RUNT

This is a group master project, made up of myself, Charlotte Dobson and Jacob Kirk, which is contributing to the final year of our degrees. The plan for this project is to produce a fully stylised, 3D animated short.

THE STORY

Runt tells the story of Nina and her unexpected birthday present...

Nina is your typical 12 year old girl, grumpy, has an attitude and everything is a chore. We first meet her at her home in the living room as she is scrolling through her phone, coming across photos of her friend with a new designer dog. This causes Nina to become upset and reminds her of her dog that has recently passed away. This becomes clear as she walks over to the fire place which displays trophy's and photos of the pair when Nina was younger. We then hear the mum calling to Nina, "Where's the birthday girl?". Off screen the mum says "Happy birthday sweetheart" whilst putting a cardboard box on the floor into view. Muffled noises come from the box, which starts moving. Runt ( a shark pug mix) pops his head up out of the box and Nina looks at it in shock and disgust. Off screen her mum says “I know he’s not what you’re used to love but he was the last in the litter, and we got him for a really good price, apparently no one wanted him because he was the runt, he’s one of those designer things, you know, a mix”. Nina's mum then leaves the room leaving the two to get to know each other. Nina is left alone with Runt who is now out of the box and exploring his surroundings.

The idea is to end the sequence will photos of Nina and Runt on their journey as their friendship develops and Nina starts to think Runt is actually pretty cool.

THE PLAN (beginning of semester two)

The following gantt chart shows how the jobs are going to be distributed over the time scale we have be given.

As you can see, my main role in the project is to design and create the interior of Nina's living room, since this is the only room the action takes place. As we get further into the project myself and Jacob will move on to animating the characters whilst Charlotte creates the artwork which we will end the sequence with.

RESEARCH

Like every project, I started this one with research, both existing animation interiors and real life interiors (which can be seen below).

As you can see, Inside Out was a big influence on this project. When looking into the interior of many Pixar houses, they are normally populated with masses of stuff, how ever in Inside Out the interiors are pretty basic and plain, adding the the mood of the film. This is represented by dull colours when Riley is in the new house that she hates, which start to get brighter towards the end of the film as she becomes happier. The interior is also populated with simple yet very well made objects that I feel is something I should incorporate into my design.

THE INTERIOR

I decided to use 3DS Max to create the interior for our sequence, as it is the software that I feel most confident using. Since the animation is set in one room I didn't focus any attention on the rest of the house. Before I began modelling the living room, I produced a floor plan to use as a starting point (seen below). Although I didn't make this floor plan completely to scale, that wasn't a huge problem as my modelled room will be slightly out of proportion to order to create the stylised look we were going for.

This was a pretty accurate floor plan, however when I started modelling I realised not all the elements we wanted to include actually fit in the room created due to the variation in proportions. It would have been easy to make the room bigger but this would have thrown out the whole scale. I chose to cut out some unnecessary items, such as, the side board and the foot stool, since these weren't as big a part of the story as other aspects like the fireplace.

The modelling process went as planned. From previous research into stylised interiors tried to incorporate masses on the shelves and fireplace. I also ensured I chamfered all the edges a little extra than usual, giving all the models that more cartoon style. Here you can see the fully modelled living room, prior to texturing.

From these renders you can how I have altered the proportions particularly the size of the sofas and fire place and the height of the room, giving the room some character. A lot of detail has gone into modelling assets for the mantel piece since I knew this was going to be the main focus of one of the shots.

The next stage of the process was unwrapping and texturing the room. For various items in the room it wasn't necessary to create different texture maps when I could re use ones I had already created, particularly for items that wouldn't be fully in shot, like the books and vases. This was a huge time saver. Below are some test renders produced to send out and gather feedback which can be seen later on.

As you can see some cushion textures are missing and the artwork for the picture frames since this was a work in progress, which was pointed out in some of the feedback we received.

So now you can see (below) a three quarter view of the fully textured room and a wireframe. In the final sequence I took Jacob's street and placed it outside of the window to complete the scene.

The wireframe clearly shows the topology of my assets which is quite dense in certain areas, for example the birthday banners needed more polys to add a noise modifier, which created some variation. This was also the main focus of a shot so more detail was required. Other aspects have more polys (the rug and cushions) as I have applied a cloth modifier to create creases and wrinkles in the mesh.

