Shot list
Continuing with the animation process, this week, I aimed to complete shots 3, 4 and 6. Since 3 and 6 are both set on a Floridian beach, I thought it would be practical to do both of those shots within the same week as, in theory, everything should be set up in preparation for it. Shot 4 is also quite minimal and simplistic in its approach, so it will not prove too much of a challenge in regard to modelling.
Beach Modelling
There are several assets required for me to make a convincing beach, such as palm trees, deck chairs and, of course, the ocean.
Palm Tree
Looking at images of palm trees, I wanted to look into ways to create some lower poly trees, to match the visuals of the previous. Models and also to reduce render times as much as I possibly can. In order to achieve this, I found the following tutorial, which was very useful in creating the overall effect I wanted.
The first step in this process was to create a ‘tower’ from extruded polygons which will act as the base of the palm tree.
The next step was to create a bezier curve, which will act as a base shape that the palm tree will conform to get the curved shape.
However, When I attempted to use the cure warp deformer tool, which would allow me to utilise this effect, it did not work for me as It did within the tutorial. However, When considering a solution for this, I recalled that due to the nature of beaches being windy, the trees would require some passive animation so that they would blow gently in the breeze.
Problem Solving:
Going forward with this idea in mind, I recalled some methods taught in tutorials over the postgraduate course in which we rigged a tube to bend and warp in a uniform way. Applying this, I created some hierarchically affected joints so that they would move in a curved more circular manner together rather than stiffly one at a time.
After creating the joints, I created a very simple skin binder that allowed me to shape the tree trunk to the joints in a way that did not overly stretch and confront them to appear unrealistic. In doing this, I used a closest joint hierarchy bind.
Since the tree currently had no leaves, following the tutorial mentioned earlier, I created these two low poly leaves, in which the multi-cut tool was applied to create little ‘cuts’ into the mesh to create the impression of large leaves.
After using the vertices to snap these to the top of the tree, I combined all sections of the mesh so that it moves as one and added additional joints to the leaves so I would be able to manipulate these in correspondence to the rest of the movement of the trees.
Using the reference to a traditional beach deck chair, I wanted to create a more visually stimulating background than the white plastic ones that are typically seen in more beachy resort hotels.
After creating the two ‘wooden’ sections of the chair, I used the boolean tool to create some cylindrical indents into the wood to give the impression of the chair height adjustments. I feel that a lot of the key elements of 3D modelling encapsulate the small details in a simplistic way, and I felt this to be very effective.
After finishing that section, I created a flat polygonal plane and used the soft select tool to shape it around the existing mesh to give the impression of a cotton-like material.
After applying the AItoon textures, I feel this model encapsulates exactly the reference material I was following and also aesthetically matches the material banners on the side of the beach cafe character who will populate the scene.
Water Simulation
The most essential part of creating the beach scene, I feel personal, Is the water simulation. In order to once again create a low poly beach to consider render times early on, I followed a tutorial from the same creator who very efficiently explained how to go through the process.
After using the texture deformer on a polygonal plane, in order to get the water to be as low poly as possible, the next step was to triangulate the mesh.
after this, by using the poly reduce tool, I was able to turn down the polycount by 90%, having much more minimal surface faces to render later on after the animation process.
Since a key part of my films, aesthetic considerations were to get this toon-shaded look as distinctly as possible, I attempted to get this look onto the water simulation. This, I feel, was particularly effective as the motions of the waves are gently implied by linework rather than entire parts of the mesh that present themselves in a way that matches the world I am creating.
When combining all these elements into the scene, I feel this had a very effective overall look. I think reflecting on how this environment could be pushed even further aesthetically would be considering how to make different ‘sand’ simulations rather than soft selecting a single plane to create a slightly uneven surface. However, I feel for the simplicity I am trying to achieve overall, It works quite well in regard to visual identity and cohesive appearance with the film as a collective. Since a lot of the other scene have the inclusion of X-Gen grass, I feel adding the water simulation helped balance the detailing in the scenes in regards to passive animation and environmental depth.
Now that the environment has been considered, I placed my character rig in the scene and did a render test to gauge how much lighting/ sampling would be needed for the render later on. When producing this test render, I also noticed that the glasses indicated how bare the environment was on the other side of the camera, and I wanted to rectify this. In order to better self the universe, I added some of my other rigs into the scene to give the appearance that they were ‘recording’ the character as they were discussing their experiences. I feel this adds another level of detail to the shot that improves the overall quality.
Shot 3 Animation
Moving onto the animation process for this shot, I wanted to make sure that, despite the character’s very short design and square body, there was enough movement to symbolise and enhance expression. In reference to the classic flour sack animation task that is referenced in The Animators Survival Kit by Richard Williams, in which expression and movement are attempted to be displayed through minimal human appendices and facial elements. Considering this, I feel that the same principle can be applied to my houses as they only have short legs and minimal eyes, often without eyebrows.
