Nira's VFX Blog
A journey through my master

Tag: Team Meeting

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Collaborative

Week 6: Third Team Meeting – Environment & Ghosts Basic Models & Unity Compatibility

This week, I had one meeting with the group students another with the lecturers and collaboration partners. We reviewed the first models from ghosts and environment as well as optimisation for importing into Unity.

I started to model the ghost of the mother this week so the 3D animation girls could carry on with the rigging and animation of the characters as soon as possible. To start off, I took a reference female model from Maya’s ‘Content Browser’. Then I researched about possible looks that were more suitable for an apocalyptic ambience. I started to think about what a person would wear the day that they are supposed to be euthanised, and I reached to conclusion that a person that is going to kill their child to then kill themselves, would not care much about appearance, so basic jeans and jacket would be the most logical option.

Mother reference (Nam, 2014)
Mother reference (Charro)

Then using symmetry and the soft brush, I started to shape the features of this character since the preset model from Maya is pretty standard. I also duplicated the body, dissected it in sections, and adjusted the scale so I had the basic shapes for the model’s clothes. Then with a smaller soft brush, I also added some creases to the clothes so they would look more realistic.

Clothes modelling

Later on, I researched about how to model hair as I have never model this. I found a hair tutorial with XGen in Maya:

Maya XGen tutorial to create realistic hair (Karimi, 2021)

This tutorial uses XGen tool in Maya to generate ‘guides’ that would lead the direction of each strand of hair. After all the guides have been placed the tool creates a duplicate of this in the form of hair strands. We could add more or less density, width, and even texture. Then we also have to set up painted maps so the tool recognises the direction that the hair needs to follow. Lastly, with the help of modifiers we can refine the final look with tools like ‘clamp’ (to fix hair to place), ‘frequency’ (to add ‘noise’ and randomness). I followed most of the tricks and techniques from this tutorial and came up with the following hair model:

Hair UV map and guides placement
Tidy up of guides to set hair style
Hair generation, adjusting ‘density’
Reduction of number of guides and replacement
Addition of ‘modifiers’ such as ‘clumping’ to determine orientation of hair
First attempt of xGen hair – Front view
First attempt of xGen hair – 3/4 view
First model – Full body

I was so proud of this hair but it needed some tidying up as it looked a bit messy. Also, as this was only a practice I also started to think about what kind of hair style this character could have. I think straight hair would be the easiest as I also have limited time and to shape the hair takes me quite some time.

Main weekly meeting

In this meeting, the VR team showed us their floor plan of the building’s interior we are going recreate. They also set some possible routes and interactions the main character could follow.

From VFX side, I presented my ghost model of the mother. They liked it, however they mentioned that it could be nice to add eyes and face features. Since this was going to be distorted with particles effect in Unity I considered unnecessary, however, they said that it could help to have something that gives a bit of characteristic features to the ghost. I came up then with the idea of a face mask, taking in consideration that the people cannot really breathe properly because of air pollution, so they could wear like a face bandana tied to the back of the head. Also, VR girls mentioned that the hair could give some issues when importing into Unity since it is not made with geometry so the programme will just ignore it.

Regarding the environment, a draft model of the map was presented by Martyna and Jess. It also looked very good but we needed to discuss dimensions as it needed to be tested into Unity to see the scale of the ceilings, walls and how it would look like from the viewer’s perspective. Overall, it seemed to need higher ceilings, the waiting area needed to be rounded with some exterior light coming through the ceiling (windows, or broken parts), and the shape of the door frames should be in a transitional form and not flat (see sketch below). We could also see some parts of London from the broken parts of the walls so the audience can be situated.

Door frame sketch
Main building – Outside view
Entrance main building
Waiting area main building
Corridor – Interior view

Model hair optimisation, face mask, and eyes

Following the review received in the last meeting, I decided to optimise the hair top convert it into mesh so Unity would be able to read it. But before to do so, I wanted to adjust the hair style of the model first to a low pony tail and also model a hair band.

Pony tail made with xGen
Hair band model

I optimised the hair following a tutorial I found in YouTube, which explained how to convert an xGen curve into mesh:

Hair optimisation tutorial (My Oh Maya, 2016)

First, I needed to select the hair guides created with xGen, and then in the xGen tool ’utilities’ tab, select ’guides to curves’ and ’create curves ’ to be able to create physical curves that can be used to create a mesh. Then in ’create’ we select ’sweep mesh (dialogue box)’ and we click on ’one node for each curve’, so each curve can have a mesh that can be modified individually. Then we adjust the mesh to the shape we want. In my case, I used a flat card shape to then add the texture with ’standard surface’ and link the hair texture with an alpha and a normal map. The alpha will be linked to opacity so the black parts of the texture card do not show in the render, the normal will be linked to the bump map to give texture, and the diffuse is linked to the base colour.

