Summary of your work 

Our project is a TV opening sequence in the style of Daredevil, Westworld, Game of Thrones openings.

The purpose of it is to give a brief introduction to a theoretical TV series based on a man from a historical Japanese village in medieval times. The overall story of the opening will be a precursor to the overarching story of the TV series – explaining how the main character became how he is.

The key features of the project will mostly be using 3D models and lighting to tell a story, with minor animation using dynamic particle systems. Instead of the traditional way of telling a story, this will use objects to symbolize different parts of the story – for example instead of showing a character dying showing a grave with flowers on it.

The role assignments are that Antonio and I will both be doing some modelling and texture work, he will do more in the lighting area and I will do more in the environmental and animation areas. Other students in our group will work with us to help get more design ideas, and potentially some kind of music/sound design student will be able to help us with that area.

What does the work aim to achieve? 

The concept is novel in that it requires the audience to do some work in interpreting what is happening and what the overall story is. Although some effort on our part will be made to make sure that there is a cohesive understandable story, the audience will need to make some judgements on what is happening.

The narrative is driven by mostly the order of objects being shown – using rapidly changing scenes at times to drive home the connections between the objects/scenes – for example showing a tree growing to represent a family growing, but adding a scene that represents a baby (such as an object like a crib, or a baby toy) to help the audience understand that the tree is not just representative of a tree. After establishing this connection different things can be done with the tree such as having it destroyed, which can use the audiences previous understanding to allow them to understand this destruction is also representative of the destruction of the main character’s family.

The developmental process began with thinking of different areas of 3D that we had not yet explored and were interesting in attempting. As we both admired the TV openings of the shows I mentioned in the beginning, trying to go for a work inspired by these would be an interesting challenge, and mostly focus on areas we were not greatly confident in such as in particle systems and narrative through symbolism. Considering options such as what different objects can mean, especially when connected together was interesting and exercises such as saying a word and writing down what instantly comes to mind was useful to help think about what we subconsciously associate objects with.

Practical scope of the project requires a fairly generalised knowledge of different areas of 3D. We will be using modelling, texturing, lighting, rendering, compositing, dynamic systems and animation skills to complete the project.

Target users/audience

The target audience for this project will mostly be adults or more mature audiences as it deals with adult themes unsuitable for children such as violence.

Aspects of the work that are affected by this are that we decided to make the project look realistic – without much in terms of stylised models/animation. Putting in mind that children will not be the audience for this project also allows for more freedom in the limits of what can be shown.

We chose this audience and demographic because the shows that we drew inspiration are also mostly for this demographic. As we are attempting to make media that is similar to these shows we are inspired by whilst still being different enough to make it it’s own thing, we thought that choosing the same audience would make sense, as people who enjoyed that which inspired us will hopefully also enjoying a similar piece of media.

Technical

Techniques used to achieve our goal are mostly 3D CGI software, including Houdini, Maya, SpeedTree, Substance Painter, Arnold, etc.

Plans and timelines

We are aiming to finish our project by the deadline.

Testing aspects of our progress as we progress included making test renders/videos of effect. For example, for the tree animation I made previewing it inside SpeedTree before I export it to Maya, or previewing fluid dynamics inside Houdini before exporting.

I also began working on the gate section of my animation on this week, modelling and texturing a Torii gate. I wasn’t entirely sure how I would use it at this point, but I thought that it would be a good way of symbolically showing the audience what is happening in the story.

I also worked on my SpeedTree tree, building the tree from scratch instead of using presets. This process involves a step process using a node system to develop the tree. It starts with drawing out a trunk using points to begin with a lot of control. Further branches can then be add parented to the level above, getting smaller and smaller as well as more numerous. Eventually, you can also add roots as well as decorations such as leaves.

You can also create materials in this software for the tree bark and the flowers. There is a lot of customisation options available to further change your tree, including parameters to change how the bark looks, how much the tree twists, how much height the tree extrudes, etc. Further changes such as having the tree animate as well as adding forces to the tree such as wind can also be applied to animate your tree. I applied these and exported as an alembic cache.