Model Development - Alien

I've been developing the mesh for the alien model to be used in the animation. I've made it very long because it will stand upright sort of like a snake, and needs the length to be able to curl back on itself without standing on the tip of it's tail.

I've put a dip at the bottom of the neck to accommodate for the fact that it will be looking down slightly because of it's size. There's still plenty of work to be done on it though.

Model Development - Poltergeist

The modelling for the poltergeist I'm a little more comfortable with as I've modelled a humanoid model before, and drawing from that experience, I think I'm able to make this one better. It's already looking to be much more correct in terms of anatomy, even with the adjustments to be made such as with the size of the hands.

As part of my testing process for Mudbox, I brought the models in only to find that there were problems - problems that have taken a long time to address and correct - but in the process I have developed skills in problem solving that will come into use later on. 

Model Development

This is the nightmare model, rigged with joints in it's upright posed. It is posed resembling a snake or a cobra in it's attack position, as this makes it seem threatening and dangerous.

One of the problems I had when making this was getting the joints bound and constrained correctly. At first I simply tried parenting one to the other, forgetting that I needed to constrain them. I realised this was an error when I came to see some of the joints simply vanishing after being parented, leaving them unconnected. I then tried constraining them, but they did not respond to the controllers I had set up. This is because I was still using the earlier method of parenting - in terms of which one was child to the other. I was clicking the joint as the child and then the controller as the parent, but for whatever reason, this meant the controller couldn't control the joint first. When I tried it the other way round, it finally managed to work.

I lost quite a few hours working around this problem, but overall I feel that learning the workaround for myself was ultimately progressive to my development and proficiency in using maya.

Textures / Bumps

Whilst I've dabbled in the textures and bump maps used for the environment, here are the ones for the character models.

Once the mesh was appropriately laid out in the UV texture editor it became available to paint. I prefer this much more than manually painting the details in photoshop and applying it directly, as it feels more natural to literally paint onto the model. That said, I can only wish I had more experience in it, but I'm confident that the lessons I have learned producing these models will come in later when I come to produce more.

That said, it was partially necessary to use photoshop in the production of the alien model because it took a long time to paint, and the way the polygons were arranged (a fault on my part admittedly) made it hard to paint in some areas because of the range of size in which one polygon came to play a part. For example, it was hard to paint a part of one spike because the spikes were made of only a few polygons each in total. But in photoshop I wasn't restricted.

So all in all, I've learned important lessons regarding the advantages and disadvantages concerning mudbox and painting textures, and I do feel they have helped better my proficiency in using both of the softwares.

Model Development II

I don't particularly like the modelling phase, but I like the animating. This is the poltergeist after he was given a skeleton, although at this point I was still having trouble with the controllers and so had to pose him without the use of them - which was easy enough.

The textures I had made in Mudbox worked perfectly, and binding the rig to the mesh using heat mapping - which to my knowledge is a new feature of Maya 2014, dramatically reduced the amount of weight painting necessary. In contrast to the last humanoid model I built it is much cleaner.

Though more work could have been done on the hands in the modelling, rigging and animation processes all, I knew he wouldn't be using his fingers so much - even so, his fingers are functional as independently posable extremities.

Playblast

A playblast of my animation - just in case the worst should happen, but also as a means of reviewing camera angles and timing. As such, some of them may change before the final thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQ13qC9d9b8

Rendering Issues II

On the computer it was rendered on, the cave entranced had not been smoothed, meaning the poltergeist stood half buried in the rock. This was obviously an error on my part and I learned that I ought to make sure that the .mb file is completely suited for rendering before copying it over to seven other computers, as I then had to manually go and smooth the mesh on all of the computers where the cave entrance was in the frame.

Also, a similar problem occurred where some computers failed to render the bump maps on the characters, and I could not find the cause. There was nothing for it but to find the point at which the bump maps vanish and the point they return (as the problem only persisted for a particular scene, where the nightmare hits the poltergeist into the rock and the moments before and after that).

These re-rendered files have the bump maps on the characters and will be inserted into the animation tiffs folders to replace the defective ones.

Rendering Issues I

When the time came to bring my rendered images into After Effects, I set to work arranging the sky image to fit the animation, and readied the hologram image I had produced. Whilst these were appropriately keybound and animated, I noticed not everything had rendered out perfectly.

