THE JOURNEY OF THE JEDI

THE JOURNEY OF THE JEDI

EPISODE I: THE PADAWAN

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…

In the superior master scenario modeling and 3D production of the Animum School, the last project of the master was focused on the steps of the 3D production. This is related to all of the development processes required in the scenario when the padawan (the artist) received from the animation department a little shot with only an animated character.

In the beginning, the Rebels and the Padawan were provided with some animated sequences made by other Padawan animators. The goal was to pick up one of those to start the challenge and this is how begins…

EPISODE II: THE FORCE AWAKENS: Pre-production process.

The Padawan chose the animation made by Dailos Rodríguez because she thought that the whole sequence could represent the Jedi master Obi-Wan Kenobi expressing something important. For the Padawan, it seemed really interesting to recreate a situation like that. So, she started to research a lot of graphic references of the environment, assets, clothes, hair, lighting, and more details that allowed her to understand how to recreate a Star Wars scenario.

EPISODE III: THE JOURNEY OF THE PADAWAN: The Process

Part 1: The Blocking & Modeling

After a study stage about the references, the Padawan decided which assets she would need to build for the environment. Therefore, the first step was the creation of the blocking to establish the proportions, the distribution of the elements, and the general mood.

When the Padawan received approval from a supervisor of the Rebels about the blocking, she started with the modeling. This is a very important process because she had to add more detail to the blocking and had to create the necessary library to complete the environment. In this particular case, she created all the assets from the environment. At the same time, when she finished an asset, she created the Uv’s for each one of the elements, this process is necessary for the oncoming step: the creation of the textures.

Part 2: Clothing

The next challenge was the clothing, so the Padawan made it in Marvelous Designer. There, using the references of Jedi master Obi-Wan Kenobi, she recreated the outfit but only for the parts that would be made of fabric. Once this clothing was finished, she exported to Maya to make an optimization of the topology, because she wanted to simulate some of this clothing regardless of the movement of the character. On the other hand, the belt and the boots were created in Maya to add more detail to those elements.

Part 3: Texturing 

Once the clothing was finished, the Padawan had to create the textures for the elements of the scene, the clothes and the skin of the character using Substance Painter software. For this process, she used the PBR system because she had to set up the shadings in Maya using the Arnold shaders to make the renders with the Arnold system.

Part 4: Simulation

After the texturing process, the Padawan had to decide if she wanted to do some simulation with the cloth. After choosing one of the clothes of the outfit to do this simulation, the process will be done with NCloth dynamics in Maya. This stage was a challenge to Padawan because the simulation changed during the whole animation and she had to make some adjustments to avoid the geometry from being crossed. At the end of the simulation, the Padawan had to create the caches to optimize the final scene.

Part 5: Grooming

For this process, the Padawan used graphic references of the master Obi-Wan Kenobi to study the hairstyle of the character. The Padawan used the X-gen tool on Maya, she put the guides to recreate the hair, the eyelashes, and the beard. Then, using masks, density maps, and expressions she made the necessary adjustments to recreate the necessary hairstyle. To make the final touch, the Padawan made a hair shader to give it the final look.

EPISODE IV: FROM PADAWAN TO JEDI: Assembly, lighting & render

To proceed with the lighting, the Padawan created a new Maya scene where she referenced the environment, the cache of the character, the cache of the cloth, and the hair to start the lighting process. This process was based on some of the references and the Padawan started to use the Arnold lights to generate the Star Wars mood.

To better optimize the render process, the Padawan organized the Maya scene using layers that would have to be reassembled in the next step of the process: the post-production. She also used Aov’s Layers to make sure that the color, shaders, shadows, Subsurface Shader and specular were correct and look very good with the set light.

EPISODE V: THE RISE OF THE JEDI: Post-production

This final stage was developed in Nuke Studio because the Padawan wanted to do some color and specular correction over the layers to make sure that the shot looked like the original idea.

Inside Nuke, besides the color corrections, the Padawan made other adjustments like lens distortions, chromatic aberration, depth, and motion blurs necessary to make a better integration of all elements.

Finally, the Padawan exported the sequence as an image sequence that she put into Adobe Premiere to generate the final video.

So, that was the path of this padawan, she hopes that you enjoyed her story and remember… may the force be with you.