Hair guides converted into mesh planes – Front view
Hair guides converted into mesh planes – Back view
Hair guides converted into mesh planes – Side view
Hair optimised with texture added

In addition, taking a plane divided in half and forming a triangle shape with this, I also started to fold it on top of the character’s face to form the face mask. I also added some creases and with a deformed and scaled down torus I created the back nod of the bandana.

Bandana mesh and texture

For the eyes, I simply took a sphere and duplicated it, and then adjusted the UV map so it fits the sphere. I added a texture of eyes that I had saved from one of my previous projects from term 1 (lip synch face model). Lastly, I added the rest of the textures (clothes and skin).

Model with eyes and eyebrows
Final model of the mother

References


Charro, J. Fade to White Characters (online). Available at: https://charro.artstation.com/projects/PY5e3 [Accessed 18 February]

Karimi, H. (2021). Creating Realistic Hair with Maya XGen (online). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkpJ4LGJrf8 [Accessed 18 February 2023]

My Oh Maya (2016). XGen for Game Character Hair (Part 1) (online). Available at: https://youtu.be/1Fs6rle_IbE [Accessed 18 February 2023]

Nam, H (2014). Marlene : Last of Us by Hyoung Nam (online). Available at: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/gw9x [Accessed 18 February 2023]

Categories
Collaborative

Week 5: Second Team Meeting – ‘The Departure Lounge’ sequence

In the second meeting of this project, we already started to discuss how the characters, objects, animals, environment, lighting, colour, and interactivity would look like.

Characters

We started the meeting discussing how the ghosts characters would look like. These characters should be faceless figures or they can even have some eyes, mouth, and nose but showing very vaguely.

These models will need to be modelled by 3D modellers to then be rigged and animated by 3D animators, therefore, we will need a clear break down of both processes so the models are created and exported correctly. Also, VR will need to let us know how do they include elements in Unity, and what format do they need for compatibility. Later on, we clarified that they will prefer us to export in FBX but we could also export on OBJ. Also we will need to use simple materials such as colours, reflections, etc, but never use shaders as these are completely ignored by Unity when imported into the programme.

  • Male ghost. This should be the father that is trying to stop the mother to euthanise their child, so he should look threatening initially, but he should also transmit his love and desired to keep his child.
  • Mother ghost. She has chosen to euthanise her child to then kill herself, so she should look like conflicted and desperate.
  • Child ghost. Running from mother? Is he aware of the situation?
  • Main character (POV). One tourist is looking for evidence of life 300 years after the global disaster, (with limited resources as most of technology is lost).
Characters moodboard in Miro

Artefacts

The main character could be receiving hints of what happened in that place with the objects they are finding and the possible interactions they can have with these:

  • Posters/propaganda. Like warning signs, posters (showing health, political, or global warming propaganda), holograms (with instructions or a message)
  • Oxygen bottles. Rusty and empty.
  • Space like suits. To protect from gas/fog and radiation? (thin atmosphere due to global warming lets harmful sun radiation in so can cause skin cancer or really bad sun burns).
  • Futuristic tablet devices. Showing holograms with departure lounge scape procedures, or euthanasia options?
  • Sunk or floating objects. Like books, helmets, bags, clothes, children toys (everyday objects so viewer empathises with story – emotional response).
  • Photographs. Showing ghosts from past memories (happy memories)?
  • CCTV footage. Would this show too much of the story? Would it be too obvious?

Animals/Plants/insects

These remains of nature could show both the extinction of live on Earth and at the same time the new rise of life in the planet with only survivors (it would give hope).

  • Dead fish in water. This could be part of past memory. In the present it would look decomposed.
  • Moss. This could help to minimise number of objects angles such as bricks, broken walls, or other environmental assets.
  • Deer. Showing at the end cell to transmit the new rise of life in the planet (hope).
  • Bugs. Such as cockroaches, which are resilient to extreme conditions.

Environment

The environment would look like an airport terminal like an open space, tall ceilings, and big windows, but this area would be the waiting room for people that has consent to be euthanised. It would also be a half collapsed building with the following features:

  • Broken walls, ceilings, and windows. covered with moss and dirt.
  • Flood. Partly flooded floor with animated ripples and little waves. Can add the floating objects and decomposed fish here.
  • Water drops from ceiling. From condensation as it would be a really warm environment.
  • Fog. As CO2 levels are extreme, this dense fog covers the whole scene giving a monochrome colour feeling.
  • Broken bricks. From collapsed walls and ceilings.
  • Rusty pipelines. Coming out of walls or floor.
  • Door covered on dried blood (stains). It can be one of the cells’ door?
  • Euthanising beds. Inside of cells.
  • Mother and child’s skeletons. In final room, skeletons of mother hugging child.
Environment moodboard in Miro

Lighting/Colour palette

  • Natural light. Coming through broken walls, ceilings, and windows.
  • Flickering lights. Would they be working yet after 300 years?
  • Hologram light.
  • Monochrome palette. With desaturated colours, like a sepia photograph.

