Conclusion and Final Rendered Piece

Having carried all all of the tasks that were assigned to me this term I feel that we once again achieved our goals and in some instances surpassed our previous expectations. In terms of the technical role that I played in the 3D elements of the spitfire project, I created the plane rig and the pilot rig, both of which fulfilled their needs.  In particular, the pilot rig was robust and realistic enough to create necessary kinematics of a human. I even created a 30 second test animation to test the digital asset in which I tested various basic ideas that the rig may need to endure.

On the other hand, when involved with the "Mission Control" project that was running side by side, I had to create a dynamic rig that had features similar to those that one may find in a cartoon character. This was one of the most difficult rigs that I made this year since I added stretchy limbs functionality and also had to deal with the added complication of rigging a skirt.

However some of the best breakthroughs that we made were as a group. We managed to increase the productivity of our pipeline greatly simply by introducing common sense problems, highlighting the bottle necks and then solving them. We introduced the idea of referencing- a great way for every person to begin working with the assets that they had hence giving departments such as Modelers and Riggers etc. a freedom to work with files that were yet to be finished.

After accomplishing this we created a fantastic method of updating files so that everyone could have access to the most recent files without anyone losing the work that they had done. We used a file sharing application called dropbox where all members had their own folders. This way, when ever there was an update in the model or the rig for animation, we all could immediately access the necessary files.

In conclusion, great deal has been learned that has developed our maturity in the production of CG films. I feel that I am on the right track to being a professional and that this unit along with fulfilling the needs of a client. This unit has brought the reality of the industry to the student and will be able to take a great deal away from this. Again all of this was done with some great team work that all came together at the right time, another skill that is crucial in the industry.

An animation test

Having completed the rigging for the Pilot I was highly motivated to create a short animation to test the rig. I initially blocked out a few ideas that it would be a very nice sequence to have the pilot take off or land, walking either to or from the plane. This would both give a detailed view into the assets that a seen either moving fast or from far away.

Here is the progress of my scene as I animated.











Here is the final animation that I finished. Since it was simply an animation test there was no need to have fully rendered textures etc. Some of the benefits of using simple white shaders is that one can see obvious problems if the model did not work.

Th Pilot Rig (part 2)

The following videos and images show the development of the rig in its painted weights stage. Having followed an essential naming strategy I was easily able to select the joints that were to be bound and skin them appropriately to the mesh.











Here is the final version of the rig that would be used in the final piece if and when necessary. Creating this digital asset is a very important as a pre-production project.