Torran Rodgers, BA (Hons) Computer Animation Arts, UCA Rochester

  Major Environments The last step in creating the film is my environments, the last 3D elements i need to make before I can render the film. Making the environments, I learnt and important lesson fast. That being to match the camera view and nothing else, this would save me time rendering and modelling however to make these environment better i should have used either concept art of story board panels as a guide. This would let me focus on the shot instead of spending time on things out of frame. 

  Major Final Submission Post Torran R Major Art Of by Torran Rodgers on Scribd https://torranrodgerscaa.blogspot.com/2022/05/major-reflective-statement.html

  Major Reflective Statement As this project is probably the longest continuous project i have worked on so far there is a lot to reflect on not that i have completed my time on it. Firstly the nature of the project and my original reluctance to focus on characters or creature is something that was brought on through a understanding of the process and a respect for the steps involved. Now that the project is finished I am confident in my ability to reproduce these creature of any other creatures to a new level of detail and visual fidelity. I am now more confident in my ability to sculpt, rig and skin creature and character where before hand i would have been mainly confident in the modelling and sculpting. Now I'm sure I can do them and to a speed reasonable for a position in industry. This includes a new skill I learnt in Retopo. I learnt a lot through the process on animating the characters mainly on how cycles and curves need to be shown the artistic respect similar to hand ani

  Major Art Of Torran R Major Art Of by Torran Rodgers on Scribd

  Major Creature 9 Reflection Reflection: Working on Creature 9 was the fastest and easiest creature to make. After many attempts of trial an improvement, I have ended with a pipeline for the creation that doesn't run into any problems. Even so this creature was the easiest as I didn't need to add extra details to me normal maps through Zbrush because of the distance and setting of seeing this creature.  After 4 successful creature rigs I am know confident in my ability to create characters and creatures for 3D. This is a subject I was unsure about for a long time and as such approached with apprehension and respect to the difficulty. I Think this was a good thing in the end as my research of detailed approach to the process made me gaining confidence a slow and steady process ending with confidence in my ability.

  Major Final Film

  Major Script A script was written if I was able to finish all the scenes, i would be aiming to bring this script into a reality, even through time did run out on making it, this outline was pivotal in production to show what was being mad and determined shortcuts like the design of my giant creature.

  Major Editing The process of editing the clips together was simple, as the timing wasn't overly important for comedic or dramatic purposes. The editing was a chance to push the found footage aesthetic while organising them in some sort of order, overall the visual and audios where finalised and set up ready to be presented.

  Major Screen Effects To give the impression of camera footage i added camera shake within premier pro, this made it look hand held and less robotic in nature. After this i used a few layer within after effects to create a screen look that wasn't to harsh but gave a effect. As well as adding motion blur and a vignette. These where added into of my footage allowing me to move into onto the other clips with ease.  Before After

  Major Creature 9 Turnaround The final rig for this creature is simple and minimal as I know what I needed the rig for, because of this the process was simple and didn't take very long.

  Major Creature 9 UV and Textures. For this creature I didn't bring the retopo mesh into zbrush to generate a normal map, instead I just the used substance to create the textures with simple patterns. becasue of the fog and distance this will not appear to relevant to the film

  Major Creature 9 Rigging Rigging was simple with few bones I had few controls and I had no need for FK or IK's because of this is was as simple as attaching bones to nurbs circles.

  Major Creature 9 Skinning Skinning the creature took some time but I didn't have to restart the skinning at all because of a reduced amount of bones and simpler shapes.

  Major Creature 9 Modelling / Redesign The redesign was done to make the characters silhouettes look more solid and human, this will create a good effect in the film and add to the characters presence. Overall the process is simple and similar to the last 3 creatures making it easy and creates a result I'm happy with.

  Major Perceived Creature 9 Pipeline Moving into the last creature I know that we will only see the top half because of this character, because of this I will only really need to make have half rig. Because of this the process should be easy and follow the same steps as the last character.

  Major Creature 5 Walk Cycle Creature 5 Reflection:  Animating this creature can get quite complicate, however I am gaining confidence with animating quadrupeds. Overall I feel I have learnt a lot from the previous 2 creatures and because of this I avoided many road bumps along the way, and the process of making this creature went well and was an enjoyable revelation of the refined pipeline.

  Major Creature 5 Texturing I enjoyed the process of texturing this creature adding muscle lines and definition in Zbrush creates a great sense of thin skin that is loaded with distress after passes within substance painter. I am happy with the look, however i might tone down the design later if it needs to fit the animation.

  Major Creature 5 Turn Around Finishing this rig marked a good point within my project, having all 3 main creatures finished really has helped motivate me to push on through the project. after seeing outcome I am pleased with, I look forward to finishing my animation.

  Major Creature 5 Hair Dynamics I used bonus tools to create the spines on the back of the creature each one had to be put in and have its setting adjusted individually, as such it took a long time but the results are great to see. Spine Test One Spine Test Two

  Major Creature 5 UV UV's are simple when the creature has a simple silhouette and can be broken into pieces easily.

  Major Creature 5 Rigging There where a lot of bones and controls needed to give the spines on the creature the dynamics they needed because of this the layers system was essential in keeping the visual clutter down and allowed me to create the rig for the creature over all.

  Major Creature 5 Extra Modelling This Creature has a lot of extra geometry so I felt it important to spend the time and get it right, the teeth and spines add alot to the threat this creature gives of and as such its important to make it feel aggressive and interesting to look at.

