Study Projects

Love, Death & Robots

The thesis project was a collaborative work between all the master students and was organized as a production: supervisors and leads were chosen, who divided the tasks so that everyone had something to do.

Our reference was a short part from the episode titled "Three Robots", which is the second one in the first season of the series. The episode talks about these robots that embark on a sightseeing tour of a post-apocalyptic city long after the fall of humanity. In our scene the robots are in an old vintage diner trying to understand how humans were made and how they used to function.

I was one of the two texturing leads and in addition to checking that the textures made by the generalist artists were done well following a previously established common workflow, we also did our part. I created the texture of 11-45-G, which is the square-based pyramid with a single eye.

I took the model made in the modeling department and before starting on Substance I looked for some detailed references.

I started texturing by attributing basic colors of the materials, for example grey for the metal. When I had a base, I started adding the spoils, like scratches and dust.

For the solar panels I recreated a pattern in Illustrator that could be tiled in Substance.

When the texturing phase was over I was moved to do animation as that's what I'd like to do as a job.

I made two shots and in both of them I animated 11-45-G (I highlighted the elements I animated in blue): in the first shot, she lifts a plate full of moldy scraps.

 The second shot is the last one of the thesis and the next scene after the previous one. Here you can see where the plate is being taken. The tricky part for me was animating the hat, which didn't have to look like it was hanging in the air. In the second shot I also animated the flickering of the eye light.

Currently the thesis is still in progress but we're very close to the end, stay tuned for the final result! :)

Berserker

The berserker is a team project in which the goal was knowing how to organize oneself and collaborate in order to create a sort of functioning assembly line and obtain a character with a base like an action figure. Whether to make a photorealistic or mock look was up to the group. Our concept art was by Max Hugo. 

We started analysing the character  trying to figure out how many elements and materials made up the character. This was a first step in understanding how to divide the tasks between us.

Then we searched for references for the various elements and merged them into a single file, so that we could consult it whenever we needed to, without the risk of creating something that didn't fit with the pieces made by others.

My main job was to take care of the stand. First of all I made some sketches to propose to my teammates.

After choosing one idea I started the research of more specific references

Time to start the modeling! Depending from the props we began in Maya or in Zbrush, for example for the lamellar armor I used Zmodeler in Zbrush while for the stand I used Maya. Here are some objects:

Below you can see an advanced blocking of the little environment. To make the engraved runes on the stones I first created the letters and then subtracted them with boolean operations; the geometry thus obtained was then retopologized.

We continued to model gradually adding more and more detail. We also used Marvelous Designer to create some garments.

Once we finished every piece, we assembled the character to check that everything matched. When we were officially done modeling we did the UV's and started texturing on Substance Painter.

These are some work in progress of the texturing phase. First I texturized the base and when I finished I moved on to making other elements.

The difficult part for me was to give as much realism as possible to the various objects, especially the snow was not easy to recreate.

After the stand my teammates entrusted me with the texture of the clothes. Also in this case, before getting to work I searched some macro photos of fabrics and I based myself a lot on the main reference for the colors. And here is the result:

After this I made other minor textures. 

In the end the character was rigged and posed, furthermore were created with X-GEN both the beard+hair and the various furs.

The berserker in the end turned out better than we expected and seeing the renders was really satisfying. While I was trying to correct some flaws in Photoshop I tried to add a snowfall to make the atmosphere even better. My teammates liked the idea and we improved it by comparing our opinions. In conclusion we added a light mist and changed the general tone of the image towards blue.

Alastral

The first module of the course was on Zbrush. We were given a warrior insect themed concept that we would have to model in detail – mine was a concept art of Jotade titled "Alastral, the warrior".

I started searching some references and analysing the basic shape in the character, in order to have an idea of what I should do for the blocking.

Then I opened Zbrush and began with the modeling of the body in A pose using Zspheres and I placed a shape to occupy the space of the hair on the neck. After that I added the various pieces of armor and the horns, and when I was near the end of Alastral I created the sword. Here you can see the progress of the sculpting.

When the maquette was ready in pose I exported an fbx and imported it in Maya where I set up the lights, assigned a clay material and rendered with Vray.