Chenwei Liao

For this project, I chose to work on it alone, so I spent a lot of energy in the process from the initial project proposal to the final completion of all the designs, I had a big idea, I wanted to create the environment and the characters and the whole animation, this workload is very huge, but my energy is limited. However the whole process of the pre concept was something I really enjoyed, I was looking forward to how the project would look when I exhibited it at school, I wanted everyone to like my work, I wanted to step out of my comfort zone and give myself a challenge, and thinking about it it seemed as if my energy was becoming enough again. In the early stage of the project, I took the perspective of a gamer to explore some games with a similar style to my proposal, and I would ask myself what aspects of these games I liked, and what aspects I could add more to, and what I could learn from the excellent art styles of these games, and this method was particularly effective, and I think that I would always ask myself why I chose this game or animation as a study in the early stage of the research. I think in the preliminary research I will always ask myself why I choose this game or animation as my research, is there anything I can refer to or study about it? After studying a few games and an animation, I have a new understanding of Japanese culture and its application to animation, and the knowledge I learnt will be twice as effective when applied to my own projects. In terms of the overall design I did a lot of different designs, I got the centre of all the animations right, which I’m quite happy with. However, in some of the designs I didn’t add colours, instead I was going to add textures to the model at a later stage with reference to realistic references, I think this is a shortcoming and I can design all the concepts as much as possible (including colours) in future projects. I think the final animation will look great based on the current design and list, and I hope it really is. I have also changed the design many times during the design process based on the suggestions of my tutor and my classmates around me, it is usually hard for me to find out which part of the design is faulty, whereas my tutor and my classmates are able to find out the problems and point them out through their perspectives, and I will actively try to optimise them, which is what I am more satisfied with in this part of the pre-project.

I plan to research the technologies I need to apply to my entire project in the next step, including 3D scanning technology, how modular modelling is built in unreal, how realistic style materials are made, and how animation performances are applied to motion capture. I need to spend a week to two weeks going over these methods that I need to apply, this will also give me a clear picture in my head and I can better plan my project according to the flowchart and timeline that I have made for myself. After finishing this aspect of the research it’s time to start working on the models, this aspect will take a lot of time and researching the methods used to create realistic animations in these games, the acting techniques of motion capture actors and so on, there are so many things that I need to get done in the next step, however, I have a good planning schedule and I can control all the progress in the time cycle and if I can’t finish it in the cycle how do I ask for help! Mentor’s help, these are also my next steps to think about. I need to get these things done first then plan the later steps during the Christmas holidays.

The software and techniques I will be using next:
1.Maya (making modular modelling and props for the character, animation adjustments for the character)
2.Zbrush (sculpting high polygon models needed in the environment, adding more detail and texture, sculpting characters)
3.Substance Painter (create realistic environment materials and realistic character skin materials)
4.Speedtree (create trees that may appear in the environment)
5.Unreal Engine (environment construction, lighting rendering, camera animation, etc.)
6.Marvelous Designer (character clothing layout production, fabric simulation)
7.Marmoset (high polygon model baking to low polygon model)
8.Move ai (character animation capture and import into maya)
9.RealityScan (scanning some distant or corner objects into 3D models)

Some of these techniques, some of which I am familiar with and some of which I have never used before, need to be learnt, and I need to learn the software techniques that need to be used in each step before I start modelling or animating.

Funding:There are some expenses in this project, I may buy some software to learn, I may spend money to rent professional motion capture equipment if the motion capture shot by mobile phone is not accurate enough, or I may buy a set of equipment to lay a foundation for my future motion capture technique.