  Major Creature 5 Retopo / Modelling Modelling and retopo when slow but the result was guaranteed, because of this I was more conformable spending time  of it because I was in control of the outcome. Over letting zbrush generate strange topology in areas.

  Major  Perceived  Creature 5 pipeline Taking what I've learnt forward into the creation of Creature 5 I will discuss issues with the steps I've struggled with. From this I have gained a better understanding of what went wrong and what went well within the pipe line of the previous creatures pipeline.  1. Zbrush sculpt - Focusing on a form sculpt and not spending time on details as i will have to redo these sculpts later. 2. Import into Maya 3. Maya Retopology - This time by hand the whole time focusing on edge loops around joints of articulation. 4. UV 5. Rigging and Skinning 6. High normal on Zbrush 7. Texturing This is a more refined process after learning a lot of smaller techniques through the creation of the other creatures.

  Major Creature 4 Walk Cycle Creature 4 reflection: Creature 4 caused me a lot of problems due to its design when I came to skinning, the thick thigh's and high joints meant a lot of deformation but now I see the creature animated it was all worth it. its controls and mesh look and work well and I can see the potential to have good animations made this the rig. Many of the efforts I took to speed up the process of making this creature didn't help and instead caused problems, mainly the lower topology out of Zbrush and then the process of skinning the creature overall. I have found the part of MAYA I am least comfortable with and as such i will been to learn to be better doing it.

  Major Creature 3 Walk Cycle and Reflection Creature 3 Reflection: Creature 3 being the first creature I had fully finished in this project, was a coming together of ideas and goals for myself as well as this project. setting myself the goal of a fulling rigged model was one thing, personally I found it a greater challenge to create quadruped creature using Zbrush and its own methods and work flows to mimic the process of creating these character. I became aware of may of the problems as I proceeded through he pipeline i had set out. many of the problems where self inflicted through no knowledge of the effects they would have later on, however because of this I am more knowledgeable. Overall I really like how the creature looks. On the other hand its design doesn't allow for a whole lot of movement around the legs. But I can see how standing the creature taller may reduce some of the problems I had while animating the walk cycle. Quadruped are strange in how they move but I thing

  Major creature 4 Turn Around

  Major Creature 4 Texturing The texturing process is one I enjoy and feel confident in because of this I was able to sit through the process in a few days and generate the outcome. I came back to these textures a few days later to darken the textures over all once I saw then in Arnold. I also increased the level of dirt in the textures as they looked to clean.

  Major Creature 4 Normals When I imported the FXB from MAYA into Zbrush may faces where not present resulting in patchy high poly sculpt. After a few days of problem solving i found these where ngons that caused the software to not load them in. because of this I had to re mesh the model then reskin it to the bones, this is less painful than it sounds as i was able to export my weights for skinning which saved me from reskinning from the start. I Used Zbrush's own normal generator due to discrepancies with he high and low poly models, doing it this way gave me all the pro's of the system I just needed the setting to be right in zbrush before I imported it the substance.

  Major Creature 4 UV UVing is a simple process it just takes time, luckily because I'm using substance painter I don't feel it necessary to make the shells straight and mirrorable.

  Major Creature 4 Skinning I really struggled while skinning this creature, very often weights would move onto bones on the other side of the creature, this caused me to restart on 2 separate occasions. On top of this the thigh weighting was hard as it didn't have enough loops to deform on the body. As such there is some stretching in the area however it sound cause a problem as its out the way and makes some sense where it is.

  Major Creature 4 Rigging Adding the bones and the controls to this creature was a simple process a large amount where assigned to a side or another as such I could mirror them over and it made the process simple. I se up a simple Rig for the legs as they act using IK's with an extra bone separating them from the foot controlled by and ankle control.

  Major Creature 4 retopo / Modelling after exporting from Zbrush to MAYA I found myself deleting edge loops and smoothing the loops against a decimated version of the mesh to further lower the quad count of the mesh, This will make skinning and rigging a smoother process and put more of the effort onto the maps for the creatures details.

  Major Creature 4 Perceived Pipeline After completing the rig for creature 3 I learnt a lot about potential hiccups and snags for the process as such i will list the new process. 1. sculpt in zbrush 2. export low poly with zremesh guides from zbrush 3. fix issues in export in MAYA 4. rig and skin the topology 5. UV 6. Import low poly to zbrush and use sub-div's to generate new hi poly details. 7. Texture using normal generated from high poly sculpt. Know how the generate the normal maps should save some time however i aim to save time with the retopology using Zbrushes zeremesher as a base.

  Major Creature 3 Turn Around With the rig finished a Turn around can see the creature from all angles and I am happy with this rig and the pipeline seemed to work. For the next creature I will asses where things took extra time and try to smooth out the process.

  Major Creature 3 Texturing Once I knew how to generate the Normal maps the rest of the texturing process was simple using group masks projection layers and generators using the normal map as an anchor point to generate micro details before exporting the textures and adding them into Arnold. 

  Major Creature 3 Texturing Normal Maps I found I was unable to reimport the mesh into Zbrush and project the details, because of this i had to redo a high topology sculpt re-adding all the detail to me mesh. I Exported the new high poly mesh as its own FBX file and using substance painters map generator, created UV's that went straight into the substance system.