Rookies Weekly Drills 045 - SurvivalKnife

Warning: There are some strong almost strobe like black to white transitions in the video for those who may be sensitive.

This afternoon I have updated the IRay renders from yesterday as the alphas are now correct which are attached to this update. The knife required a few texture tweaks here and there which I then hooked up within Maya and Redshift.

I also used the Locators within Maya I created yesterday to then create a simple animation to showcase the knife parts opening.

Due to other study projects and commitments I focussed on getting a first version of the final render / video complete without the chandelier animation. I find working in an end to end iterative manner helps get at least something in a reviewable state and I am able to enhance it in smaller parts. It also helps foster new ideas and get a general direction of what I am hoping to achieve overall.

I am still hoping to put some time aside to get the model into Houdini and add the chandelier / animation idea as a transition or background to the presentation video.

All of the music is licensed and part of a royalty free music subscription I have with Artlist.  The animated graphics within the video were part of a free asset pack last year (from Artlist) I have never had chance to use.

All of the final edits and cuts were done within Adobe Premier Pro.

Another super fun weekly drill, getting ready for next week :D

Updated 18th February (Keeping this entry to leave video render at the top)

Created a simple camera animation within Houdini that consists of a sphere with copy to points and applying some random rotation. I also got some great feedback that my current renders within the video were a single perspective so changed it up a little with a different render perspective to at least give some difference midway through the video.

All in all I am pretty pleased with the result, as always these things are never finished.  Was a great learning experience this week to push myself to see what can be created in just a few days.

This evening worked on creating the last few parts and putting it together to flesh out look and tweak sizes where needed.  I then created UVs and started to texture it within Substance Painter. I additionally created some simple alphas for the following:

1. Alpha for an engraving, was hoping to make it look like when you see symbols on silver.  I did notice on the "how it is made" video they engrave at the base of the knife part. I wanted to show the engraving, I additionally changed the weekly drill number into Roman numerals.

2. An alpha for the Rookies logo so I could mask texture it as Gold and add height.

3. An alpha for the grip notches, haven't quite mastered it in this iteration but ok for a first attempt. I think I need to make it a gradient to get a better effect, right now it looks like a harsh stamp.

On a side note I parented each part within a Locator whilst in Maya this evening.  This will allow me to rotate each part at the correct pivot point so that if I wanted to create an animation of parts coming out of the knife at the end I could.

Render above is direct from IRay, eventually it will be rendered with Redshift. That's all for now in this evenings update.

Started to put together a breakdown as I go this week based on the very valuable feedback given by both Justin and Kristina.

This evening I have begun to create some of the parts needed to create what will hopefully become a survival knife inspired by the classic Victorinox Swiss Army Knife. I remember owning one of these with my brother when we were younger (and old enough of course).

After starting to create some basic meshes I then setup basic lighting to help presentation and to identify any immediate issues with the meshes themselves (plenty of tidy ups still to do).

I will be looking to change up the theming and texturing to be more inline with The Rookies.

First job is to get all the parts I need and get a block out of the basic mesh composition all together. After that (dependent on time) the plan is to get my headphones on and UV it before heading into Substance Painter for texturing.

References & Concept

What makes a Swiss Army Knife unique is the amount of variations and combinations that exist, just on the https://www.victorinox.com/ alone there are so many awesome designs. I am hoping to create a black and gold version and change up the iconic logo with a Rookies variant.

The core concept of what I am trying to re-create will be the chandelier in their flag ship store of Zürich. I will be modelling the main parts within Maya (as have not practised for a little while due to recent Houdini studies). That said, I will be using Houdini to create the final chandelier and render with Redshift. Hoping to play around with some copy to points and colour attribute transfer to see if I can create a nice wave of satisfying animation.

Also lucky enough to have a video on how the knives are made to help with detailing, love this kind of stuff. If you have time would recommend watching with your morning coffee :D