Because the overall animation style is realistic and I tried to use 3D scanning to scan some street objects during the summer, the results were not very good, but in the last few days I’ve experimented and I’ve tried to switch to another software called “RealityScan” the scans are great and I’ll think about whether I can use this method to add some small objects to the environment that I have in real life and might appear in this project and they won’t be the centre of the shot, just a second. Using this method I can add small objects to the environment that I have in real life and may appear in this project, and these small objects will not be in the centre of the shot, they will just pass by for a second, so if this is the case I can try to use this technique to scan the rubbish on the side of the street or some objects that fall on the ground and then import them into the unreal engine to place them. I’m really looking forward to improving the efficiency of my work with some of these new techniques, but it’s all just an experiment, and I’ll be experimenting with them later in the workflow to see if they can actually be applied to the environment.

I’ve made a list of items that need to be modularly modelled with reference to the real world. This list is an initial idea, and there may be various compositions that will be added to the environment as it is being built, which I will leave for later consideration, as the environment is a long process, and I’m going to try to make sure that each shot is as rich as possible.

I did a simple environment street build based on a part of the conceptual design of the painting combined with primary research, and since I’m more skilled at the 3D part, I used this method to plan the streets of my environment, which gave myself a clearer understanding of how I should later on, based on the blockout and modular modelling of my streets in Unreal engine Build my animation environment. This blockout building will not be applied to the post build environment, it is just a simple concept in the plan to use maya for modular modelling and testing in the post build environment, and then import it into the unreal engine for the build.

My plan is to build a shrine at the end of the street, the shrine is the biggest building in the whole environment, so I designed a shrine using the traditional Japanese shrine as a reference, the shrine can also be built using modular modelling, many of the columns and windows etc can be modularly constructed, the shrine being the most complex and biggest scene in the whole environment it should have a lot of details in it, such as why I would so design this roof, why didn’t I choose the other two. One very important element is the talisman made of paper and cloth tied to a rope at the entrance of the shrine, which is symbolised to protect the shrine from demons. The design of the roof and the structure of the base of the shrine are the most solid of the three designs, which is why I chose this version of the design.

If I had to choose the most designing part of a Japanese town’s architecture, I would undoubtedly choose the roof. The roof structure in Japan is very different from the roofs of our modern skyscrapers, and the Japanese roofs are made up of many triangles and rectangular modules, and I analysed the reasons why they are designed this way, and combined with the articles that I have read, I learnt that triangles have a kind of stable characteristic for architectural structures, so many Japanese roofs use this feature. So I designed a few different roofs with reference to some research I found in the preliminary stage, three roofs are enough for different houses to be built differently. Since the whole animation is based on a realistic style, I could model the basic structure of the Japanese town building with reference to real buildings, because I plan to use modular modelling to build the floor structure of the building directly at a later stage.

The torii is one of the most important buildings in front of a shrine in Japan and this is one of the buildings with symbolic significance, I need to design two different torii based on these references combined with my previous research. The stone statue is also one of the important buildings around the shrine, I have made two sketches based on this, this is just a concept but I will be sculpting my concept in fine 3D.

After I finished designing the main character’s design I started to think about how to design the costumes for the other six characters, and the kimono was one of the most appropriate costumes because it is one of the costumes that best represents the background culture of Japan. I designed a basic kimono pattern based on these references and then used the Japanese pattern brushes that I used to have in my PS collection for the basic colouring and pattern drawing. I created six kimono colour patterns which were just right for the attire of the six demons in my project. These colours are all on the less saturated side, which is similar to the colour choices for the ronin, which are darker colours, after all, all the characters are in dark environments. And while I looked for some photos of traditional Japanese motifs before the pattern brushes I used, I realised that there are a lot of motifs about flowers in Japan and these styles were just the right ones for me to paint directly with the brushes. When I was looking for kimono references I found some particularly interesting step-by-step kimono dressing techniques, and as I intend to use marvelous designer throughout to create the kimono and simulate the fabric, these techniques are perfect for me to learn and apply in marvelous designer for the sewing of the garment.

I downloaded a model of a kimono from the internet to try and add colour to it and imported the base colour texture into Photoshop for Japanese style patterns, this is an experiment which isn’t too rigorous but I can tell that the method works.