ANIMATING

Myself and Jacob were the animators for this sequence, animating the two characters (Nina and Runt) which Charlotte had modelled and rigged. These can be seen below in their T-pose.

Before we began animating, a shot list was made (seen below), naming each shot and describing the camera move, the primary and the secondary actions we thought would be needed. This was a good starting point and helped us have an idea of the movements we wanted to achieve with the characters. The shots outlined in red were animated by myself.

This list then helped us to pose Nina where we wanted, which was a huge time saver, as when we came to animating we pretty much had the character in the position and ready to go. We then put the posed renders together as an animatic to see how the sequence would flow.

Before we animated, we also shot some reference footage so we could see the movements we wanted to create and base our animation off of it. You can see the comparison and the similarities between the animation and the real life footage in the video below.

These screen captures, below, show the rigs that were used to animate the two characters. As you can see Charlotte has set up a control system to make it easier to access and move various joints and bones. She also used morph targets for different facial expressions which can be controlled using the controllers within the two boxes.

Since the scene was quite a big file the animation was jumping, therefore each shot was animated by isolating what the characters were in contact with. This actually helped us to see the characters and focus on the movements. To get smoother animation we also used the curve editor to create smooth arcs and help the animation flow.

THE CREDITS

Along with the interior and animating, I also undertook creating the credits sequence, which was a big part of finishing off the story and giving it meaning. We knew we needed a credits sequence that carried on telling the story, so a big influence were credits from Up and Monsters University which incorporated pictures of what happened after the movie ended (seen below).

We decided to make a mash up of Up (using the tape design) and Monsters University (using the polaroid style photos) to help us explain what happened to our characters after the animation ended. Before starting this, I did a very rough sketch of the type of style I waned to achieve (below). Along with the rest of the artwork, Charlotte also created the artwork for the polaroids.

As you can see, these sketches are extremely rough, but they were a way of giving Charlotte the information she needed to create the artwork. The idea is that Nina has pinned the images up on her bedroom wall and the camera would smoothly arc around the wall slowing down over each image set up.

Above are Jacob's credits, as an example. I created the design for the wallpaper using photoshop and overlaying a plain wallpaper texture so it didn't look so flat. I modelled the pin using 3DS Max, making it reasonably chunky to follow our stylised theme. In terms of the polaroid, torn paper and tape, they have all been made using the same technique, by using a basic plane with a good amount of polys to add a noise modifier and create ripples in the paper. The textures were all created in Photoshop to make the diffuse maps and I also made opacity maps for each image so that only the diffuse maps are visible on the plane, which made it easier to create a torn edge effect instead of modelling it. The tape has been made in a similar way, however I have modelled the creases into the plane to give it more dimension.

Finally, myself and Jacob animated the camera to smoothly move around the wall and reveal each shot. We did this with the help of the curve editor altering the x and the y axis and off setting the curves to help the animation flow without being jumpy.

The above images show the overall lay out of the credits, and a wireframe version. As you can see, the paper and pictures are quite high poly, which is so that a noise modifier can affect the mesh and add a slight wave over the paper. The tape also looks as though it is going through the mesh, which is because the opacity map is applied in this render.

THE PLANNING

Like most projects, we created a gantt chart at the start of the year planning on how we were going to get the project done by the deadline we had. Here you can see the original...

As you can see, we planned on spending a good amount of time on each aspect of the sequence also getting plenty and feedback from professionals. However, when it came to Christmas we were already off target due to having to focus on two other modules along side. We then came back and revised the plan...

This plan was a much more realistic timeline, however, some personal issues arose pushing Charlottes area back a little bit. Here is the plan showing what actually happened and how our plan developed over the year...

As you can see, a lot changed over the year and a big chunk of the project got pushed to the end. However, we did manage to get it done in time, but it would've been helpful to have a little more time to spend on other aspects of the project such as, sound design, professional feedback and maybe some cloth and hair simulation.

