Concept to 3D Blocking

It took a good while to get started but I finally had some time to finish off some 3D blocking for my project. I've been working hard to try and finish this section within the next couple of weeks. My schedule has changed a bit, so trying to do personal work is a mission sometimes, but it's getting there!

Scene 02 - Shot 01 - 12mm

Scene 01 - Shot 01

I've tried to recreate my storyboard thumbnails and concept art for now. I'll be adding in details and iterating through 3D means next. These are what I have done so far.

Scene 01 - Shot 02 & 03

I mainly tried to focus on the planning and optimization of the overall project before just diving in. So I've been jumping back and forth, doing little actual work and more tasks like project layout, asset resourcing, etc.

Scene 02 - Shot 01 - 90mm

Some more detail around the animation - There are about five scenes in total, all with three to four shots - all with two to three different times of day, seasons, and weather variations. Some shots will be camera pans from a bird's eye view and some from a worm's. Main shots will be long periods of time in First-person FOV.

At this time, I am working on scenes 01 and 02 - using them for trial and error and iterations, from start to finish. I will fully finish these scenes up to a renderable point. Do a test render and iterate if needed. After I've got the workflow down, then I'll move on to the other scene and finish one by one. This is my game plan, I'm sure if I dedicate at least a small amount of hours per week during my schedule that I'll be able to finish this by the end of the year, given life doesn't throw too much a curveball at me.

Anyway... note to future me - Stick to the F@#%ing schedule!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Planning Process

Almost three weeks since my return to the project - I've spent some time planning my shots and the idea of the animation, how it should be felt and transition between scenes, and so on. I've decided to use a loosely planned scrum board to keep track of what I need to do and to prioritize things. 

And no.. I did not dedicate all my time to this, these last three weeks were filled with challenges, if it's not my lazy self not wanting to work, it's the depression that keeps me in bed, or it's the country's local "terrorists" rioting in my city and forcing the community to defend our homes...

!!!!! ANYWAY !!!!!

I've created a storyboard and made some basic concept art for the environments: 

Storyboard Thumbnails

Basic Environment Concept Art
  

01_Environment Concept Art

02_Environment Concept Art

03_Environment Concept Art

Next up:

• Creating the environment's basic block-outs in scenes separated from each other.
• Recreate basic 3D animatic with driver POV. 
• Replace Block-out with 3D Assets.

That's it for now. I'm glad that I've made the time to write this out. It keeps me motivated to push forward when I can. 

Cheers for now!

Back after a massive break - some updates:

This post is just to ensure that I haven't given up on this project, I am recommitting myself after many months of delay.
A few things to note after the past 3+ months :

• I got a massive hardware upgrade - had some compatibility issues that delayed me quite a bit - ( this was my main reason for putting my project on hold at the start. )
• After my upgrade, I got a pretty massive freelance project that almost took a month of my time.
• BUT for the last month and a half... I was caught in a laziness spiral. I'm still slowly but surely coming out of it.

What's Next?

I ended my project on hold just as I had to evaluate what I have done so far and to decide if I was happy or not, so today I did just that and decided to try one more iteration on my environment. To see if I can optimize my workflow and the project overall a bit better. I've decided on a new approach - I'll be using newer assets to start with, totally scrapping my previous environment. I started to plan out my shots, by planning out the shots I will be able to determine what exactly needs to be in the environment. 

I'll be creating separate scenes within Blender for each shot to make things faster. I have created a Trello board in order to keep track of what I'm in the middle of working on, the automation of the website is great BTW. 

So that's it for now - I'll be posting regularly again starting next week Sunday. I promise. 

Also...

I actually started this blog to keep myself in check - kind of failed since 4 months have gone by... but I'll be more active from now on. Just want to say thanks to whoever spends the time to read this crap.. cause it's just me rambling to myself. Legit.. I talk to myself aloud too, especially when I drive... I do however have no problem with you following the blog or not, It's pretty cool to see the "viewed" icon count be more than just the amount of times that I checked it myself.

Anyway - CHEERS for now!

-- 2021 --

Let's aim to improve this year on the bad habits that the lockdown had us develop!!!!!! And to #GETSHITDONE

Starting off with quite an impressive leap with the modeling of the vehicle interior.

So I sourced for examples first, CC0 of course, I needed some scale references and to see how their topology flowed. So far I've made this :

Screenshot of WIP Vehicle Interior

Screenshot of WIP Vehicle Interior_Wireframe

It's a work in progress, but it didn't take me that long to be honest, which is awesome cause I thought it would.

ALSO

I finished the lighting and did some minor adjustments to my environment. This is what it looks like now:

WIP render of Lighting ( Cycles Renderer, 1 Sample with Denoise)

ANYWAY

That's it for now. Cheers

Happy Holidays to whoever reads this first of all!!

So I took a bit longer to get my environment right, but I got it done* And that's what matters, right?

Anyways - I was aiming to get the full project finished by the end of Jan 2021... Although I'm still determined to get it done by then, I will have to budget some extra time for other stuff as well, which I haven't really taken into consideration. I'll take a few hours to really plan out my schedule for the project by using something like the ASANA website ( Project planner ). 

So far I've just tried getting my environment done without a deadline, cause it's an important piece of the project for me. BUT I do recognize the ugly truth that if you don't make a deadline for an artist, he/she will never finish the project. So instead of just estimating how long it'll take me to finish something, I'll be assigning deadlines for each task that I set out for myself, and properly evaluate my progress on these dates. ( NOTE: I know how to manage a project through real experience... I was just lazy from the start )

I know it looks bad from a professional standpoint to admit my lacking project management skills, but I take pride in the fact that I noticed this by myself and am trying to improve rather than just being blindly ignorant?!? The next post will be a small detailed roadmap of my project progress so that I can hold myself accountable even more by putting my deadlines per se on public record... although no one reads this blog, it's still connected to my online reputation as an artist. 

