Well, some recent news about the project:
-Modeling of one antagonist character is finished: George. He needs to be textured and then rigged, obviously.
-Modeling of David (main male protagonist) is %95 finished. He will have some small modeling changes and fixes before receiving a skeleton.
-Modeling of Marie (main female protagonist) is %80 finished. Some small changes on her face, then her clothes have to be modeled.
-Creation of HumanIK rigs (no facial rigging) for David and George to see if we could you use them for pre-visualization has been done. Skinning is rough but I am convinced that they can be used in previs before finalizing the rigs.
-I found a free NYC block model and bought a building generator to create a previs scene. It looks more like NYC right now but in the real set besides NYC architecture; Victorian, Baroque architecture will be there in the old city district (plus slums in future, probably on the other side of the river). I thought it could be nice if the city had a river running through the two districts of the city. I got the idea from Paris (a concept art from Ratatouille). It will definitely look more interesting in the background when characters run on top of the buildings. Also, for actual set modeling, since it's the early 1990s, we have to have many elements, billboards, designs belong to that era to emphasize it, otherwise it will look like an ordinary city in 2000s.
One of the important decisions to make was to use Unreal or not. Main advantage was having an easier time in rendering, effects and world building; while disadvantages: exporting short film assets, getting familiar with the game engine may require additional time, training needs, technical problems, etc. At the end, we decided to do it. I figured out that using Unreal could be much helpful in creating pre-visualization of the city too. Maya is not very good at handling so many polygons and produce nice renders real-time. After getting rough timings for shots, main camera moves in Maya, we will start building the city core/downtown in Unreal.
I noticed that there were already many assets in Unreal for free which can be useful as references for different timelines in our story: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/soul-city-soul-cave-assets-released-for-free .
While some cg production elements are beginning to form and characters getting ready to be alive and it's definitely looking exciting; I believe the real struggle, innovation and creativity will arrive through our short's unique story-line and interesting storytelling paths. I'd say get ready for special, rich visual and emotional experiences soon!
Here are two mysterious cg figures in pre-production, one having a mask and the other hoodie on. The 2d designs here for Marie were mostly for exploration and experimental, not turned out to be final. Others are previs city assets captured in Maya. Enjoy!
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