Landing on Planet

 

                                                                      Landing on Planet

Hello and welcome to what became the most challenging piece of Blender work I have created so far.  

This was a commission and that is what stretched me as I could not give up when things got challenging. If I had known how big this project would get I would have probably passed.  The reward was all the new stuff I learned along the way.  I wanted to do it as I knew it would push me out of all the lowpoly work I have done and towards realisim.  The other big draw was   ... its space. 

It started off with a storyboard.

Then a landscape which I ended up modeling as I needed some specific features.  It had to be not identifyable as Moon or Mars. 

Planet Landscape

For the planet scene I used the resource made available by NASA  https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4720.  Changed up the colour a little. 

Moon Shot

Next were the vehicles of which there ended up being 3.  

The lander had to have a few moving parts and I would have done a proper rig on it in hindsight but it ended up being  wheels parented and a driver on each wheel.  

Lander rigging

The next vehicle was the cleanup vehicle.  This had to have a few specific features so I made it to order.  On this one I did rig the wheels as the vehicle had to move in circles.  I used rigacar to rig all 6 wheels. http://digicreatures.net/articles/rigacar.html .  This is a fantastic addon with great instructions.  I had not used it before but it was great and easy to animate using a follow path modifier.   The big disappointment on this vehicle was the laser.  I wanted to use a different approach to render but rendering time was limited so I went with a basic solution.  

Clean up Vehicle

The final vehicle was the spaceship which was deliberately non descript.  It was a simple design.  The dificulty on it was adding  the smoke and heat.  This all ended up being parented.

Space ship landing

Thats a summary of the major assets.  

I will go through some of the more complex effects in the next installment.  If there is something in particular you would like to know more about drop a note on Twitter. I am planning on creating some YouTube videos to go in more depth on those.   

99 Ice-cream a Journey

 

99 Ice-cream a Journey

https://vimeo.com/581118123

As i was working on some client work I had to come up with some effects.  Its always better to stick with tried and true methods when doing client work but I have found doing 3D work means you almost always end up overcoming challenges (problem solving) on the job.  The down side is that there is limited time to explore. That was where this project evolved from.  I took some elements and pushed them and created this short.  

It was all created in Blender and used the ocean modifier and the explode modifier. I added the heat shimmer as a post effect in Premier Pro.  

I have realised to be efficient doing these is to choose what needs to be done in 3D and what can be added in post.

As rendering has serious time and environment cost I have thought more about it and want to explore utilising Unreal Engine to capture these kinds of animations.  

Unreal are holding a course over the next few weeks as an introduction to its uses in animation and I am enrolled to see what is possible. 

After the first week I can see the possibilities but there is a steep learning curve.  

Stay tuned. ...

Showreel

 

showreel  

Think this is the longest break in posting since I started this blog. 

I have been busy with NDA work so no personal work to share.  I have a bit of a break now so I took some time to put together a showreel.  I did not have much animation prior to this but more of the  work I have been taking on is motion based.   There is an increasing demand for it with Instagram and Tik Tok been the most dominant sharing platforms and peoples expectations for more production.  

Despite all that my freelance took a big hit last year and though things have picked up this year it is still a struggle.  

I am at a decision point as to what to do next.  I hope to produce more personal work for the next few weeks and figure out the future - or the little bit I can control.  

Municipal Services

 

City vista

This was a big project and went through a number of iterations before landing on the final look.  

The brief was from an Engineering Company Vista Engineering.  They wanted to include notable buildings in Reykjavik alongside the services they provide for marketing purposes. 

To try include so much in the single scene they wanted was the challenge.  The starting point was way zoomed out.

Then we moved to a grid like structure - ignoring actual geography. 

The early drafts were going to include some sea.  

It was taking up valuble space and needlessly constricting where buildings were sited - so it is ditched.

After that the how to depict each service was worked out.  This version had the pipework above the ground plane. 

In this draft I was playing around with how to illustrate the information on signs and displays

Then it was into fine tuning details and timing. 

And finally locking in look and render settings.

Making a Production

 

I have been working on a lot of 3D projects recently but this is one I made for myself.  Making a model and running a simulation in Blender is sometimes challenging but creating a scene with multiple animations and effects requires that I have to plan it all out. 

If its multiple shots its easier as you can set up seperate scenes and buid to purpose but if all has to live in one shot it is a bigger challenge.  So I deliberately set up a large scene with alot going on to get a better workflow.  I ended up building all the elements and placing them in the final scene.  All the animations were decided then each element was duplicated in a seperate file and animated.  When the animations and effects were finalised they were baked or keyframed and  all moved back into the final scene.   Video is here.  

A Lobster

 

I had this painting knocking around for quite a while.  It was almost complete and other things got prioritised and it got left behind.  I needed a short break from the computer this week so worked on it a little more.  If I remember it was just going to be watercolour but I added some ink.  

This kind pattern of work symbolizes how things have gone this past year.  Balancing working on projects to get more profficient versus making a living .  Some stuff will enevitably get left behind as priorities shift. Some will get picked up again as a sort of normal arises out of the eventual control of pandemic.  Some will be left behind. 

For now I am budgeting on this year not being normal and not planning too far ahead.  Controlling what I can and trying to keep moving forward.  

Tree with friends

 

Tree with friends

A recent commission from before Christmas.  This was painted in watercolour.  I had not painted in watercolour for a while and I mapped everything in Photoshop and got client approval before I painted it. There were a few smaller watercolour practice runs.   I liked the Photoshop take alot.  This was painted on very heavy paper Waterford 300 lb cold press.  I think the better you are in this medium the easier it is to paint on lighter paper.  

Photoshop preliminary sketch