Star Wars Project Episode VI: Return of Your Mom

Final Animatic: 

Team Progress:

    With all assets completely done modeling, the team moved onto Polish for the last 2 weeks of the project. During this final sprint, all textures were fully completed, more decals for graffiti and blaster scorch marks were made for set dressing, lighting received a 3rd and 4th pass, and animation was finalized for real this time.

    However, Motion Builder had Different Plans.

    After many many hours of wailing and gnashing of teeth (and about 20 retries on looping the walk cycle of the troopers only to end in bitter defeat), the motion capture data was finally cleaned, skating was minimized, the blaster was constrained to the hand and the secondary hand was constrained to the blaster.

    In Unreal, the Trooper and the DC-15a Blaster Prop was socketed together in a Blueprint and placed in the level. And then put through another round of additive animation.

    Finally, the Sequence was reviewed over and over until my eyes bled and I still somehow missed that the walker stopped in frame and froze for the last half of the animatic. The walker ultimately got a final (Final polish v02 for real this one) pass and everything rendered out nice and neat (after...weeks of not rendering out nice OR neat. At all).

    The animatic ultimately ended up being 17 seconds of cinematic cutscene, 1 march cycle offset on 7 different troopers, an Idle Trooper animation, and the Main Trooper Highlight animation, completed in motion builder, plus the additional animation of the Walker, all done natively in Unreal with a custom made control rig.

Animation Highlights from this Project

Huge Shoutout again to my amazing teammates: 

Jessica Blask ; 3D Character Artist- AT ST Walker

Eric Wiley ; 3D Character Artist - Tank Trooper

Justin Diaz ; 3D Environment Artist

Haley Kroppman ; 3D Prop Artist - DC-15a Rifle Blaster

Kirsten Futch ; 3D Hard Surface Prop Artist

and a huge shoutout to my SFX Designer, Yegues Shettini

Star Wars Project Episode V: The Cohort Strikes Back

 Team Progress:

    Work work work- we turned up the juice these two weeks to power through our production phase and get all our assets as finalized as we could.

    From a production standpoint, we were able to hit most of our goals during this fifth sprint, which leaves the team able to use our last two weeks of work to polish our assets to the highest quality we can! We successfully completed the following:

• All models finalized
• (Almost) All textures finalized
• Dirt/Rubble Effects and set dressing
• Animation pass 2/2
• Lighting pass 2/3

    We also had a few happy surprises happen during the sprint regarding the characters:

    A collaborative effort between the animation department and the character modeling department (read: me and Eric) led to a Storm Trooper Skeletal Mesh Update. Together, we worked to split the topology of the Trooper between the flexible leather uniform and the hard plastic-like armor, and with the additional polish time, Eric updated the Trooper's topology to be more skinning and animation friendly. This allowed for significant polish to the trooper rig, including the addition of secondary animation on the shoulder pads and belt pouches to reduce clipping and breathe more life into the trooper's motion capture performance.

    Additionally, Jedha now has a new robot friend to keep our Gonk Droid company- our Prop Artist Kirsten was able to create a new BB-8 model along with finishing all of her planned set dressing props.

    Our environment is coming together nicely with a beautiful update to the rubble set dressing and procedural sand/stone textures along the buildings and a second pass at scene lighting.

    And finally, animation is being polished to perform as naturally as possible. Another cool surprise the additional time allowed for was a re-animation of our second camera.

    We went back to the motion capture studio and connected our Star Wars scene to our Vicon Shogun Live set up on stage and used Live Linking to record live animation data for our camera directly into our sequence, reacting as if our point-of-view character was ducking away from the searching stormtrooper.

Animatic Version 5: Unreal Sequence

Still to Come:

• Placing the blasters in the trooper's hands correctly
• Final Lighting Pass, including volumetric fog
• Final Sound, courtesy of Yegues Schettini

Stay tuned for Episode VI...

Star Wars Project Episode IV: A New Heart Attack

 Team Progress:

    Significant work was made to push all the assets into game ready mid or high poly assets, with everything in the scene currently textured with at least a proxy version of a texture pass.

    The characters, the ATST walker and the Stormtrooper, had their rigs updated and re-skinned to account for their new geometry pass- in the walker's case, their final geometry is officially in engine.