Interactions

  • Site specific. So it will trigger glitch memory when reaching certain area.
  • Grabbing objects. Memory will be triggered.

Testing

This week I have also been testing some hologram effects in Maya following this tutorial in YouTube:

Hologram tutorial using MASH tool in Maya (CG Artist Academy, 2020)

The final result I got was this:

Hologram effect test in Maya

Despite the result was good, after speaking with VR, they confirmed to me that these effects cannot be transferred from Maya to Unity, so it would be better to create this effect in Unity directly.

Miro board

We also organised in Miro the tasks to be done, the role of each member of the group, the assets we needed, the timeline with targets of each week, and links to important shared spaces from the group (like Trello, Google Slides, and OneDrive).

Miro board

References


CG Artist Academy (2020). Maya MASH Holographic HUD Procedural Tutorial (online). Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8He2bcS6ao [Accessed 11 February 2023]

Categories
Collaborative

Week 4: First Team Meeting – ‘Before the Fall’ VR Experience Project

In this week, we finally had our first team meeting to received a detailed brief of the project and to agree which sequence are we going to focus on.

We all met through Teams to start discussing this project.

Teams meeting with lecturers and external studio partner

The project is based in a post global warming VR experience where the user walks through a dystopian London environment.

The viewer starts in a landing craft from where they get out with a protective suit, as the environment is surrounded by a dense mist (it could be due to the increase of CO2 caused by an excess of noxious gases produced by humans over the years). In this part we are thinking to add a projection of what happened reflected in the visor of the viewer’s helmet.

The viewer can interact with objects found in their way that would trigger some flashes of past memories from the same place. It should show vague suggestions of what happened but never give the full information.

It could also be shown the story of a mother that has decided to euthanise her child to then kill herself since they could not get into the spaceship that is taking the most fortunate humans to leave the already destroyed planet Earth. Also, it can be shown a father that is trying to stop the mother to kill the child as he does not agree with this measure. These stories can be triggered when the viewer suddenly finds the ghosts of these persons crossing their way. These flashes of ghostly images should be more like blurry and unfocused images (ghosts from the past) mixed with sounds and effects to add to the experience. The viewer could hear the voice of the ghosts from the moment they get out of the craft until they find their dead bodies inside a building (the voices could guide the viewer through the environment).

The aesthetic of the scenery would be like the Eastern European buildings that are collapsed or unfinished, with some brutalist (naked concrete) look.

The lecturers made a Miro board so we can keep every update there and have a place where we can all share our thoughts and progress.

Moodboard added in Miro by the lecturers

Some aesthetic materials the professors recommended were Alien, were they have some static interference that can be taken as example for the glitches that happen in between memories.

(add example images)

Also Blade Runner 2049 arid and apocalyptic scenography mixed with Solaris & Stalker decade Soviet Union mood can be a notion of how the environment could look like.

Blade Runner 2049 post-apocalyptic environment (Framestore, 2023)
Solaris & Stalker Soviet Union landscape (Godwin, 2017)

An aesthetic that I also found interesting and inspiring is the one found in Alien Covenant. I found the following video showing the CGI and VFX breakdowns of the different sequences created by MPC.

Inspiration from Alien Covenant aesthetic and VFX made by MPC (TheCGBros, 2017)

We also decided to focus only in one section of the story as time wise it is impossible to get the whole experience done. This scene we are going to focus on will be like a beta version of the experience and not a finished piece. After another meeting separately with the MA members only, we decided that the part of the story we want to focus on would be the end scene as it would take place inside a building so it would be easier to model than the whole outside London scenery. Also, we found interesting the interaction of the user with objects found around in the building until they discover the dead bodies in the final room.

References

Framestore (2023). Blade Runner 2049: Art Department (online). Available at: https://www.framestore.com/work/blade-runner-2049-art-department?language=en [Accessed 4 February 2023]

Godwin, K. G. (2017). Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979): Criterion Blu-ray review (online). Available at: https://www.cageyfilms.com/2017/07/andrei-tarkovskys-stalker-1979-criterion-blu-ray-review/ [Accessed 4 February 2023]

TheCGBros (2017). CGI & VFX Breakdowns: “Alien Covenant” – by MPC (Online). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yv5FyBK_u5Q. [Accessed 4 February 2023]