Ideas and Concepts
We gathered into groups to work with on a team 3d animation. The theme of the animation is ‘adventure’, so I suggested to the team we do a fantasy short and they agreed. We used miro to create a mood board and sketches of what we could do. We talked about a journey, characters fighting, dragons and magic. ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ was mentioned and we instantly stuck with it.
There was a sketch of a plague doctor that i wanted to elaborate the design on but we decided we don’t need one in the short so i used some of the inspiration from the mood board to create the sorceress character.
3 designs with different hair and cape designs and lengths.
I chose the middle one and then polished her design. Gave her a bun for a more beginner-friendly animating. And like everyone else’s character designs, for consistency, I gave her a cloak that covers her body.
Storyboard and Animatic
In my part of the animation, I planned the sorceress to watch from afar, show some sass and disdain to the fighting in the tavern with the other characters and the orc innkeeper. I structured the shots in simple compositions and kept to the rule of thirds. The scene begins with her establishing shot and then it cuts to her head shot, rolling her eyes and looking away while casting a spell to drink from the goblet.
With the animatic, I used after effects and planned the camera movements, as well as considering the timing of the scene.
Feedback
After showing the full animatic with everyone else’s parts, we were suggested that we may be a little too ambitious with so many characters and scenes. So my and John’s characters were cut from the animatic. Below is the updated and final animatic before we began 3d modelling our characters.
Orc Character Design
The orc innkeeper still needed a modeller so I decided to take up the job. This is Tish’s design that she made for him, a chef with an apron.
I looked into some references for orcs to help with fleshing him out and wanted to add a few of my personal touches to him.
Since he is supposed to be slightly menacing and a lot larger than the other characters, I designed him to be a little more squared and bulky but still stay with a similar style. I gave him big arms and head.
3D Modeling
Model reference drawing for use in maya.
First Attempt
I looked up an anatomically correct reference to help me with the modelling and then widened it to fit the drawing reference. I used a cube and then used the multicut tool to add subdivisions and shaped the torso and neck. Then I placed a cylinder in and cube and began trying to model the face. I used 2 cones and gave them only 2 subdivisions and used them as ears, shaped the nose, and sculpted the face some more but I wasn’t loving it. A cylinder was used to make the forearm with the sleeve, using bevels for a more clean edge. When trying to connect the forearm to the torso realized it was not going to work, as there were too many subdivisions on the torso compared to the arm and I could not connect them easily.
I came to a decision to scrap it and start over.
Second Attempt
Body
I did some research on how to model a humanoid in Maya and found this very helpful and easy to understand.
I used a reference of a stockier man for this orc innkeeper. I inserted the aligned reference photos and set their layers to r so they wouldn’t be in the way. Since it’s best to start with simple shapes working to more detailed ones, I placed a cube in, setting the subdivision axis at 8, height 4. I used the vertex mode and moved them to the overall shape of the reference torso and neck.
A cylinder with a subdivision axis of 8 and height 6 was the leg. I moved the points to fit the shape of the reference. At this point, I selected the faces of half of the body and deleted it so I can work on only one side and then duplicate it, saving me time. The same process as the leg was used on the arm however it did not reach up until the shoulder area because the shoulder is built from the torso. So I extruded the part where the shoulder and arm start and then removed the faces that have to connect them. I duplicated the side of the body using the duplicate special tab.
I aligned the arm and shoulder as best as I could and then began joining the points with the target wield tool, any points that did not join I bridged together or filled the hole. There was a triangle so I used the multi-cut tool to add more faces to make them all quads. I used number 3 to check how the body would look like smoothed and it was shaping great.
For the hands, I used a cube and subdivided it height 2, depth 4. I began shaping it in the shape of a hand using the reference, extruded the 4 faces where the fingers should be, separated them, and bridged the holes to create fingers. I selected and copied one of the fingers and enlarged it, and deleted a face on the hand where I connected them and made the thumb. Then I joined the wrist with the arm, the hand had more subdivisions so I needed to use target wield to connect certain points together that would connect to the arm. Any triangles i fixed up.
For the legs, it was pretty much the same process as the previous limbs. I followed the shape of the reference faithfully. To not make the foot look too round when smoothing it I used the multi-cut tool to create a subdivision and beveled the edge, and then I connected the foot to the leg.
To have the appearance of clothing I added folds on the forearms, as the orc has rolled up the sleeves for work. To make it defines I used the extrude and bevel edges tools and I did the same for the collar of the shirt and the boot folds. This is where I separated the geometry so I could add different materials to them, the neck and arm below the fold for the skin, shirt from the trousers, and trousers from boots. I added colors to the materials to check how they work and I went ahead with working on the head. Overall the body wasn’t too hard to do once you know the basics of how to make a basemesh.
Head
The same youtube made another video for the head so I decided it was smartest to follow it too.
I placed my references in for the head and began by placing a cylinder and rotated it to a 90-degree angle. I removed all but the front face and added the skin material to it from a preset I made previously. I placed it on one eye and then duplicated 2 more which went over the other eye and mouth. I set them to x-ray and began moving and shaping the points to fit the face reference. I cut the faces in half for convenience.
Another cylinder I used face I used for the nose and shaped it, then I used the target wield tool to connect to the mouth and corners of the eyes. I extruded the sides to create the jaw and space between the nose and cheeks. I kept this up until I was able to create the cheeks and forehead. With a cone, the tooth was made and I gave it its own material. I had a problem with the cheek where it was glitching out so I asked for help and all I needed to do was delete the face and fill the hole again.