In regards to the tree motions and passive animation, I essentially Keyed all the trees simultaneously and then used the dope sheet to offset them, so they moved at slightly different times to get a more naturalistic look. I feel this was quite effective; however, in order to improve the look, I would create a rig in which I could control each individual leaf and time them correctly in a very specific direction to give visual impressions of wind movement.
When considering environmental assets such as towels, I used the N cloth simulation asset to make the towel fall in a natural way around the ground mesh so that it would shape by itself without me having to spend a lot of time soft selecting it in a way where the mesh would not collide. When going through this process, I did find that the first few tests collided quite poorly with the floor plane, so in order to fix this, I used two poly planes to layer on top of each other to give the illusion of thickness. While I could have created a Ncloth simulation out of an extruded plane rather than layers of the two pieces of mesh, I feel this method created the effect I wanted. After copying the mesh in its final simulation stage and deleting the history regarding its simulation, I had a cloth that sat evenly on the surface.
When perceiving the animation a few times, I noticed that the sky was quite barren, especially due to the very sunny weather implications and lack of clouds. I felt this would be an appropriate time to add the plane from earlier (and used later) in the film to fly across the sky. I also feel that this use of planes gives audience members associations with holidays and beaches and therefore has a location contextual placement.
Below is the final rendered shot, which, overall, I am quite happy about the outcome. However, there are several factors I would improve upon. For example, the coconuts in the trees sometimes detach slightly from the mesh in an unrealistic way and make the weather appear slightly more severe than I had intended.
Shot 6
Since I already had the entire scene set up already, I moved straight away onto shot 6, Which followed a very similar process of animation. However, I removed the plane from the background as I felt that would be a bit too much external animation and would distract from the main content.
My critique of this animation is similar to that of the first shot. However, I feel I was able to time the ‘mouth’ with the spoken content much more successfully, and I also feel the timing of the body movements was more effective. However, the eye movements perhaps moved too quickly across the face of the building as it is a larger surface area than that of a normal eyeball. In future, I will consider the keyframe timing between each eye dart and the space it has to cross in without looking too drastic.
Shot 4
Shot 4 only primarily needs about 3 assets, a table, a cake and character 4. Due to this, I got started right away on completing the shot.
Shot 4 Modelling
When googling birthday cakes as a reference, there were a lot of very complicated designs that had candles with ages on them and lots of patterns drawn with icing. However, to keep the cake very simplistic and to keep the age of the interviewee anonymous, I settled for a very minimal design that colour-matched the house model it corresponded to.
For the lighting of this scene, I wanted to create a very dramatic bright spotlight to accentuate the loneliness of the character and the isolation he felt on his birthday.
Exploring the lighting for this shot, I also wanted to create a subtle light from the cake that would imply there are lit candles. In an ideal world, I would love to explore with fire simulations, but simply due to time constraints, I will try to explore with mesh lights and key framing the explore to create a ‘flickering’ effect.
Since the table by itself looked quite bare and plain, I decided to utilise what I had learned about N Cloth materials. I created a plane that I could wrap around the table. Once It reached its final settled position on the timeline, I created a copy of the material and cleared the history to ensure it was still not attached to the simulation. In order to keep render times down, I did not want to add additional things to crowd the scene. However, If time allows, I will go back and re-render the simulation.
Replacing the place-holder cake with the completed model, I began to create mesh lights that resembled small flames to begin to create the effect I wanted.
My initial idea was to create spherical mesh lights that would surround ‘flame-shaped’ mesh. However, all this did was create an odd effect in which the light would not project around the mesh but was instead obstructed by it. From this test I decided creating the flame model directly as the mesh, but making it visible, similarly to the process of making stars, I was able to get a better effect overall.
From this point, I key framed the intensity of the individual lights to create a flickering effect to the candles so that they would give the appearance and implication of movement.
When producing a test render, I explored different coloured rim lighting, and by adding the same orange hue to the roof rim lighting, it created an upward light effect which gives the impression he is sitting above the cake. The same process will be applied to the additional textures of the house.
During the animation process, I wanted to make sure the eye darts looked nice and clean in contrast to the movements mentioned for shot 6 earlier in this blog post.
I feel this shot is more successful with the eye darts, and the motions are not as drastic in appearance. I also feel the body timing matches that of the spoken content. However, there seems to be a slight disparity between the eyebrow movements and the rest of the animation. The eyes also attempts to be less drastic, also seem more ‘floaty’ and less concise. Going forward I will have to find a midground in which the eye movements look more reminiscent of real eye motions.