me on producing my own work. Generally speaking, this collaboration experience was very successful. The combination of the 2D and 3D worked really well. Everyone contributed their best to work and did a great job.
This week I selected and searched through the internet to find the ideal music for the animation.
I found all the sound effects (royalty free) on the Internet and picked the suitable ones to send to Yuting for sound effects.
For the BGM, I chose Morning Mood by Greig as the intro music when entering the virtual scene. I think the peaceful and dreaming music suits the scene quite well. For the frog part, I chose In the Hall of the Mountain King by Greig because I think it suits the hilarious and absurd feeling the frog comes out.
The virtual classroom part with the music roughly done.