THE DISSERTATION

A quick recap. My dissertation topic was focussed on finding the best technique to create stylised hair simulation using 3DS Max. In this I researched creating hair from splines using the Hair and Fur modifier, using planes and applying hair textures and creating hair by applying the Hair and Fur modifier directly to the mesh and styling it. From this research the results showed that applying the Hair and Fur modifier to splines achieved the best result using 3DS Max.

Following the dissertation I determined that 3DS Max isn't the best software to use for simulation and if 3DS Max was the program of choice then a plug-in would be more successful than using built in 3DS Max tools. However, with using the university render farm we discovered that it doesn't support objects that haven't been produced directly in 3DS Max, therefore this wouldn't be an option for our project. Also the render time of each shot was already pretty high and adding hair into the scene would've just made it higher, which wasn't really an option for us.

Due to all these factors we decided it would be best to model the hair on the character along with the clothes, therefore we didn't have to worry about any simulation and could focus on other challenging aspects of the sequence.

FEEDBACK

Through-out the project, we regularly sought after feedback both from our target audience and professionals by posting updates of our work on various social media sites and getting first hand research. Sometimes this was harder than anticipated.

We initially posted renders, showing our work in progress, on social media sites, particularly Ten Thousand Hours - a Facebook page dedicated to sharing 2D and 3D art - to gather feedback and critique from other people interested and working in similar fields. This gave useful feedback regarding mine and Jacobs modelling, which we could act upon. I altered the material of the cushion so the seam was as harsh and Jacob added a bump map.

Our target audience is children and teenagers, similar to Disney and Pixar's demographic, so we felt it was necessary to include feedback from the age group to see how well they understood the story and whether they found the character designs appealing. As you can see from the written up feedback above, most of the children enjoyed the short animation and enjoyed the character.

Most recently we sent out the finalised sequence to academics teaching in similar fields, which gave us lots of useful feedback to work on for our evaluation report. The man feedback we received was regarding the sound, which (when you get into it) can become a main task itself. Once you start adding a few sound effects, you have to continue for the whole sequence, which we unfortunately didn't have time for. In hindsight we should have collaborated with music students, but this could be something for the future. We also received feedback concerning the fact that the sequence was lacking real world physics, specifically cloth and hair simulation. As previously stated this was in the initial plan, however we realised this was a much bigger task and for the best results 3DS Max wouldn't be the program of choice. A lot of people commented on the credits sequence being a necessary part of the sequence. It was stated that this gave the sequence more meaning and rounded of the story.

THE TEAM

JACOB KIRK

Jacob's main role for this project was modelling the exterior environment for the opening shot. Initially we had planned on the story partially being set outside, however due to our timescale we shorted the narrative to put more focus on other aspects of the project. Jacob also animated the other shots (previously shown on the shot list) which we did together in order to ensure we were animating in the same style. Jacob's dissertation topic was focussed on lighting and rendering, which was a huge part of this project and helped massively. We rendering in image sequences using the university's render farm, which was a huge time saver in the end, with Jacob rendering and compositing the final sequence using After Effects.

CHARLOTTE DOBSON

Charlotte's role was focussing on the characters. Using ZBrush, she modelled, textured and retopologised Runt and Nina ready to bring into 3DS Max, which she used to rig both characters. Once these big tasks were complete Charlotte passed the models on to myself and Jacob, ready to be animated. In the mean time Charlotte was creating artwork for the sequence using Photoshop. The art work was needed for the mantel piece picture frames and the images Nina flicks through on her phone.

AS A WHOLE

Myself, Charlotte and Jacob have worked in a group together throughout our three years and university on multiple occasions. We have never had an issue of a team member not pulling their weight and have always enjoyed working together, bringing our different skills together ultimately to create this master project. Although we study together, we still learn from each other about the best techniques and how to problem solve issues with each others support.

On the whole, I believe we work well as a team and have supported each other throughout our time at university and have enjoyed created this final project to finish off the year together.

THE FINAL SEQUENCE

THE FINAL SEQUENCE IS SHOWN AT THE BEGINNING OF THIS FEED.

I would like to finish off this post by saying that overall I am pleased with the work that we have achieved in the timescale given. Of course, there are things that we would have done differently if we had known what we know now, having said that, this project has been a huge learning curve for us all.

There are still areas of the project that we would like to alter, specifically the sound and voice overs, which could be achieved later on in the year.