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Animated Movie Environment Project
The goal of this project was to digitally recreate a scene from an existing CG film and to include a natural phenomenon with a group of peers.
Planning
We settled on this image from Pixar's latest release Soul because of all the character they managed to convey with their assets through the models and textures. We discussed each other's strengths, in terms of modeling or texturing, and divided up asset responsibilities accordingly.
Modeling
My strengths pertain to modeling, so I picked up modeling and UV unwrapping for multiple assets. These included: the barber's chair, trash cans, posters, and outlets. Due to the film's recent release and the protections of streaming services to prevent screenshots, I used a still taken from the trailer a group mate found as my main point of reference.
The chair was constructed from a few cylinders, the seat cushion and base, some spheres for the cushion decorations, and a multitude of cubes for everything else. A second image was found of the chair at a side view, however seemed to be from concept art. I was still able to use this to gauge the chair's depth, but all design had to be observed from the front-facing reference image. The cutout piece behind the footrest was the trickiest, and there were multiple ways it could be done. Since I am more comfortable working with polygons, I decided to start with a cube forming the upper beam, and adding in edge loops and extrusions to form the shape around the cutouts. Once the top portion was completed, I duplicated it to function as the bottom as well, since this is covered in the reference. I combined the two into one object and built off both of them towards the middle until they could be bridged together. I evaluated the piece again, adding edge loops as needed to keep the shape of the cutouts, and smoothed the object. It took an iteration or two, but then the polygon count had skyrocketed so I applied the reduce tool. This helped keep the overall shape I wanted while eliminating any nuancing polygons.
I next worked on the trash cans, starting with cubes that I altered to fit a rough outline of the object. I added edge loops and extruded inward to create the hollow objects. The smaller one has a trash bag inside, where I created a nearly flat cube inside and extruded along the geometry of the trash can. I molded the shape around the lip of the can and down the sides partially. I initially believed that texturing could handle all the winkles in the plastic, however the surfacer in charge asked me to model them in instead, which was achieved by bringing edges together and translating some outward from the can.
The posters were quick work of flattening
cubes in the dimensions of the reference and
off to texturing they went. The outlet and
power strip are shown partially in the
reference, either covered by plugged-in wires or not facing the camera. For these, I created the general shape from the image and further details were modeled off an outlet and power strip near my desk at home.
A group mate had modeled the shelf of razors and wires, however did so in a 2D plane due to the limited reference. I had a different partner working on campus export the surrounding geometry from the scene to a new file and email it to me so I could recreate the wires in a 3D space, as that was easier than editing the existing meshes. I followed the model and reference for the front view of how the wires fell, and then used my knowledge of physics to estimate how they would fall from the side view. This was done with a NURBS curve that I then extruded a NURBS circle along. Converting this to a polygon created odd topology that had to be deleted to create a zig-zagging open cylinder. I had Maya display the object in smooth mode and adjusting the shape before running the mesh through the smooth tool to add all the subdivisions.
I picked up the hair brush models near the end of our three-week project period (four if you include a week of snow and no power) since the models were taking too long, and added them to the scene.
I was in charge of most set dressing, so I matched the camera's perspective to the perspective of the image before rearranging assets to create the barber shop.



Texturing
One of my greatest weaknesses is texturing, so I handled more assets on the modeling side. Due to a crunch in time, I ended up picking up the hair brush and towel models to texture so they could be set dressed for our lighter. Thankfully, these assets are relatively small and simple, so I was able to alter preset materials in Substance Painter in terms of color, pattern, and roughness, to match the objects in the reference image.
FX
As I am concurrently enrolled in a Houdini class, that teaches Digital Asset creation, I felt comfortable taking on creating the natural phenomenon as I am familiar with the software's UI. My group initially set on having running water come from the sink, however we switched to having steam rise from an assumedly full sink. This was a great choice, as I could not get particles to show up in Houdini from their fluid simulations, so I was able to use a preset wispy steam simulation. I imported an FBX of the sink model with its placement in our scene, and constrained the simulation to the size of the sink's basin. I imported the camera from the Maya scene as well and rendered the simulation from its view.
Group Mates Blogs
Jolena: Animated Movie Environment: Soul
Zachary: Barbershop
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