    Animation wise, the team reviewed the progress and decided it would be beneficial to use motion capture data to animate the Stormtroopers- this keeps the movement of the troopers realistic AND allows us to possibly extend our animatic time past the original goal of 10 seconds of animation.

    Currently, the first pass of a walk cycle is exhibited on the group of four troopers, with a second pass planned for Sprint 5 that includes variations in timing and walk cycles, and a highlighted animation for when the individual trooper breaks off to investigate the hidden camera.

Animatic Version 4.0: Value and Color Pass

Trooper Walk Cycle in Engine

Setting Updates: Value and Color Texture Pass

Here is the moment we knew we had to re-visit the skinning on the trooper oops hehe

The Walker has grown Far Too Powerful She now works in both maya and Unreal

Star Wars Project: Episode III: Revenge of the Diff (Against Have Revision) (We Love Perforce)

 Can also be titled:

Revenge of the (Trim) Sheets, Revenge of the Game Res, Revenge of the Rigs, Revenge of the Skin , Revenge of the Nick

Based on whatever gave you the most trouble on this sprint

Team Progress:

    The team worked together to migrate all the assets we've made to a new project in UE 5.4.2 instead of 5.3- we plan on taking advantage of the new animation, nanite geometry, and volumetric fog features 5.4 has to offer. Everything migrated smoothly and we maintained our project velocity through the change.

    While the 3D artists made progress completing the high res and game ready versions of their respective assets, the animation department (me) began rigging and skinning the actors in order to prep them for animation in Unreal.

   ( While skinning on the walker went relatively smoothly in Maya, the animation department (me) forgot to consider that in order to animate in UE, the skeletal mesh needs a Control Rig- which does not import over from Maya. Neither do constraints. Or IK handles. Or set driven keys. Or anything I set up in the last sprint's rig Range of Motion. )

    The Up-res walker was brought to UE to continue the rigging process, where I spent the next week and a half researching a way to combine an IK and FK set up in a Control Rig to make it useable for animation straight into unreal. This was very difficult and I had to do a lot of research (read- find a bunch of youtube tutorials) to make it happen.

First working demo of control rig

    

Rig Hierarchy in Unreal

Animatic Update: Version 03

    There are two different IK legs set up in the control rig that I tested in version 03 of the sequence: currently, the right leg is working much better than the left leg, but further testing is necessary (yay). 

Also featuring:

Updated first pass on lighting, including an updated HDRI/skybox, volumetric fog and a dynamic smokey fog material in the god rays render

First Pass of Lighting in Scene

Camera updates to focal length to keep the focus of the scene on the intended actor: camera no longer loses focus on the trooper that moves closer to the camera

SFX placeholder: right now it's ripped straight from Rogue One, but we intend to have a pass of sound fx once animation is more finalized

Animation test on the first 90 frames of the walker

Star Wars Project Episode II: Attack of the Cameras

 As the pre-production cycle came to an end, the biggest hurdle our team faced turned out to be my own hubris...

Team Progress:

    During the second sprint, the team worked together to lock in our proportions for our planned characters, create a proxy rig and establish a working Range of Motion for any moving assets, finalize the proxy models for our environment and planned props, and begin taking our hero assets into ZBrush for their high res pass.

    As a stretch goal, we also decided to finalize camera positions and movement by the end of June 5th- final camera animation was not originally due until Sprint 4, but the team decided that with established camera angles and animation at the end of Sprint 2 Pre-production, the modeling team can focus extra attention on the buildings and props that appear up close in camera, giving the necessary priority to models that need that additional detailing. We're hoping this camera lock will allow production to flow smoother as we wrap up pre-visualization.

  

Test Animation: Range of Motion for Trooper and Walker

    It's a good thing we decided to work on the cameras when we did, because our layout artist (me) ran into several unique issues regarding the import and export of cameras between Maya and Unreal 5.3.

    Exporting cameras from Unreal to Maya or another Autodesk software is a relatively smooth process; getting cameras to look the same from Maya TO Unreal, however, is a horrifically painful ordeal that took up the majority of my week to research into and fix. 

    It turns out that in order to export cameras from Maya to Unreal, there are several preparatory steps to take in order to have Unreal recognize the fbx as a camera to import. Additionally, this doesn't factor in settings like aspect ratio or depth of field. I did end up manually re-creating the cameras to the best of my ability natively in Unreal, but I found a good couple of resources online that detail how to import cameras from Maya:

  

Youtube Camera FBX to Sequencer resources

    With the cameras figured out and locked, despite their best efforts, we were able to complete the following goals:

• Finish Camera Pre-Visualization
• Finish Character, Prop, and Environment Proxy Models
• Finish Asset List Documentation with all planned final models
• Begin Character Up-resolution and rigging

Sprint 2: Maya Layout vs. Unreal Layout

Stay Tuned for Episode III...

Star Wars Project Episode I: The Fiean Menace

 The Goal: 

Create a 5-10 second in-game cinematic sequence in Unreal Engine 5.3 of a Walker from Star Wars marching down an alley in the outer rim.

Necessary Components for the Team:

Hard Surface Robotic Character Artist (Jessica Blask): To create a high poly and game ready, texutred model of an AT ST Walker (and provide additional set dressing support not covered by environment artist)

Environment Artist with a Hard Surface Preference (Justin Diaz): creates environment for the sequence; establishes and maintains scene scale and lighting

Prop Focused Hard Surface Artists: (Kirsten Futch and Haley Kroppman): create additional environmental loose props to populate set and establish scale

Hard Surface Focused Character Artist: (Eric Wiley): creates human stormtrooper character models; large focus on their uniform armor

Unreal 5.3 Animator (Paige Thorsen): Responsible for camera sequencer creation, animation of AT ST Walker, animation of marching troopers, all done in Unreal Engine

I'm also on point for most of Production Management, including the plan moving forward for a bi-weekly set of 6 Sprints

Why Star Wars:

    Several of our team's target studios make high value Star Wars games, for example: BioWare, Respawn, DICE, and EA. As hopeful entry level industry workers, we're seeking to analyze how a studio tackles a 3D interpretation of a large IP.

Episode 1: Schedule and References:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12V1pU1FQZHtQVUSFJ7CoHtqxB9tiQHxMiPlqFY-p890/edit#gid=0

    To plan the project and the necessary teammates required plus their spheres of influence, a Gantt Chart was created alongside the initial project pitch, which was then revised to accommodate portfolio worthy assignments for each team member along with their necessary spheres of influence. If you like looking at nice colorful spread sheets, take a look at the link above.

From there, the team moved into the Concept and Reference research:

The team collectively did research into the LucasFilm concepting team's process and how they achieve the Star Wars "Look" and how we can achieve similar styles.

From the "Art of Rogue One, Mandalorian, and the Force Awakens" books, the team selected an environment based on the marketplace/cantina in Jedha, a dusty outer rim planet.

From concept art, movie stills, and comic books, items were selected to act as inspiration for prop research and reference around the scene.

Loose Prop assets are being tracked in an Asset List: what doesn't get completed by the available prop artists will be sourced from asset packs to fill the scene and make it feel lived in, but the schedule allows for about 1-2 hero assets per prop artist and 5-6 background assets per prop artist, for a maximum total of 18 original props.

Animation references were pulled from scenes of troopers marching in Andor, Rogue One, and Disney Hollywood Studios

**Student actors were motion captured with walking cycles during a mo-cap workshop, video not shown here to protect actor privacy until they give consent to share video**

During the environmental research, the animator went through a rough proxy storyboard pass of a layout and sequence of action for our actors to go through:

2 storyboard layouts from the 2D Proxy Sequence

5 second animatic with one camera movement

10 second animatic with 2 camera shots

10 second animatic, slightly edited with suggestions from team and animation mentors

The animatic was then timed out in a test 3D proxy layout scene in Unreal

All proxy assets on display in engine

All proxy assets on display in engine, with preliminary environment and set dressing

Stay tuned for Episode II: Attack of the Cameras

Lighting Workshop 4: Revision

 Before and After Feedback from Lighting Artist Peers and Teachers:

Before

After

What changed: an additional light was added to provide another area of interest for the viewer to focus on and guide their eye to the billboard. The materials of the set were adjusted to be two-sided and the outside directional light streams from the window only, rather than the light seeping in from the transparent plane above.

Before

After

What changed: an additional light was added to highlight the silhouette of the lamp and separate it from the background. The materials of the set were adjusted to be two-sided and the outside directional light streams from the window only, rather than the light seeping in from the transparent plane above. The shot was captured from a CineCamera Actor and depth of field was adjusted to highlight the objects on the top of the desk and separate the objects from the background further.