Final Major Project (FMP) – The Viral Escape - Ryan Shepheard – K0091883
The main focus of my final major project is going to be animation. I plan on creating an animated short film approximately one and a half minutes in length. The project itself is going to be mostly hand animated with a possibility of some motion capture. The main character will probably be modelled by myself to a low standard as my modelling skills are at a basic level as I do not wish to be graded on said skills. The environment is going to be designed and modelled myself but due to the nature of the story my animation tells it is only going to be built out of basic geometry such as cubes and voxels. I will be creating basic textures for my assets and if I have time a soundtrack for the chase. Once the animation is finished and rendered to a high quality, I will take the exported animation into various editing suites for post-production and advanced editing.
Over the course of the animation we follow one main protagonist who gets injected/synchronised into a virtual environment where death is the final chapter be it in the real world or the Crux itself. The world (Crux) around the character is being de-synchronized or deleted via a security program caleld the D.O.E system (Delete or Erase) in the form of a red laser beam. As soon as the laser beam touches geometry, the geometry is split into hundreds of separate cubes or voxels. The character witnesses this and begins to fear for his life thus attempting to outrun the D.O.E. As the Crux becomes increasingly less stable through the deletion of the world, glitches and errors will appear that the character will see and possibly have to overcome or avoid.
As the character will be free running and moving at a fast pace, I want to capture and display all of the intricate motions and animation without using motion blur or camera cuts as trickery. The style of animation I’m looking for is relatively realistic but still has slightly over exaggerated movements and a springier flow to the movements. I believe this will be more appealing to the audience and will allow me the freedom to create a more aesthetically pleasing animation to watch and enjoy for all.
The main goal for this project is to hone my freeform or hand animation skills so I can become more efficient in the industry role I would like to fulfil. Ideally I would like to work for companies such as “Riot Games”, “Valve” or “Blizzard” who tend to specialize in hand animation as opposed to motion capture.
I believe this project will be demanding both on my animation skills, as well as pushing the boundaries of my creativity and definitely forcing me to manage my time and efforts throughout the course of the module. I hope the final piece will be finished and polished to a very high standard which I’d be proud to show off to prospective employers, and hopefully will impress them at the same time.
The main focus of my final major project is going to be animation. I plan on creating an animated short film approximately one and a half minutes in length. The project itself is going to be mostly hand animated with a possibility of some motion capture. The main character will probably be modelled by myself to a low standard as my modelling skills are at a basic level as I do not wish to be graded on said skills. The environment is going to be designed and modelled myself but due to the nature of the story my animation tells it is only going to be built out of basic geometry such as cubes and voxels. I will be creating basic textures for my assets and if I have time a soundtrack for the chase. Once the animation is finished and rendered to a high quality, I will take the exported animation into various editing suites for post-production and advanced editing.
Over the course of the animation we follow one main protagonist who gets injected/synchronised into a virtual environment where death is the final chapter be it in the real world or the Crux itself. The world (Crux) around the character is being de-synchronized or deleted via a security program caleld the D.O.E system (Delete or Erase) in the form of a red laser beam. As soon as the laser beam touches geometry, the geometry is split into hundreds of separate cubes or voxels. The character witnesses this and begins to fear for his life thus attempting to outrun the D.O.E. As the Crux becomes increasingly less stable through the deletion of the world, glitches and errors will appear that the character will see and possibly have to overcome or avoid.
As the character will be free running and moving at a fast pace, I want to capture and display all of the intricate motions and animation without using motion blur or camera cuts as trickery. The style of animation I’m looking for is relatively realistic but still has slightly over exaggerated movements and a springier flow to the movements. I believe this will be more appealing to the audience and will allow me the freedom to create a more aesthetically pleasing animation to watch and enjoy for all.
The main goal for this project is to hone my freeform or hand animation skills so I can become more efficient in the industry role I would like to fulfil. Ideally I would like to work for companies such as “Riot Games”, “Valve” or “Blizzard” who tend to specialize in hand animation as opposed to motion capture.
I believe this project will be demanding both on my animation skills, as well as pushing the boundaries of my creativity and definitely forcing me to manage my time and efforts throughout the course of the module. I hope the final piece will be finished and polished to a very high standard which I’d be proud to show off to prospective employers, and hopefully will impress them at the same time.
