Cubone

This was my final project for my 2nd and final year of study for a Level 5 HND qualification in VFX. 

Moodboards

For my project, I had to pick a bipedal Pokémon to redesign in a realistic style similar to as done in the movie Detective Pikachu. I decided on Cubone as I like the appeal of the character, especially the fact he wears a skull, and I thought I could change the design to the one that appears in Detective Pikachu.

Before I started modelling my character, I gathered images to use as a reference to understand where I wanted to go with my design for Cubone. I gathered images of the actual Pokémon in the live-action movie, anime, concept art, fan art, etc. I then began adding references to animal and human anatomy so that I could create a realistic structure for a humanoid creature. I also researched my Pokémon's height so that I could make him as accurate as possible in the scene. 

As I continued through my pipeline I would add more references, such as skin and scales for sculpting and then expressions for animating blendshapes. 

As Cubone doesn't have an official design for his face I used Procreate to sketch out an idea for how I wanted my design to look. I based him on lizards, dragons, and dinosaurs.

3D Modelling 

I used Zbrush to create my 3D model of Cubone. This is a turntable that shows my progress, I began with very basic shapes and used poly grouping to help me start to understand each body part more before I began making it look anatomically correct.

I ended up deciding that the upper body looked better using human and chimp anatomy references whereas for the lower  I focused more on animal anatomy, focusing mainly on pandas and Komodo dragons to try and achieve the thicker-legged appearance.

I wanted to make sure my character was still recognizable as Pokémon is a very popular franchise I felt this was important. To make sure I achieved this I constantly referred back to my Pokémon reference images, I also looked at my character's silhouette, I felt if you could tell who the character was from this it was a good sign that I hadn't strayed too far from the original design. 

Sculpting

When I began sculpting the details I knew I wanted to give Cubone scales rather than just skin.  When playing video games as I kid I always pictured Cubone to be more dinosaur-like. I looked at real-life scale references, the dinosaur's scales in Jurassic Park, and scales in animated movies such as Toothless in How To Train Your Dragon. Once I had my idea down I began masking each scale shape using the layers feature on Zbrush. All of the large scales were individually drawn as were many of the small ones, I did however make my own alpha mask to speed up the process for the small scales. 

After masking the scale shapes I inverted the mask and use an inflat brush to raise the scales from the body. I then used the smooth brush to make sure they blended nicely. 

Rigging

After I finished modelling my character I exported the lowest subdivide level of him as an FBX and imported this into Maya. The reason for this was to save more time when it came to rendering. I used Mgear to generate an automatic bipedal rig in Maya for my character. I then used the plugin ngSkinTools to weight-paint my character. I began making rig tests to understand how each controller and body part moved.

For my original animation idea, I planned to have Cubone toss his bone from one hand to another. To achieve this I made 3 bone rigs. One rig was constrained to the left hand, one constrained to the right hand and one with no constraints. I played with the key framing of each bone's visibility so that it looked like only one bone was in the scene.

Weight Painting

UVs

The next stage in my pipeline was to create UVs for my character. I used the 3D cut-and-sew tool in Maya to make my UVs. However, I decided to use Zbrush's automatic UV unwrap for my Skull as it produced a better and faster outcome for what I needed. I tweaked this slightly in Maya so that it unfolded into 2 pieces rather than one. 

I decided to make 2 UV sets. One had everything on one UDIM, this could be used for lower-resolution textures, allowing for faster rendering. The second set had everything laid out on multiple UDIMs, I knew I would need this as my final outcome was to be rendered out in 4K. 

Texturing

I began the texturing stage. I used both Zbrush and Maya for this. In Zbrush I made masks, such as a cavity mask which allowed me to paint on certain areas on my model while blocking out other parts. I was able to export this mask and bring it into Substance Painter. 

I first started out with base colours, I originally wanted to use Cubone's original colour pallet but felt it didn't suit my design so I changed it up. I chose a dark colour and light colour, I then brought these into an online colour mixer to generate in-between colours, this gave me an idea of how to blend the two drastically different colours together realistically.  

During this process, I referred back to my mood board and looked at my references for how scales are textured and coloured. 

The skatepark geometry was able to be generated from the 3D track given. This was then brought into Maya and used as a reference to create low poly geom. The textures were made using photos of different angles of the Skatepark. An image plane would be brought into Maya projected through a camera and positioned into the appropriate place of the geometry based on the photo. This camera was then exported and brought into Substance Painter with the skatepark geometry. The paint projection feature was used, the same photo was used with the camera position which allowed the texture to be painted accurately onto the geometry. 

Animatic

Previs

Techvis

I began visually planning out what I wanted to do for my animation. I first made an animatic, then previs and eventually a techvis/previs that showed my character in the composited scene. This alerted me that my character was too small to be seen by the camera, so I ended up adjusting my final animation idea to accommodate this as I originally wanted to keep Cubone at his real height.

Animation

I began creating some animation tests, I referenced videos I found online as well as filming myself acting out the actions I needed. This would help me create a more accurate animation. 

I used the ATOM feature in Maya to reuse my run cycle from earlier on in my scene, this helped me save time.

Blendshapes

I decided to create some blendshapes for my character. I made these using the layer feature in Zbrush before bringing them into Maya and creating a blendshape slider for each. 

I attempted to make an angry, sad and happy expression for my character.

Rendering 

To check my lighting I used an EXR of the Skatepark and brought this into Maya. I then made some render tests with my model's basic textures to test how this looked. The EXR was a 32-bit image so I later decided to bring this into Photoshop and adjust the level so it was as bright and matched the plate more.

I used a camera tracker in NukeX to create a 3D track of my plate. This would help me create an accurate position for making skatepark geometry later on as the tracking points could generate a point cloud. I was also able to use the tracking points to create cards that also helped show where areas on the Skatepark were in 3D space, e.g. the Skatepark bowl. This was especially helpful for when I created my fence rotoscope. 

The main reason of the 3D track was so that I could get an accurate camera movement that is close to the real camera used. I would later bring this camera into Maya so I could use it when I render my animation. This insured the framing and position and correct.

Compositing 

Throughout my pipeline, I was also working on my composite at the same time. My plate was a video of a skatepark, I was assigned to create a rotoscope of the fence as my character would be behind it and also change the graffiti.

I drew a rotoscope for the fence in NukeX. I made two separate rotoscopes, one for the thick bars and one for the thin. This was because the composite looked better this way as I was able to plug the thin bars into a grey constant rather than the background plate, this way it showed less slipping on the rotoscope, as since they were so thin it was hard to get a perfect rotoscope.

This was my final composite with my fully animated and textured character. I am currently working to improve on this. I will be improving the animation, character scale, retexturing, adding more passes, and adding more VFX.  In this version, I used a beauty, shadow, and Z depth pass.

I added denoise and a lense distort node in NukeX, this was because the plate quality was affected due to the camera used to film it. Denoising the plate made it easier to composite my character into the shot and adding back the noise after, this allowed him to look more part of the scene as he would have the same noise amount. 

I decided to redo my graffiti in Adobe Photoshop. I wanted to go for a more recognizable style. I decided to use a Pokémon-themed font and used a silhouette of Cubone. This idea was based on the Pokémon ad breaks where they had a "Who's that Pokémon?" silhouette guessing game. 

Thank you for taking the time to look at my work :)