So!

To get back to this week's update on my progress, I finished the entire environment layout, still need to fix and optimize textures, but that'll be completed during the polishing phase if needed. I took some time to do a little Look Dev in terms of the style that I'll be going for in the end. I actually really do like the cartoon hand-drawn effect that the denoise does when you have a low amount of samples within the Cycles renderer of Blender. 

But a friend sent me a link of a pretty cool artist that uses EbSynth to overlay a hand-drawn effect on top of your rendered frames: 

EbSynth Official Video

I will also try and play around within Blender itself, cause I do know you could create the same effect if you know what you're doing...

And what I have so far is this oil painted idea per frame:

I'll be taking a small break from this just to focus on some other commission work and then I'll jump back into things in the new year! 

Happy Holidays once more and I'll be back with a more planned out and serious roadmap  >-'_'-<

Cheers
  

Week 1- Environment design:

The main focus for the week was to source assets that I could use either up to production or as placeholders while I iterate the environment layout. I never really plan out on a 2D platform first, to be honest, I usually start by creating basic 3D scenes and iterate from there, I find it to be faster for myself. 

 I created a procedural, symmetrical road, placed buildings, and street details along the path that my camera will be moving on:

Screenshot of environment top view

Screenshot of environment with sourced assets

I made another 3D viewport render to see how the environment would look like and it looks pretty good so far:

Detailed environment preview

The Style:

At first, my initial idea for style in any project would be realism, which is what I focused on this week while creating the scene and sourcing for assets. For now, I think I'll stay with this idea and iterate a bit more before making any style changes. The main problem with doing something in a realistic style usually means a lot of processing power is needed, which I don't have unless I optimize the SH%T out of the project, which would take A LOT of time. 

I could always make it more stylized, meaning:

Fewer color data + Fewer reflections + Less geometry = More processing power

Maybe Semi-Low-Poly  ¯\_ಠ_ಠ_/¯

I don't really mind what style I work in, so I'll maybe iterate a second scene with a low poly mindset.

The best thing to do is to finalize my environment with the assets that I have right now and to make the changes afterward.

-

-

-

 I also made this list -

Ways to optimize my scene:

• Lessen geometry of sourced assets.
• Model own assets.
• Break shots into separate scenes.
• Create Texture Atlases for assets to minimize draw calls.
• ?? GO LOW POLY ??

ANY other suggestions are welcome!!!

Anyway - That's what I have to share for now. Keep in touch for more updates next week.

Cheers

The Drive Home - Animation Project

What is this?

I've decided to create this blog to make myself accountable for myself, to prove that I can finish something of my own, to drive through the procrastination that most humans ( especially artists ) deal with. 

For a while now, I had an idea, to create something that resembles an experience everyone goes through, or a situation that most people can relate to. I've always been interested in creating experiences rather than games or animations and I only managed to pop out one real-time experience a year ago. So by utilizing the blog feature of Artstation I will try to complete this project. 

What to expect:

•  I will commit to constant updates through posts, either to discuss the main decisions for the project or for showing something that I have achieved. 

• I will provide weekly updates to show progress ( every weekend ).

• I will only be posting this on Artstation and share it on my Linkedin Social Media ( I don't have an art account for Instagram ).

• I do encourage anyone who has any comments on my work to please post it, I do take critique into consideration and I do appreciate anyone who follows this.

What now?

So the next step would be to explain the project, to show planning or any visuals that I've done so far... 

I will be using Blender for all the 3D work, I'm still deciding if I want to add it into a game engine like Unity or UE4, I usually work in an optimized manner, so I'll most probably try doing a render inside Eevee first and see how my PC handles it. But I would want to render it in cycles to create a propper animation out of this project for sure! 

My Animation Rational:

The Drive Home

I finished my studies in 3D Animation and Game Design in 2018, and got a job in Architectural Rendering in 2019, Doing Archviz was a great learning experience, but it often required me to work late at night, on occasion public holidays, and even weekends ( Sundays included ). This being my first job ever, I made it my main priority, not making time for anything or anyone else. This way of handling it made me go from being in control and enjoying the work I've done to be in survival mode, just doing what I've made the norm. Repeating every day. And I've experienced the "Autopilot" scenario more than a few times. 

The idea is to show a POV of someone driving at night, this person is alone on the road, for the most part, the radio is playing and this person is heading home after a long day of work. The animation is to convey the almost habitual / ritual of what most people experience in their everyday lives. Every day is a repeat and sometimes you don't even remember how you got home... the scary realization that you were consciously asleep during your drive home, not knowing if you skipped a stop sign or drove over a red Light...

This is what I have to show so far: 

• I have a reference board: 

Pinterest board of my References for the main elements of the animation.

•   I've made a Lighting render on the mood of what I'm trying to convey:

• A quick prototype Animatic on what the view will look like throughout the animation ( Raw file ) : 

3D Animatic

Rough roadmap of this project:

•  Writing and sharing about the project ( weekly updates )

•   Environment Design for the overall scene ( 1 week )

• *Modeling of the vehicle interior ( 2 Weeks )

• *Modeling of the buildings ( 1 Week )

• *Modeling of the Street details ( 3 Days )

• *Modeling of the POV character arms ( 3 Days )

•   The rigging of character arms ( 2 Days )

•   Animating [ traditional/mocap ] ( N/A )

*Assets will be sourced either for use, placeholders, or references.

That's all I have to share right now... (•‾⌣‾•)و ̑̑♡