I had rendered across seven computers, a but apparently there were some missing. 778 seemed to be the only one that was actually missing, however, and I have since rendered it out again to a correction tiffs folder, which will be inserted into the animation tiffs folder to replace or add to what I am currently missing or what needs replacing.

I did not have the time I originally wanted to edit and appropriately render, but I do not think it would take the two and a half weeks I had allocated to it.

Environment Details

One of the only things I added, in fact the only other thing I added to my environment plane with the DEM image was this geometry here. Although that isn't strictly true either, as this was an earlier version that I wanted to test idea with. I thought it would be overly complex to build the cave-in-the-floor look I wanted out of one piece in geometry, so I wanted to save myself time by building something that could effectively cover up the edges of the whole whilst still providing access and providing it's own aesthetic as an inverted crater - where the land has been raised around it. My way to do it was to create a pipe and deform it.

This gave me the look I wanted and saved me the time of having to sculpt the same look by inserting more edge loops around a single area and sculpting it out of the same plane.

I built stones and boulders too, but they have gone unused so far because I don't feel like they wouldn't have contributed unless I placed loads of them into the environment, which probably would have caused a polygon overload, and that the bump maps and textures I already had were enough to simulate the rocky surface of a moon.

Early Nightmare Model

Here is an earlier version of the alien. It is different mostly because of it's tail, the realisation that it needed to be longer, and a number of other things such as the large task of adding additional edges in order for the mesh to be suitable for painting in Mudbox.

I didn't like the tail because even in the earlier storyboards I had, I knew I wanted to use it's tail to hit the poltergeist, and the spike-like end wasn't suited for this. Even so, I'm glad I tested it and saw it visualised.

I had referred to the designs I had produced earlier when it came to deciding on a tail.

But I also neglected to include horns, as I could not find a way of modelling them that I was happy with, and because I found the overall design of the alien not to be significantly impacted. I didn't include eyes either, because these initial ideas came from back when I was still planning on the alien having eyes before settling on a more final design, where it does not have eyes.

Early Poltergeist Model

These are some screenshots of the poltergeist model before it was smoothed. One of the mistakes I made was smoothing it early. At one point I thought the model was finished and went to smooth the mesh, only to run into more problems later and not have a more recent back-up version to start over (despite how many I had created for versions earlier on - lots!).

You can also see what happened to the boots when they were smoothed, which was why I only partially smoothed the mesh and left everything above the knee, exempting the feet, as it was. This gives it the chunkier, armoured boot look that I wanted. It simply looks strange whilst smoothed and didn't have the appeal I wanted. That said, I still think it turned out okay.

I found the arms difficult. I didn't mirror the geometry, and so each half was built on it's own - the whole model is built out of one cube, split with the insert split edge loop tool, extruded and deformed as necessary. So the arms aren't exactly like one another, but they resemble each other well enough. The right arm is different in the forearm because it has the device that will use the holographic information projector.

Storyboard

This is the updated storyboard. Some shots I have kept, others I have thrown away.

Basically the intro starts the same, and the poltergeist lands on the moon from his unseen pod. He spends a moment surveying the environment, and we are given a glimpse of the view behind him at the planet as he does. He then gets to work, using a device on his arm that projects information, showing him where to go. He hears something and looks around, but sees nothing. Knowing where to go, he uses the low gravity atmosphere to his advantage and jumps to his next destination, next to a crater or hole of some sort. However, as he scans again, a nightmare jumps out and attacks. He enters a defensive stance to engage it as it leaps up again towards him.

He jumps to avoid and lands, readying a weapon of sort on his arm, but the nightmare closes the distance before he can fire it off and it knocks him back violently into the wall, apparently knocking him out. The nightmare slithers towards him and coils back to deal a finishing blow, but he avoids at the last moment and the nightmare smashes it's face into the rock, knocking it out or killing it. It coils over backwards. Shortly afterwards, the poltergeist jumps down the tunnel and lands inside, briefly inspecting it for any other enemies. He then locates what he is looking for - a crystal of celestialite. He signals that the mission is complete and that it is safe for extration.

Initial Storyboard

Knowing that the animation needed to be two to three minutes long, I produced a storyboard that roughly went over a developed form of the narrative idea I had written down for the animation.

The storyboard goes over most of the shots including the intro, but I used it mostly for timing. This isn't the final storyboard by any means, but it became a starting point as I developed the models and environments I produced alongside it.