Basic colour Mood board for environment
Above is a colour mood board for the environment of my upcoming final animation. I wanted my environment to have a modern, digital sci-fi theme to it and thus went for black, dark blue, cyan and grey.
Environment Moodboard
Here is the moodboard for the environment and art style of the project. Taking inspiration from TRON, Metal Gear Solid, Computing and I.T., Science fiction and Voxels.
Character Moodboard
Here is the character moodboard for the upcoming project. Taking inspiration from L.M.S. (Last Man Standing Comic), I,Robot, Robotics, Lasers, Etc.
Basic mind map
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Basic UVW Map and Texture
To the left here we can see a basic design for the environment texture. The Cyan edges give a very Sci-fi feel to the scene and allow for the texture to tile easily. This was inspired by the VR missions in "Metal Gear Solid" for the Sony Playstation.
Basic Environment Test Render
Here we can see a very basic block out of what the environment might look like. I'm working on having the Cyan edges being the light source for the environment. Also i'm planning on having the textures animated so that they pulsate brighter then fade, which will be looped over approximately 2-3 seconds.
Animated Texture Test
Below is a test of my animated texture in 3DS Max 2013, it's going to have a similar look to that of Disney's "TRON"
Glowing Texture
Here is the above animated texture test with an additional glowing effect, created using the environments option of 3DS Max 2013. (Press 8 on the keyboard for a shortcut to the drop down menu.)
Collapsing Geometry / Physics based animation
Below we can see a test of an effect i'm looking to implement into my final piece. As the laser grid collides with the geometry it will be deconstructed and erased from the virtual environment similar to the reference video below also. It's only a ground basis as i'm experimenting with the Rayfire plugin which I haven't used before. It needs more work and polish but it's a good start.
Reference Video
Level Blockout
Here we can see the developed level blockout in 3DS Max from 4 different viewports. This is an improved version of the one featured earlier in the project diary.
Below is a quick basic render of the blockout from the perspective viewport.
Level Blockout Fly-through
Here is a camera fly-through of the above level block out. The fly-through does not relate to the pacing of the final animation, although it does highlight the key areas of interest. This is just to give a feel of the overall layout and and design but also to help me and the audience imagine how our protagonist will traverse the scene.
Pre-visualisation
This is the basic pre-vis of my animation, showing the main protagonist traversing the environment. The camera angles will most likely be the same in the final rendered version come May. The textures will be glowing, the animation will be tenfold better as is purely for pace and timing currently, the cubic environment will hopefully be exploding into hundreds of smaller cubes. It's going to be great so make sure to stay updated!
Finished Character Rig
Above is the final version of the custom rig I built for animation of my FMP. As we can see the geometry of the mesh has been scaled and adjusted with 'edit poly' modifiers to match that of the underlying mesh. This allows me to have the geometry hidden during the animation phase; increasing the overall fps within max and saving system resources for the environment or procedural animation. I've also attached some Gizmos to the wrists and hips to make animating a little easier in the later stages.
Rig with underlying geometry
Here we can see that the rig is a pretty close match to the actual mesh itself which just makes animating for me that little bit easier. As I've sized the rig to be ever so slightly larger than the character mesh this means that if the rig fits the animation, so will the character.
Character mesh with base materials
Here is the High poly version of the character mesh i'm using in my FMP. The base textures are supposed to be similar to that of Sunny from "I-robot". This great character mesh is courtesy of Digital Tutors and they have given permission for me to use this model in my upcoming final animation.
Updated Textures
Below are the updated version of my textures with help from my friend Kent. We've added some self-illumination, reflections and alpha maps. The first image is the environment in it's default state and the second image is the environment at the peak of its pulsating lights. These will we animated on and off over about 45 - 60 frames over the course of the entire animation.
Scene Render Test
This is pretty much the final scene structure. There may be a few minor tweaks to the background image and lighting but what you see here is pretty close to how the final render will turn out. I'm really liking the look of it thus far and I am keen to finish the project so I can get it rendered out and see it in all its glory!