Pursuit.exe
Storyboarding/Previs
For the initial concept and storyboards we had the robot in our story running and hiding in an ally way but after showing the storyboard and the first previs people found it quite confusing so we decided to alter the location of the first part to a roof top as that was much more readable and was more exciting. In the second previs we refined the camera movements of what we initially had and put in the new stuff that we wanted.
For Both of the previs tests that i did i used Mixamo to get some basic animations that matched what i needed for each shot and then in blender i used some rough geometry to block out each scenes environment. For rendering i needed something that was quick and would allow for rapid prototyping of each shot so i used the evee render engine in blender to do so
Pre-production/R&D
After we knew what we wanted to do i started to test out ideas to help achieve this projec. For the City i used a online city generator that i found before this project and used that to give me the foundation for the city so that i could take it into blender and randomly select buildings from the generated city and then assign different building to each to create some difference in buildings texture.
After we knew what we wanted to do i started to test out ideas to help achieve this projec. For the City i used a online city generator that i found before this project and used that to give me the foundation for the city so that i could take it into blender and randomly select buildings from the generated city and then assign different building to each to create some difference in buildings texture.
Going into this we knew that we didn't want to create characters and rigs from scratch so we found a cyborg and wraith rig that were great but the textures for them weren't at resolution or style we wanted for our project so as they were already unwrapped i took them into substance painter and gave them more PBR based texture so it would work better when in Blender. The cyborg was just some metal, scratches and imperfections and then in blender give the lower layers a black texture layer and a emissive red texture to interact with the scene more. For the Wraith i gave a black metal texture and then added some wear to the edges and gave the bottom half a cloth texture with some added dirt on it. For the face i wanted to experiment so i took a fleshy texture and used coffee ring alphas in substance and used that a black mask on the face area of the wraith so that it would look like a ancient language or symbol to make the wraith feel more of a threat.
I experimented with other looks of the wraith so cut down in animation as fully animating two characters would be more time consuming so i tested a smoke sim in blender where i animated an emitter moving around and then simulated it smoking and leaving a trail that dissipates. I also parented a light to the emitter so that it would have a glowly subsurface glow through the smoke. However this was later repurposed as rendering and simulation times would take too long. So we decided to find more creative ways to show or imply the wraith was around.
For the environments i built out two main environments that were going to be used the most and seen from the most angles. One was the rooftop and the second was the bridge. For the roof top i modelled the base shape and then started to add the details like the circular vents and the chain link fence that i created in blender by using array modifiers to give me more control of how many segments of each that i want. For the rest of the roof i used assets off of sketchfab and mega scans to help fill out the environments to make them imperfect and lived in.
The portal was a very important part of the project so i started to look dev and test it out during this phase so that when we got to the shot we knew what we'd be looking at. The basic idea for the portal was taking a torus and scaling it on its Y axis to make that generic portal shape and from there i sub divided it and then displaced it with noise to give it a much more organic and energy like shape. To give the portal the subtle movement/Shimmer I set the displacement to object then selected an empty that is moving around a circular curve so that the displacement moves.
To stay organised during the production phase i made a simple shot list that was invaluable during this project as it allowed me to track what shots i was working on at any given time as i would be on multiple at once. For communication with my other team members we would either discuss the project in person or we would use Miro or Discord to showcase our work to each other and give feedback.
Production
Making a fully animated previs and building out the key environments helped slide into production seamlessly as now all i needed was to Bring in the animations that i exported from maya that my team members were doing and reanimate the cameras with a little more polish and then setting up render passes for each shot. that i could use for compositing.
Shot 1
For shot 1 i used the generated city as a background and then noise modifiers on the hover copter model to give it that air craft movement as the camera pushes in. For the comp work in this shot i mainly used the emission pass out of render from blender and then in nuke gave the lights in the city a glow and added some depth of field with the mist pass and Z_Defous node.
All Videos
Shot 2
In Blender i took the rooftop and the running animation and animated the door slamming open when the cyborg runs through. The camera movement is a pretty simple pan from the moon to the door. In Nuke i exported the camera and so that i could put some clouds on cards to fill out the night sky and to make the moons glow that i added have that subsurface effects.
Shot 4
Most of shot 4 is done in a similar way to shot 2&3 in terms of the compositing but i was able to reused the smoke simulation from the R&D phase to make a burst of smoke as the wraith appears behind the cyborg with the blue light emanating through it .
Shot 5
Shot 5 was a fun one as i really got to have fun with the camera in this one as i wanted to mimic a Zolly shot as i thought it would be dynamic and help show the fear and realisation that the cyborg is going through when it hears the wraith. So in Blender i did a test by animating the character moving back and then animating the focal length to push in on the cyborg creating the effect i wanted and after that i just brought in the animation and retimed it a bit and then let it render.
Shot 6
Another fun shot as i really got to play with the camera in this one. The inspiration for this shot was Sam Raimi's style in the evil dead that he uses to depict the deadite moving and even in spider-man 2 for doc ocks arms. In Blender i added a curve and just animated the camera along it and then added some animation to the camera itself so its view would change as the wraith looks around.
Compositing in Nuke was fun as i got to design how the wraith sees. For the main distortion i'm using a lens distort node on the emission pass and then using two gizmos called exponetial glow and X_Distorti got off of a site call nukepedia. The last bit of comp work was using a Z_Defocus node to blur all of that out.
Shot 7
In this shot i decided to push my 3D skills abit and try setting up a ragdoll simulation and i was pretty happy with how it came out, its be no means perfect as there are a couple issues with constraints and limbs moving or not moving the way that they should. Once it was all set up i brought the ragdoll into my scene and set up some collisions so the cyborg would fall the way i wanted him to and then added some awnings model that i got off sketch fab to decorate the sides of the buildings. The rest was just testing different camera speeds in the graph editor to find the best speed to match the fall.
Shot 8
For this shot i wanted the fallen cyborg to burst out of the dumpsters in a similar shot to the iconic shots of zombies coming out of their grave. The camera animation is a quick push in that tilts as the hand comes out and then in Nuke as the hand comes up i used a radial shape and inverted it so that i could grade it down and create a vignette that draws the viewers eyes to the centre of frame as it pushes in.
Shot 12
Luckily during pre production i was able to sort out the bridge environment and the portal so i just brought them into the scene and set the up with the animation and animated the portal scaling up. To add to the power of the portal being created i wanted to make up sparks so i took a cylinder bevelled it and then put an emissive material on it and added a ico-sphere as the emitter and gave it some velocity on the normals so that it would burst out with the power and speed i wanted it to.