I got feedback from my tutors that to fit the style of the other characters more, I should conjoin the fingers so I did. Then I added a sphere to the head and removed more of the faces, leaving space for the ear. I extruded the back to better connect to the neck later. This part was tricky as there were different amounts of points that I needed to connect to the forehead so I used the multi-cut tool as well as the target wield. For the ear I used another cylinder and drew out the shape with the multi-cut tool and shaped it, removing the faces that need to connect to the head. I found this was a much more intricate and difficult process than modelling the body.
Miscellaneous
At this point, I joined the neck with the head and the duplicate specials for both head and body, making a complete basemesh. I fixed up anything that wasn’t right and I moved on to the apron. A polygon plain and multi-cut tool was used for the apron and extruding for the sides and adding thickness so it isn’t like a piece of paper. It was tricky to get it to lay like fabric but I think I did pretty well. I cut it in half and duplicated and joined it as well as adding a material to it. The strap at the back proves a very effortless way of separating the trousers from the shirt without having to show the seam. I connected everything and went into the UV editor where I auto-aligned the faces and after that, checking if there aren’t any overlapping faces so there wouldn’t be clipping texture issues.
Rigging and Problems
For the rig, my tutor suggested we use Mixamo website and upload the fbx of the Maya file in it. Choosing the t pose to allow a base pose to start animating. I fixed up the model stance as the Mixamo rig made my characters feet sideways when moving. After many tweaks, I was happy with how the rig was on my character. However the script that was needed to bind the rig to the character, wouldn’t run no matter what. So I asked a teammate to run the script for me and send the rigged character back, but the character was separated still. After sending it to my tutor, he helped fix the issue and I was able to continue.
Texturing
When it came to texturing the orc, I put the fbx of him in substance painter. I gave every material a name so it was very easy to identify when wanting to paint on them. I gave each material a base color and then more layers to paint over for the details e.g. eyes and any textures like skin. I used smart materials for the clothes which really nicely made the clothes actually look like clothes which I was very happy with. Texturing was a very fun process and completely brings the character to life before its animated.
Material problems
I exported the textures at 2k quality and set them on the Maya materials with bump mapping. I rendered it to check how it reacts to light but it had an interesting white shine on the skin. After some experimentation, I realized I had it on the blinn material instead of lambert, same with the legs. We were advised to use the file path editor to see the textures that imported models, like the tavern, shows its textures on your computer. There were some file paths not found but they did not end up meaning anything in the end.
Animating
For my animated scenes, I decided I wanted the character hunched over by the hearth either stirring the cauldron or fanning the smell towards him. I ended up choosing the fanning motion, I took a video of myself performing it and I observed that the top of the body moves with the hand so I applied it to the animation. There is anticipation with the beginning of the fan and then the hand quickly swipes and goes towards the face in a circular motion and then it cycles like that. I wanted him to lean over and fan while the camera is approaching him slowly as it is the second establishing shot. I used the pose to pose method to map the motions and then smoothed them out within between Keys. There was the repeated action of the fanning so I copied and pasted it in the time editor and overlapped them and sped up and slowed down the movements so he doesn’t move like a machine( more natural). After he’s done, I animated him to straighten up, his head moves to the left and he begins turning. Then I baked the time edit to the scene, made some tweaks and it was done. I placed the camera at a few angles and then I stuck with the overhead approaching shot.
The final playblast of the first scene before rendering.
For the second scene, he approaches the table to pick up and clean a tankard. I took a video of myself wiping a mug with my hand and used that as a reference. The scene was very dark on the character so I added an orange light and placed it on the candle and brought the exposure way up. The candle ended up looking a lot more realistic and the subject was lit up well. I tried keeping the movements of the steps and hands, body, and head movements as natural as I could. The head never stayed in one place, the hands go to pick up the cup as he’s still walking up. The hands go into their poses of the intended action. I gave the lift of the tankard before he began wiping a little wobble. I utilized all of the body’s rig to not keep him stiff. For the camera, I wanted a pleasing spot, the bottles in the foreground and midground with the candle, as well as extra lighting and barrels in the background. Nothing is taking away from the subject (which is the orc) and I set the camera field of view to quite low for a more intimate look. Again, I used the time editor to smoothen out his movements and control the speed and I baked it into the scene and made some fixes. I noticed he jolts a bit too fast in one frame but I spent quite a bit of time trying to fix it already and the deadline to start rendering was approaching so I let it be.
For a final idea of how the animation would turn out, we had playblasts of our scene and Tish edited them together. It looked just as we wanted so we moved on to rendering.
Rendering
Rendering took a very long time. For both scenes combined, it took a week and a half to render. Everyone used the same render settings as well so the different scenes would look as consistent as they can. After rendering the scenes, I noticed white specks in each frame, so for an easy fix, photoshop and the content-aware patch tool fixed them right up. Finally, after all that, Imported each scene as a sequence to premiere pro and they were converted into video file when I exported them. And voila
Final Animations
Scene 1
I am happy with this scene as it works great as an establishing shot, simple yet effective. The camera is at the center shows that he’s the center of conflict in this animation and I believe sets up the story very well.
Scene 2
This was a slightly more difficult scene as it was a lot more up close and I had to get it to look natural and get the movements right. I really enjoy how it looks but there are some things id change if I did it again, like smoothening the movements even more and maybe add some extra micromovements.