A Light From The Dark

This semester was all about getting involved in team based projects and as became quickly apparent in the studio the third years had all started with their final film projects. Eager to get involved i put myself up for a few projects with the intention maybe to build some models, work on some animation, in fact, i was pretty happy to do anything that encapsulated the 3d pipeline. I quickly received a message asking if i'd like to create some models for a film called a light from the dark which was going to be created in 3d.

On meeting with the project leader Alex, we discussed my role within the team and he started me off by relaying some reference pictures:

So I started to block out the environment in maya. I didn't want to create unnecessary detail so I ensured that I put the detail only where the camera would be shooting. As the door into the Warehouse would be a focal point of the video I felt that it was probably a good idea to start there. 

I blocked out the shapes of the door and surrounding area and thought about the necessary animation of the door denting as I knew that the geometry would need to be bent after the monster hits into it. After modelling the door area I continued to texture it. I used a combination of procedural textures within maya and a bit of help from Photoshop to create the door texture which I was told should be rusty and weathered.

I continued to model and texture the surrounding areas. The cladding on the wall around the door area, some filler objects including traffic cones and pallets, the light above the door and so on.

I continued to model and texture and light and build the scene as closely to the guidance i was given. Every week I turned in my progress to Alex and received feedback, sometimes critical and helpful and other times not. As i continued forward and the pressures started to build for everyone involved within the project I decided to use a lot of my own intuition and focused on just getting all of the content in there and to a stage that i was happy with but could revise if necessary.

I started to bulk out the corridor ensuring that i tapered the end where the door was to create the sense of entrapment.

I continued onto the warehouse now where the shelving would consume the majority of the space. I was told that on the shelves would be lots of boxes, crates, junk, bottles, nuts and bolts and so on. I obtained a reference image to use for a guide to building the shelves. I noticed that the holes that allowed the shelves to connect within the frame would be best achieved using transparency maps. This was important in the pursuit of keeping the poly count down, I knew that with the textures the scene was growing quite large and I'd been told to be careful of this. 

I plugged a box ramp into the transparency slot of a blinn shader as well as the eccentricity slot to ensure that light was not diffusing seemingly off of thin air.

As well as, modelling, texturing, lighting, Alex suggested that perhaps I do some environment animating. I agreed as I had the best knowledge of the capabilities of the models and my first task was to animate the bend in the door as the monster hit into it. I used blend shapes as I thought this would be the easiest way to animated with the most amount of control. I created a duplicate door from the main model and deformed it in the areas that was necessary to portray the damage. I created a blend-shape deformer and key-framed the slider between 0 being undamaged and 1 being completely damaged.

The final film is as follows: