Another year of architectural visualization

A Moment in time - Personal project

This is my latest project that I'm working on right now. A Moment in time is going to be an animation, focusing on telling the story of a small scandinavian family, and their morning, all frozen in a moment in time.

I haven't had the time to render all of the animation yet, so I've decided to instead show you still images from it, as well as the process behind making it, starting with the pre production. 

PRE PRODUCTION

Having learned from my previous projects throughout the year how valuable proper planning really is to a project, I spent more time than ever during pre production.

At the very beginning I wanted to set some mental key points that I was going to primarily work on during the project, which were: Composition, story telling, shading and animation.

From there I went on to create a moodboard, as well as different variations of colour palettes based on a mix of personal taste, and research of design trends in scandinavia. There is something appealing about colours to me, and therefore went with a more colourful palette, which I feel also helps strengthen the overall story in the animation.

After doing the moodboard and picking a colour palette I began working on the animatic. After a less than satisfactory first draft, and some advice from one of my teachers, I sat down and began writing out a background for this family I had envisioned in this apartment.

This really helped me solidify the overall story I wanted to tell. Coming up with shots for the second draft of the animatic became easier, as I had a much better idea of what was important to show in order to tell others about the life of this family I had envisioned.

PRODUCTION

After being satisfied with the animatic I moved on to the production phase. As I usually do, I began by setting the primary lighting for my scene, using an hdri. Something I recently have started doing, is to use Vray's VFB for some of the color grading after setting the light, as whatever I then render out, is much closer to the end result. Additionally, I've been playing around with emulating how normal film footage is made, by making my own scene monotone in look and using color grading to get the look I'm going for.

This time I used Vray's filmic tonemap together with an exposure layer for the main color grading.

I struggled a little with the overall design, but otherwise things went fairly smoothly building out the scene I feel.

Most of the objects in the scene are downloaded assets with  downloaded textures, although imperfections and shading were mostly done by me. a small amount of textures were made by me aswell. The building as well as kitchen, and a few smaller objects like the keyboard were also modelled by me.

THE SECOND - AN ANIMATION PROJECT

This project began as a school assignment, but as I tend to do, kept working on it afterwards, eventually finishing after 5 weeks. It was a very fun project for me, as I had previously never really made animations outside of a failed attempt half a year prior.

Outside of a general focus on learning about different aspects of animation, I really wanted to try and mix a traditional architectural flythrough animation with a "artsy"/cinematic style. I also really wanted to challenge myself by making a more "whole" interior scene, as I usually make projects on a smaller scale (especially kitchens for some reason). 

PRE PRODUCTION

I've never been that good at drawing, so instead I decided to create a storyboard in 3D. I approached it with a simple blockout, starting with the building layout, then bigger objects like dining area and kitchen area, and ending with small details of key points to focus on.

I'm glad I decided to do it in 3D, as it allowed me to both reiterate the storyboard and its details faster, as well as making it visibly clearer to me in terms of composition (In comparison to drawing in my case). As I already had the scene in 3D, it also allowed me to quickly test ideas out for the shots, like focus shifting, making it much easier to sort through ideas

As both the blockout and camera shots had already been made during storyboarding, I had more time to focus on animating the cameras. A big part of that was getting the speed of each to match each other, learning about, and working with constraints to create camera shake in varying degree.

I also spent quite some time on figuring out what aspect ratio I wanted to use. I initially tried using a 2.35:1 aspect ratio but felt it didn’t work very well when seen on social media platforms, where this project was going to be seen. Instead, I settled on 2.1 aspect ratio as a compromise, while still getting a cinematic feel.

PRODUCTION

When making a scene I always start by setting the primary lights. In this project that was done by a dome light with an hdri, and Vraysun. the domelight was the primary source, with the Vraysun being there to enhance the shadows.

From there I began detailing the scene, starting with texturing, and shading of the building structure, and then beginning modelling details and the larger objects like the kitchen area and dining table and seating. in between modelling I'd do some texturing and shading.

As some point throughout the project, a classmate of mine had shown me some interesting resources on colour theory, which inspired me to play around with some of it, resulting in the colours walls.

Outside of the curtains, which was made in Marvelous Designer, everything else was made in 3ds max, using V-ray as my rendering engine. Some textures were made or altered by me in photoshop, but the majority are downloaded. The majority of shading in the interior part of the scene was made by me. I used ACES for this project

The animatic had been made in After Effects, but we had recently gotten student licenses at school for Nuke, so I did the final compositing with that, after a quick intro course from my wonderful teacher.

WHITEHALL BOAT PROJECT

During school I had done an assignment focused on modelling, in which I had decided to model a Whitehall classic spirit 14 rowboat. Afterwards I came up with an idea for an animation to showcase it, making my first exterior scene, and first attempt at making animations.

Although I had intended on finishing this scene in one go, I didn't have the time and ended up working on it on/off throughout half a year. The biggest challenge was the scene becoming outdated every time I would come back, making me redo the whole thing. I eventually ended up cutting back on the bigger animation and settled on the result below which I was still very happy with.

It was quite challenging making an exterior for the first time, but I learnt a lot. most of the time was spent learning about vertex painting and distance tex in Vray and using it on the beach. All the rocks and vegetation were scattered using Houdini. I had wanted to learn how to use Houdini more and used this project as an excuse to do just that. Occasionally I like doing it that way, although there are more efficient or suitable approaches that fits my software better.

The beach itself as well as the boat was modelled by me. I also made the shading and textures for the boat. the rest was downloaded textures, but with my own shading. Lighting was made using only a Vraysun and a few Vraylights for the godrays on the boat. The ocean was made using PhoenixFDOceanTex.

Software used is 3ds Max, Vray, PhoenixFD, Houdini, Premiere Pro, Photoshop