Lighting

The lighting in my animation ought to be fitting of a lunar-esque environment. In many reference images I browsed beforehand, prior to arranging lighting, I noticed that because of a lack of atmosphere, things were quite plainly white or black. Things were either exposed to light, or not, and therefore hidden in shadow. I wanted to recreate the look of the above two images to try and capture this look.

However, I thought that adding a slight glow to the environment and character made things look more space-like, for the lack of a better descriptive word for a cumulative summary of all things involved in space. Our own moon glows at night, although it isn't it's own light, but the light it reflects off the sun.

Also, despite the view from space on Earth, in some areas..

The view of space from the moon is relatively plain. It could be because of light pollution from the Earth itself.

Whether I want to add more stars or not is a matter of whether it would look better vs realism. I don't feel the need to be no-holds-barred when it comes to realism, but I find it important to balance.

Finished Models

With the controllers attached, tried and tested, the models were ready for animation.

Some of the problems I encountered whilst attaching the controllers and getting them to function correctly was the parenting. For example, for a while I didn't notice that the neck controller wasn't properly attached, and so when the body was posed to lean forwards or backwards, the neck and head remained where they were whilst the rest of the body moved. This obviously wasn't the response I wanted or needed, but it was a simple case of trial and error, parenting and un-parenting controllers with and to one another until they functioned smoothly.

Overall though, there could have been with a few upgrades. The toes in the boots have minimal functionality, for example. But otherwise it functions well for the animation I have in mind.

Environment Development III

I made the environments using a different way than I otherwise would have. I used a heightmap with the surfaces creator in Maya.

I used the same image as a bump-map, which created a realistic looking hill range. I adjusted the colour to another shade of grey and then used an option in maya which made it glow slightly, which made it look like it is reflecting sunlight.

Overall it was an easy process and one I will more than likely use again in the near future if necessary.

After doing some research into creation terrain, this is the guide I used and found.

The process uses DEM images, or a digital elevation model, which seem almost to be height map photographs taken from space. They are easy to create or find.

Environment Development II

This is the surface of the moon level - at three different qualities. As it is a moon environment, I took reference from Earth's own moon, Lunar. Even so, it has more local, bumpy hills because a flat moon environment would be far too boring despite the realism. I think the surface environment is a decent size - it will have to seem like it is but one part of a bigger environment, and I feel that the hills help with this as you won't be able to see behind them. The rest I will manage with camera angles and the way certain scenes are shot.

Environment Development I

This is the cave environment I came up with for the animation. I originally wanted more staligmites and stalactites, but with the camera shots I wanted to use, having too many would be an inconvenience because they would be in the way - either in the way of the character, or the camera, or of the rest of the environment.

There are spotlights that simulate light shining through small holes from the surface. Overall the area is meant to be darker than the outside, which makes it look more natural.

Overall there isn't much more to do to a cave environment. I will be adding the celestialite in After Effects, but I did use a small polygon pyramid in game to test representing where it could, would or should be - likely under one of the lights.

The character will enter the cave in the second half of the animation. The first half will take place on the surface.

Intro Shot and Background

This image has the components that will be used for the introduction of the animation. The pod containing the poltergeist will fly past over the planet, towards the moon on which the animation is set. This will be possible because the background, planet, moon and ship are all on different layers. I may have the planet move ever so slightly so that the image is less still.

This is the work so far on the background image. It is wide enough so that depending on the angle of the camera in the animation, the background will shift from left to right and will show a different view of the sky. E.g from one angle the planet will be visible, but not at another angle.

Mudbox Testing

I brought the alien model into Mudbox to briefly test some ideas I had and I'm satisfied that I can use it for the purposes I have in mind. However, there are still things to address before that happens.

There are many tasks that I need to complete beforehand. The models need to be smoothed before I can truly get started and achieve accurate results - as can be seen here - and they need to be appropriately UV mapped so that paint and textures do not spread.

There are still issues with polygons and vertices that are marked out in red, but this is useful as it makes it easier to find them in Maya, and so I regularly exported versions of the alien and poltergiest to Mudbox in order to locate rogue vertices and edges, as well as any other areas which may cause problems. I also took note of how to partially smooth models, as I obviously want to keep the sharp edges of the spikes at it's side and teeth at the front.

Some of the problems was that many faces had multiple vertices. I had likely deleted edges carelessly and caused this to happen, but addressed it after it started presenting problems. This was done through a multitude of solutions which ranged from either adding or deleting more edges, using the interactive split tool, thereby reducing or increasing the amount of polygons in the area to the necessary levels.