ANDROID’S DREAM

ANDROID’S DREAM

Animating the movement of a robot in an organic manner, without destroying the impression of a heavily weighted robot, was definitely challenging. The android still had to move like an immense machine in motion, yet at the same time had to have some sort of natural movement.

It was the second time in a project, where I have animated a robot. What I learned from my first attempt was that the weight of the character effects all aspects of the animation.

The android shouldn’t move like “The robots” from the German Band Kraftwerk in 1978, but more like the current high-tech androids from Boston Dynamics or Lt. Commander Data.

Let the fight begin…

The objective of my second Demo Project was to animate a robot in a space station to challenge my understanding of the acceleration and deceleration of heavy characters as well as rotating them in an action scene.

I first thought about letting the android dance, but this felt like a copy of the Boston Dynamics films, which have so inspired me. I decided therefore to create a fight scene, combining a high-tech android and its use of an ancient spear.

I need your clothes – Terminator I

The references I used were spread over decades or better millenniums. I used the German band Kraftwerk, the Terminator movies and Star Trek Next Generation from the old millennium; I also used the movie I Robot and the current promo videos from Boston Dynamics.

To create an organic and natural feel and at the same time heavy weight movement, I studied a lot of robotic videos, and additionally but I also studied track and field sport events. The discus and javelin events were good sources of inspiration.

Run Forrest, run! – Forrest Gump

Animation: Starting the animation with the android running, filmed with the perspective from outside the space station. This gives an impression of the limitations the robot must deal with: limited space, limited energy – shown by the poor light and the appearance of fog. I animated this way to indicates that the life support systems on the space station were either failing or were non-functional.

The second camera shows the running cycle of the android. Being linked to the chin of the android the camera gives the impression of heavy movement, like a backwards-running camera man operating a hand-held camera.

All of a sudden the robot stops with its enormous weight it to slides to a halt over the floor. Finally the android comes to a stop with an evade movement. At that moment, the viewer sees that a spear has been thrown at the android.

With a turn-around animation, which is a mixture: half martial arts and half discus throwing the android grabs the spear out of the air. Using his body weight to pivot around he manages to throw the spear back to where it came from.

Landing on his feet emulates a heavy touch down (like in American football) on the floor of station. The pivot movement required a lot of manual optimizations on the graph editor to make the arms and legs move in a realistic and smooth circular movement.

In the playblast I wanted to demonstrate that this android model has a perfect rig. The controllers worked very well, so the movement of arms, legs, hips and torso were pure fun to animate.

As opposed to my previous projects, I was able to concentrate on the total movement of the figure, instead of moving every joint of the skeleton. I also wanted to show the complete animation, which might not be visible in all details during the video.

To create the atmosphere of this nearly-lost space station required the combination of an intensive light from outside and a dystrophic foggy light shining inside the station. This contrast helps build the right atmosphere.

There is no escape, nowhere to run...

Scenery/Environment: In this project there is only one set of scenery, which is a corridor in a space station. A massive hunting robot is running down the corridor, when he is suddenly attacked.

The corridor with its texture map was taken from Sketchfab. To create realistic ambient lighting, it was necessary to double and mirror the corridor because it was open from one side. This would have allowed the dome light to shine into the open corridor, ruining the dystrophic spirit.

The light dome with its extraordinary starlight effects of red and blue was taken from Marcos Barrios Muñoz on Artstation. The dome created the red light falling through the windows of the station. I used several cameras in different positions to create a cinematic effect.

There were two different camera perspectives: one outside of the corridor filming the actions and the other inside the corridor. One of the inside cameras was a point and aim camera, which created the impression of a hand-held camera and another one, which was stationary - to filming the spear attack and the immediate defense reaction of the android. 

Light and heavy weight

Light: The dome, which I chosen had two extraordinary starlight effects of red and blue nebulas . The dome created an intense red light falling from a distant space nebular into the corridor and this light reflected onto the wall as well as onto the mirrored surface of the android.

This combined with the ceiling light, which was placed on top of the already existing light from the corridor environment. Additionally, I added the attribute “scale contribution” with redshift’s volume scattering on every third ceiling lamp to create the foggy corridor effect. If I had used this effect on every lamp, it would have resulted in an overexposed scene, so I had to be careful so as not to too much of this lighting effect.

Credits

Spacecorridor by: the_table on Sketchfab

                 Ivan bot: Truong CG Artist

                  hdri by: Marcos Barrios Muñoz